Chapter Text
“Lying on your bed examining my head
This is the part of me that hates
Paybacks are a bitch, I throw the switch
Somewhere an electric chair awaits“
-Megadeth "That Was My Life"
The tools are prepared, room dark enough to the point to keep the mood gloomy, except for a single squeak of light shining down on a table, where a figure sits on a bench.
Around the room, on display, are crudely done works of art, small animals frozen on display, all the products of a taxidermist.
An animal is currently being worked on, a scalpel having just been used on its chest to cut it open, to remove a stray bit of dried-up, preserved skin that bugged the person working on it.
Grabbing a set of long surgical tweezers, careful, steady hands set in a glass eye before putting in another with ease, years of practice to show.
After enough time, the taxidermist has sewn the chest up, the false skeletal frame under it keeping the newest addition in place, making sure to wipe off any stray chemicals or blood, feeling of the texture of the black and silver-colored animal going through their fingertips, both feathers and fur.
Seeing their newest piece done, the taxidermist pulls down the long sleeves of their shirt, covering up a weird scar on their lower arm for business outside of their side-project that needs to be dealt with.
Leaving the room, he makes sure to set what he was working on up high on a shelf among the others…
… a foxcrow, still, it’s wings spread out, ready to fly, as if it was still alive.
Loud chants ring out through thundering clouds, among a sea of pickets and signs, everyone calling out for the same at the entrance of a prison, located near the city of North Chung-Lin, nicknamed 'Fire Fountain City'...
“FRY HER! FRY HER! FRY HER! FRY HER!”
Among the signs calling for the death of one, a 21-year old, the target of their hate, promoting electrocution, to burn in the flames of the Spirit World, one sign stands out the most amongst them.
One saying to ‘Remember the Victim’, written in black against white, a picture attached to it.
The picture, in color, being that of a local, beautiful brown-haired girl, her tied up braided ponytail going down her chest, a bubbly smile that seemed to bright up the whole world, her eyes wide and expressive while wearing a cute pink and red dress.
There, to see it all, were news crews from all over, through print and VB stations, all wanting the latest scoop of what’s been considered one of the biggest news stories in recent months since the reports of a face painted vigilante going after and ending the criminal empire of the Top Boss of Republic City six months prior.
Among the crowd of gawkers and protesters, a fancy motor vehicle slowly parked for those inside of it, one of the news reporters is given a cue to describe the scene on camera, a wide smile on her face…
“You join us live outside the state prison to witness the arrival of Zhao and Jin Raito, the father and sister of the murdered Ty Lee Raito,” the black-haired woman described while dressed in a tan and green news reporters suit.
“The impending state execution of Azula Tezuka may provide the Raitos, and what seems the majority of this crowd, with some form of justice...”
Inside the vehicle, sat in the back, were indeed the family of the victim, the Raitos, the daughter looking like she was from the Earth Kingdom with her lightly sun-kissed skin and dark olive green eyes, compared to her father’s light skin and amber eyes. This was due to her and her sister’s father being from Capital City, while their late mother was from Ba Sing Se.
The young woman looked frightened at all the frantic attention being given, not just to them, but the impending execution. It was rather disturbing to her.
“Why are there so many?” Jin asked out loud, one of her hands nervously going down one of her braided brown pigtails, which her father, Zhao, took notice of, taking her hand with a calm grip, wanting to comfort his daughter and have her prepared.
“Just hold on to me…”
With officers as guards to hold back any pesky reporter and to give some form of respect, the back door to the vehicle as the father and sister of the deceased exited it, already feeling unease at all the attention being thrown their way.
Trying to keep his only daughter safe from all the gawkers, it left the tall man with the greying sideburns open for the female reporter on the scene to hold a mic up to him.
“Mr. Raito, Sir. Joo Dee of DLI2 News. Do you think this execution will bring you a sense of closure?” the green eyed reporter asked out loud before focusing her attention on the poor girl who was being held by her father as they were close to getting inside the witnesses’ entrance.
“Jin, Jin! Your sister has been gone for three years, can you tell us anything?”
