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Owned by Fire	By : Andartha Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > Het - Male/Female Views: 16516 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Avatar: The last Airbender and all the characters therein are the intellectual property of Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and I, like all the other fans, only get to play with them every once in a while. I make NO profit from "Own

Chapter List
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- 4
Disclaimer: Avatar: The last Airbender and all the characters therein are the intellectual property of Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and I, like all the other fans, only get to play with them every once in a while. I do not make a profit from this story (at least not in any material way ^_~)
Summary: Ozai is no longer a part of her life. Trying to come to terms with that, she reflects on the past, on how it all started.
Author’s note:
Pairing Ozai/OC.
Het.
Takes place about 3 months after A:TLA. Contains a flashback that start 18 years before the series.
Sequel to the previous chapters, but can also be read as a stand-alone.
Warnings: Some swearing, that’s all.

She doesn’t want to say goodbye.
The room is underground and cold, a good thing, given that the climate in the Fire Nation is mostly warm and that ritual demands a waiting period of four days.
A hall, hewn from rock black as midnight, the ceiling low, walls bare…it should have felt like a tomb. Instead, it is oddly comfortable, with padded benches upholstered in fabrics of cream and gold and red. A warm glow comes from an oil-lamp sitting in a corner, its’ small flame giving off more light than it should have. In the next corner, there is a large skylight from where one can see the stars, their twinkling hinting at the skies that arch in an endless expanse above.
There is a calm, musical click-clock…..click-clock of wood on stone filling the room with its song, so much like the string of moments passing that make up a human’s life. It’s coming from the third corner, where a small water basin sits, fed by a wooden spout set on a hinge. As the spout fills with water, it tilts with a click and then pours its contents into the basin, only to right itself and hit the stone set under the spouts’ rear end with a clear, hollow “clock”.
In the last corner, the roots of a tree have grown through the walls, their thickly corded strength telling of the lush beauty of the tree above ground which guards the entrance to the underground room.
She envies the tree, for it has kept its roots, while she has lost hers.
In the centre of the room lies the thing that she has dreaded most for the last few days: irrefutable proof that he is gone.
People always say that death is like sleep, only deeper. They are wrong.
In life, even when sleeping, the intensity and strength he had radiated so casually had dominated any room. Neither of that can be felt now. The lifeless form laid out on the stone slab in the centre of the room is….empty.
The man who has ruled her life for the last eight years is dead. And for all that he has turned her life into a living hell, he had also given her a glimpse at heaven. It hadn’t been worth it, but sweet water, how she aches to see that bit of heaven again. And now she will long for it in futility for the rest of her life and she will never find out if that bit of heaven had just been a pretty lie or not. Spirits, how furious she is at former Fire Lord Ozai for dying!
So far she has just sat on one of the thickly padded benches that are lined up against the walls, one of the thick, complimentary blankets wrapped around her to keep away the chill. The room is empty but for her. Iroh had said he’d come by later, since there are still things he urgently has to take care of, but she knows he will be there to sit with his brother.
Ozai had always envisioned himself the supreme leader who would lead his people to glory: respected, held in awe and feared.
Never would he have imagined that when he died, the only people to keep him company during his wake would be his former pleasure slave and the brother he has cheated out of the throne and later imprisoned as a traitor. The Phoenix King has flown too close to the sun, burned his wings and fallen deep indeed.
Slowly, she gets used to the thought of a world without him, but she isn’t ready yet to go over to his body and take a last look. First, she has to come to terms with the fact, that after this, she will never see his face again or talk to him. Granted, she won’t miss the harsh orders, the restraint of her freedom or the beatings.
But the tender kisses, the pillow-talk where they used to share memories, ideas, opinions….and what about his all too rare and precious smiles? What about those times where she witnessed him act not only with strength, but also with honour and compassion? They had been few, but they had been THERE.
The beauty and wonder of those moments was like a shining star guiding her through the darkness. Over time though, her skies had turned dark. She will never find out if the light could have been reborn from the ashes of his failure.
And neither will she find out if he has…at some time….maybe….actually cared a bit about her.
Her love for him has almost killed her. It still might. Her only chance at survival lies in smothering whatever yearning for him is left in her heart. She has to try. And the day she feels nothing for him anymore but hate, she might be able to return home, to her family.
Funny…if it hadn’t been for the war, unleashed by Sozin, continued by Azulon and perfected by Ozai himself, she would still be living with her family, with her tribe.
Maybe she’d be married to a man she loved.
Maybe she would have children.
