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When Zuko first sees someone who looks like him, he has to stop in the middle of the deck and hyperventilate. He could do without, he thinks. His body isn't responding. In the detached way that makes him think he's about to faint, his vision narrows to a pinprick and his blood is much too loud in his ears. He has a brief thought that he was in the middle of speaking, but he can't remember what.
His crew worries.
The golden-eyed pirate in blues and mauves and war paint doesn't notice, and keeps fighting. Fortunately, Zuko isn't essential to the battle, and the would-be invaders are repelled off the ship without his help.
When he comes back to himself, he's losing a game of Pai Sho. The sea is calm. He can hear someone scrubbing blood and soot from the deck, and he can smell jasmine tea.
䷍
The boy who calls himself Jet is loud, and he doesn't like firebenders, and he never stops insulting Fire culture, and he thinks that will endear Zuko to him for some reason. When the prince finally manages to stalk off and sit down, not having to feign tiredness, he doesn't expect another to detach from the group and keep him company.
“He's our leader, but he's got a big mouth, and he doesn't think before he speaks.” The voice is much lower and rattling than Zuko expected from a small stature, and he turns, and he finds himself staring back.
“I'm from Yudao. Mom's from Bisai. Dad's on the front.”
Yudao is a colony in West Earth. Bisai is a Fire county. Her dad is… “on the front” is what you say when you're part of a regimented army. Not part of a rebel cell or action group. There is no standing Earth army. Not since the seventy second year since Sozin's comet, when the forces retreating from the second unsuccessful campaign against Ba Sing Se, frustrated, passed through the capital of Beiling and left it smouldering.
“An elite unit landed, we held a parade, they didn't seem to like it, they marched out through the crowd, and. And I was in his way.”
Like Zuko, her eye is almost ruined. Like Zuko, there are five smaller spots of white scar tissue splayed around the scar: four on her brow, one on her throat. The skin has stretched and sagged in uncanny patterns as she's grown up. Unlike Zuko, the burn wraps around her head, and she only has hair on the other side. She's arranged it so it looks neat; he wants to ask for tips.
“When—” he has to clear his clogged up throat to be able to speak. “How long ago?”
“Close to fifteen years now. I couldn't stay after that. I hadn't done anything, but. True fire doesn't burn.” Her words are bitter, but her tone is resigned.
䷈
“True fire doesn't burn!” a youth spits.
Zuko is dressed in red and black, but has left his gold decorations on the ship. This is a risky mission, but they're desperate. Coal reserves have run out two months ago, and every firebender on his crew is exhausted from working the boilers directly. The only way to get more of even the lowest grade for burning is where the supplies are not restricted to military vessels carrying a pass from the ranking Admiral. Ever since Zhao has been promoted, all supply ports outside the Nation have been closed to Zuko, and by extension, to the Dāling and her crew.
Nobody within the Nation would knowingly supply a military vessel with commercial coal. The only reliable way to assess quality is to be a firebender. All of his firebending crew are out of commission. That leaves the extremely well known Dragon of the West, and Zuko.
Who is burnt.
He walks into another chandlery, which curiously isn't named, only indicated by the universal symbol of a hammer and an anchor.
“True fire doesn't burn,” he hears immediately, so he promptly turns around and walks out. Not worth it.
It's entirely possible none of the shops here would accept him in, and he'll have to continue on to the next port. He can't stop looking. Eventually they'll run out of places to go; he tries not to think about it right now, and to focus on his task.
(With his golden bling, he is instantly identifiable as a member of the royal navy. People still see the burn, but no one refuses service to the navy, no matter what they think.
However, as an anomaly, his presence in any place he visits in such official garb is faithfully reported. The machinery grinds slowly, but eventually reports end up in the central accounting ministry, identities are confirmed and collated, and under normal circumstances it triggers an adjustment to the hazard pay his crew receives.
As the captain, he receives the hawk carrying the itemised rolls, files them, submits an acknowledgement along with the ship's economic outlook, also known as Form 9937-B, and has discretion to adjust payslips before distributing them to the crew (via his lieutenant), for purposes of discipline. He never does, but he takes note of the hazard bonus nonetheless. It's always alarmingly high.
If he wore gold here, within the Nation, there is a strong chance a bureaucrat would notice, put together “banished prince” and “royal officer buying unmarked coal”, and get “treason”. Most importantly, his crew would stop getting paid.)
