Chapter 1: Nadir
Chapter Text
Azula died in prison.
She hadn’t thought she would, even at her lowest point. She’d been dodging and retaliating against assassination attempts semi-regularly even before her traitor brother took the throne, and while they increased in quantity after her deposition they didn’t increase in quality. She might have lost most of her allies, but she hardly needed bridges that burned so easily. The only thing she needed was the very flames themselves.
Azula made use of them. Very thorough, very liberal use. The assassins and the prisoners and the guards and even the warden who thought to take advantage of a friendless, unstable, beautiful fourteen-year-old girl with no one to protect her had their lessons scorched into their flesh with fire and lightning. Even the chi blockers they tried to send in couldn’t get near her; Azula imagined that every single one of their faces was Ty Lee’s as they burned.
They stopped even trying to control her, let her go where she wanted in the prison grounds and take what she wanted from the guards, as was her due as their rightful Fire Lord. Zuko hadn’t even won his own Agni Kai; he’d brought in a foreigner, an outsider to win his battle for him. If anything, his pet Water Tribe peasant should be Fire Lord, not her pathetic brother who had only ever learned to steal the achievements of women stronger and more skilled than he.
Azula had expected better of him, but she shouldn’t have, considering how often he failed when he only had his own talents to rely on, how he’d even stooped so low as to send an assassin to finish the mission their father gave him to restore his honor. Azula had given him his greatest victory, given him the title of Avatar killer and the right to return home in glory, to steal part of her triumph over Ba Sing Se, and he repaid her by spitting her generosity back in her face and betraying her.
Just like Mai. Just like Ty Lee.
Azula gave him to Mai, gave her only brother to one of her vassals as a reward for her service, and now neither Mai nor Ty Lee had been punished for the things they gleefully did in her service. Mai had only ever been interested in violence, just like Ty Lee was in the spotlight, and she gave them both everything they could ever want. She knew Mai thought Zuko a traitor to his nation, that she looked down on the commoners of her own nation and was openly disgusted with those of others, but all had been forgiven as long as she continued servicing the Fire Lord.
Ty Lee wanted more than anything to be unique, to be recognized, and she threw all her hopes and dreams away to bow and scrape before the Kyoshi warriors the way she once had before Azula. For someone so desperate for individuality, she was always so willing to be used, to be a doormat, to be a weakling. Azula had tried to make her one of the most powerful women in the world, a woman who bowed to none but her princess and her Fire Lord, but her spine really was as rubbery as her contortions suggested.
None of them had visited her, never even sent her a letter, until the day they condemned her to die.
Azula should have reacted as soon as she saw the bison land in her newly-claimed prison yard, saw the ugly scar on her brother’s face, but she wasn’t… entirely able to trust her senses, these days. She saw her mother often, now, and Zuzu slightly less. Mai and Ty Lee she only saw in dreams.
Occasionally, on very bad days, she saw her father.
Azula’s arms were encased in ice and her feet in stone before she realized that what she was seeing was really there.
Mai was holding a blade to her throat, a smirk playing on her colorless lips at the… unkempt state Azula was in. The only thing that could reliably cheer her up, other than Zuko, was the suffering of those beneath her. Azula spat fire in her face, and cackled when her brother had to haul his little girlfriend away before she put that blade to use. Azula recognized it; she’d given it to her for her friend’s thirteenth birthday. Mai probably relished the chance to twist the metaphorical knife in her back deeper with the real one.
“How nice of you to visit, Zuzu,” Azula cooed, a wide grin splitting her face. “And look, you’ve brought your entourage of traitors, too!”
Her brother stared back, face twisted with anger but eyes sad, before he went carefully blank. Mai was beside him, his grip tight on her arm as the waterbender held glowing hands to her jaw before the burn could scar. Pity, it would have matched Zuko’s. The blind earthbender was in a ready stance, sweating slightly but visibly; Azula had always enjoyed cracking her bravado. The Avatar watched her from the bison’s neck, gray eyes piercing, and Azula imagined shooting him full of lightning again. In the saddle, her uncle was cataloging her various injuries, her broken nails, her tangled hair.
