Fic: Exile: Chapter 15: The Meeting

Chapter 15:  The Meeting

After descending several flights of spiral stairs, they came at last to a steel door, heavily locked and barred, with two guards posted outside. Lu Ten spoke to them briefly, and they went to work on the lengthy process of getting the door open.

“So much security for a powerless man?” Azula asked.

“It’s more to keep other people out than to keep Ozai in,” the female guard replied, lifting the steel bar away from the door and setting it aside. She nodded at Lu Ten. “The Fire Lord’s command is that he be prevented from escaping at all costs, and the biggest danger is from an outside breakout, not Ozai himself.”

Azula found that interesting, as it suggested Zuko feared an organized attempt to release Ozai. Was there an actual group out there working toward that end, or was her brother simply overdoing it out of fear of their father?

The last of the locks clinked open, and the guard motioned for them to enter. Azula stepped forward, but Lu Ten hung back. “I’ve no wish to see my…father,” he said. “Let the lady in. She may speak to Ozai as long as she likes. I’ll wait here for her.”

The guards looked mildly puzzled, but voiced no objection as Azula, the hood of her cloak pulled tight over her head, stepped into her father’s prison. The door clanked shut behind her.

She was in a stone room. There was a cage on the far side. And in the cage was a cot, on which lay Ozai.

Azula padded forward silently and peered through the bars. Her father’s face was turned toward the wall, and she couldn’t see much more than a disheveled and stained prison smock, and long strands of dirty, uncombed hair trailing to the floor.

The figure on the cot stirred. “Go away,” it rasped.

The voice was harsh and coarsened, not the smooth, regal tones she was used to, but it was still her father’s voice.  She pulled the hood of her cloak back, and spoke. “Father. It’s me. I want to speak with you.”

The shape on the cot stirred, then sat up. Ozai’s gold eyes locked on his daughter’s. His gaze seemed somehow flatter than she remembered. She could see no fire in those golden eyes at all.

“Azula…” Ozai breathed. “They told me you were ill.”

“I was. I’m recovering. They told me…you have lost your firebending. Is it true?”

Ozai’s teeth bared in a snarl. “It is. For now, at least. That cursed boy used some unknown magic on me to steal my bending, but I have not given up hope of finding a way to win it back.”  The snarl transmuted into a narrow, vicious smile. “That fool of an Avatar and my traitor of a son chose to let me live. I will make them regret it.”

Her father focused his flat gaze on her. The dull eyes made her uneasy, though she was careful not to show it. Stripped of their inner fire, they appeared an unnatural, sickly yellow, no longer the gleaming sunlit gold that was part of the heritage of the Fire Nation’s noble bloodlines. “And what of you, my one faithful child?” he asked. “Have you come to free me from this place?”

She paused. Had she? She touched the crown in her pocket, seeking out the warmth as a shield against the dead coldness in her father’s eyes.  “I…I can’t, right now,” she said, not entirely truthfully. If she really wanted to, she could take out the guards and Lu Ten as well without difficulty, even without her bending, and run off with Ozai into the night. But with both of them stripped of their fire, she doubted they would get very far. And she would never be allowed to see or speak to him again, if they weren’t both simply killed outright while escaping. “I have lost my bending as well.”

Ozai cursed again. “That blasted Avatar – may flame consume him slowly over a thousand years!”

“He swears he had nothing to do with it,” Azula said slowly. “And he’s not a very skilled liar. It seems to be something else. But I don’t know how to fix it, not yet. I think Zuko and the boy Avatar know, but they haven’t been polite enough tell me.”

The former Fire Lord considered that, then shrugged. “No matter. We will solve those problems later.  Free me from this cage – between us we can overpower the guards even without firebending and escape this prison. There are loyalists out there who will give us shelter until we have recovered enough to reclaim what is rightfully mine.”

“Rightfully yours? Not rightfully ours?”

Ozai gave her a sharp look. “What?”

Azula started. She had been unaware that she had spoken aloud.  “I…sorry, Father. I misspoke. I meant nothing by it.”

Ozai frowned, but let it pass. He stepped up to the barred door of the cage and rattled it. “You have gotten the keys from the guard, yes?”

“No…I wasn’t able to come here alone. My escort would have noticed if I had attacked the guards for the keys.” But not if I had palmed them quietly. Why didn’t I think to do that?

“An escort? Your brother?” Ozai looked around, and his eyes landed on a pile of scattered scrolls and a quill he had apparently been provided with to write down his thoughts. Before Azula could correct him, he snatched up a scroll and the pen, and scribbled furiously on it for a moment.

He held up the parchment. They will be listening, he had written.

“No. It’s not Zuko. It’s – “ She stopped, not sure how to describe Lu Ten. A friend? Was that possible? “ – someone else,” she finished. “Someone who agreed to help me get in to visit you.”

“Ah.” Ozai smiled. “I see you have not lost your skill in commanding people. You were born to rule, Azula. Never forget that.”

She hadn’t told him about Mai and Ty Lee deserting her at the Boiling Rock, not wanting to bear the burden of his disappointment – or worse, having him decide to take their fate into his own hands. Had he learned of it during the weeks she lay unconscious? Did he know what they meant to her? Would he even care?

“Father. I came here to tell you something.” She took a breath. “Mother has returned. You told me she’d been killed.”

Ozai recoiled. A mix of emotions flickered across his features and were gone, almost too fast to follow. Surprise. Rage. Disgust.

…Fear?

…Sorrow?

