TRIAL BY FIRE: PROLOGUE

A/N: wow! my first fanfiction on this site. i'm excited to see what this one has in store! it's darker than what i usually write in my spare time, but this idea came to me and just won't go away, so here it is i guess?

The flames flickered brightly in the corridor to the throne room, darkening for the briefest moment as a shadow passed over them before lighting themselves again.

A girl was walking confidently through the corridor. Behind her were two guards, dragging along a teenager, who was beaten and bloody. A large scar stretched across the left side of his face, and he glared at the tiles as the guards hefted him after the girl.

Said girl stopped in her tracks, causing the guards to do the same. The boy looked up at her as she turned around, piercing him with her cold, calculating gaze.

"You know, I honestly expected you to put up more of a fight. Pity. Looks like all those years with Uncle made you weaker than you were."

Her brother glared at her, fire in his eyes. He finally broke the silence.

"Don't you dare talk about Uncle that way, Azula."

She laughed. "You don't have the rights to tell me what to do, Zuzu. You're about to be tried for war crimes. It's saddening that our dear old uncle can't make the meeting though. It's alright really. I have a team of assassins tracking him down as we speak."

Zuko looked up at her, horrified. "You-"

"What are you looking so anguished for? He doesn't deserve to live any more than you do, brother."

Azula started walking again, the click of her boots and the shuffling noise of her brother being dragged behind her by the two guards the only sounds echoing through the air. After a moment, Azula decided to break the silence again.

"If it were up to me, you would have been dead on that ship the moment I saw you. But, I suppose, Father probably has a long life of suffering ahead of you for being an enemy to the state."

She smiled to herself as the doors to the throne room loomed before her and her prisoner. She turned back to Zuko as he was struggling against the shackles that held him.

"Well, goodbye, brother. I doubt I'll ever see you again, but I don't plan on ending up wherever you go any time soon. I'm not a traitor," she spat, as the guards opened the doors and shoved him in.

The throne room was dark, except for the wall of fire separating the throne and the rest of the room. On the throne sat Zuko's father, the man who now decided his fate, his face impassive behind the flames. The guards deposited Zuko in front of the throne and bowed to the Fire Lord.

Ozai stood. "Leave us," he commanded, and the guards were on their way. He looked down on the boy that was barely seventeen, shivering on the tiles, blood dripping down from a cut on his forehead.

The Fire Lord sneered. "Pathetic," he spat.

Zuko looked up at him, eyes hollow. "Father, I-"

"You're a coward. And a traitor! And you can't even complete the most basal of tasks."

"I made a mistake, Father. Everything I did, I did it so that I could return home to you, and be at your side as your loyal son."

Ozai sneered. He strode through the flames, away from the dais, and began circling Zuko like a vulture would to a dying animal. And maybe he was a vulture, waiting to seize the boy in his claws, to rip him to shreds using Zuko's own insecurities. Zuko's own weaknesses.

"Tell me why, then, you constantly let the Avatar slip through your fingers? Why you and your precious uncle turned against your own country at the North Pole? Why you let Admiral Zhao die in front of you? No loyal son of mine would let all of these discrepancies happen."

Zuko coughed into the tile below him, spitting out blood. "Everything I did was done in the best interest of the Fire Nation. I located the Avatar. I did it all so I could return home, so I could help you win the war. I did it for you, Father."

"I never wanted you home, boy. You're weak. Finding the Avatar? That was just an excuse to rid myself of you, to keep you at sea for the rest of your miserable little life." Ozai looked down at his son, at the broken teenager now staring up at him with shock in his eyes, the pain not yet giving away to tears. "But, I see you've failed at even that. And now I have to put you in a place where I never have to see you again. Take him away!"

The two guards from earlier came back, yanking Zuko back away from the throne, as the boy began to thrash, screaming the likes of fatherpleasedon'tdothisicandobetterplease- as Ozai walked back behind his wall of fire, back to safety. He smiled wickedly as the boy let the tears fall from his good eye, the left side having lost that capability long ago.

"You'll go to the Boiling Rock, and you'll rot. And don't you ever think of showing your face around here again, or you'll be dead where you stand. Goodbye, Zuko."

And as the doors slammed shut, he heard a howl of agony.

A/N: and that's the prologue! reviews are welcome :)