“Wait!” he hears from inside the shop he'd just exited, in a different voice, and he pauses. A customer leaves the shop, looking angry and disgusted, sees him, and shudders.
“Freaks,” he utters before striding away at a brisk pace, not looking back.
“Come back in, show me yours,” the voice calls again.
What? That can't mean what it sounds like.
Still. A lost ember ain't a chooser. He turns back and enters the shop properly, straining his eyes against the sudden darkness.
The shelves are covered in mostly broken parts, so dusty it's hard to tell what metal they're made of. Several bins marked “1 coin each” have the most bewildering array of knick knacks in cheap metals, almost all bent or defective in some immediately visible way. It's dirt cheap, but none of it is directly usable. Even the cordage is all offcuts, no lengths beyond a few armspans. It's the worst shipchandler Zuko has ever walked into.
“I don't get a lot of business,” a man justifies at the back of the shack. “But I've been here forty years. I can get anything, for the right price.”
Even within the gloom, he is hooded. A single candle is set at the far end of the desk, illuminating nothing but his hands, finishing sums in a mottled ledger.
This doesn't look like a place coal is traded. Or, really, much of anything.
“I need coal?” Zuko tries anyway. “For a ship. Cheap, but of grade.”
“How old are you, boy?” the hood asks.
This isn't what Zuko asked, and it doesn't feel like small talk, either. He hesitates, but answers nonetheless.
“You're too young,” the man breathes.
Zuko doesn't understand. As this isn't a new condition, he says nothing and waits.
The man lowers his hood.
Zuko inhales sharply. The man's left eye is a bare and blackened socket, and his ear is split and melted. Two marks on his brow and another next to his nose, the cheek sallow. The skin is so thin and taut he can guess at the shape of teeth on the upper jaw. The darkest part of the scar looks smaller, somehow, than his, but more horrible. Bumpy and boiled, it makes his own look smooth.
Zuko nods jerkily, and stares until the hood goes back up. After a moment, he catches his breath, and nods again. Now there are only two men discussing business in the dark.
“Coal?” the man ponders. “Well. I can do coal, if you can sort through the grade yourself.”
It would take days. He acquiesces. He can no longer afford to be picky.
䷉
“So, uh.” Zuko searches for appropriate topics of conversation. “When's the nuptials?”
She looks… young? But he'd gotten in trouble for assuming people were younger than they were based on appearance before.
“What?!”
Oookay. Touchy subject?
“I'm not getting—” spluttering “m- married!”
Huh. What?
“But you're wearing a betrothal necklace?” he asks, confused. Maybe it's some kind of newfangled fashion choice.
“What? No I'm not. This is my. Mother's… wait. Dad!”
Hakoda waves from where he's finalising arrangements for the freight their ships will be carrying. His gesture seems to reassure the… girl? young woman? besides Zuko that he'll be coming soon to see what his daughter wants, and she visibly stops herself from sprinting there immediately.
Finding and somehow befriending a southern water tribe chief had been a stroke of good luck so providential Zuko is still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It came after they had repainted the ship and refitted the crew at a colony port that was more of a tidal estuary with ramshackle pontoons in guise of docking facilities. Once Zhao had essentially banned them from the navy, it had made some sense to lose the uniform and adopt a more neutral black-and-greys theme, and to style the hull into something less distinctively navy and more like a merchant ship with a flair for the gothic.
And once they had run out of luck bamboozling Fire Nation merchants to into selling them unmarked coal at a much lower grade and much higher price than they liked, been found out, and been ashlisted, struck from the records and all monies rescinded, the Dāling had attempted a crossing using currents to aid navigation rather than powering through. That had put them in the path of Hakoda's ship, who was doing the same, given their tragic lack of qualified waterbenders. While initially almost hostile, after a few weeks of being in sight of each other on the same route, and frequently within shouting and dinghy distance, they had started trading, then visiting, then dining, until Zuko found himself sharing skincare tips with Bato, who sported a burn on his neck and left clavicle.
“I'd probably look like you had he not slipped on ‘koda's blood before reaching me,” he confided.
Zuko had exchanged a horrified look with Hakoda, and that had been that. In Hakoda's eyes, the Dāling's young captain clearly has a lot more sense than his insane crew. It's a weird friendship, to be sure.