“Leave us alone!” Zhao let out quickly, this already being hard enough for him as it was. He always hated reporters like Joo Dee, but to keep badgermoling the only family he has left was just cruel.
Still, it was the woman’s job to report and give updates for what happened on the scene, the news reporter turning back to her cameraman and speaking into the mic.
“A difficult time for everyone involved,” she said, almost giving an almost somber tone before seeming to perk up on camera.
“Interesting fact: It will take about twenty-one cents of electricity to execute Azula Tezuka tonight on this, her twenty-first birthday …”
Walking down the prison block, a cake was in hand, covered in frosting done up in a special way, lit candles poking out of it, the short grey haired guard holding it like a waiter, going to where he knew she was being held.
The guard stopped to look inside the cell as the barred door opened up, walking in on a game of Pai Sho in progress between an inmate and her lawyer, both seeming to be focused on it.
The lawyer, Wu, was a handsome young man from the Earth Kingdom with his brown hair kept in check, having taken off his green suit jacket, choosing to be casual with his work attire, if just for the woman he was defending. One whom he actually grew to consider to be more like a friend than just someone he was helping pro-bono, especially as this was only his fourth case.
And his lady friend, her name had been chanted, damned and spoken on the news…
… Azula Tezuka.
Just turning twenty-one, the same age Ty Lee would have been, she sits, focused at Pai Sho tiles in front of her, trying to keep herself brave, not nervous. Sane.
She herself was quite the beauty, even in this rough environment, able to stay as such, due to her long, flowing hair, a ponytail keeping some of it tied back as she eyed over each tile with her gold eyes. She didn’t need makeup. She was beautiful, even while wearing a darkened red prison jumpsuit like any other prisoner, a metal pendant of the legendary warrior Roku on her chest pocket and a grey long sleeve shirt under it.
Despite how… sharp her eyes looked, there was innocence to them, only damaged due to why she was even in prison in the first place.
Without even giving a full look towards the guard, by the name of Jee, with the cake in his hands, Wu was able to keep his anger in check at the clear disrespect thrown Azula’s way.
“She didn’t order that.”
“We found the man with the scar…”
She knew she was being mocked as Jee moved closer and lowered the candle filled cake closer to her, Azula tried not to give him the satisfaction, keeping her eyes on the game in front of her.
“Make a wish.” she heard the guard insist before her own gold eyes betrayed her, Azula unable to look away from the cake, just seeing the frosting had been crudely done to resemble a bare arm with scarring along it, in red-colored frosting, appropriately enough.
Finding himself more angry, all Wu was able to do was calmly make his opinion known as he glanced up at Jee.
“Get it out of here.” he insisted, while the older guard just looked at him with contentment.
In response, Jee puckered his lips and blew out every candle, extinguishing the flames as Azula herself was able to refocus on the Pai Sho game while the cake was set down. Then the guard left the two be once more for now, closing the door behind himself, leaving the lawyer and his client alone.
Azula didn’t want to break down, knowing only one person believed she was innocent, she kept it to herself.
Outside of the prison, Joo Dee was interviewing two old women who both dressed and looked alike. In fact, they were twin sisters who were used to the circus that’d come with every execution…
“Yes, we've come to a lot of these over the years, but this one has many unique aspects.” One twin spoke, before the other gave her opinion.
“Youth of the condemned. That's unusual...”
“And fifty-three stab wounds...”
“Kind of a record.”
“And Ms. Tezuka is still maintaining her innocence?” Joo Dee had to ask the two, to which both shrugged it off before speaking at the same time.
“Oh, they all say that.”
After interviewing the old twins, the reporter had another person to interview, one more connected to the case. The star witness, a young man simply known as Jet.
“I saw those two fighting that day. Facing the chair, you do what you gotta do.” he said, his mop of brown hair scruffy normally, having it combed back for the night, the lights reflecting off his tan skin as he kept a cool tone, “I don't fault her saying I lied on the stand...”
Shifting a bit, giving a quick sniffle, Jet shook his head, making sure he stayed cool on camera, knowing many were watching
“I didn’t lie.”
