"Why did you do it?!" the young Fire Lord demanded. "To amuse yourselves by taunting me with false hope and watching me break down once it was shattered?"

Ozai scoffed. "Don't flatter yourself – everything isn't always about you. We did it so Azula could take the throne from you, release me, and undo all the damage you've caused. You were never supposed to find out the truth. Your mental anguish is a poor consolation prize."

Zuko stared through the bars at the man he had never hated more than he did at this moment. "Some part of me knew the truth all along," he said bitterly. "If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is…"

"But…" Ozai continued for him, with a knowing sneer.

Why deny what was so obvious? "But the part of me that wanted to believe it was true made me think, act, and feel as if it was, no matter how much I told myself not to."

"I never did teach you how to obey orders, did I?"

Zuko stepped forward and gripped the bars of the cage. "For a few a days," he whispered, "some part of me felt free. For those five seconds after I first read that letter, before my reason caught up with my mind after it processed the words, maybe all of me felt free…" Ozai shook his head in contempt and looked aside; Zuko didn't know why that made him say next, "For all you know, it could still be true…"

Ozai burst into laughter. "You poor, pathetic, deluded boy…" He looked up directly into his son's face again. "Why bore me with your fantasies? Whether you want to believe a peasant from some backwater village is your real father or declare my fool of a brother your only true father is all the same to me. You know the truth as well as I do, and nothing can change it! You know whose son you really are!"

Zuko could feel himself losing control, but he was too far gone to care about fighting it. "It can't be… I can't be…" There was a chance, there had to be… "Look at you, look at me! There's no way…"

"There's no other way!" Ozai bellowed. "That letter really got to you, didn't it? Well, perhaps I should show you mercy and crush that last bit of tantalizing hope." He said, with an emphasis that showed he was thoroughly enjoying every word, as if he had been waiting for years to say it, "Zuko, I am your father!"

Zuko backed away and clutched his head with both hands. "No, that can't be true! That's impossible!" he begged.

"Search your feelings, you know it to be true!"

The prison halls echoed for hours with the last, desperate yell of "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"