Avatar Fanfic - Despising Pity
Title: Despising Pity
Characters / Shippings: OzaixUrsa
Rating: PG
Words: 6,900
Notes: This is a threeshot. All the chapters are below the cut, one after another.
I.
It takes him five weeks to realize that his brother went through the exact same ordeal. The cold walls that contained all his fluttering, useless thoughts…the flat bed that smelled of brokenness and despair and something resembling mildew…the glances the guards would throw him when they thought he wasn’t looking. He would ignore them with his eyes-but his mind was continually focused on their expressions, their movements. He could feel their pity without even having to see it.
Pity. Waves of it, striking him again and again like a blasted ocean. He despised the feeling with a red-hot passion, a passion that nearly made him feel like he could roar fire again-it certainly made him want to.
Pity was seeping into his bones, now. He was submerged in it. It just kept building within those damned stone walls like water, slowly drowning him, slowly making him submit to it. He could not escape it. It was all around him, letting him breathe only for so long. How long would it take for the pity to claim its new patron saint?
He despised those walls. Those cold, unforgiving walls that simply watched him with blank eyes, watched him fall. Unless he’d already fallen. They didn’t care-they were just there for the view, for the scene. For the play to play out, the actors all dull and hidden. Hidden glances from the guards, hidden hate from the Saint of Pity. Dull voices from the guards, dull eyes from the broken Lord. But the walls were entertained. At least, he liked to think so.
I hope I’m giving you a good show.
It takes him seven weeks to realize that he only truly, honestly misses one person. It takes him another week to realize he’s missed her all along, and only another moment later to wonder why he didn’t realize this before.
The loneliness is vaguely familiar, in a dreamlike sense. He is alone in a cage of metal and stone. Before, in that time before the world was his: he was alone in a cage of forced smiles and laughs that are too loud, fancy dresses that swirl and vanish and sparkle, beautiful days spent trying to escape it all the while wishing desperately to be in it. Her smile, her laugh, her beautiful black hair in the sun as she ran. He was never alone when he was with her-at least, not then. Never then. She was always there to stroke his cheek, cup his face in her palms, take him by the hand when he least expected it. The cage was no longer. The bird was free, and she became his wings.
Then the children.
He blamed the children. He blamed them for the new loneliness. The kind that was nights spent in complete silence between them, that was her eyes casting down to the ground as she whispered ‘yes, my lord’, that was her apparently-involuntary shifting of position to protect her son from his presence. Azula gave him hope; he thought she would become his new wings, to take him away from his solitude.
But she was a foolish child, all cruelty and brilliance and prodigy. She wasn’t her, all smiles and sparkling eyes that he wished he could drown in, smooth and flawless face leaning against his hand and kissing it, soft neck that he could bury himself in when the world just became too damn much. No, she was a child. And he was still alone.
Just like he was now, watched by an audience of stones, mocked by a company of guards that never once looked him straight in the eye or spoke louder than a distracted and disconcerted mutter, supported by a filthy once-white pad that only barely allowed him sleep. Yes-he missed her. He missed his wife. He wanted her to run a finger down the side of his face with affection while whispering, “Why do you want so much, Ozai? You’re enough for me.”
The door creaks open with a shriek that seems to echo in his head. He does not look up-no more guards with their eyes downcast. No more sons demanding where their mothers are, only to find out their own fathers don’t know. (Don’t care? He doesn’t know that either.) So he stares at a stone. A cold, damp stone that only watches him back without a smile, without a disconcerted expression, without uncomfortable words or covert, curious glances. Yes, he decides he likes these stones. They watch him-but they cannot judge him. And perhaps that is the most important thing of all.
The door to his cage opens, and now he looks up, eyes dulled by weeks of wishing and wanting and hating and missing. And all of the sudden, everything stops.
Everything stops.
The stones stop watching, he stops hating. The flat bed stops smelling. The pity stops drowning. All he can see is her, kneeling on the dirty floor in that beautiful dress, staring at him with those beautiful eyes, eyes-
--that are wide with pity. But he can’t find it in himself to hate her for it-the missing, the wanting has taken it all away.
“Ursa,” he croaks, his voice no longer commanding and noble and everything she deserved. Deserves.
“Ozai,” she whispers. It is a wistful sort of whisper, the sort of whisper one breathes when they meet a dream. When they don’t think it’s real.
And he has a sudden urge to prove to her how real he is.
He lunges forward with a strength he didn’t realize he had, she gasps and flinches, he’s kneeling in front of her all of the sudden and less than a foot from her face, and craving her in a way he never realized he could have craved her. Not in bed, not close to him and his…it’s a sort of craving that just wants her. Just her. Just Ursa, the beautiful woman who stole the heart he hadn’t yet found and never gave it back. He’s still taller than her, even kneeling, and he finds himself looking down into her aged, flawless face. Her skin has wrinkles, marks of smiles he hadn’t shared beside her slightly-withered lips and ever-bright eyes. Bright eyes staring into his own, dulled ones with a nostalgia and regret and sadness that tears him apart.
“You came back,” he says softly. A quiet, hidden smile comes over her face.
“Zuko found me.”
“Obviously.” He feels a bit of his old self coming back: the Fire Lord everyone thought was gone. “I meant-” His audience of stones is waiting with baited breath, on the edges of their seats. He can feel it. “-I meant you came back…to me.”
It’s hard for him to say those words. He was never really a romantic, as much as Ursa was. And his emotions were never a part of his actions, they never made their way to his behavior. They were always hidden, separate, locked away like they weren’t a part of him at all. Foreign intruders in his body. A sickness he could not cure. She knew this. She had always known this. And so her soft smile only grew wider, still weak with insecurity and worry. Worry about what? he wondered. Worry about me? She was always worried about him. Worried about his reputation, worried about his time with his family, worried about his children, his work ethic, his decisions, his sleeping, his eating, his health, his heart. The heart that she knew she held, and could do nothing about. She couldn’t give it back, she knew-he would never take it. It was a burden she would carry for eternity.
“I couldn’t just walk around the palace-around our courtyards-without thinking of you,” she says. She does not say how she had been thinking of him the whole way there, that long ride from the Earth Kingdom, how she had asked about him within minutes of her arrival, how she had left to go see him in the dead of night after her first dinner back home, when no one could see her go. She does not say how her unsure heart fluttered with worry and worry and worry as she half-ran to the prison, how it wondered what it would find, and wondered what, Dear Agni, she should expect.
He finds that it is getting hard to breathe. The stone walls are dead silent around them. The cage door is open, the cell door is open, and the freedom of the hallway is beyond to let the flickering firelight cast over them all-but he does not even think of leaving her. Not now. He cannot. He would never be free anyway: not without his wings.
She lifts a hand to his dirty face, hidden in shadow beneath his long black hair. He feels her soft skin, more callused than he remembers it, but warm and welcome all the same. And all of the sudden, he can breathe again. And he does.
“What has happened to you?” she breathes, and that beautiful face is sad in a way he has never seen before. “You nearly conquered the whole world, Ozai.”
He turns away-into her hand. “I know I failed,” he whispers. “I’m sorry, Ursa.”
She shakes her head vehemently, now clasping his face in both her hands and moving closer imperceptibly. “No, no, no, Ozai. You were never meant to conquer the world.” He glances up, opens his mouth to protest-but a single pale finger is placed to his lips, and he is silenced instantly by the only woman who ever could. “You were meant for better things, if only you could have seen them,” she whispers with tears gathering in her eyes. “If only you could have seen them.”
He does not understand (he never did) but he knows that she means well for him, and that means more that she could ever know.
He knows that.
“Ursa,” he says quietly, brushing hair away from her eyes with a hand so gentle it almost feels like it is not his own. Tears run down those smooth, pale cheeks. “My flower. Stay with me.”
Suddenly, with a rush that feels suspiciously like desperation, she kisses him sweetly (Agni, so sweetly) on the lips. He melts in her hands; but it is over too quickly, and she is already behind the closed cage door.
“I cannot,” she murmurs into his dark, cold, lonely corner. “There are others who will wonder where I am. But I will bring you anything you wish, if you wish for anything.”
