Chapter Text
He can feel himself dying.
It’s been 40 years since he was imprisoned for his crimes against the world, and he’s ready to die. He knows what awaits him isn’t pretty. He was never much of a believer in the spirits, but having met the avatar and having his bending removed as a result, he feels a little more inclined to believe in their general existence.
His chest has been hurting for six hours now, and it’s getting worse by the minute. It’s hard to breathe, only able to gasp and panic as he fights to get air into his lungs. He knows what this is, Sozin had died the same way when Ozai was only a year old.
A heart attack.
Suddenly, the pain reached a peak, and he knew no more.
—
A bright white light blinds him as he comes to.
Once it clears, he realizes he’s laying on his back in a field. Pushing himself up onto his elbows, he looks around.
There’s nothing as far as the eye can see, only an empty field with a slight breeze, dotted with wild flowers. There’s white fluffy clouds in the sky, the sun shining through them and lighting up the area.
He has no fucking idea where he is.
He knows he died, he remembers the searing pain of his heart attack.
What he doesn’t understand is why he’s here of all places. It seems too… idyllic for all that he had done in his short stint as firelord and the horrors he had committed in his earlier years. Someone like him doesn’t deserve something like this.
“Former Fire Lord Ozai, I see you have finally made your way into the spirit realm.” A voice says from behind him, causing him to nearly jump out of his skin.
He turns to see a man towering over him, looking down at him like he’s nothing but dirt on the bottom of his shoe. Ozai supposes that's an… honestly very fair assessment of him as a person.
The man is clad in a bright white bukan sokutai, lined and trimmed in gold. There is an almost unnatural appearance to the bukan, appearing as if it shimmers in a rainbow of colors as he moves. Half of his hair is in a top knot, the other half down and worn extremely long, almost down past his waist. He wears an older style hair piece, a mianguan, the very same as the first crown of the fire nation royals. His eyes are a golden color so bright and true that it hurts to look at them. His hair is as black as soot, seeming to devour any light that comes near it.
“W-Who… who are you? Do I know you?” He asks, standing to greet the man with a shallow bow.
“You should know me quite well, Ozai. You once possessed my gift, and your family claims to be of my blood.” The man says, tilting his head to look down his nose at Ozai.
Ozai’s eyes go wide as he connects the dots.
“Agni, my sincerest apologies, I am not familiar with what you look like. We did not… have many paintings of you in the palace during my lifetime; at least, not that I knew of.” Ozai says carefully, bowing as low as he can without fully getting to his knees.
“I appreciate your apology, Ozai. It does not hold the weight it should, but I guess I can accept it for how I know you can be when facing your own wrongdoings.” The great spirit says, placing a hand on his shoulder and motioning for him to stand up.
“If I may ask, why are you here? Why are you talking to me of all people, when I have done the things that landed me in prison and without my bending?” Ozai asks, tentatively.
“Ah, You are more observant than I gave you credit for.” Agni hums. “You see, Ozai, I have a question I want to ask you.”
“Of course, Great Spirit.” Ozai says, not daring to look directly at the man.
“Do you regret it?”
“What?” out of all the things he could have been asked, that was not the one he had been expecting.
“Do you regret what you have done to the world? Has the removal of your bending taught you anything? Your stay in prison?” Agni elaborates, stepping closer to the disgraced firelord.
“Yes.” Ozai’s answer is firm and sure, he knows why he ended up where he did.
“Oh? You do? Tell me, what was the final straw that made you realize that what you have done in your life was abhorrent?” The spirit asks, tilting its head quizzically.
“I… I can’t say for sure, but I do know that over those forty odd years I was imprisoned, I had a lot of time to think.” he takes a deep breath before continuing “I did so many horrible things. I hurt my wife, I hurt my children. I raised half of the earth kingdom to the ground for no other reason than I believed that it was my right as the god my father had always told my brother and I that we were.” his words come spilling out, baring his soul for the Great Spirit before him.
“When you ask if I regret it, my answer is yes, because after forty years of being left alone with nothing but my thoughts for company, I was forced to confront my own actions. Yes, my father may have told me I was the many times great grandson of a god, and yes, that may have inflated my ego, but it never justifies what I did.”
“I committed genocide, a word I did not even know until the young avatar came to see me a year into my imprisonment. I abused my family, because I thought it was my right. Not even my father did that. He never burned Iroh or I, like I did to Zuko. He never drove me to the brink of insanity in order to create a miniature version of himself like I had with Azula.” He knows he’s being too informal with Agni, but he can’t stop now.
“I had many talks with my brother, my son, and the avatar over the years. The things they told me, the things they showed me, I… I couldn’t deny what I, what our nation, had done. The young avatar took me to the southern air temple once, and that is what truly made me realize that I had been fed lies my whole life.”
“There were skeletons of infants. Infants. That… that’s something that should have never… Sozin reasonings, he was wrong. The avatar told me exactly what his people were like; they were peaceful.” Ozai lets himself fall to his knees, unable to remain standing with the weight of his and his family’s actions weighing him down.
“We could all learn something from the long departed nomads.”
Agni is silent as he processes Ozai's admittance.
He had not expected the former tyrant to have become so… introspective. Men like Ozai never changed, rigid and steadfast in their beliefs that they are above the spirits.
“I see.”
Ozai remains on the floor, terrified of what the man will do.
“I have a proposition for you, Ozai.”
Ozai’s head snaps up to look at the man, shock evident on his face.
“I am going to give you two options. One, you stay here, and I let my dragons drag you to the pit of despair, where you shall suffer for all of eternity. This was what was originally planned for you, but I became curious, so I dragged you here.”
Ozai’s breath catches in his throat as he starts to shake.
“Option two, you go back to the day your nephew, prince Lu Ten, died, and you make things right. You atone for your sins, by making sure they never happen in the first place.”
Ozai is about to answer, but Agni stops him.
“Before you choose, there is a condition placed on the last one. If you begin to make your same mistakes, if you squander this chance and use it to try and resume your reign of terror, then you will immediately die from the very same heart attack that killed you the first time.”
Ozai takes a shaky breath, trying to swallow down his fear.
“So?”
“I choose the second option.”
“Very well.”
And once again, Ozai felt the world fall out from under him.