Exchanging information with someone not influenced by Fire Nation propaganda had been… eye-opening, in many ways. The coal situation is one thing that makes a lot more sense now than it had before, and infuriates Zuko, both at how stupid he had personally been (despite nobody else on his crew or Iroh realising either) and at how self-defeating the Nation's cultural narrative is.
It turns out, while Water Tribe ships by and large use knowledge of the wind, an encyclopedic oral tradition of oceanic currents, and waterbenders when available… Earth freighters are coal-powered. Just like Fire ships. Except that both mercantile and military ship firebenders are able to precisely control burn rates and correct for impurities, while Earth ships have to rely entirely on the strength of the boilers and the quality of the coal supply.
The kicker? Earth commercial coal is better than Fire navy coal. Without a firebender to grade natural coal from the mines, earthbenders have figured out how to upgrade the material, by repeated cycles of fracturing, sifting, and compacting.
They've even achieved production efficiency through standardisation: Earth coal comes in a single grade, Standard Coal, and it's always the same.
It's simply revolutionary. The Dāling is now the most fuel-efficient coal ship in the entire Fire navy fleet they've just been kicked out of.
Also, now that they're no longer affiliated, they can sustain themselves financially by taking on freight. Which is. Surprisingly profitable. To the point that Zuko gives his crew raises, to match what Hakoda pays his crew, from when they do shipping runs in between raids on navy installations.
(Zuko carefully doesn't think about those too much. He's no longer of the Nation, much less a prince, but he still instinctively reacts whenever the people he still thinks of as his are at risk. He knows it's war. And yet.)
Hakoda's coming back from his chat.
“Alright, you've got five tonnes of heavy goods, I think mainly ingots from the local refinery, and I've got twenty crates of wood trinkets and stone jewelry,” Hakoda explains. “Drop-off is within five weeks in Gaoling, which is plenty for both of us. Sound good?”
“Perfect.” Zuko confirms after a quick mental check. “That's us fully loaded, maybe a little margin for if you decide to decimate a pack of shark-seals again.”
“That was one time!”
“My hold stank of blubber for three months, Hakoda,” he complains. “Three months! I still keep finding teeth in the bilges.”
That had been, shark-seal blubber excluded, a good trip. They'd gone back to Hakoda's home town (Zuko complained about the cold), discovered his children were missing (Zuko stopped complaining, and went a bit intense), and then found them in company of a foundling who had been trapped in the ice, probably stranded from a storm-wrecked travelling ship. The kid had a confused story about being the Avatar (Zuko panicked for five whole minutes and had to lose at Pai Sho with Uncle to calm down), but they'd determined that since that was impossible, he was most likely ice-sick, a kind of hypothermia the Water Tribes were familiar with which caused memory loss, vivid hallucinations, and delirium, hopefully temporary. The would-be Avatar had an airbender name (Aang) and could indeed airbend, but while rare that wasn't unseen, especially in the cities around the old temples where some of the Air Nomad civilian population had settled. Aang couldn't bend water, or earth, or fire (“Not Yet!” he'd exclaimed), so he was an airbender orphan with a medical condition. No problem.
“Alright, alright. No more seal. Now, Katara.” The chief turns to his daughter, who is sitting increasingly impatiently.
“Is this” she motions to her apparently-not-for-betrothal necklace, “Mom's?… betrothal?? necklace???”
There's entirely too many question marks in this sentence, Zuko thinks. He doesn't know how he can even hear those.
“Ah.” Hakoda says.
Uh oh. There's a story.
“Well. No.”
“See?!” Katara turns to Zuko. He raises an eyebrow.
“It is a betrothal necklace,” Hakoda clarifies, “but it's not your Mom's.”
“What!?”
Okay, that definitely qualifies as a screech. Zuko is torn between silently supporting his friend and getting away from the clearly developing family drama.
“Did you marry me off without even telling me about it?!”
Zuko is curious about that too. It doesn't seem in character.
“What? No! Plus you're the one who decided to wear it. Look,” Hakoda takes a breath. “It was your Gran Gran's betrothal necklace, from when she lived in the Northern Tribes, and then she passed it down to Kya when she married me.”
Oh, that's a much better explanation. Katara seems to agree too, and now looks sad, probably thinking of her late mother.
“We don't do betrothal in the South, you know that,” Hakoda reassures, “and I would never 'sell you off’, nevermind not tell you about it. You know that too, I hope.”