“I wish for you,” he says immediately. Later, his mind would wonder if he was going mad-for that was something he had said so sincerely, it felt strangely foreign and colorful on his tongue. “You’re enough for me.”
She turns to face him, one hand on the door, illuminated in the flickering firelight of the freedom of the hall beyond. And for one moment, he sees the bright smile, so alive in its light, that he had handed his heart to so many years ago.
“And you are enough for me.”
Then the door closes, Ozai is once more left to drown in pity and hatred and the polite applause of his audience of cold, heartless stone walls.
II.
It takes him nine weeks to become angry again. That anger that had been beaten into submission, belly-up, buried beneath everything, suddenly wrenched itself free. He felt it fill his chest, his soul, his entire being with rage and fury. Why did this happen? How? Had he been forsaken? Had they given up on him? Is that why he had failed? Were the spirits laughing at him now?
Laughing, laughing, laughing…he could almost hear them in his mind.
“Bow down to me,” he began to snarl at the empty and faceless air. “Bow down before your King.” No one would stand in his presence. No one would pretend they were above him, better than him-no one would look at him with sympathy. Bow.
The anger chased some of it away. It chased away the blank stares of the stone walls. It chased away the suffocating pity. But it only inflamed to a blaze the wanting, the wishing, the hating, the missing. He hated the guards. He hated the Avatar. He hated his son, his stupid and foolish son. He hated his useless, obedient daughter. He hated those damn walls, watching him slowly break into pieces.
He was crumbling. They knew it. And he knew it. And the anger smelled blood-and went in for the kill.
“Stop it!” he bellowed at the silent stones, at the useless flat bed, at the cold metal bars and the window that only gave him sunlight once every 18 hours as if to mock him. “Do not mock the Phoenix King! Do not mock me!”
(The guards outside would hear him. But none of them would laugh. They would simply avert their eyes, bow their heads, and feel discomfort lie over them like a heavy blanket. His cries were the only words to break the silence they stood in. No man had the heart to say what they were thinking. And no man had the heart to mock him more than his own mind mocked him.)
He never cried. His eyes would burn, his eyes would water, but he would never let the tears fall. This only fueled the blaze that was his anger, his fury. This dungeon would not win! He would not be defeated! He was King of all the world!
“I dare you to defy me!” he cried, his voice echoing off the cold, heartless walls. “I dare you to try! Worthless! Weak! Come and face me, instead of laughing at me from afar!”
After a while, he had already forgotten whom he was shouting at.
“I am the Phoenix King.”
It takes one week for word of his madness to reach the palace. The scarred one on the throne looks away, his expression torn, but does nothing. His wife lays a gentle hand on his. Their children do not understand, and continue their play. The grandmother, lingering on the fringes, is the only one to act.
And when she walks through the cell door, he looks up and says, “Bow down to me.”
She stops. The door is closing quietly behind her, and shuts with a ‘click’ that is too loud. They stare. Then:
“Bow down to me.”
She knows he wants it-he needs it. He yearns to be King again, possibly just Lord. Anything. Anything more than what he’s become: because he can’t stand what he’s become.
She’s not sure she can stand it either…but for a much different reason.
“You are not a ruler anymore,” she says slowly, taking measured steps forward. He snarls-and she sees no recognition in those dulled amber eyes.
“I am the Phoenix King,” he states. Like a child, making it true just by saying it louder. “I am the Phoenix King.”
She feels her heart begin to sink, lower and lower in her chest as she moves ever closer. “No,” she says shaking her head. “You are not. You are Ozai. Ozai.”
A few quick, anxious breaths of someone who is trying to catch up. Of someone who realizes something important was very, very wrong. An empty stare, then a spark. “Ursa?” he whispers. She smiles softly, and lets go of the breath she didn’t know she was holding.
“Yes. I am here.” Her long fingers curl around the filthy bars, and she lowers herself to the ground. “How are you?” She nearly chokes at the obvious question (so stupid, so foolish, she’s not a teenager anymore) but manages to keep a straight expression. “Are you eating?”
“I didn’t think you’d come back.”
She can’t tell if he’s all there. It’s been too long. She remembers the face, straight and serious and noble in ways she could never be. She remembers the eyes, clear but blinded to many things. But she cannot tell if this is him-if this is the man she loved, married, hated, loved, left. Maybe he was already gone when she left. Maybe he was just buried. Maybe this was him.
“I’ve been busy,” she says honestly. Visions of her son flash before her eyes: tired but determined; casting eyes blurred with love at his wife; laughing with a young Airbender who was forced to grow up far before his time; hugging a short earth girl and chuckling when she punches him. “Your son is a wonderful Fire Lord.”
Those eyes seem to become duller. “I can only imagine.”
Is he resentful, or thoughtful? Resenting how his son turned against him and betrayed him and stole his throne away? Or thinking of how he wished he could see for himself?
In truth, Ozai is both. He despises his son, and he knows it is pity that keeps him from visiting. He despises the pity just as much. But he wants to see his son on the throne, the crown a golden flame above his head, commanding generals and servants and nobles and thinking he’s doing a better job, damn him. It would be a hated sight. But he still wishes desperately for it.
Why? he wonders. Why do I need to see that?
Because he needs to see whether or not the world is going on without him.
Who misses the Phoenix King? Who prays for his return?
Does anyone remember him?
“Have they already forgotten me?” he asks her quietly, and she looks up. There. In his voice. She can’t put it into words, she can’t describe it even to herself, but it’s there. He’s there. That’s her husband. That’s Ozai. He hasn’t been lost.
She contains her joy. “Of course not,” she replies with a smile. “How could they?”
He glances away. “They could. They will.”
Her eyes become sad. “They won’t. Nobody will.”
His eyes look up. “Did you forget about me?”
There’s more than one meaning to his words. She catches it, and sighs.
“Never,” she whispers. Even with her voice soft, the stones still make it echo and rebound in the empty space. “You are enough for me.” She had been pursued by several men, all of them much alike. But a certain knowledge kept her at a distance. The knowledge that somewhere, a certain Fire Lord was trying to survive without a heart, never truly free. Not without his wings.
Not without her.
“Their loss, my gain,” he says with the first smile she has seen on him in years. Her heart lifts. Her love, her husband. The one she fell in love with. He is sitting just across the bars from her, grime on his chest and arms and face, hair hanging loose and messy and stringy to frame the face she had always admired. He reaches up to take her hand, the one curled around the bars. She lets him, watching him with a tilted head and a crooked, happy smile.
He glances up. He recognizes that smile-but he hasn’t seen it in years. It warms him from head to toe (it’s been far too long) and he rubs her hand between his. “I think I may go mad in here without you,” he says simply. She laughs.
“I’ve heard that before. Although I believe it wasn’t a jail you were referring to.”
“Close enough.” He smiles as well at the sound of her laughter, and looks back down at her soft, pale hand in his. Then his smile fades-just like her laughter. “Will you stay?” he breathes. “Will you stay with me?”
Her smile fades. And slowly, so does the warmth that once possessed the former Phoenix King. “I cannot,” she says, and withdraws her hand. “Ozai, I cannot.”
“Please, Ursa-”
But she is already standing and walking away. He feels the anger return, the crazy anger that built into a wildfire in his chest and in his mind. He feels the pity begin to close in; but this time, it’s coming from her.
The Phoenix King panics.
“No! Ursa, I will die here!” he screams at her retreating figure, now just a silhouette in the light from the hall. “I will die here alone!” She turns back-but it is too dark to see her face.
She sees his, stricken with madness and confusion and desperation. But those eyes are no longer her husband’s, and so she turns away again. “I would never let that happen, Ozai,” she whispers so that he can only just hear. “Never.”
But then the door shuts. And he is left alone anyway.
III.
Ozai’s words haunt her for thirteen days. “I will die here…I will die here alone.” They echo in her head faintly with every step, every time she walks into one of their courtyards-their courtyards, filled with ghosts of smiles and laughter and sidelong glances-and every time she sees Zuko’s eyes light up at the sight of the dark-haired girl (sharp in every sense of the word, as Ursa likes to think of her). That light…it’s so familiar in its warmth, fiery warmth, passionate longing, it almost hurts to see.