…..How strange to think that in a world without war, she would never have had to leave home.
And in a world without war, a member of the ruling family of the Fire Nation and someone he used to call “a dirty, uncivilized Water Tribe Peasant” would never have met.
She leans her back against the wall and draws the blanket closer around herself. Her eyes rest on the remains of her lover, but the memories of the past are what she sees:

It takes a lot to get her laid-back, fun-loving, kind-hearted older brother to yell, let alone scream at someone. But when she proposes to the elders that she leave the tribe, alone, Hakoda fights it tooth and nail.
She wants to leaves so she can search for the other waterbenders of her tribe, captured by the Fire Nation long ago and still imprisoned somewhere. If their tribe learns where they are, they might be able to free them.
However, this is not the only reason she wants to leave.
They all know that eventually, word will get out that once more, the Winter Wolf Tribe has a waterbender and then the Fire Nation will stage a raid on their village. It doesn’t matter to the Fire Nation that she is inexperienced and will remain so without a teacher.
Hakoda doesn’t want her to go, and so he stubbornly claims that they will be able to keep the secret and that she is making progress on her own just fine and that a quest to find the captured waterbenders is futile.
They have a screaming match then and there, right in what remains of the village’s meeting hall.
But in the end, even though she is only sixteen, the elders agree. Her brother doesn’t. After the elders pass their verdict, he just turns wordlessly and runs.
Fighting with him is painful enough. The thought of leaving him, knowing he doesn’t understand, knowing he is angry at her, is unbearable and so she runs after him.
She only catches up with him when he has almost reached his favourite hiding place, a deep hollow in the ice at the foot of the beached Fire Nation Navy wreck. She grabs his sleeve, but he won’t look at her. So she keeps pulling at his sleeve, crying and begging him not to do this to her, that it is difficult enough already, to please, please understand that she HAS to do this.
When he finally turns to face her, the anguish in her brother’s face hits her like an ice floe crashing into a canoe. It is only the third time ever that she has seen him cry.
His voice is somewhere between a hoarse growl and a whisper as he responds to her.
“I know you have to go Kian, and I can even understand why. But you can’t just break our family apart like that. If you must go, then let me go with you!”
“Hakoda, no! The tribe can do without me….It can’t do without you. You’re the one dad is training to be his successor and if anything happens to him, the tribe will need your skills as a leader. And what about Kya? You just asked her to marry you, you can’t leave her behind like that.”
“But how can you leave me and mom and dad behind? We need you Kian.”
That got her mad at him. “How can I leave? I love you more than anything! You are my entire world and I can’t sleep anymore for nightmares of the Fire Nation raiding our tribe. Every time I close my eyes, I see you dying, trying to fight them. I see Dad dying. And Mom. Bato. Akko. Temo. Kya. And all I can do afterwards is to wait for death to come for me too, because they shut me into a cell and keep me chained up for the rest of my life. Running is the only chance I have. If nobody knows I’m a waterbender, then nobody can tell. I’ll be safer out there, wandering strange lands, then I’ll be living with my family….and you’ll be safer without me too.”
Halfway through her angry outburst, she has started crying again, and now sobs are wracking her body so badly, she can barely hold herself upright. For a moment, Hakoda just stands there, face stony and eyes filled with infinite grief, then he pulls her to him and holds on to her, hard.
They spend the night huddled together in his hideout beneath the shadow of the wrecked Fire Nation ship, a small fire warming them, talking, remembering old stories and their adventures together and he gives her advice about everything he thinks might be useful to her. He teaches her his special knot and how to undo it and when she gets into her canoe the next morning, ready to leave, his favourite knife is firmly tucked into her belt.
For the first few months, her plan is successful, at least partially. She makes it to the Earth Kingdom, fishing and scavenging to keep her belly full and selling some of her bounty in various villages when she needs to stock up on other supplies.
Her luck changes when she comes to an Earth Kingdom city sitting in a river delta that has recently been over-run by the Fire Nation. At first, there are no problems at all. She is just one peasant amongst many, peddling her goods on the market. She keeps her ears open for rumours about other waterbenders and to her delight, she hits pay-dirt.
One of the servants serving in the household of the local Fire Nation Commander, shopping for fish and vegetables, tries to impress one of her fellow food-sellers in order to get a better price and lets it slip that his master had been the Chief Warden in a prison holding waterbenders. So, very discreetly, she starts scouting the Fire Nation Commander’s household and the garrison, where he spends most of his time. It takes her almost a month, but then she has the routines of the servants and the guards down pat. Hell, she knows most of their names and what they like for breakfast. She has even slipped into one of the guard-houses and has gotten a glimpse at the maps of the garrison, which are kept there. And she learns that the Commander keeps all his records in his office at the garrison.
