Fire Lord Zuko sat quietly behind the blazing inferno in front of his throne. His eyes were trained on the bowing figures of the Fire Sages before him; near perfect statues on the floor, waiting for him to give notice to their presence.

“You may rise,” Zuko said regally, ushering for the Sages to stand.

The Sages stood slowly, trepidation easily recognizable on their withered faces. “You summoned us, my Lord?” the head Sage asked.

Zuko nodded, though the action was impossible to see clearly behind his fiery curtain. “I wish to hear your report for the week. Has her condition changed?”

“No, your Highness, there has been no change in your sister’s condition,” the head Sage responded.

Zuko nodded again. “I see,” he said solemnly, taking the news in. “Return at this time next week, or if anything changes beforehand. You are dismissed.”

The Sages bowed again, but as they turned to leave the head Sage took a tentative step forward. “My Lord, if I may, there is something that I wish to ask you?”

The young Fire Lord regarded the Sage impassively. “You may ask your question.”

The Sage bowed slightly. His wrinkled face suddenly became very serious. “Over these past three months we have cared for your sister and tried everything we know to help ease her delirium. However, nothing we seem to be doing is having any effect. She has not improved in any way. I wish to know if you have given any thought as to what should become of her if our efforts continue to fail?”

A tense silence filled the room, rushing over its occupants like a bone-chilling breeze. None of the Sages dared to move as they waited for their Fire Lord to address the question that had been posed.

“No,” Zuko admitted with a slight frown, “I haven’t given it any thought.” His face became serious again. “But I take it that you have?”

The Sage hesitated, but after a moment nodded.

Zuko folded his hands in front of him and set his attention on the head Sage alone. “Then tell me, venerable Fire Sage, what course of action do you suggest I take?” His voice was calm, but it held the unmistakable edge of irritation.

The Sage lowered his eyes to the pristinely polished floor and shifted nervously. Despite knowing that he need not fear any sort of violent repercussion from this new, young Fire Lord for an honest answer, he was still quite reluctant to speak upon this matter.

“Well?” Zuko asked, beginning to lose patience with the Sage’s silence.

The Sage shifted again, but after a moment cleared his throat and met his lord’s gaze. “As you are now aware, your Highness, your father instituted many strict laws after the Day of Black Sun. He made it very clear what was to become of traitors to the Fire Nation…” The Sage trailed off, not having the courage to continue speaking.

“Am I to understand then, that what you’re suggesting is that I have my sister executed?” Zuko asked, his voice never wavering from the deadly calm that it had become.

The Sage paled. “You father was very clear–”

“That’s not what I asked you,” Zuko interrupted, his voice rising considerably.

A cold sweat ran down the Sage’s forehead. Somehow, he found the ability to speak again through his apprehension. “Yes, your Highness, I believe it would be for the best,” he said. “It would not need to be painful – a mixture or hemlock and sleeping herbs into the water that we give her. She would fall into a deep sleep and the poison would shut her body down. She wouldn’t feel a thing.”

Silence filled the room again, though this time it seemed to be much harsher then it previously had been. No one moved, no one spoke; half the Sages weren’t even sure if they remembered how to breathe. And then, after what seemed like an eternity, Zuko spoke.

“Return here this time tomorrow and I will have your answer.”

For the rest of the day and well into the night the question posed by the Sage assaulted Zuko with an unrelenting fervor. He sat for hours pondering what to do; he stood and paced for many more. Countless questions swam through the young Fire Lord’s mind: what should he do? What was the right course of action to take? Should he execute Azula? Did he even want to?

For much of his life, Azula had been a living nightmare. She was always around to torture him at the worst possible times; what was worse, she often enjoyed and took pride in her ability to do so. As she got older her attempts to hurt him physically and mentally only intensified, until at last she crossed the line between childish torment and sadism by performing multiple attempts of fratricide.

However, despite his sister’s shortcomings – of which there were many – Zuko could not bring himself to kill her when he took the throne. Then, like now, a strange feeling ate away at him. If anyone would approach him about this feeling, he would simply tell them that it stemmed from a deep desire to be a better man than his father was in the way he ruled. However, this was only half of the truth. Zuko knew that he was already a far better man than his father. What the feeling really was; what was really keeping him from acting, was pity.

Zuko pitied Azula; he pitied her for what she had been molded into under the twisted hands of his tyrannical father, and he pitied her for what she had become in recent months.

Images of his defeated sister thrashing on the ground at their Agni Kai filled his head. He remembered quite distinctly how she had been crying; how she writhed and screamed, tears falling down her face as she twisted and turned in awkward positions on the cold floor, choked sobs erupting from her mouth with each pitiful blaze of flame. He remembered her muddled and incoherent sentences; how she would scream and call out to something – someone – anyone. And he remembered her eyes most of all; her once golden, cat-like eyes, reduced to small dilated dots that held no recognition for the world around her.

The young Fire Lord shuddered.

In all his thinking, Zuko had neglected to realize that he had left his throne room and was now well on his way to his own chambers. He turned, and seeing as he was far closer to his room than his previous location, decided to continue along his path. When he reached his room, which, until just recently had been his father’s, he noticed the familiar silhouette of his beloved Mai sitting quietly on his bed.

The knife-thrower looked up at her lord and regarded him with a curious expression. “Another long day of boring decree and reform?” she asked, a sly, almost invisible smile gracing her lips. Zuko smiled a little despite himself.

“Not exactly. I’m sorry I kept you waiting, Mai,” he responded, his voice despondent. Mai, who was quite familiar with dour moods, picked up on his depressed tone immediately.