“I will die here alone.”
Ursa’s words haunt him for thirteen days. “I would never let that happen, Ozai…Never.” Never, she said. Never. Where is she now? Where is her golden warmth, her smooth pale skin lighting up the darkness, her soft, enigmatic smile? Never, she said. And yet here he is, empty and aching and missing…and dying.
He could feel it. He could. Death was slowly sinking around him, circling over his crownless head, watching him as he slowly lost all sense of reality and time and life. The loneliness was what was driving him mad, he was sure of it. It was the hollow air, the void that was never filled, that surrounded him and sucked him in and wouldn’t let him go.
It was the silence.
“Stay away from me,” he whispers hoarsely to the ghost circling him, watching, waiting hungrily but patiently-with frightening, eternalpatience-for the time to come. “You will not take me. I will not let you take me.
“Stay away.”
But the shadow lingers ever closer, relishing in the silence, the cold, the emptiness of it all.
On the fourteenth night, Ursa jackknifes awake, covered in thin sweat, her breath painful in her chest. In her heart. “I will die here alone.”
Alone. That one word, echoing off of those heartless stones, striking her with pure emotion. Pure desperation. Alone.
On the fourteenth night, Ozai opens his eyes, the stone cold against his temple. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.
Death.
He recoils quickly, staring at the wall. Cold and heartless. Staring.
Waiting.
“No!” he yells suddenly, violently, striking out at thin air. At the shadow waiting for him. At the wall. “No, no, no! You will not take me! You will NOT!”
The wall, the stones, they stare-amused. Laughing at the Phoenix King, weakened and wild and out of his mind, defying something that cannot be defied. Death.
The name is repeated, echoing, echoing, echoing.
Death. Death. Death. Death.
The immortal King shall die.
“Bow down!” he screams, punching the wall with his fist. And again. And again. “You will not stand in my presence! Bow down, damn you! Damn you all!” The stones are stained crimson. Crimson like fire, crimson like anger, crimson like the pity he always despised. Stained, again and again and again. Pain like wildfire licking his hands and wrists and arms. Throat raw. Screams dying slowly like his heart. “I am the Phoenix King…I am the Phoenix King…I am supreme…You are mine…You are all…mine…”
A gasp he can’t hear for the screaming. Thin fingers wrapping around his wrists, a sudden warmth that chases away the shadow. Heavy, saddened breaths on his neck-and the fingers on his wrist begin to tremble.
Then everything disappears, and all he can see is Death. Death. Death. Death.
The immortal King shall die.
“NO!” he screams, thrashing. The fingers on his wrist-his bonds, as he sees them-only tighten. The breathing next to his ear becomes heavier, with a touch of a sob that he might have imagined.
“Ozai,” it whispers softly, gently, sweetly. “Ozai, please.”
He freezes, breathing hard.
“Please.”
Her voice melts into his skin, velvety and warm. And desperate. Suddenly he is limp in her arms, leaning against her thin, strong frame, and she lunges to catch him. Keep him. Support him, like she always had.
She always had.
The skin of his bare chest and back and arms is slick with sweat and dirt and filth, but all she can feel is the cold. She cannot feel the fire she once did, flickering with vigor inside a soul filled with pride. He is cold.
And that chills her to the bone.
“My flower,” he breathes in a voice raspy with emotion and rawness, staring sightlessly into the empty air. He cannot see me, she thinks with horror. Why? Why can’t he see me? Why isn’t he looking at me?
No. He can see the shadow, watching with interest. Cold and uncaring. Watching.
Waiting.
Ozai’s fingers clutch at Ursa’s own, and he squeezes his eyes tightly shut as he turns his face into her neck. “You left me,” he whispers. Ursa’s chest contracts with a sharp, unadulterated pain.
“You left me.”
“I’m sorry, my love,” she whispers in return, stroking his face gently. How gaunt he is…and light in her arms. The muscles are gone, the grace is gone, the dignity is gone. And she is left holding an empty skeleton. Empty and hollow, like her heart was slowly becoming. “I had to.”
“Not before,” he protests, and his tone is like that of a child’s. “Not that night. I told you not to leave. I ordered you not to-”
“I had just killed the Fire Lord,” Ursa interrupts harshly-her voice is strong with regret and disgust. Disgust for herself. Disgust for the crimson on her hands no one but her could see. “I had killed him so that you, Ozai, could have the throne. I would not have stayed for the world.”
There was a soft silence, that left Ursa’s words echoing off the walls. Their audience of stones. Then:
“You were my world.”
She looks down at the man in her arms, her expression softened with pain and sorrow. His eyes remain closed, his face remains pressed into the skin of her shoulder and neck, and there is a sort of agony in his expression that cannot be defined.
He is ill, she thought with resignation. He knows not what he says. This is not my husband. Ozai would never admit such a thing.
His eyes open. They no longer glow with fire as they once did, but they captivate Ursa all the same.
“I will die,” he murmurs, searching her gaze for something. Something she does not know she has. “I can see it. I can feel it. I can feel Death. It is waiting for me. Waiting for me to become alone again.”
Breathing is becoming harder. Unconsciously, she clutches him to her tighter, and reaches up to cradle his neck with a hand. “You will not die alone,” she says firmly in a voice that only barely trembles. “I would never let that happen.”
A soft, flickering smile. “Too headstrong. That’s what they always said about you.”
“I don’t like to think of it as a flaw,” she replies with a quiet smile of her own.
“Neither do I.”
And for a minute, she can see him. She can feel him. Her lover, her husband. His eyes sparkle just a bit brighter. There he is…unearthed, after weeks of being buried. There he is. In her arms. He is almost even a little warmer to her wounded imagination, struggling to break through the despair that permeated the dungeon.
The smile fades, and he stares imploringly into her eyes. “I will die here,” he says honestly. “I meant it. I will die here alone, and be forgotten by the world. Forgotten even by you, I suppose.”
She shakes her head slowly, surely. “I will never forget you, Ozai.”
That wavering smile flickers to life again. “I think you will,” he replies. “You have Zuko. You have the court. You have the Fire Nation-”
“But I don’t have you,” she interrupts firmly. “And I will be reminded of that every day. Every day, Ozai.”
He is fading. She can see it. Everything is wavering unsteadily, slowly falling. She feels him start to tremble. “I will die,” he whispers, almost to himself. “I will die. I will die here. I will die alone.”
A sob almost escapes her, unbidden and unchecked-but she withholds it. “You are not alone,” she says resolutely. “I am here, Ozai, I am here!”
“All alone,” he murmurs to the air. “With the silence and the pity and the walls and the Death. Death all around me-”
Ursa shifts to face him, now choking on her sobs. Yes, he is gone. Completely gone. Gone somewhere she can’t follow, and wouldn’t even if she dared. “Ozai,” she calls softly. “Ozai!”
In an instant, he sees her. Catches her in his dulled golden gaze. And there they are, both caught in each other’s eyes: Ursa with restrained sobs and an intense agony somewhere in her heart; Ozai with a memory in shards trying to fit pieces together.
“My flower,” he breathes.
Ursa breaks down in sobs.
-x-x-
The funeral is secret. Held at sunset, as firebender funerals always are. The celebration of death at the death of the sun. The fall of the sun.
The fall of a king.
No one yet knows he is dead but the servants and the royal family. The Fire Lord made sure of it. No one would be at the funeral except those needed to complete it and the royal family. There would be no citizens to mourn their beloved ruler. There would be no citizens to celebrate his final passing.
The Fire Lord made sure of it.
The setting sun casts a fiery light over everything, making it glow and shimmer like a fire itself. Oranges, reds, golds…
Golds. Every time Ursa sees the gold banners next to the coffin, the golden designs on the blanket draped over it, she thinks of his eyes. The only gold she ever wanted to keep and hold forever, the kind of gold that was endless and beautiful.
The procession walks toward the hill, the hill that was chosen by the Fire Lord earlier that day. Behind the palace, away from the city, away from prying eyes. And looking over everything.