If only they knew the truth, how more and more nervous Azula was growing, not at Wu placing down a rock title to interrupt the harmony she had going, but more because of something else on the mind. Something that’d happen after how things would end.
That being of an old photo from three years ago taped on the wall, taken six months before that horrible night…
It was one of her with whom she considered the spark of fire in her life, Ty Lee Raito, having first met while they were young, both in their school uniforms.
Unlike Ty Lee, Azula didn’t grow up in some fancy home with a businessman for a father. She had no family, or, at least, no birth parents, just a kind old man named Iroh who raised her after her single mother had died giving birth to her.
Iroh was an old janitor at the hospital who overheard what had happened, and, having lost his son in a war at a young age, took the newborn in as his own. He was wise beyond his years, despite his odd job, enjoying the peacefulness and a good cup of tea while on break, able to get his daughter a part-time job alongside him as she finished school.
He died peacefully in his sleep about a month after the photo was taken, thank the spirits he wasn’t here to see the girl he considered his daughter like this.
But, Ty Lee, always full of life, stayed at her girlfriend’s side as she grieved, despite what her father and sister thought of Azula, knowing there was a good heart in her.
Posing for the picture when a carnival came to town, holding each other by the waist and smiling for the camera, Azula having her hair done in a fancy ponytail and Ty Lee wearing a heart shaped locket around her neck, it was a simple, yet perfect moment in time captured on camera.
And yet, their love was cut short, and here Azula was, minutes before going down death row, for something she didn’t do. Something she could never do to Ty Lee.
Azula was trying so hard to keep it together.
“You okay?”
She could hear the concern in Wu’s voice, turning back to see her friend worried. Wu was many things, flamboyant, and someone who tended to be concerned about his choice in attire, for starters, but he wasn’t selfish, nor stupid. He was a good guy, Azula knew he believed her.
And, as much as she knew the end was coming, Azula believed in Wu.
“What's been holding me together is the hope that maybe you do go someplace. And I'll be seeing her again soon,” she spoke softly, trying to smile at the idea of reuniting with Ty Lee in the Spirit World…
… only for self-doubt to fill her lips as she continued speaking.
“Only… What can I say?... That I was too stupid to find the guy who killed her? That he's down here, laughing?”
Wanting to not see his friend go in with a dour attitude, Wu thought of something.
“Tell her... we'll get him.” he offered, nodding his head, only to get a scoff in return.
“We won't.”
The lawyer in green got what the gold-eyed woman meant, but he still held out some form of hope.
“Someday he'll surface and I'll get him for both of you. I promise... I'll find the guy with the scar.” Wu vowed, knowing someone had to believe Azula, to give her some hope before she died on the chair.
In front of the prison gates, time was ticking down as Joo Dee managed to get herself some words with several officers, detectives who worked on the case, four of them.
The lead one was talking, while the other three stood by his side, certainly aged, with his stringy, grey hair tied into a topknot, trying to act as gentlemanly as possible.
“This mystery man with the scar,” he spoke into the mic before raising up his arm and pointing at it, “The zigzag, whatever. We couldn’t find him. And, obviously, the jury didn’t buy it.”
As honest as he tried to sound, he surely didn’t believe Azula’s claims, it sounded too preposterous. It was almost like he was tired of hearing about it.
“Some people here seem to, Detective Yon Rha.” Joo Dee spoke up from behind the camera, only for another detective to step up, a significantly younger one, actually close to the convicted woman's age.
He certainly looked rather arrogant, with grey eyes to go along with his own brown hair that he too tied in a topknot like Yon Rha’s, while.also being the shortest out of the four.
“Hey, look. People here are protesting the execution of a girl just turning twenty-one, almost as old as me.” he spoke, just trying to get the reporter to knock it off and end it.
“A girl who had a tough life. No parents, no dough. Always had to fight for everything. It's a tragedy, it really is.”
Shrugging, he looked over to the other two detectives, both older than him, but younger than Yon Rha, as they smoked their cigarettes in silence. One with a bald head with a black mustache and goatee combo while the other had a more full set of grey hair to go along with his massive goatee.
