AN: Mai and Ozai remind me a lot of the old movie Cleopatra. I wrote one of the scenes from said film tailored and altered for their characters and then an entire plot bunny came from it. Azula and Ty Lee are also heavily featured. The AU is quite simple: the Fire Nation won. The title Caïssa is for the goddess of chess.

Caïssa

Oh can't you see?
You belong to me.
"Every Breath You Take," The Police

Chapter One

The landscape was white, as if dusted with snow.

As Mai stared out of her barred window, she tried to remember what Ba Sing Se looked like before she helped Azula raze it to the ground. It definitely did not have a thick, monochrome coating of ash that had yet to settle.

Sozin's Comet left its carnage five months ago. Mai left her prison cell five weeks ago.

She upgraded her room in the Boiling Rock for this one.

Mai heard the news when a servant girl brought her breakfast.

She requested to speak to her captor, but, of course, was denied again. All it took was the sharp edge of the bars on her window and a sleek chopstick to form a lock-pick. She broke into a sweat before she even began walking down the hallways.

They did a poor job of covering up what once was. The Earth Kingdom engraved their legacy in stone so deeply that metal could not erase it. Maybe it could eventually, the way the ash had yet to blow away with the wind.

Finding Phoenix King Ozai might be easier said than done. This place was huge.

She considered giving before she got lucky and heard voices. A few steps away from her was a door to a war room.

Mai invited herself inside.

"I won't let her come here," Mai interrupted.

Slowly, four men and one woman turned to face her.

Ozai was the only one to speak. He asked, "Have you broken out of your nursery to come irritate the adults?"

One guard perked up. "Should we remove her for you, your majesty?"

He looked her up and down.

"No. I'll talk to her. Alone," Ozai ordered, setting a stone tile down on the tabletop.

Mai stood still and stolid as the room emptied.

"She'll kill me," Mai said, addressing her captor for the first time since the day he 'liberated' her. "You know that."

Ozai laughed. "What makes you think I care if you live or die?"

Mai was unimpressed. "You removed me from the Boiling Rock and have kept me fed and have yet to execute me for my treasonous crimes. You want me alive for some reason. Not that you've ever bothered to explain."

"Well, you have never asked, have you?" he said.

"I don't mind the solitude of imprisonment," said Mai completely honestly. "I do mind having visiting hours with Fire Lord Azula."

"You've been a model prisoner. You deserve to visit an old friend," he replied with a small, semi-sadistic smile.

"I don't know what you want," Mai admitted, walking towards him. He did not move. "I do know that you think you can break me, but you can't. You might be able to enslave masses, wipe out cities and burn the world with your bare hands, but you can't control me."

"I already do." He walked to her and met her in the center of the room.

He rested his hand on her arm. It was not a very gentle gesture, but Mai did not show her discomfort. She could not afford it.

Meeting his gaze without a flicker of fear in her amber eyes, "Play conqueror all you want, Phoenix King, but no army or emperor or any other barbarian has the power to destroy thoughts," Mai said.

"I should kill you for that," he said casually, "but I find your outburst fascinating. I think the time has come for us to get to know each other properly."

"You only need to know one thing," Mai said, trying to pry his hand away. He responded by grabbing her other arm too. "I'm not your slave or anyone else's."

"So you think, but you chose your own fate. You are what I say you are. You are a failed conqueror. If anyone has pretended to be that, it would be you. You knocked down the walls of this very city. But did the game stop being fun enough? Did it start to bore you?" He smirked a lot like his daughter did. It must be genetic. "Did you really want to be on the other side of a knife?"

"Your daughter is far more persuasive and much more frightening than you, and she clearly couldn't keep me under her thumb. How could you?"

He grabbed her.

"I am very bored of this. You keep saying the same thing in so many different ways, as if one of them might change my mind."

"Let go of me."

"Allow me to make this simple. You can have anything you want, as long as you do whatever I say."

"Do whatever you say?" Mai scoffs. "As if I am something you conquered?"

He began to lose his patience, but did not lose his grip on her. "If I choose to regard you as such."

"Am I to understand that you want to do with me whatever you want, whenever you want?" Mai asked, wondering if she was mocking enough. She was not. She knew she was not.

"Yes," he replied, not acknowledging her disgust.

Mai paused, giving him time to think perhaps he won.

"Don't you wish it was that easy?" she whispered, leaning in to him instead of away.

He did not falter before replying, "You talk too much."

His lips met hers.

The door opened and Mai took her opportunity to break away and walk to the other side of the room.

She crossed her arms and tried to slow her racing pulse.

He looked her up and down once, and then turned to the messenger as if she did not exist.

AN: to be continued...