The hole is ready. The coffin is lowered. And Ursa looks around at them all. Zuko, tall and proud, but with a sort of sadness and regret that wasn’t the kind to heal with time; Mai, quiet and strong, keeping one hand on him at all times to support him; and little Kaza, thumb between her lips, hand clasped in her mother’s, staring without comprehension at the wooden box as they began to shower it in earth.
“With the death of the sun, we celebrate and mourn the death of the firebender…unlike the sun, not to be reborn on this world as we know it…”
She thinks she can see a tear in her son’s eye, but she can’t be sure. Instead, she tears her gaze away and looks into the sunset. Crimson and bright-and slowly fading. Slowly sinking.
Slowly falling.
“You are crying,” Ozai whispers as sobs rack Ursa’s body. She can hardly breathe to speak-but he has already moved to a kneeling position in front of her, peering into her face with a certain child-like curiosity. “Don’t cry,” he says quietly, wiping her tears away with the back of his hand.
She feels something wet on her face that is not her tears.
Her hand finds his. She pulls it away, placing it in the faint light of the torch, and gasps.
“Ozai,” she breathes in utter shock and fear. “What did you do?” His torn and bloody knuckles are obvious in the light, the skin shredded and the flesh wide open for the world to see. Crimson.
“I don’t know,” he chokes, tears forming in his eyes. “I don’t know.”
They don’t know how it happened, they say. He is just dead. Just dead. That’s what they whisper in the streets.
“He just died.”
They don’t know the reason. They don’t know why. They don’t know how.
He is just dead.
Ursa sits by the window, arms around her knees like she used to when she was in her wistful youth, staring at the sunrise. Rebirth. Like a phoenix.
Her eyes flick downwards, studying the veil in her hands, white and pure. Pure with innocence, pure with love, pure with goddamn good intentions. Visions appear, visions of another sunrise in another life: a wedding, white and bright and musical and beautiful. A strong young man looking down on her with devotion. What she thought was devotion.
Maybe it really had been devotion all along.
Her fingers trail along the edge of the wedding veil, tracing the patterns. Flames, flowers…a large bird rising above it all, showered in flames and ashes…
The veil flutters to the floor as she raises a hand to her mouth to muffle the sudden sob. She had not cried. Not even at the funeral. Not since that night.
More tears sting her eyes as she sees the confusion and pain in Ozai’s face. His mind was falling apart-and she was being forced to watch.
Her fingers find his cheek, and he leans into them gingerly, his eyes never leaving her face. “You were always enough for me,” she says softly. “Always. I never needed anything more.”
He just stares. A single tear rolls down his face.
She takes a deep, shaking breath. She lets it fill her up, comfort her, give her strength. Strength she doesn’t want, never wanted. “And I won’t let you die alone,” she breathes at last. “I won’t.”
“I will die,” he says hoarsely. She can hear the fear, the desperation. She moves closer, hugs his frail body to her once more.
“You will not die alone.”
Her chambers seem so empty. Even the gentle light of the sunrise isn’t enough to fill them. They are still hollow, lonely. Silent. She is alone.
“And I will die alone,” she realizes aloud, her cheeks stained with tears as she stands in the middle of her empty bedroom. “I may have saved Ozai. But he will never be able to save me.
“I will die alone.”
He is limp in her arms now, just like before. “My flower…” he is murmuring. “My flower, my flower…”
“Hush,” she says gently, pulling a cord around her neck up from beneath her nightgown. “I am here. I will not leave you.”
“You left me,” he says automatically.
She looks down at him sadly, and whispers: “And I will not leave you again.” Dangling at the end of the cord is a vial, clear as crystal. She uncorks it, and lifts it to the light. The fire of the torch seems to dance in its depths. “Drink this,” she says-and her traitorous mouth that doesn’t seem to be her own: it never falters. “Drink this, and it will all go away.”
He complies obediently. Too obediently.
He is well and truly gone.
“It will all go away,” he repeats. “All of it?”
She brushes his forehead lovingly. “All of it.”
“All of it,” he says again with a deep sigh. “All of it, all of it.”
“That’s right,” she says. All she can do is wait. Wait like Death for the time to come, with patience eternal.
A few minutes pass. She rocks him, hums lullabies she remembers (he remembers too). Gently strokes his face, cradles him to her, warms him.
“Ursa,” he says suddenly at the end of a lullaby. She looks down. His eyes are closed, his hand wrapped tightly around one of hers. “Promise me you won’t forget me.”
Sorrow closes in around her once again.
“I promise,” she replies. “I promise.”
He smiles, opening his eyes-and there is that glow. There’s the fire, the passion, the life. Rising to the surface only when they are of no more use. “You always had my heart,” he whispers, wiping away the blood he had put on her cheek. “Always. And you will always keep it.”
The time has come. Death has descended.
Warm tears are running down her cheeks again, and she presses his hand to her cheek in an attempt to keep it there. To keep it from falling. “I love you, Ozai,” she whispers passionately, her voice breaking into a million pieces with her heart. “I love you.”
The smile appears again, devoted and caring and with the air of someone gazing at pure beauty, at peace…then it slowly fades.
And his hand falls from her cheek.
Ursa is curled on her bed, on the quilt, on the pillows, dressed and made up for court. For once more flitting amongst the butterflies, simpering and smiling and laughing at that which neither requires nor deserves laughter. For being caged.
Sobs no longer rise to her throat, but tears are steadily dripping on to her pillowcase, making a dark stain on the golden fabric. Bright gold, deep gold, gold fiery with affection-
She takes a deep breath, and buries her face in her pillow. There is somewhere she needs to go.
The courtyard looks beautiful in the early morning. The slanted sunlight casts long shadows, makes everything glitter in the dew. Ursa feels the cold, wet grass beneath the soles of her feet, feels the wet edge of her skirt slowly getting dirtier and dirtier. But the feeling is too wonderful, and she has missed it for too long to care. Far too long.
The bench is still where it was, exactly the same. Ageless. Timeless. The stone is no more worn than it was. It is cold when she gently lowers herself upon it, seating herself lightly in the sunlight.
If she looks, she can see them. The ghosts. Walking around the paths, picking flowers from the trees, sitting in the shade, throwing bread into the pond. Holding hands. Playing games. A girl and a boy. A woman and a man. The woman is tall and dignified, with a determination in her eyes to make any man tremble. The man is tall and proud, his expression confident and his steps sure. Both are dark-haired, bright-eyed, and alive with fire and passion and life.
She watches with a growing sadness as the ghosts pass by, figments of her imagination and memory, transparent reminders of a time long past.
“Sometimes I hate this place,” the ghost says as he throws bread into the water. The other ghost looks up with interest.
“Why?” she asks curiously, eyes wide with concern. He scowls slightly.
“I feel as if I’m in a cage, Ursa,” he replies, and the old woman sitting on the bench presses a hand to her chest at the sudden pain. “You give me my only freedom.”
She ducks her head. “I am glad to give you companionship, Ozai,” she says shyly. “But I simply do not see how I could give you any more freedom than any of the other noblewomen.”
This makes him chuckle: and in a moment, he kisses her softly on the lips, catching her by surprise. The old woman can watch no more.
Ursa stands suddenly and turns away, her stomach twisted and her chest contracted. Things had changed so much. So much. That had been a different world. A different lifetime.
Then she sees the tree. And she stops. Two ghosts sit beneath the tree, leaning against one another and looking up into the sky.
“There’s one,” the ghost says happily, pointing her finger upwards. “A shooting star. What do you wish for, Ozai?”
He frowns a little in thought. “There is a lot I would like to wish for,” he replies seriously. “I would like to wish that I were the older brother. I would like to wish that my father would take me seriously. I would like to wish that this courtyard was ours, and only ours. And I would like to wish that I had more time to spend with you.” He turns to her then, a faint smile flickering at the corners of his mouth. “What about you, Ursa? You must make a wish.”
She laughs, a colorful sound even as a memory, and the old woman slowly falls to her knees in the cold, wet grass. “You wish for so much, my love. I? I wish for nothing.”
Ozai’s eyes go wide. “Nothing? Nothing at all?”
She laughs again, and her arms encircle his neck. “Nothing. You are enough. You are enough for me.”
A happy, relieved smile slowly makes its way across the young man’s face before she kisses him.