“But I don’t see a single sign telling me Azula Tezuka is innocent.” he finished, the two cops nodding in agreement, trying not to bring Joo Dee’s attention onto them.
Walking to Azula’s cell, another guard walking ahead of him, Jee wanted to make something known to the two inside of it.
“If I was facing the hot seat, I'd want my attorney banging down the door of the Fire Lord, not playing Pai Sho,” he spoke up, seeing Wu glance up at him in annoyance, not caring of the look he got.
“But maybe that's just me.”
His words said, the door to the cell opened back up, unlocked as Azula gave a quick look before refocusing on the tiles on the board, remembering all the tricks Iroh had taught her.
“Your move…” Wu softly said to Azula, having been familiar with the game thanks to his great-aunt, whom, the less said about the old crone, the better.
But before Azula could even think of what move to make next, Jee made things clear.
“No…” he spoke, this time just a bit more quieter as he glanced at Azula, whom he could see knew what was next for her.
“It’s time.”
Wu could see it as well, the cracks showing in Azula’s eyes as she gave a deep breath and without protest, stood up as did he, who knew this was it.
Feeling horrible for being unable to help his friend, all the young lawyer could do was give a very emotional and very huge hug, which the golden-eyed woman returned.
Azula knew Wu tried hard, and knew she was innocent. And even as everyone wanted her head, there her friend was, sticking by her side.
Letting go, she did have a request for him, a simple one.
“I don’t want you to watch. I don’t want to give them the pleasure.” she insisted, to which Wu gave a respectful, understanding nod.
“Ok. C’mon now…” Jee had to butt in, choosing now to be a bit more respectful in tone, not wanting to drag things out. But he had a job to do.
Now having to be led down the row by another guard, while Jee followed, time started slowing down as Azula walked by all the different cells, all the inmates knowing why she was in here.
As if to give a funeral march of sorts, they all began clapping their hands in unison for the twenty-one-year old on death row, headed to where many of them would be ending up as well at another time.
At this moment, Azula was praying the pain would be quick and fast, to just die there and then so she could be with Ty Lee.
What seemed like hours later, but was really only two minutes, there she was, so many judging eyes casting upon her from behind plexiglass windows with metal blinds open, all looking inside the chamber.
There was Ty Lee’s father and her sister, Zhao and Jin, both casting looks of silent judgment onto her, contempt for what they thought she did to their family, thinking she wasn’t good enough.
It hurt more to see Jin be so angry, as she tried to be friendly to Ty Lee’s older sister.
Also standing with them were those four detectives who worked on the case, who had arrested her for what she was framed for, all watching her, as if knowing this was how it was going to end, not bothered.
She knew their names from the trial. Yon Rha, Hide, Mongke and Qin.
And there was the so-called star witness, remembering he claimed to be able to connect her to what happened on the stand. But he didn’t know the truth!
Then, there were all the guards, the prison warden, the recorder on her typewriter, the hooded man there to pull the switch and the monk giving her some last rights that she wasn’t focused on.
No, Azula Tezuka was focused on everything being done to keep her in place of the electric chair she sat on.
Her legs and wrists were strapped down, locked with pins just in case during the struggling, the belts break.
Each sound the chair made began getting to her more and more, as if like a morbid countdown as she looked towards her witnesses, able to see how most kept their eyes on her, having seen this many times like the detectives and those who worked in the prison.
The young woman could see the star witness himself look unsure if he should be watching this, feeling some form of guilt.
Zhao himself looked to feel some guilt as well, perhaps thinking he should have tried harder to convince his daughter to not get caught up in some janitor’s daughter.
And Jin, she just kept her eyes on who she believed was her little sister’s murderer, wanting her to pay for what happened to Ty Lee, knowing she had been stabbed fifty-three times..
That, perhaps, was the most frightening thing, not dying by way of the electric chair, but dying knowing that aside from one lawyer, no one believed her. That she was framed by a man with a scar on his arm.
Would Ty Lee even be able to look the same way at her when they meet up again in the Spirit World?
