can azula be burnt to a crisp by her shitty dad while zuko watches? ::)
It’s an Agni Kai in nothing but name.
Blue flames light up the grimy walls of the dungeons and lightning leaves dark lines scoured into the stone. All Zuko can do is watch. It’s only him, his sister, his father, and the two guards summoned to hold him back because apparently the shackles weren’t enough. Their hands rest on his shoulders like immovable rock, and he doesn’t pay attention to how one of them squeezes just a little bit tighter every time his father throws a particularly ferocious lightning bolt.
Now he realises what people meant when they said an Agni Kai against a child isn’t an Agni Kai at all.
His sister is fast, angry, and brilliant. There’s a precision in her movement that Zuko has envied since he was eight. But their father is...their father. Ozai has no qualms about striking Azula down, because to him she’s just a tool that’s no longer useful. Azula is—
His sister is burning, and his father is laughing and walking away, why is he walking away? The smell of burnt flesh and singed hair is suffocating, and he doesn’t know what’s making his throat close at the moment because his sister is burning and he didn’t do anything to help.
“Azula!” He yells, and the hands holding him loosen enough that he can run towards the broken, smouldering body of his baby sister. There’s nothing he can do. There’s nothing anyone can do. He turns her over so her face is staring up at the cracked ceiling, brushes what’s left of her hair out of what's left of her eyes, and promises there and then that Ozai won’t get away with this.
Zuko doesn’t know what she was doing down here. But does it matter anymore?