The old woman can no longer control her pain, and screams in agony to the sunrise.
Characters / Shippings: OzaixUrsa
Rating: PG
Words: 6,900
Notes: This is a threeshot. All the chapters are below the cut, one after another.
I.
It takes him five weeks to realize that his brother went through the exact same ordeal. The cold walls that contained all his fluttering, useless thoughts…the flat bed that smelled of brokenness and despair and something resembling mildew…the glances the guards would throw him when they thought he wasn’t looking. He would ignore them with his eyes-but his mind was continually focused on their expressions, their movements. He could feel their pity without even having to see it.
Pity. Waves of it, striking him again and again like a blasted ocean. He despised the feeling with a red-hot passion, a passion that nearly made him feel like he could roar fire again-it certainly made him want to.
Pity was seeping into his bones, now. He was submerged in it. It just kept building within those damned stone walls like water, slowly drowning him, slowly making him submit to it. He could not escape it. It was all around him, letting him breathe only for so long. How long would it take for the pity to claim its new patron saint?
He despised those walls. Those cold, unforgiving walls that simply watched him with blank eyes, watched him fall. Unless he’d already fallen. They didn’t care-they were just there for the view, for the scene. For the play to play out, the actors all dull and hidden. Hidden glances from the guards, hidden hate from the Saint of Pity. Dull voices from the guards, dull eyes from the broken Lord. But the walls were entertained. At least, he liked to think so.
I hope I’m giving you a good show.
It takes him seven weeks to realize that he only truly, honestly misses one person. It takes him another week to realize he’s missed her all along, and only another moment later to wonder why he didn’t realize this before.
The loneliness is vaguely familiar, in a dreamlike sense. He is alone in a cage of metal and stone. Before, in that time before the world was his: he was alone in a cage of forced smiles and laughs that are too loud, fancy dresses that swirl and vanish and sparkle, beautiful days spent trying to escape it all the while wishing desperately to be in it. Her smile, her laugh, her beautiful black hair in the sun as she ran. He was never alone when he was with her-at least, not then. Never then. She was always there to stroke his cheek, cup his face in her palms, take him by the hand when he least expected it. The cage was no longer. The bird was free, and she became his wings.
Then the children.
He blamed the children. He blamed them for the new loneliness. The kind that was nights spent in complete silence between them, that was her eyes casting down to the ground as she whispered ‘yes, my lord’, that was her apparently-involuntary shifting of position to protect her son from his presence. Azula gave him hope; he thought she would become his new wings, to take him away from his solitude.
But she was a foolish child, all cruelty and brilliance and prodigy. She wasn’t her, all smiles and sparkling eyes that he wished he could drown in, smooth and flawless face leaning against his hand and kissing it, soft neck that he could bury himself in when the world just became too damn much. No, she was a child. And he was still alone.
Just like he was now, watched by an audience of stones, mocked by a company of guards that never once looked him straight in the eye or spoke louder than a distracted and disconcerted mutter, supported by a filthy once-white pad that only barely allowed him sleep. Yes-he missed her. He missed his wife. He wanted her to run a finger down the side of his face with affection while whispering, “Why do you want so much, Ozai? You’re enough for me.”
The door creaks open with a shriek that seems to echo in his head. He does not look up-no more guards with their eyes downcast. No more sons demanding where their mothers are, only to find out their own fathers don’t know. (Don’t care? He doesn’t know that either.) So he stares at a stone. A cold, damp stone that only watches him back without a smile, without a disconcerted expression, without uncomfortable words or covert, curious glances. Yes, he decides he likes these stones. They watch him-but they cannot judge him. And perhaps that is the most important thing of all.
The door to his cage opens, and now he looks up, eyes dulled by weeks of wishing and wanting and hating and missing. And all of the sudden, everything stops.
Everything stops.
The stones stop watching, he stops hating. The flat bed stops smelling. The pity stops drowning. All he can see is her, kneeling on the dirty floor in that beautiful dress, staring at him with those beautiful eyes, eyes-
--that are wide with pity. But he can’t find it in himself to hate her for it-the missing, the wanting has taken it all away.
“Ursa,” he croaks, his voice no longer commanding and noble and everything she deserved. Deserves.
“Ozai,” she whispers. It is a wistful sort of whisper, the sort of whisper one breathes when they meet a dream. When they don’t think it’s real.
And he has a sudden urge to prove to her how real he is.
He lunges forward with a strength he didn’t realize he had, she gasps and flinches, he’s kneeling in front of her all of the sudden and less than a foot from her face, and craving her in a way he never realized he could have craved her. Not in bed, not close to him and his…it’s a sort of craving that just wants her. Just her. Just Ursa, the beautiful woman who stole the heart he hadn’t yet found and never gave it back. He’s still taller than her, even kneeling, and he finds himself looking down into her aged, flawless face. Her skin has wrinkles, marks of smiles he hadn’t shared beside her slightly-withered lips and ever-bright eyes. Bright eyes staring into his own, dulled ones with a nostalgia and regret and sadness that tears him apart.
“You came back,” he says softly. A quiet, hidden smile comes over her face.
“Zuko found me.”
“Obviously.” He feels a bit of his old self coming back: the Fire Lord everyone thought was gone. “I meant-” His audience of stones is waiting with baited breath, on the edges of their seats. He can feel it. “-I meant you came back…to me.”
It’s hard for him to say those words. He was never really a romantic, as much as Ursa was. And his emotions were never a part of his actions, they never made their way to his behavior. They were always hidden, separate, locked away like they weren’t a part of him at all. Foreign intruders in his body. A sickness he could not cure. She knew this. She had always known this. And so her soft smile only grew wider, still weak with insecurity and worry. Worry about what? he wondered. Worry about me? She was always worried about him. Worried about his reputation, worried about his time with his family, worried about his children, his work ethic, his decisions, his sleeping, his eating, his health, his heart. The heart that she knew she held, and could do nothing about. She couldn’t give it back, she knew-he would never take it. It was a burden she would carry for eternity.
“I couldn’t just walk around the palace-around our courtyards-without thinking of you,” she says. She does not say how she had been thinking of him the whole way there, that long ride from the Earth Kingdom, how she had asked about him within minutes of her arrival, how she had left to go see him in the dead of night after her first dinner back home, when no one could see her go. She does not say how her unsure heart fluttered with worry and worry and worry as she half-ran to the prison, how it wondered what it would find, and wondered what, Dear Agni, she should expect.
He finds that it is getting hard to breathe. The stone walls are dead silent around them. The cage door is open, the cell door is open, and the freedom of the hallway is beyond to let the flickering firelight cast over them all-but he does not even think of leaving her. Not now. He cannot. He would never be free anyway: not without his wings.
She lifts a hand to his dirty face, hidden in shadow beneath his long black hair. He feels her soft skin, more callused than he remembers it, but warm and welcome all the same. And all of the sudden, he can breathe again. And he does.
“What has happened to you?” she breathes, and that beautiful face is sad in a way he has never seen before. “You nearly conquered the whole world, Ozai.”
He turns away-into her hand. “I know I failed,” he whispers. “I’m sorry, Ursa.”
She shakes her head vehemently, now clasping his face in both her hands and moving closer imperceptibly. “No, no, no, Ozai. You were never meant to conquer the world.” He glances up, opens his mouth to protest-but a single pale finger is placed to his lips, and he is silenced instantly by the only woman who ever could. “You were meant for better things, if only you could have seen them,” she whispers with tears gathering in her eyes. “If only you could have seen them.”
He does not understand (he never did) but he knows that she means well for him, and that means more that she could ever know.
He knows that.
“Ursa,” he says quietly, brushing hair away from her eyes with a hand so gentle it almost feels like it is not his own. Tears run down those smooth, pale cheeks. “My flower. Stay with me.”
Suddenly, with a rush that feels suspiciously like desperation, she kisses him sweetly (Agni, so sweetly) on the lips. He melts in her hands; but it is over too quickly, and she is already behind the closed cage door.
“I cannot,” she murmurs into his dark, cold, lonely corner. “There are others who will wonder where I am. But I will bring you anything you wish, if you wish for anything.”