Guard’s schedules, several escape routes, where to find the keys for the document drawers…young and maybe over-confident, she thinks she had figured it all out.
Under the cover of night, she has gotten into the office and out again, the pertinent files slipped securely into her small back-pack, when a ball of fire hits the ground right in front of her. In a flash, she switches from sneaking from corner to corner to a flat out run, dodging and weaving around obstacles and corners like a rabbit. First towards the dark, badly lit corner at the garrison wall, where she has fixed a rope that would have helped her scale the wall. It has been cut down. She races for her second escape route, a small side-gate. Some of the guards use it to sneak out and meet their sweethearts in town and for that purpose, it should have been unlocked tonight. It isn’t. Another fireball almost singes her hair.
Heart racing, the taste of fear acrid in her mouth, she heads for her third and last escape route, a privy set on the outer wall; the rapid footfalls of her pursuer too close for comfort. She almost shouts in triumph when she finds that her pursuer apparently hasn’t thought to block this one. Reaching the privy, she just jumps over the beam people use to sit on, down the gap. Hours before, she has filled the pit with sacks of hay, nicked from a local stable, so that if she has to use this route, she won’t get stuck in malodorous mixture of piss and shit. It works. Sliding from the small mountain of hay-filled sacks, she snickers in relief, going so far as to give a short call of “Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-NAH!” into the direction of the walls.
From above, she can hear a rough young male voice cursing loudly.
She starts running again, heading towards the hills and the woods outside the borders of the town. A week ago, a small armada of Fire Nation Navy ships has docked in the harbour and she doesn’t stand a chance of escaping them in her canoe. So she has “freed” an eel hound from the very same stable from which she has gotten the hay (eelhounds LOVE fish and befriending the animal hasn’t been too hard) and has hidden it in the woods.
Behind her, she hears a faint “thump” as something large hits her impromptu haystack and she starts swearing up a blue streak. Even though her lungs have already started burning, she picks up her pace.
Hakoda, who got into trouble so often when they were kids that he was an expert at making a quick getaway, always told her “Don’t look back when you’re running. It’ll only cost you time.”.
So when she is tackled from behind, the eelhound a mere hundred feet away, she doesn’t see it coming. The impact on the ground, even though it is amply padded by dry leaves, drives the breath from her body. For pain and lack of breath, she can’t move and is helpless as her arms are wrenched behind her back and tied with tough leather strings. She coughs and rings for breath, thanking the spirits when sweet air finally fills her lungs once more.
“Dirty little thief.” That same rough voice she has heard from the walls snarls in her ear and her stomach does a funny little flip-flop. Hands as rough as the voice turn her over and she starts struggling and kicking for all that she is worth. Her attacker just hisses when her foot connects with his shin, grazing it, and then brings his full body weight to bear to keep her pinned to the ground. To secure his position further, he wedges his elbow under her chin, the threat clear that he won’t hesitate to lean on her wind-pipe if she continues to struggle.
“Let’s get a look at you” he says, contempt hardening his tone, and a fire flares to life beside them.
She looks up into the most beautiful eyes she has ever seen, mesmerized by their rich golden colour. He is young, maybe twenty or so, but then, the Fire Nation likes to recruit them young. Straight nose, square chin, full, but not too full lips, high cheekbones. Strands of his rich sable hair have escaped from his topknot during the chase and now they frame his face in disarray.
Someone this good-looking, someone who makes butterflies flutter in her stomach just by looking at her, someone she wants to make babies with the moment she sees him, has NO right to be FIRE NATION. She hates him on sight.
“May your guts rot in the sun like five days old fish!” she spits at him. He doesn’t answer.
When the fire lighted the scene for the first time, there was pure hatred in his eyes, turning his even features into a fearsome mask. The moment he gets a good look at her face, smeared with soot as it is, first something akin to shock creeps in and then his eyes soften.
The pressure on her wind-pipe eases as he pulls back his elbow. He gently starts to rub away the soot with his hand, his gaze burning into hers.
“You’re a girl.” A soft whisper.
The intimate touch of his fingers on her cheek reminds her uncomfortably of the fact that he is still lying on top of her, his hips touching hers, her breasts pressed to his chest. She can tell the moment he notices too, for his eyes go wide and he swallows, hard.