Azula was sure he’d been responsible for more than one of the assassins. The Dragon of the West had been just as ruthless as her, before he adopted his doddering old fool persona, and he’d never liked her. He’d had a nephew to groom and manipulate into replacing his worthless son, and his poor behavior with women was an open secret around the palace. A niece he couldn’t use in that way was of no interest to him; a girl who threatened his pseudo-heir’s place was worse than worthless.
“Uncle finally convinced you to kill me yourself, Zuzu?” Azula asked, throat convulsing with laughter she could barely hold back.
“Of course not, Azula. We’re family, even if you’ve never treated me like it,” Zuko said, eyes flashing. He was undoubtedly relishing the chance to lord over her, to finally feel superior to her despite his own inferiority. “But I can’t permit you to terrorize our people like this any longer.”
Azula started to giggle, first softly and then louder and louder. “You mean the ones trying to kill me? I owe them nothing but the lawful executions I have given them for attempting to assassinate a member of the royal family.”
“No one has tried to kill you, Azula,” Iroh said firmly. “You are even more crazy than you were when we last saw you, and you have resisted treatment again and again. They were doctors trying to help you, and you killed them.”
Azula was too overcome with mirth to respond to that, especially when she saw the blind one’s face pull tight. Apparently her uncle wasn't nearly as gifted a liar as Azula was. No doubt the earthbender could sense the cracked ribs, the broken fingers and fractured wrist, the missing teeth. Even so, she said nothing. Azula hadn’t expected her to.
“Avatar Aang agreed to come here today to stop you from hurting anyone else,” Zuko declared, voice echoing across the prison yard. “As Fire Lord, it is my duty to safeguard my subjects from you.”
Azula heard a few cautious cheers from the cells and the guards watching from atop the walls. She hadn’t made things easy for them, in the past… however long her imprisonment has lasted. Time slipped away from her so easily, these days.
She turns to the waterbender, who Mai had finally lost her patience with and shoved away. Her pale, dead face looked pink now, rather than charred and red. The waterbender looked affronted, blue eyes flashing, and the familiar sight brought a memory back to the forefront.
“You should be Fire Lord, you know,” she said conversationally, watching the beautiful peasant’s face go slack with confusion. “My brother lost his Agni Kai. Technically, he forfeited by bringing anyone else into it in the first place. My second Agni Kai, the one I lost, was with you. That crown is yours by right, even if your tactics were cowardly.”
“Heed your princess!” Azula yelled, turning her head to look up at the guards and then down at the prisoners, who were paying rapt attention. She’d always been a gifted public speaker. “Your dishonorable Fire Lord lost to me, in the eyes of Agni and our ancestors, and stole a crown he has no right to! A Water tribe peasant won his duel for him while he lay moaning on the ground! Is this a man worthy to rule?!”
A chorus of jeers answered. Many were directed at her, calling her a liar and many other unsavory terms she’d long since gotten used to, but a few were directed at the waterbender, and a few more at her worthless brother.
“Fire Lord Zuko,” Iroh said urgently. “Do not drag this out any longer. Have the Avatar do what he came here to do.”
“Always whispering in your ear, isn’t he?” Azula spat contemptuously. “Always telling you what to do. You went from being Father’s beaten dog to Uncle’s pathetic pet.”
Zuko slapped her across the face. Azula was less surprised he’d done it than he was; his eyes were wide with shock, and he looked at his hand like it had betrayed him.
Azula smirked, tonguing the new split in her lip, and said, “Maybe you are a little like Father, after all. But you’re still weak; his always hurt worse.”
Zuko went ghastly white, and stumbled back. Iroh snapped her name. The earthbender winced. The Avatar’s mouth fell open. Mai didn’t react at all.
Only the waterbender surprised her.