“I wish for you,” he says immediately. Later, his mind would wonder if he was going mad-for that was something he had said so sincerely, it felt strangely foreign and colorful on his tongue. “You’re enough for me.”
She turns to face him, one hand on the door, illuminated in the flickering firelight of the freedom of the hall beyond. And for one moment, he sees the bright smile, so alive in its light, that he had handed his heart to so many years ago.
“And you are enough for me.”
Then the door closes, Ozai is once more left to drown in pity and hatred and the polite applause of his audience of cold, heartless stone walls.
II.
It takes him nine weeks to become angry again. That anger that had been beaten into submission, belly-up, buried beneath everything, suddenly wrenched itself free. He felt it fill his chest, his soul, his entire being with rage and fury. Why did this happen? How? Had he been forsaken? Had they given up on him? Is that why he had failed? Were the spirits laughing at him now?
Laughing, laughing, laughing…he could almost hear them in his mind.
“Bow down to me,” he began to snarl at the empty and faceless air. “Bow down before your King.” No one would stand in his presence. No one would pretend they were above him, better than him-no one would look at him with sympathy. Bow.
The anger chased some of it away. It chased away the blank stares of the stone walls. It chased away the suffocating pity. But it only inflamed to a blaze the wanting, the wishing, the hating, the missing. He hated the guards. He hated the Avatar. He hated his son, his stupid and foolish son. He hated his useless, obedient daughter. He hated those damn walls, watching him slowly break into pieces.
He was crumbling. They knew it. And he knew it. And the anger smelled blood-and went in for the kill.
“Stop it!” he bellowed at the silent stones, at the useless flat bed, at the cold metal bars and the window that only gave him sunlight once every 18 hours as if to mock him. “Do not mock the Phoenix King! Do not mock me!”
(The guards outside would hear him. But none of them would laugh. They would simply avert their eyes, bow their heads, and feel discomfort lie over them like a heavy blanket. His cries were the only words to break the silence they stood in. No man had the heart to say what they were thinking. And no man had the heart to mock him more than his own mind mocked him.)
He never cried. His eyes would burn, his eyes would water, but he would never let the tears fall. This only fueled the blaze that was his anger, his fury. This dungeon would not win! He would not be defeated! He was King of all the world!
“I dare you to defy me!” he cried, his voice echoing off the cold, heartless walls. “I dare you to try! Worthless! Weak! Come and face me, instead of laughing at me from afar!”
After a while, he had already forgotten whom he was shouting at.
“I am the Phoenix King.”
It takes one week for word of his madness to reach the palace. The scarred one on the throne looks away, his expression torn, but does nothing. His wife lays a gentle hand on his. Their children do not understand, and continue their play. The grandmother, lingering on the fringes, is the only one to act.
And when she walks through the cell door, he looks up and says, “Bow down to me.”
She stops. The door is closing quietly behind her, and shuts with a ‘click’ that is too loud. They stare. Then:
“Bow down to me.”
She knows he wants it-he needs it. He yearns to be King again, possibly just Lord. Anything. Anything more than what he’s become: because he can’t stand what he’s become.
She’s not sure she can stand it either…but for a much different reason.
“You are not a ruler anymore,” she says slowly, taking measured steps forward. He snarls-and she sees no recognition in those dulled amber eyes.
“I am the Phoenix King,” he states. Like a child, making it true just by saying it louder. “I am the Phoenix King.”
She feels her heart begin to sink, lower and lower in her chest as she moves ever closer. “No,” she says shaking her head. “You are not. You are Ozai. Ozai.”
A few quick, anxious breaths of someone who is trying to catch up. Of someone who realizes something important was very, very wrong. An empty stare, then a spark. “Ursa?” he whispers. She smiles softly, and lets go of the breath she didn’t know she was holding.
“Yes. I am here.” Her long fingers curl around the filthy bars, and she lowers herself to the ground. “How are you?” She nearly chokes at the obvious question (so stupid, so foolish, she’s not a teenager anymore) but manages to keep a straight expression. “Are you eating?”
“I didn’t think you’d come back.”
She can’t tell if he’s all there. It’s been too long. She remembers the face, straight and serious and noble in ways she could never be. She remembers the eyes, clear but blinded to many things. But she cannot tell if this is him-if this is the man she loved, married, hated, loved, left. Maybe he was already gone when she left. Maybe he was just buried. Maybe this was him.
“I’ve been busy,” she says honestly. Visions of her son flash before her eyes: tired but determined; casting eyes blurred with love at his wife; laughing with a young Airbender who was forced to grow up far before his time; hugging a short earth girl and chuckling when she punches him. “Your son is a wonderful Fire Lord.”
Those eyes seem to become duller. “I can only imagine.”
Is he resentful, or thoughtful? Resenting how his son turned against him and betrayed him and stole his throne away? Or thinking of how he wished he could see for himself?
In truth, Ozai is both. He despises his son, and he knows it is pity that keeps him from visiting. He despises the pity just as much. But he wants to see his son on the throne, the crown a golden flame above his head, commanding generals and servants and nobles and thinking he’s doing a better job, damn him. It would be a hated sight. But he still wishes desperately for it.
Why? he wonders. Why do I need to see that?
Because he needs to see whether or not the world is going on without him.
Who misses the Phoenix King? Who prays for his return?
Does anyone remember him?
“Have they already forgotten me?” he asks her quietly, and she looks up. There. In his voice. She can’t put it into words, she can’t describe it even to herself, but it’s there. He’s there. That’s her husband. That’s Ozai. He hasn’t been lost.
She contains her joy. “Of course not,” she replies with a smile. “How could they?”
He glances away. “They could. They will.”
Her eyes become sad. “They won’t. Nobody will.”
His eyes look up. “Did you forget about me?”
There’s more than one meaning to his words. She catches it, and sighs.
“Never,” she whispers. Even with her voice soft, the stones still make it echo and rebound in the empty space. “You are enough for me.” She had been pursued by several men, all of them much alike. But a certain knowledge kept her at a distance. The knowledge that somewhere, a certain Fire Lord was trying to survive without a heart, never truly free. Not without his wings.
Not without her.
“Their loss, my gain,” he says with the first smile she has seen on him in years. Her heart lifts. Her love, her husband. The one she fell in love with. He is sitting just across the bars from her, grime on his chest and arms and face, hair hanging loose and messy and stringy to frame the face she had always admired. He reaches up to take her hand, the one curled around the bars. She lets him, watching him with a tilted head and a crooked, happy smile.
He glances up. He recognizes that smile-but he hasn’t seen it in years. It warms him from head to toe (it’s been far too long) and he rubs her hand between his. “I think I may go mad in here without you,” he says simply. She laughs.
“I’ve heard that before. Although I believe it wasn’t a jail you were referring to.”
“Close enough.” He smiles as well at the sound of her laughter, and looks back down at her soft, pale hand in his. Then his smile fades-just like her laughter. “Will you stay?” he breathes. “Will you stay with me?”
Her smile fades. And slowly, so does the warmth that once possessed the former Phoenix King. “I cannot,” she says, and withdraws her hand. “Ozai, I cannot.”
“Please, Ursa-”
But she is already standing and walking away. He feels the anger return, the crazy anger that built into a wildfire in his chest and in his mind. He feels the pity begin to close in; but this time, it’s coming from her.
The Phoenix King panics.
“No! Ursa, I will die here!” he screams at her retreating figure, now just a silhouette in the light from the hall. “I will die here alone!” She turns back-but it is too dark to see her face.
She sees his, stricken with madness and confusion and desperation. But those eyes are no longer her husband’s, and so she turns away again. “I would never let that happen, Ozai,” she whispers so that he can only just hear. “Never.”
But then the door shuts. And he is left alone anyway.
III.
Ozai’s words haunt her for thirteen days. “I will die here…I will die here alone.” They echo in her head faintly with every step, every time she walks into one of their courtyards-their courtyards, filled with ghosts of smiles and laughter and sidelong glances-and every time she sees Zuko’s eyes light up at the sight of the dark-haired girl (sharp in every sense of the word, as Ursa likes to think of her). That light…it’s so familiar in its warmth, fiery warmth, passionate longing, it almost hurts to see.
“I will die here alone.”