Her mouth goes dry. This is a bad, bad situation, and it is going in an even worse direction. Panicked, she snarls at him.
“Do the world a favour Fire Nation scum: choke on something. Maybe you’ll start being worth something when your ashes fertilize the fields.”
That gets her a response. His eyes turn icy and he sneers. He rolls down from her, gracefully landing on his feet and before she can even think about making another bid for freedom, he has his sword at her throat. He makes her get up, slowly, and then hobbles her feet too. Leading the eelhound by its tether, he escorts her back to town and from there into prison.
She doesn’t see him again, but in the months that follow, he haunts her dreams every night.
The Fire Nation judge responsible for the district sentences her to 5 years in prison in a work-house in the colonies for theft and spying. They take her brother’s knife from her.
Prison isn’t too bad. If you work hard and keep you head down, the guards don’t bother you much and neither do the other prisoners. She waits and watches. She doesn’t use her waterbending. If anybody catches her doing it, and she doesn’t manage to make good her get-away, it just would make her situation so much worse. In the end, her patience and restraint pay off. Almost three years into her sentence, she manages to escape when guards, squabbling over a game of dice, set the part of the prison where she is housed on fire. Weary and heart-sore, and despite logic telling her that this is a bad idea, she starts on a voyage home.
She is pretty much on the other side of the world, on foot, alone, trusting no-one, and it takes her a little less than two years to get home. The grin on Hakoda’s face when she walks into the village is bright like the sun on fresh fallen snow and the bearlike hug he gives her almost breaks her ribs. She burrows her nose in the fur of his hood so he can’t see her cry.
Her father embraces her, whispering “Welcome home. We missed you.” into her ear and her mother berates her for being too thin and not eating right and then holds onto her like she just came back from the dead.
Kya and the rest of the village are there, happy, smiling, wanting to hear stories from her travels and she does her best to satisfy their curiosity without giving too much away of all the bad stuff she has had to face. She instantly falls in love with her a little over one year old nephew and his newborn sister. Surrounded by the people she loves and whom she has missed so badly, like a part of her heart had been torn out, she feels light as a feather, as if the weight of the world has been lifted from her shoulders. But she knows she can’t stay.
Knowing she can’t win a second argument with her brother, now fully grown, so proud, so strong, she quietly slips away in the night.
By Fire Nation Army regulations, warrants and wanted posters are reserved for the most dangerous criminals. She is nothing but a petty thief, not worthy the attention, or so she thinks. Her way home has led her almost exclusively through Earth Kingdom territory, still free of the grasp of the Fire Nation. Now, once more pursuing her quest of finding the missing Southern Water Tribe waterbenders, she steps onto Fire Nation territory again for the first time in over two years. It is just a minor trading outpost and it shouldn’t be too hard to sell some fish and some of the combs she has carved from whalebone. It takes less than five hours for her to get arrested as a runaway prisoner.
She expects to be sent back to prison, to serve out the rest of her sentence. It will be hard, but she tells herself she can do this; she can take another two years of being locked away. In retrospect, given that the Fire Nation is rather unforgiving of those that dare challenge its rule, it turns out her assumption is rather naïve. When she emerges from the hold of the Fire Nation Navy ship transporting her, she is no longer in one of the Colonies. She finds herself at the heart of the Fire Nation, smack in the middle of hostile territory.
The jailer smirks as he welds the slave rings shut around her wrists and ankles, and tells her she will live out the rest of her life as someone’s property.
She is close to panicking, close to doing something stupid that will earn her a fate worse than death, but the man she is given to is a kindly old gentleman; a doctor who lives in one of the more remote villages and who needs a housekeeper and an assistant in his practice. He is grumpy at times, forgetful and he never treats her as anything but a useful tool that he needs to take care of so it will continue to function well, but all in all, to her surprise, she is rather enjoying herself.
The old man’s arthritis and failing eye-sight no longer allow him to handle the more manual aspects of his profession, so by default, she becomes his student. She learns how to read chi lines, how to do acupressure and acupuncture, how to set bones and which herbs to use and how to prepare them to treat everything from pneumonia to wound-infections and hangovers. The old man also has a rather well-stocked if small library of medical texts. To her delight, she also finds a collection of rather dusty scrolls describing waterbending healing techniques there. It is not difficult to secretly start practicing on his or rather, as the years go by, her patients.
Some nights, she still dreams of the young man who captured her. Some mornings, she will wake up smiling; some, she will wake up bathed in cold sweat. She gets used to it.
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Owned by Fire