Azula stared. Had she really seen that? Her father feared nothing, regretted nothing. And now his ruler’s mask had closed down again. Whatever had been there once was gone.

“You knew she lived,” Azula said, watching him closely. “You let us think she was dead.”

Ozai seemed to recover some of his composure. “I did, yes. It seemed a kinder approach than to tell you she was banished, that she lived, but you would never see her again. It is easier to let go of the dead than of the vanished. I did it to spare you.”

“I see,” Azula said. And she did. With her mother gone, she would have no one to turn to, to learn from, except her father.

“Why is this of concern to you? Your mother never cared for you, Azula. She loved your brother, accepted banishment for his sake – she never thought about you. Only I did that. You are my daughter, Azula.”

She came for me, Azula thought.  I was trapped and she found me. She brought me back to life. She touched the crown in her pocket again. She is the granddaughter of the Avatar.

“Did you know about her lineage?” The question burst out of its own accord, without conscious thought.

“What?” Ozai’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Roku,” Azula said.

“The Fire Avatar? What of him?”

“Mother is his granddaughter. Did you know?”

Ozai stared at her, irritation on his features. “Of course I knew. He was born high Fire Nation nobility. His blood flows in many of the best bloodlines. What does this matter, Azula? Why are you speaking of these things? We can discuss this later if it means so much to you – after I am free.”

Azula ignored that. “Tell me. If your plan had worked, if the Avatar had failed or run away…what then, Father?”

Ozai’s frown grew deeper. “Then we would have been victorious, Azula. Did your illness dull your wits?”

Azula wondered that herself. Her thoughts seemed to be moving sluggishly in new channels, long unused, or never used.

“And after our ….victory….what then?”

“Then the world would have been ours!” She could see her father’s temper beginning to slip. “Don’t you recall? You were the one who suggested burning out the Earth Kingdom!”

Azula nodded slowly. “Yes. I did, didn’t I? I knew it was what you wanted to hear. And I knew it would upset Zuko, perhaps cause him to speak out rashly. I wanted him back home, but I didn’t want him to take the throne from me. You’d always said it would be mine. And yet you restored him to his place as Crown Prince. I thought that after he spent so much time with those Earth Kingdom peasants, he would protest their wholesale destruction. But he said nothing. I underestimated him -- although he did leave to join the Avatar soon after, so perhaps it worked after all.” She rubbed her forehead with one hand. Her head was beginning to ache. “I didn’t expect you to take my suggestion so much to heart, Father. Burn out a few villages, perhaps, as a lesson to the others. But the entire Earth Kingdom? We had them beaten, Father. We had their cities. We owned the riches of the world. What did we gain from destroying them all?”

Ozai was plainly baffled by this outburst, though he tried to cover it with anger. “We gained victory, Azula. I thought you understood this. They would have opposed us, would have continued to fight. We would never have had peace!”

Azula shivered, just a little. “Peace. Yes. Well, a wasteland is peaceful. But what else is it good for? We couldn’t have put colonies on the burnt earth for years, perhaps generations. Once everything was burned down, the soil would have washed away in the first strong rain. What would our people have lived on?”

“The war would have been over, Azula. It had dragged on for over a hundred years thanks to my father’s failure of vision. He even wasted time attacking the Water Tribes – why, so that we might colonize acres of ice? That we might have waterbending slaves? How did that bring us any closer to true victory? It is the Fire Nation’s destiny to rule the world unopposed, Azula – the disappearance of the Avatar after the destruction of the Air Nomads proved that. It was time for the world to take a different path. Our path, Azula.”

“But the Avatar has returned.” She touched the crown in her pocket again.

Ozai hawked and spat. “A boy who got lucky. Does he think stripping me of my powers will stop our nation’s conquest? Our colonies have been on Earth Kingdom soil for over a hundred years – does he expect our colonists to meekly come home and begin living on bare volcanic islands?  There are far too many of them for that. He is just a child, Azula. He has power, yes, but no experience. He can still be killed, if you wait for the right time, and the right place. But first, of course, you must kill your brother. He should be the easier target. Remove him and claim your birthright.”

“My birthright has been taken already. Killing Zuko wouldn’t be enough to reclaim it, not now. There are others standing in the way. What should I do after Zuko is dead – kill Mother and Uncle as well? And did you know Zuko found Lu Ten, alive, after all this time? He would have to go too. You want me to murder our entire family, Father?” She moved a step closer to the bars, feeling fire flickering at her fingertips, so close. “And of course, I would have to remove you as well, to truly claim my seat as Fire Lord. Deposed rulers are so inconvenient to have around, don’t you think?”

Ozai stared at her, but did not flinch. “You are my daughter, Azula. You are strong, and clever, and ruthless when necessary. I trust you will know best how to restore our Nation’s pride and supremacy. You will find a way.”  He turned on one heel and moved to the small writing desk, and scribbled something down.  Then he folded the sheet and held it out through the bars. “You will find a way,” he repeated.

Azula looked at the small parchment scrap and read the writing. Her eyes widened.

Before she could say anything, there was a commotion at the door. Azula swiftly slid the parchment into her pocket – the one not containing the crown – and turned to see what was going on.  The door swung back with a groan, and a tall, slim, hooded figure entered. The door shut again.

Pale hands reached up to pull the hood of the cloak back.

“Greetings, my husband,” said Lady Ursa. Her tone was colder than any Azula had ever heard. The bitter wind of the endless winter nights at the poles blew through it. “I believe we have much to discuss.”

To Be Continued