Ursa’s words haunt him for thirteen days. “I would never let that happen, Ozai…Never.” Never, she said. Never. Where is she now? Where is her golden warmth, her smooth pale skin lighting up the darkness, her soft, enigmatic smile? Never, she said. And yet here he is, empty and aching and missing…and dying.
He could feel it. He could. Death was slowly sinking around him, circling over his crownless head, watching him as he slowly lost all sense of reality and time and life. The loneliness was what was driving him mad, he was sure of it. It was the hollow air, the void that was never filled, that surrounded him and sucked him in and wouldn’t let him go.
It was the silence.
“Stay away from me,” he whispers hoarsely to the ghost circling him, watching, waiting hungrily but patiently-with frightening, eternalpatience-for the time to come. “You will not take me. I will not let you take me.
“Stay away.”
But the shadow lingers ever closer, relishing in the silence, the cold, the emptiness of it all.
On the fourteenth night, Ursa jackknifes awake, covered in thin sweat, her breath painful in her chest. In her heart. “I will die here alone.”
Alone. That one word, echoing off of those heartless stones, striking her with pure emotion. Pure desperation. Alone.
On the fourteenth night, Ozai opens his eyes, the stone cold against his temple. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.
Death.
He recoils quickly, staring at the wall. Cold and heartless. Staring.
Waiting.
“No!” he yells suddenly, violently, striking out at thin air. At the shadow waiting for him. At the wall. “No, no, no! You will not take me! You will NOT!”
The wall, the stones, they stare-amused. Laughing at the Phoenix King, weakened and wild and out of his mind, defying something that cannot be defied. Death.
The name is repeated, echoing, echoing, echoing.
Death. Death. Death. Death.
The immortal King shall die.
“Bow down!” he screams, punching the wall with his fist. And again. And again. “You will not stand in my presence! Bow down, damn you! Damn you all!” The stones are stained crimson. Crimson like fire, crimson like anger, crimson like the pity he always despised. Stained, again and again and again. Pain like wildfire licking his hands and wrists and arms. Throat raw. Screams dying slowly like his heart. “I am the Phoenix King…I am the Phoenix King…I am supreme…You are mine…You are all…mine…”
A gasp he can’t hear for the screaming. Thin fingers wrapping around his wrists, a sudden warmth that chases away the shadow. Heavy, saddened breaths on his neck-and the fingers on his wrist begin to tremble.
Then everything disappears, and all he can see is Death. Death. Death. Death.
The immortal King shall die.
“NO!” he screams, thrashing. The fingers on his wrist-his bonds, as he sees them-only tighten. The breathing next to his ear becomes heavier, with a touch of a sob that he might have imagined.
“Ozai,” it whispers softly, gently, sweetly. “Ozai, please.”
He freezes, breathing hard.
“Please.”
Her voice melts into his skin, velvety and warm. And desperate. Suddenly he is limp in her arms, leaning against her thin, strong frame, and she lunges to catch him. Keep him. Support him, like she always had.
She always had.
The skin of his bare chest and back and arms is slick with sweat and dirt and filth, but all she can feel is the cold. She cannot feel the fire she once did, flickering with vigor inside a soul filled with pride. He is cold.
And that chills her to the bone.
“My flower,” he breathes in a voice raspy with emotion and rawness, staring sightlessly into the empty air. He cannot see me, she thinks with horror. Why? Why can’t he see me? Why isn’t he looking at me?
No. He can see the shadow, watching with interest. Cold and uncaring. Watching.
Waiting.
Ozai’s fingers clutch at Ursa’s own, and he squeezes his eyes tightly shut as he turns his face into her neck. “You left me,” he whispers. Ursa’s chest contracts with a sharp, unadulterated pain.
“You left me.”
“I’m sorry, my love,” she whispers in return, stroking his face gently. How gaunt he is…and light in her arms. The muscles are gone, the grace is gone, the dignity is gone. And she is left holding an empty skeleton. Empty and hollow, like her heart was slowly becoming. “I had to.”
“Not before,” he protests, and his tone is like that of a child’s. “Not that night. I told you not to leave. I ordered you not to-”
“I had just killed the Fire Lord,” Ursa interrupts harshly-her voice is strong with regret and disgust. Disgust for herself. Disgust for the crimson on her hands no one but her could see. “I had killed him so that you, Ozai, could have the throne. I would not have stayed for the world.”
There was a soft silence, that left Ursa’s words echoing off the walls. Their audience of stones. Then:
“You were my world.”
She looks down at the man in her arms, her expression softened with pain and sorrow. His eyes remain closed, his face remains pressed into the skin of her shoulder and neck, and there is a sort of agony in his expression that cannot be defined.
He is ill, she thought with resignation. He knows not what he says. This is not my husband. Ozai would never admit such a thing.
His eyes open. They no longer glow with fire as they once did, but they captivate Ursa all the same.
“I will die,” he murmurs, searching her gaze for something. Something she does not know she has. “I can see it. I can feel it. I can feel Death. It is waiting for me. Waiting for me to become alone again.”
Breathing is becoming harder. Unconsciously, she clutches him to her tighter, and reaches up to cradle his neck with a hand. “You will not die alone,” she says firmly in a voice that only barely trembles. “I would never let that happen.”
A soft, flickering smile. “Too headstrong. That’s what they always said about you.”
“I don’t like to think of it as a flaw,” she replies with a quiet smile of her own.
“Neither do I.”
And for a minute, she can see him. She can feel him. Her lover, her husband. His eyes sparkle just a bit brighter. There he is…unearthed, after weeks of being buried. There he is. In her arms. He is almost even a little warmer to her wounded imagination, struggling to break through the despair that permeated the dungeon.
The smile fades, and he stares imploringly into her eyes. “I will die here,” he says honestly. “I meant it. I will die here alone, and be forgotten by the world. Forgotten even by you, I suppose.”
She shakes her head slowly, surely. “I will never forget you, Ozai.”
That wavering smile flickers to life again. “I think you will,” he replies. “You have Zuko. You have the court. You have the Fire Nation-”
“But I don’t have you,” she interrupts firmly. “And I will be reminded of that every day. Every day, Ozai.”
He is fading. She can see it. Everything is wavering unsteadily, slowly falling. She feels him start to tremble. “I will die,” he whispers, almost to himself. “I will die. I will die here. I will die alone.”
A sob almost escapes her, unbidden and unchecked-but she withholds it. “You are not alone,” she says resolutely. “I am here, Ozai, I am here!”
“All alone,” he murmurs to the air. “With the silence and the pity and the walls and the Death. Death all around me-”
Ursa shifts to face him, now choking on her sobs. Yes, he is gone. Completely gone. Gone somewhere she can’t follow, and wouldn’t even if she dared. “Ozai,” she calls softly. “Ozai!”
In an instant, he sees her. Catches her in his dulled golden gaze. And there they are, both caught in each other’s eyes: Ursa with restrained sobs and an intense agony somewhere in her heart; Ozai with a memory in shards trying to fit pieces together.
“My flower,” he breathes.
Ursa breaks down in sobs.
-x-x-
The funeral is secret. Held at sunset, as firebender funerals always are. The celebration of death at the death of the sun. The fall of the sun.
The fall of a king.
No one yet knows he is dead but the servants and the royal family. The Fire Lord made sure of it. No one would be at the funeral except those needed to complete it and the royal family. There would be no citizens to mourn their beloved ruler. There would be no citizens to celebrate his final passing.
The Fire Lord made sure of it.
The setting sun casts a fiery light over everything, making it glow and shimmer like a fire itself. Oranges, reds, golds…
Golds. Every time Ursa sees the gold banners next to the coffin, the golden designs on the blanket draped over it, she thinks of his eyes. The only gold she ever wanted to keep and hold forever, the kind of gold that was endless and beautiful.
The procession walks toward the hill, the hill that was chosen by the Fire Lord earlier that day. Behind the palace, away from the city, away from prying eyes. And looking over everything.
The hole is ready. The coffin is lowered. And Ursa looks around at them all. Zuko, tall and proud, but with a sort of sadness and regret that wasn’t the kind to heal with time; Mai, quiet and strong, keeping one hand on him at all times to support him; and little Kaza, thumb between her lips, hand clasped in her mother’s, staring without comprehension at the wooden box as they began to shower it in earth.