“What’s the matter? What strange dilemma are the Sages pushing on you know?” Mai asked, slightly annoyed that the creepy old men Ty Lee had once deemed the “squishy-faced old badger toads” were working her boyfriend to exhaustion again.

Zuko sighed in response and fell flat on his large bed. The knife-thrower rolled her eyes at his melodrama.

“Stop that; you’re beginning to sound like me,” Mai quipped, attempting to lighten the mood as she had done months ago on their return to the Fire Nation from Ba Sing Se.

Zuko sat up and looked straight into Mai’s eyes. “They want me to execute Azula,” he said, his voice a perfect representation of the battle going on within his subconscious. Mai was caught off guard, she hadn’t expected to hear such a thing, nor had she expected Zuko to be so frank about it. As the words sunk into her brain and became clear, Mai let out a dispassionate sigh of her own.

“What did you tell them?” she asked, sounding much like her old lackluster self.

Zuko shifted and laid back down, his eyes traveling to the ceiling. “I told them to return tomorrow for an answer,” he said, “but I’m not sure I’ll have it.”

Mai leaned over and looked into Zuko’s eyes; the battle raging within him was evident. For her own part, Mai wasn’t sure what she should tell Zuko. On one hand, she wasn’t against seeing the animal Azula had become being pacified with deadly force. But on the other, she was…appalled by the idea. It was true that the Princess hadn’t made her life a garden of roses, but the thought of Azula not being around was slightly disconcerting. And to execute someone in Azula’s present state? Mai sighed; she might not be on the best of terms with her old friend at the moment, but having her executed was something that not even the knife-thrower and her hatred wanted to see.

“What do you think is right, Zuko?” she suddenly asked, not exactly knowing where such a question had come from. Zuko snorted.

“What’s right doesn’t seem to matter. My father was ‘very clear about what was to happen to traitors,’” he responded, throwing his voice to imitate the old Fire Sage. Mai blinked, slightly confused as to what the tyrannical ex-Fire Lord had to do with the current situation.

“What do you mean, Zuko? What does your father have to do with what’s going on now?” she asked.

Zuko sighed again and averted his eyes from Mai’s. “After the Day of Black Sun, my father instituted harsh laws for anyone suspected or guilty of treason. Death was his answer to that problem.” He growled and gritted his teeth. “Even from his prison cell he’s finding ways to make my life miserable!”

Had the situation not been so serious, Mai might have had the temerity to laugh at Zuko. She opted instead to sigh and gently rub the top of his head.

“Zuko, you know I love you, but sometimes you can be a real idiot,” she said, playful disbelief riding her words. Zuko caught her hand and stared at her, shocked she would say such a thing.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, raising his voice slightly. Mai remained unperturbed.

“Zuko, who are you?” she asked, raising one of her thin brows at him.

Zuko scoffed. “I’m Zuko, Fire Lord of the Fire Nation!” he exclaimed. “What’s your point, Mai? I’m really not in the mood for this!”

“And what can the Fire Lord of the Fire Nation do?” she continued, calm despite his outburst.

“Anything!” Zuko screamed.

A moment later, the significance of his statement sank in. His mouth hung wide open as he stared at Mai – he suddenly felt like the world’s largest fool. Mai smirked and crossed her arms, content that she was finally able to get through to her dense boyfriend.

“That’s right, Fire Lord Zuko, you can do whatever you want,” she said, patting him on the head like a small croco-puppy. She gently leaned down to his face, which was still slightly in shock, and placed a gentle kiss on his lips. “It’s late, Zuko, I have to get home.”

When she reached the door she hesitated for a moment and turned back to face Zuko, who had finally sat up. “Listen,” she said quietly, “whatever decision you make tomorrow, I just want you to know that I’ll stand behind it.” Zuko nodded, and a moment later the knife-thrower was gone.

With his newly realized power – that in reality he had since being crowned, Zuko continued to ponder his sister’s fate for the rest of the night. He didn’t sleep for a single second; all his time and energy was placed weighing the pros and cons of his sister’s life. By the time the sun rose around the great periphery of the palace city, he had an answer to his conundrum.

When the Sages returned later that same day, they were quickly ushered into the throne room and bowed before Zuko as they always did. He acknowledged them and they briskly stood. With the lack of sleep he had gotten, Zuko looked something akin to scary, and the flames dancing in front of him played with his shadow on the room’s back wall in a way that made the Sages very nervous.

“I have decided,” Zuko said calmly, “that my sister shall not be executed.”

The Sages quickly began to murmur amongst themselves, whispering questions and concerns with their young lord’s decision. The head Sage stepped forward. “But, my Lord, your father–”

“Silence!” Zuko suddenly shouted, causing the conflagration before him to jump in height a fair distance. The Sages jumped, cowering in their shoes. “My father no longer rules the Fire Nation; he no longer has any say in what happens to my people!”

The young Fire Lord stood quickly, causing his weary appearance to meld with the flames and shadows more. The Sages, though wise and not overly superstitious, could have sworn there was a demon behind the curtain of fire and not a young man.

“As you said yourself yesterday, nothing you’ve been doing is helping my sister. So I’ve decided she will be taken from your care and moved to a mental health facility on Ember Island. Along with her, a generous sum of money shall also go – to aid in her recovery and to help improve the facility as much as possible. She leaves this time tomorrow,” Zuko commanded, voice never wavering for a second. For the first time since he took the throne, he felt like a true leader. This was his decree; his command.

The Sages all bowed deeply before him once again. “W-we will do as you command, Fire Lord Zuko.”

With a deft wave of his hand, Zuko parted the flames before him and looked straight into the eyes of head Sage. “Yes, you will,” he said…

“Because I am the Fire Lord, and my word is law.”