“I know. Sorry, Dad.”
Aaand they're hugging. Zuko is always uncomfortable with hugging, for some reason.
“Wait,” Hakoda remembers. “How was Zuko involved?”
“He asked about my upcoming nuptials,” Katara blushes.
“Huh. How do you know it's a betrothal necklace, then?”
“Um, basic cultural etiquette?” Zuko tries to remember. “Maybe a book? It might have been something a tut— school said…”
“Zuko, bud, I know you were tutored and didn't go to 'peasant school’,” Hakoda does airquotes. “There's no need to pretend. Remember the whole grain shipment thing?”
Oh, right. He might have aggressively negotiated with a supplier at a higher volume than was normally recommended. To be fair, the man had been particularly crooked. Zuko had said… many things.
“Anyway, if Zuko of all people can recognize it, you…” Hakoda hesitates. “Well, I won't tell you what to do, but it might be prudent to… wear it as a bracelet? Honestly I don't know if that would still count, it's not like we even have those traditions. Next time we meet a Northerner, we can ask, or this summer when we get back to Gran Gran.”
“You could also keep it like that,” Zuko proposes, “to keep off any, um, unwanted suitors?”
“Oh yeah, that's an idea,” Hakoda brightens, sensing a resolution.
“Uhm. I'm. Too Young? Anyway?”
The intrusive punctuation is making a comeback.
“Oh, well, my apologies. You don't,” Zuko pauses, trying to find good phrasing, then gives up. “You don't look eleven. I mean.”
“I'm fourteen! What do you mean I don't look eleven?! I hope so!”
Okay, then Zuko is confused. He looks to Hakoda for help.
“Ah. I believe what Zuko is referring to is that the betrothable age in… most of the world, really… is twelve. For girls.”
“What? That's barbaric.” Katara is aghast.
Zuko privately reflects on what it means for a Water Tribe girl to implicitly call the Fire Nation barbaric, against the propaganda machine's conviction to the contrary.
“Betrothal at twelve, marriage at fourteen, I believe is the sociable minimum, though there's no real rules,” Zuko confirms. “What is it in the South? Apart from the lack of betrothal…”
“Well,” Hakoda reminisces, “when I got married to Kya I was twenty and she was a year older, and that was deemed to be pretty young. There was a lot of trouble over it, in fact. That's why we live with Gran Gran instead of my family.”
“Dad, you eloped? Why did I never know about this?”
Twenty, and that was still too young, if not illegal? Wow. Zuko stops paying attention to Katara peppering her dad with questions and thinks back to Before.
Mai would be fifteen now. Without the potential for a match with Zuko keeping off inquiries, he wonders if she's betrothed. The thought makes him a bit upset, for some reason, though they'd never truly been in love, he doesn't think. Just keeping up appearances.
Ty Lee likely has better luck escaping that predicament, having run away to the circus at last news, and being one of seven daughters of marriageable age. Azula, of course, is a special case as a princess and royal heir.
He also knows of at least two of his crew who signed up not only for the navy but for the riskiest, most remote assignments (such as serving aboard a banished prince's decrepit boat) to flee an undesired union. What a glorious Nation he is from.
䷌
Uncle Iroh formally hires his nephew's booming shipping enterprise to deliver one (1) old man as close as possible to Admiral Zhao's command vessel without being caught.
Zuko rolls his eyes and bats away the paperwork. Seriously? And there's really no need to pay, either. Of course they'll help.
It turns out Uncle betrayed his Nation a lot earlier than Zuko thought, and has been heading a secret organisation that communicates using, get this, Pai Sho. Zuko laughs for a full minute when he learns that. Iroh pretends to be upset.
Their intelligence network has relayed a tip that Zhao plans to commit some kind of atrocity against the spirits while also breaking the famed Northern Ice Fortress in a major military offensive. Zuko already despises Zhao, but he further despairs at the thought the man is so fucking stupid he thinks this is in any way a good idea.
Sozin had learned that lesson. There is no need to look very far in any history book to figure it out. In fact, the laws against harming spirits and spiritual places are still on the books. Zhao's law speakers should have advised him so, and failing that, the consulting Fire Sage.
“I don't think Admiral Zhao has ever consulted a Fire Sage about anything, nephew,” Iroh shakes his head.
“But. But it's the law?” What?
“The law doesn't concern men like Zhao and my brother.”