“ZUKO!” she snarled, catching him with a water whip that sent him sprawling. Mai flung needles at her, but she froze them without even looking up and sent them tinkling to the ground. “She’s restrained and defenseless! What were you thinking?!”
Zuko didn’t respond, eyes closed and muttering, “Azula always lies… Azula always lies… Azula always lies…”
“Avatar Aang,” Iroh said, sliding down the bison’s side and rushing to Zuko’s side. He wrapped his shaking nephew in an embrace. “This has gone on long enough. Do it now, so we may leave.”
The Avatar glanced around uncertainly.
“Gramps is right, Twinkletoes,” the earthbender opined, though her shifting feet suggested she was less certain than she sounded.
The waterbender’s head turned from her glaring match with Mai. “Wait! Are we really going to just—”
“Get it over with, already,” Mai said, glaring at Azula. “She’s a liar and a manipulator. She wanted all this to happen. She goaded Zuko into it to hurt him.”
Azula started laughing again. Yes, of course, it was all her fault. Just like Mai’s sins were hers, and Ty Lee’s were hers, and her father’s were hers, and now Zuko’s were hers. She wondered how long he had until his new friends left him the way Mai and Ty Lee had left her. They were both their father’s children, and Zuko couldn’t fool them forever. Unless, of course, he had her around as a scapegoat for all his worst and cruelest impulses.
How nostalgic. Just like when they were children. Injured and dead turtleducklings were so easy to blame on a younger sibling, especially if their mother already knew she was a monster. (But Azula had never particularly enjoyed hurting things that didn’t fight back. She preferred a challenge. It was why she had liked playing with Zuzu so much.)
“Wait,” the waterbender blurted, twisting her hands together anxiously. “Aang, are you really going to—”
“Yes,” the Avatar decided, drifting gently to the ground. His steps were silent as he approached her. “She’s killed people, Katara. I can’t allow her to do that anymore.”
“...If that’s what you think is best for the world, then I’ll support you, sweetie,” the peasant said, all that fire suddenly turned to embers. Azula frowned. Was this the girl that had just knocked the Fire Lord on his ass? How disappointing.
And then the Avatar’s hands were at her head and chest and his eyes and tattoos glowed white and he was ripping out something inside her something precious something vital no please don’t that’s mine it hurts it hurts it hurts she can hear her father screaming along with her stop stop stop please don’t—
Then it was gone.
Azula doubled over and vomited, again and again until there was nothing but bile. She hadn’t been able to eat much while at the prison, hadn’t wanted to, and now she knew she never would again. The ice encasing her arms melted and she fell back, feet still surrounded by rock.
She felt a cool hand on her forehead and she didn’t even try to burn it, just bit until blood filled her mouth and the Avatar and the earthbender had to pry her jaws open. The waterbender didn’t strike her, didn’t even yell, just calmly healed herself.
“Are you all right?” she asked, and Azula laughed until she cried.
When she came back to her senses, such as they were, she was in a cell, hanging from a chain. The Avatar and his entourage were gone, and now there was only a steadily growing crowd of prisoners and guards. All of them had very good reasons to harm her, even she could admit that.
Azula didn’t smile or laugh. She had no reason to. She felt violated, dirty and torn open and disgusting in her very soul. She knew her bending, her reason for breathing, was gone. She just hoped they would make it quick.
They did not.
Chapter Text
Azula awoke cradled by fire.
For a wild moment she thought she was on a pyre, her corpse being consumed by the very element that had been stolen from her, and she started to laugh. What a fitting end for the princess of the Fire Nation, purified with flame after the degradation and agony she had suffered at the Avatar’s hands. As a royal, it was only fitting she be sacrificed to Agni after failing him, and though she’d never worshiped anything she’d always understood the importance of paying her dues.
But then she started to choke and animal instinct sent her scrambling blindly through the flames, the smoke so thick she couldn’t see anything but red firelight and her own blistering hands. And then the soft surface vanished from beneath her and she tumbled down to the harder ground below, hitting her head and seeing starbursts from the force of it.