And then, she heard it be opened, casting her gold eyes to the side…
… the odd leather mask attached to the metal helmet, attached by wires and electrodes where the electricity would course from the generator, made to cover the entire head, the face part of it opened to show the piece of sponge inside at the top touching the electrode being soaked
If the sponge was dry however when the switch was pulled, it would not be a pretty slight.
Just at that moment, the monk finished his prayer, hoping for a safe travel for the woman in the chair before silence filled the room as the guard held the mask in hand, everyone waiting.
“Azula Aoi-honō Tezuka, do you have any last words?” The Warden asked, his voice echoing in the chamber.
As it turns out, Azula did have something to say, casting her eyes towards Jin’s own, wanting her to at least know the truth as she spoke, tears starting to fall from her eyes and down her cheeks.
“I loved Ty Lee. I still do... I’m innocent...”
To her dismay, Azula watched as Jin looked disgusted to hear her words, turning away.
Feeling a pat on her shoulder from the grey-eyed monk, able to know he felt some semblance of pity for her, Azula began to breathe deeply now, knowing her last minute before death was to be spent in infamy, all while the old leather and metal mask was fit over her head, her hair matted under it for the most part.
With the cord connected mask on, all anyone could see of Azula's face, as everyone inside the chamber exited it, were the two rectangular holes where her eyes and mouth were. Thin, but with enough vision to just see. Just enough to show the fear in her eyes.
Otherwise, they only saw the leather covering her face, two lines going from the top to the bottom, down each of her eyes and cheeks, a similar line going across her cheeks.
As the clock struck six o’clock, the Warden gave the hooded man the signal to pull the switch.
With a tight grip, it was done.
Feeling the jolts of electricity course through her body, Azula felt herself spasm in her chair, shaking in place as the high voltage certainly ran through her, yet she still wasn’t out yet.
At that moment, one of the witnesses rose up from his seat in the very back behind the plexiglass, no one paying any attention to him as he began to uncuff a sleeve of his dark suit jacket.
Before anyone knew it, a jolt of thunder struck one of the generators connected to the chamber, the hooded man jumping back in surprise as the voltage was now going past it’s normal limit, sparks flying everywhere.
“EERGGGHH!!!”
Azula’s muffled grunts were now loud enough for everyone to hear as they all bore witness to her shaking more violently at the increase of electricity going through her, feeling it go through her skin, muscles, organs, even her bones.
To some, most noticeably Jin and Zhao, this wasn’t what they were expecting to witness, to watch who they believed murdered Ty Lee suffer longer than expected. They expected her to be zapped for a couple seconds and that would be it, not the horrible extended scene before them.
As she teared up more in pain, wanting things to just end already as a burning pain ran along her face, Azula’s eyesight happened to glance towards the unknown witness, her vision obscured enough due to a combination of limited sight from the leather mask and conveniently placed reflections on the plexiglass.
But she knew him upon seeing his bare arm held out, the horrible scar adorning it, looking like an odd zig-zag of bumpy lines, like it was self-made.
Gold eyes widened behind the mask as she realized he was here, TY LEE’S REAL KILLER WAS AMONG THE CROWD, AND NO ONE NOTICED!
With her last ounce of strength, feeling the skin on her face actually burn underneath the mask from the metal and leather against it overheating from everything, she let out one final scream of agony.
It was loud and weird as it didn’t sound like a normal scream. In fact, if you listened closely, you’d realize she yelled out a single word, if muffled.
“MURDERER!!”
As a small explosion erupted from the generator outside, the electricity had finally been cut off, putting an end to things as Azula Tezuka slumped over, her entire body emitting smoke as the sound of sizzling flesh filled everyone’s ears.
But her dead, gold eyes, now just tinted red, still looked ahead, towards the scarred man who re-adjusted his sleeve and cuffed it back up, no one any the wiser.
To everyone else, this was just a botched execution and for a moment, despite her personal feelings, even Jin felt sorry for what the young woman just went through.
But it was over, Azula Tezuka was dead.
Back in what was her cell, Wu sat where she was just sitting, resting his fingers on the photo of Azula and Ty Lee taped to the wall, knowing the deed was done, giving a silent prayer for his friend.
Hopefully, she had found some form of peace in death.