He spent the week it took the White Lotus to set up his new prison with his hands and feet chained together, the chain looped through a ring set in the floor in the hold of one of Zaofu's airships. A metal blindfold had been contoured over his eyes and fitted to the planes of his face, irremovable even if he did have his hands free. There were no less than three metalbenders present during the daily delivery of his food and water, one to spoon feed him the congee, the other two to stand inside the solid metal door, locked every moment they were not exiting or entering the hold. The elder Beifong checked on him every morning and evening, a fact which he only knew because he could occasionally hear echoes of her addressing the guards outside his door. They were not taking any chances of him escaping again.

The effectiveness of this did not escape the White Lotus's notice. His last day on the airship, they drugged the congee; when he awoke sometime later, the chains—though longer and now melded to the wall—on his wrists and ankles remained. So did the blindfold, though he could feel with his hands that his new cell was as encased with metal as his last one, the door nearly as solid with only a small metal flap at the bottom through which bowls could be slid.

Several hours later, sitting on the metal bench across from the door, he heard steps outside, then the flap opening and something metal scraping across the floor. The footsteps were already beginning to recede by the time he regained his bearings enough to call out, "Excuse me."

The footsteps stopped. Then, "What do you want?" The voice was irritated, and not one he recognized.

"I just want to know where I am being held."

His answer was a snicker. "You would like to know, wouldn't you?"

He refrained from retorting, Yes, that is why I asked, and just waited silently.

It was not long before, "You've been buried. We're so far down that what remains of your Red Lotus couldn't find you if they dug for a thousand years." Another snicker. "Not that any of them will bother to try. Enjoy your congee, Zaheer."

He walked away before Zaheer could reply. Not that he intended to. There was nothing to say.

After all, the guard was right. He had overheard what had happened to Ghazan and Ming-Hua. They had been buried even more thoroughly than he, and they were the only ones who would have looked.

-*O*-

He had hoped to spend as many of his waking hours as possible in the Spirit World, but the White Lotus had chosen his new prison well; his every attempt to project himself ended in failure. It was not a wall; walls could be torn down. It was just there was nowhere for his spirit to go. Wherever they had stashed him away, it was so spiritually barren he could not even find his way to Xai Bau's grove.

At least, that was what he hoped. The Avatar could do many things to people's spiritual energy that no one properly understood, and he did not know what they had done to him while he was unconscious. The fact that his bending remained made this seem unlikely, but he had no way of knowing for sure.

There were other, equally troubling possibilities, but thinking on them yielded him nothing. So he did not.

He spent the next week meditating, hovering a few inches above the metal bench a few minutes at a time until fatigue from the weight of the chains dragged him back down. It did not take long, just a few days, before this caused his restraints to chafe at his wrists and ankles, first raw, then bleeding. It did not take long, just a few days more, before he could not float and meditate at the same time, his concentration worn away by the bright, irregular scrapes of pain to the point that he had to choose between them.

He chose the meditation. Better to actually flee into his mind than let himself continue to harbor delusions of physical escape.

He did not regret. There was nothing he could do to fix what he had broken.

He did not remember. His memories were where his regrets festered.

He ignored the food brought to him for that first week. He at first amused himself with the idea that he would emulate the Monk Tang Xu and gain his sustenance from the universe through meditation, but either the universe did not feel like providing or he was not asking properly, because at the end of that week even the congee left from the previous day was starting to smell palatable. When the next guards who came down with food threatened him with force feeding if he did not start eating by himself, he obliged without being able to muster even mild irritation. He was very tired.

He wished he had read more during his few months of freedom. While the teachings and poems of the old Air Nomads had been a comfort to him during his thirteen years of captivity, they were becoming… worn. The peace they had formerly invoked in him whenever he had thought on them had grown thin and tenuous, likely to rip at the slightest mishandling.

It could not be the teachings themselves. They were ageless for a reason. It had to be him. But there came a time when he realized he had lost track of how many bowls of food the White Lotus had brought, when he realized he had no idea of how long he had been here, underground.

Would even Guru Laghima have been able to find peace bound hand and foot, locked in a metal box deep under the earth? Would Laghima have newly noticed the length of the hair on his face and head, touched his wrists now ringed by rigid scars where he expected to encounter open sores, and feel his long-sought serenity just… evaporate, into nothing. The thought felt blasphemous, but the air was stale in his lungs, he was an airbender surrounded by dead air, and no matter how deeply he breathed, it did nothing to dispel the tightness in his chest. It tasted lifeless.