“With the death of the sun, we celebrate and mourn the death of the firebender…unlike the sun, not to be reborn on this world as we know it…”
She thinks she can see a tear in her son’s eye, but she can’t be sure. Instead, she tears her gaze away and looks into the sunset. Crimson and bright-and slowly fading. Slowly sinking.
Slowly falling.
“You are crying,” Ozai whispers as sobs rack Ursa’s body. She can hardly breathe to speak-but he has already moved to a kneeling position in front of her, peering into her face with a certain child-like curiosity. “Don’t cry,” he says quietly, wiping her tears away with the back of his hand.
She feels something wet on her face that is not her tears.
Her hand finds his. She pulls it away, placing it in the faint light of the torch, and gasps.
“Ozai,” she breathes in utter shock and fear. “What did you do?” His torn and bloody knuckles are obvious in the light, the skin shredded and the flesh wide open for the world to see. Crimson.
“I don’t know,” he chokes, tears forming in his eyes. “I don’t know.”
They don’t know how it happened, they say. He is just dead. Just dead. That’s what they whisper in the streets.
“He just died.”
They don’t know the reason. They don’t know why. They don’t know how.
He is just dead.
Ursa sits by the window, arms around her knees like she used to when she was in her wistful youth, staring at the sunrise. Rebirth. Like a phoenix.
Her eyes flick downwards, studying the veil in her hands, white and pure. Pure with innocence, pure with love, pure with goddamn good intentions. Visions appear, visions of another sunrise in another life: a wedding, white and bright and musical and beautiful. A strong young man looking down on her with devotion. What she thought was devotion.
Maybe it really had been devotion all along.
Her fingers trail along the edge of the wedding veil, tracing the patterns. Flames, flowers…a large bird rising above it all, showered in flames and ashes…
The veil flutters to the floor as she raises a hand to her mouth to muffle the sudden sob. She had not cried. Not even at the funeral. Not since that night.
More tears sting her eyes as she sees the confusion and pain in Ozai’s face. His mind was falling apart-and she was being forced to watch.
Her fingers find his cheek, and he leans into them gingerly, his eyes never leaving her face. “You were always enough for me,” she says softly. “Always. I never needed anything more.”
He just stares. A single tear rolls down his face.
She takes a deep, shaking breath. She lets it fill her up, comfort her, give her strength. Strength she doesn’t want, never wanted. “And I won’t let you die alone,” she breathes at last. “I won’t.”
“I will die,” he says hoarsely. She can hear the fear, the desperation. She moves closer, hugs his frail body to her once more.
“You will not die alone.”
Her chambers seem so empty. Even the gentle light of the sunrise isn’t enough to fill them. They are still hollow, lonely. Silent. She is alone.
“And I will die alone,” she realizes aloud, her cheeks stained with tears as she stands in the middle of her empty bedroom. “I may have saved Ozai. But he will never be able to save me.
“I will die alone.”
He is limp in her arms now, just like before. “My flower…” he is murmuring. “My flower, my flower…”
“Hush,” she says gently, pulling a cord around her neck up from beneath her nightgown. “I am here. I will not leave you.”
“You left me,” he says automatically.
She looks down at him sadly, and whispers: “And I will not leave you again.” Dangling at the end of the cord is a vial, clear as crystal. She uncorks it, and lifts it to the light. The fire of the torch seems to dance in its depths. “Drink this,” she says-and her traitorous mouth that doesn’t seem to be her own: it never falters. “Drink this, and it will all go away.”
He complies obediently. Too obediently.
He is well and truly gone.
“It will all go away,” he repeats. “All of it?”
She brushes his forehead lovingly. “All of it.”
“All of it,” he says again with a deep sigh. “All of it, all of it.”
“That’s right,” she says. All she can do is wait. Wait like Death for the time to come, with patience eternal.
A few minutes pass. She rocks him, hums lullabies she remembers (he remembers too). Gently strokes his face, cradles him to her, warms him.
“Ursa,” he says suddenly at the end of a lullaby. She looks down. His eyes are closed, his hand wrapped tightly around one of hers. “Promise me you won’t forget me.”
Sorrow closes in around her once again.
“I promise,” she replies. “I promise.”
He smiles, opening his eyes-and there is that glow. There’s the fire, the passion, the life. Rising to the surface only when they are of no more use. “You always had my heart,” he whispers, wiping away the blood he had put on her cheek. “Always. And you will always keep it.”
The time has come. Death has descended.
Warm tears are running down her cheeks again, and she presses his hand to her cheek in an attempt to keep it there. To keep it from falling. “I love you, Ozai,” she whispers passionately, her voice breaking into a million pieces with her heart. “I love you.”
The smile appears again, devoted and caring and with the air of someone gazing at pure beauty, at peace…then it slowly fades.
And his hand falls from her cheek.
Ursa is curled on her bed, on the quilt, on the pillows, dressed and made up for court. For once more flitting amongst the butterflies, simpering and smiling and laughing at that which neither requires nor deserves laughter. For being caged.
Sobs no longer rise to her throat, but tears are steadily dripping on to her pillowcase, making a dark stain on the golden fabric. Bright gold, deep gold, gold fiery with affection-
She takes a deep breath, and buries her face in her pillow. There is somewhere she needs to go.
The courtyard looks beautiful in the early morning. The slanted sunlight casts long shadows, makes everything glitter in the dew. Ursa feels the cold, wet grass beneath the soles of her feet, feels the wet edge of her skirt slowly getting dirtier and dirtier. But the feeling is too wonderful, and she has missed it for too long to care. Far too long.
The bench is still where it was, exactly the same. Ageless. Timeless. The stone is no more worn than it was. It is cold when she gently lowers herself upon it, seating herself lightly in the sunlight.
If she looks, she can see them. The ghosts. Walking around the paths, picking flowers from the trees, sitting in the shade, throwing bread into the pond. Holding hands. Playing games. A girl and a boy. A woman and a man. The woman is tall and dignified, with a determination in her eyes to make any man tremble. The man is tall and proud, his expression confident and his steps sure. Both are dark-haired, bright-eyed, and alive with fire and passion and life.
She watches with a growing sadness as the ghosts pass by, figments of her imagination and memory, transparent reminders of a time long past.
“Sometimes I hate this place,” the ghost says as he throws bread into the water. The other ghost looks up with interest.
“Why?” she asks curiously, eyes wide with concern. He scowls slightly.
“I feel as if I’m in a cage, Ursa,” he replies, and the old woman sitting on the bench presses a hand to her chest at the sudden pain. “You give me my only freedom.”
She ducks her head. “I am glad to give you companionship, Ozai,” she says shyly. “But I simply do not see how I could give you any more freedom than any of the other noblewomen.”
This makes him chuckle: and in a moment, he kisses her softly on the lips, catching her by surprise. The old woman can watch no more.
Ursa stands suddenly and turns away, her stomach twisted and her chest contracted. Things had changed so much. So much. That had been a different world. A different lifetime.
Then she sees the tree. And she stops. Two ghosts sit beneath the tree, leaning against one another and looking up into the sky.
“There’s one,” the ghost says happily, pointing her finger upwards. “A shooting star. What do you wish for, Ozai?”
He frowns a little in thought. “There is a lot I would like to wish for,” he replies seriously. “I would like to wish that I were the older brother. I would like to wish that my father would take me seriously. I would like to wish that this courtyard was ours, and only ours. And I would like to wish that I had more time to spend with you.” He turns to her then, a faint smile flickering at the corners of his mouth. “What about you, Ursa? You must make a wish.”
She laughs, a colorful sound even as a memory, and the old woman slowly falls to her knees in the cold, wet grass. “You wish for so much, my love. I? I wish for nothing.”
Ozai’s eyes go wide. “Nothing? Nothing at all?”
She laughs again, and her arms encircle his neck. “Nothing. You are enough. You are enough for me.”
A happy, relieved smile slowly makes its way across the young man’s face before she kisses him.
The old woman can no longer control her pain, and screams in agony to the sunrise.