Right. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Of course the law doesn't apply equally, it's not like that's the entire point of laws. Zuko is very tired.
Of course, even without the legal obligation, offending spirits is always a stupid idea, nevermind harming them. Zuko had disrespected Agni when he refused his Agni Kai, and. Well he isn't doing too bad nowadays. Perhaps being under the auspices of Tui and La instead has its benefits, and what does it matter that his firebending isn't the greatest, when he can protect and care for his crew and his friends.
In any case, Zuko asks about timelines (“before the next new moon”), plans routes on his charts with his navigator (“we'll need to carry extra coal to burn on the double”), gives a shipwide heads up so any crew member who might want to disembark rather than risk a visit to Nation waters can (“my prince, we're not leaving you unless you bodily throw us off”), and tells Hakoda.
Who swears up and down and goes to send messages to other Southern Tribes ships.
Iroh informs them the Northern Tribe has already been informed. Hakoda needles and uncovers that it's because one of the White Lotus, the ridiculous name for Uncle's underground Pai Sho club, is actually on the Northern Council.
“Pakku?!” he exclaims. “That old goat? I am shocked he's able to bend his bigoted sexist arse to cooperate with anyone not of his own people.”
Okay. Oookay. What the entire.
“Pakku is the man Gran Gran was engaged to before she ran away to the South, though she never told Sokka and I that. Dad has been telling me more about, well, everything,” Katara whispers to Zuko. “Gran Gran is very good at story-telling nights, and a lot of her stories make a lot more sense with the context. He was a high grade jerk. Is a high grade jerk, I guess. Didn't know he's alive.”
Right. Hakoda seems to be summarising everything wrong with Pakku for Iroh, who looks increasingly pained.
“Wait,” Zuko has a sudden thought. “Doesn't that mean your necklace was made by this Pakku?”
“Ugh,” Katara groans. “Yes. I've been trying not to think about this ever since I found out about what it is. Thanks for that, by the way.”
“—and he wouldn't let Kanna—”
“Yes.” Iroh finally interrupts. “I am quite aware. Pakku was very brash when he joined the organisation, and though he does remain stuck in some of his ways, especially those with consequences he hasn't been personally confronted to, he's had to contend with a lot of change as he interacted with our other members over the years. As you can imagine, we are a very diverse society.”
Zuko surreptitiously coughs “Pai Sho”. Iroh resolutely ignores him. Katara chortles under her breath. Zuko's intern huffs.
“While I cannot speak as to his current nor past feelings regarding your mother, Chief Hakoda, I assure you he has grown in many aspects, in the same way that I am not the young fool who thought he could conquer Ba Sing Se.”
That seems to mollify Hakoda, who nods thoughtfully.
“Regardless, Pakku will help the Council prepare. I must attempt to use my old strategic renown to steer Zhao away, preventing this tragedy before it begins. If I fail…”
“The Southern Tribes will mobilise to defend our northern cousins, even if that means visiting the old goat,” Hakoda confirms.
It goes great, until it doesn't.
Uncle is not able to stop Zhao. Nobody had really expected that to succeed, but it's still a blow. The mood is grim as sharpening stones grind at blades and spear points.
Zuko orders his crew and ship away.
“You have deliveries to make,” he justifies.
Everyone knows it's because he doesn't want them to have to fight against their own fellow Fire Nation people. They're relieved, and worried, and he promises them he'll be safe and will come back immediately once it's over.
Zuko's “intern” also stays behind, despite explicit orders. He has a small crisis thinking about what will happen to him and his crew should anything happen to the Beifong heiress.
Toph had kidnapped herself onto his ship during his first mercantile visit to Gaoling City, as an attempt to escape from her overbearing parents. Detangling that kettle of political lol-cats before the scandal could explode his prospects as a reputable freighter had been a lot more interesting than was entirely healthy. Zuko isn't entirely sure how he ended up obtaining her guardianship out of it; he suspects Uncle engineered it since discovering the blind girl was a Pai Sho prodigy.
Toph is headstrong, possibly the best earthbender in the world, and can only navigate on Zuko's ship, not wood-hulled ones like every other vessel except for the enemy's. She's also “useless on the snow” (her words) since she can't step barefoot on ice.
Once he can breathe again, Zuko is very glad to have her by his side.