It was lifeless. He was going to die here. A failure, forever locked away. Alone, and deservedly so. He had made so many promises to his friends, but the only one he had kept was that they, at least, got to die free. But that was little comfort to anyone, and to them none at all.

He didn't even notice he was sobbing until he realized how much difficulty he was having catching his breath, only after that marking the tears running down his face. His attempts at wiping them away abruptly reminded him of the metal blindfold. Reminded him. Had he grown so accustomed to his blindness that it no longer registered as strange? Had he truly accepted that he would never see again? Had he truly accepted this… existence?

He could not call it a life. But neither could he imagine anything else, anymore.

-*O*-

More time passed. He did not try to guess how much, and he did not ask.

He did not regret. He did not remember. He did not think or meditate. The teachings of the Air Nomads no longer brought him relief from the hopelessness of his cell; there was nowhere to retreat to in his mind that he wanted to go. His inner peace had proven fragile and cheap, what enlightenment he had found a farce.

He ate, because it was easier to do so than not. He slept, and was thankful he did not dream, though he occasionally awakened to find himself floating a few inches above the bench, his chains weighing heavily on his arms and legs as if his own airbending was taunting him with the memory of the freedom he had too briefly grasped. That freedom had been taken from him. The air was dead. He endured in darkness, and could no longer envision the light. And so he remained, and wondered if a being which did not live could actually die, if instead someone who perished in a spiritual void would drift forever in the black.

He perhaps would have gone on as such forever if one day the floor had not literally fallen out from under him, the metal floor crumpling away along with the stone beneath it.

He would have landed badly if he had not still been chained to the wall, his reflexes as rusted as they were and his focus so shattered. As it was, he hung awkwardly in the air from his shackles, feeling shaken and slightly ill from the pain that now radiated from shoulders and wrists so abruptly and harshly wrenched. "What..?" The harsh scratch of his own voice startled him; how long had it been since he had spoken?

He tried again. "What-"

"Shh."

That voice…

"… Ghazan?"

"I said, 'shh.' We're trying to be quiet here. Now just… a second…"

He felt hands on his left ankle, heard Ghazan (by the spirits, Ghazan was alive) take a deep breath, then a few seconds later heard a sharp creak as the shackle was ripped away. The bonds on his other ankle and his wrists quickly followed, dropping him heavily to the ground as the last shackle broke even with Ghazan braced beneath him to help ease his fall. He was carefully set on his knees before he felt Ghazan's hands move to cup his face.

"I'm going to try to be delicate about this… if the White Lotus is scared enough to leave you blindfolded, I'm not going to take any chances for how fancy they got with this thing." He heard Ghazan take another deep breath, then the blindfold just… peeled away, as if it were made of cloth instead of metal. And for the first time in a very long time, Zaheer opened his eyes-

"Wait, don't-!"

And immediately regretted it.

Ghazan moved quickly to clap his hands over Zaheer's face, one shielding his eyes while the other clamped tightly over his lips, though not quickly enough to prevent his sharp, involuntary gasp of pain or the tears that gathered in a futile attempt to block out the unforgiving light. He had seen when he thought he never would again… and it burned.

He heard Ghazan curse softly. "Shit, and that's from just my lamp…" He felt Ghazan remove the hand over his mouth, then the draft caused by its movement as it was carefully lowered to clasp his own. "Zaheer, you need to cover your own eyes. I'm going to bend the floor of your cell back into shape to throw off your guards, but I need both of my hands for that."

He took a deep breath and nodded, allowing their fingers to briefly intertwine before he released his grip. He quickly replaced Ghazan's remaining hand on his face with the crook of his arm as Ghazan moved away, though unfortunately even with them shut, that brief moment without cover was agony, causing further tears to fall from the corners of his eyes. He heard further creaking followed closely by a rumbling sound as Ghazan presumably bended back the floor, and then felt a hand yet again grasping and tightening around his.

"Come on. We're leaving."

He squeezed Ghazan's hand back in reply. It still hurt too much to open his eyes, but he let himself be pulled to his feet, and as Ghazan began to walk away, he followed, for it never occurred to him to not trust Ghazan to lead him away from the darkness and towards the wind and the sun.