Her hair had caught alight, now, she could tell by the smell. Without thinking she reached for the chi that the Avatar had ripped out of her body and snuffed out the inferno all around her, plunging her back into darkness. She lay there for a long moment, head throbbing, unable to comprehend her good fortune.
The best and brightest part of her was back, resurrected just like she was, as if it had never left. And Azula knew she had been resurrected; she remembered each and every thing those prisoners had done to her, how long it had taken for her to die. Long enough to accept that death was coming. Long enough to wish for it.
“Princess!” someone shrieked, and Azula groaned at the volume. “Help! The princess’s room is on fire!”
Not anymore, Azula tried to say, but her throat was too sore from the smoke. She was so elated to have her bending back that she collapsed into painful, gravelly giggles, unable to stop herself.
Soon two very large men grabbed her and started dragging her somewhere, and Azula lashed out, still laughing spasmodically, creating an explosion of blue flames whose heat barely touched her. The men—guards, she could see their armor now—fell back with yells of shock and pain. Azula’s elation redoubled. Never again would that human filth think to touch her, and she would repay in full everything that they’d done to her and more before she granted them the mercy of death.
Her vision was blurring, now, so perhaps she should take a short break before enacting her vengeance. Her throat was burning, her skin still blistering, and she needed to stop laughing and focus on what needed to be done. She tucked her legs under herself, kneeling in a traditional meditation pose in a protective ring of azure fire, like the one she slept inside of ever since arriving in prison, and tried to calm herself. Control yourself. Stop. Stop it.
Something wet and salty stung the burns on her hands, curled into tiny fists on her lap.
It didn’t feel like laughter anymore.
There was still muffled shouting all around her, more and more voices joining the chorus, but Azula was not afraid. The fire would protect her. It had always protected her.
She curled over her wounded hands and told herself that her eyes were just watering from the smoke.
“Azula!” a half-forgotten, instantly recognizable voice snapped. Azula curled up tighter. Even now, would that thrice-damned vision haunt her?
She had begged it to help her, when the hurt and fear became too much, but it had just laughed at her, voice blending with those of the guards and prisoners who were torturing her.
“Azula, what are you doing?! What is wrong with you?”
That question, as it always had, broke past her shields and skewered something tender inside of her. She lifted her head and snarled, “I’m sure you’ll tell me, mother.”
But the hallucination didn’t look right. Instead of the immaculate Fire Lady regalia Azula had last seen her in, she was in nightclothes, hair mussed and eyes wide. Azula had forgotten the way her eyebrows pinched when she was wrathful—the ghost looked pitying and mocking in turns, never angry, though most of her memories of her mother involved a sharp voice and flashing eyes.
In fact, one of Azula’s clearest memories of her was something very similar to this. Six years ago, when she was eight, she’d had a nightmare and set her blankets on fire in her sleep. Ursa had been furious, convinced that her daughter was playing with fire and tormenting the servants, as she often did. Ozai had been proud of her raw power, even when asleep, but he’d later made it very clear just how unacceptable her loss of control was.
“Azula,” Ursa whispered, so quiet it was difficult to hear her over the crackling of the flames. Her tone was wondering. “You’re crying.”
Azula fought the urge to rub her eyes, knowing that it would look undignified, and sting her hands, besides. “So?” she sneered. “It’s from the smoke.”
“Azula,” the false Ursa said, crouching at a healthy distance from the flames. “Did you have a nightmare?” The very thought seemed to perplex her even as she sighed in relief.
This hallucination wasn’t particularly convincing. Ursa had thought her monstrous daughter incapable of childish distress, though to be fair even as a child Azula had always been very careful not to cry in front of anyone. She was frustrated with herself for breaking her streak so often lately, though she might be able to blame half of it on puberty (she’d recently started her first menses, after all), and the other half on physical pain.
In a fit of pique, and curious to see what this strangely-dressed hallucination would do, she sniffed, “Monsters don’t get nightmares, mother, only cowards like Zuzu can whine about things like that.”