Zhao receives a brick to the face, and doesn't ever reach the spirits, who for some reason have taken mortal forms of defenseless Koi fish. Zuko stares, opens his mouth, turns around, throws his arms up, turns back, and thanks the moon for keeping him safe on the seas.
Pakku receives a block of ice to the face when he discounts Katara's skills. To his credit, he actually learns something, and changes his opinion. Hakoda grudgingly accepts a letter to give to Gran Gran when they go back.
Zuko receives a knife to the chest, and is captured by his sister's friends. Prisoner or not, he still cannot legally enter the Nation, and is imprisoned on Sagye Island's prison camp while he recovers and the Fire Sages and/or Ozai can pronounce themselves on his fate.
He befriends a quiet waterbender named Honu, and tells her about Pakku's attitude adjustment to her disbelief and hope. He talks with the only other person here with a facial burn, an older woman who curses when she learns his age.
“I thought he'd finally stopped.”
No. He never had. He'd only stepped away from the battlefield and his source of eyes to ruin because his wife murdered his father and he had to come back home.
Zuko doesn't say this. Zuko only waits, now. Agni's revenge has finally caught up to him, despite Uncle always saying Agni wouldn't approve of his father's actions.
Zuko mourns his crew, his friends, his ship. Zuko hopes they're fine, but knows he'll never see them again. Zuko only waits.
䷀
Once, Zuko still believed he could come back. He would accomplish his impossible banishment task, his name would be unstruck, he would once again be a Prince in the Fire Nation.
But not even the most powerful of waterbenders can heal him. He will forever be burnt. And true fire doesn't burn.
Hands, arms, legs, torso, all those could be hidden, if he cared to. It’d be risky, and he’d probably have to remain exiled to a remote island, living nearly alone and only bathe in the sight of the trusted. But he could have come back. He could have lived among his Nation once more.
Face, though? There is no hiding that.
In the palace, when he was young, no one spoke of true fire. Every single person who stepped foot on the grounds had true fire. In Caldera City, reference to the phrase is an insult like no other, and no one who lives there is crass enough to utter it within earshot of nobility.
But Ozai knew. Ozai had marked dozens in this way. Ozai had a particular style, and he enjoyed destroying lives. Ozai, as Zuko's best friend says, should have been pushed off an ice floe to protect the rest of the tribe. Ozai had never intended for his son to ever have any hope.
So when Azula hesitates, he starts struggling out of his restraints.
“Father,” she's saying, “all of our coal comes from our Northern Earth colonies now.”
“You doubt me, daughter?” his voice is calm, like it ever is before the firestorm.
“No, Father. But without coal… our people will starve.”
“They should be happy to starve,” Ozai explains, as if it is a natural fact of life, “to serve the needs of their Phœnix King.”
“Father,” his sister is stepping back, but Zuko knows this is the wrong move. “Do we not serve the Nation? Do we not bless its path into the fires of civilization?”
This is what their tutors had taught. Zuko, in the back of his mind, is somewhat concerned that Azula never figured out Ozai thought otherwise. He hastens his efforts.
“I am the Nation,” Ozai booms, advancing, “and you are in my way.”
“Father!”
Azula is on her knees, looking up as if she doesn't understand how she has gotten there, how it has all gone so wrong.
The circlet of the Eternal Flame is in her hair, freshly polished from her coronation. She is where she always desired, at the top of her world, hailed by her subjects. In Ba Sing Se, she had learned that if the adoration wasn't willing, she would always be at risk of rebellion. In Ba Sing Se, she had been out of Ozai's sight, ruling a city he doesn't care for, not that he cares about anything at all. Here, on the air fleet ready to annihilate the world, only to destroy everything she rules, she is as she's always been: a pawn. There can never be any greater power than Ozai.
Ozai lifts his hand, fingertips glowing in the night, and Zuko breaks free.
He jumps in front of his sister just as the nightmarish claw closes upon her, and it instead grasps him, once again. This doesn't stop Ozai, who laughs and, rather than shaking him off, turns up the heat.
Zuko doesn't flinch. As his vision turns white, he wraps his hands around Ozai, and pushes off the deck into the void below.
His scar screams pain but he doesn't care. Azula screams after him. The wind screams past as they pick up speed. Ozai is no longer laughing, and at that, Zuko allows one last wisp of pleasure to slip through his fury. He hisses his final words:
“You will not. Burn. Another. One.”