“Azula—”
“What is the meaning of this.” It wasn’t a question. Azula stiffened and reflexively stood at attention.
The hallucinations of Ozai were rare, but they were always the worst.
“Those guards were accosting me, father,” she said, meeting the cold gaze of the vision looming high above her, incongruously dressed in sleeping clothes like the vision of her mother. “I am going to make them regret it.”
“Prince Ozai!” one protested. “We were attempting to pull her from the flames!”
“It’s true!” a female guard seconded, though she was dressed like a servant for some reason. Was she off duty? “The room was on fire before we got here!”
“Enough,” Ozai said, and their jaws clicked shut. Azula glanced rapidly back and forth between them—most people didn’t acknowledge her delusions so readily. “Your flames are blue, Azula.”
“...Of course they are, father,” she said, perplexed.
The corner of his mouth curled up in satisfaction. “Excellent.” He turned to look at his wife, still crouched on the ground. “You handle this. I will discipline her in the morning.” And then he swept out of the room without another word, guards scrambling out of his way.
Azula was beginning to feel slightly confused.
“Azula,” the fake Ursa said tremulously, “It’s all right. I’m here. You’re safe. Will you put out the fire?”
“Absolutely not,” Azula snapped. “When have you ever kept me safe?”
The fake Ursa recoiled as if Azula had spat flames at her instead of words. For a moment they stared at each other, Azula curious about what this odd hallucination would do next, her mother wearing an expression she had only ever seen directed at Zuko before.
“Mom?” a soft voice came from the door. “What’s going on?”
Azula jumped, not expecting to hallucinate her entire family one after the other. She turned to look, and the blue flames died to embers as she saw her brother, rubbing sleepily at one eye, long dark hair loose around his shoulders, his scar nowhere to be seen.
-
Azula was silent as her mother shepherded her to the medicinal pavilion. Doctor Ying was obviously annoyed to be roused in the middle of the night, but she was gentle and solicitous as she bandaged the burns on her hands. She didn’t actually care that she was hurt, of course, but Azula was glad for the familiarity of it. She’d visited the physician often, as a child, especially when her father was training her instead of Li and Lo.
She was acutely aware of that short, scarless, smiling Zuko pestering their mother, cheerful and childish in a way that grated at her nerves. She was just as aware of Ursa’s soft smile, the way she cuddled her son close to her side and kissed his forehead in a way she’d never done to Azula, not even in her most bizarre delusions.
There was also a very distinct possibility that all of this was her most bizarre delusion. Her head felt clearer than it had in months, she wasn’t losing time or hearing things without a clear source—and yet the sickening tableau of mother-son bonding before her could be nothing but a delusion, surely. The increasingly tenuous tether her mind had to reality had finally snapped, no doubt brought on by the loss of her bending.
The problem was that Azula distinctly remembered dying. The entire ordeal was very fresh on her mind, hence why she flinched whenever she saw an adult man. The physician had to be woken up because Azula had almost attacked her younger male apprentice, who normally handled night calls. Azula had only allowed Doctor Ying to touch her hands once all the guards had been ordered out of the room. (Threats hadn’t worked, but the crown princess’s words had. Even Ursa, wrapped up as she was in Zuko, had noticed that something had shaken her.)
This was unacceptable. Azula needed to formulate a strategy, a plan of attack, something. She had her bending back but she tired from it more easily, which she suspected had something to do with her diminished size. It wasn’t that everyone else was large, she’d just… shrank, somehow.
Against her will, her eyes were drawn back to Zuko’s eye.
He noticed her staring, and turned to smirk at her. “Seems like you’re not such a great bender after all, if you’re setting the palace on fire and burning yourself. Did widdle Azula have a nightmawe?”
“Zuko, that’s enough,” Ursa rebuked gently, and Zuko turned to gape at her. Only Azula’s dignity prevented her from doing the same. Ursa hardly ever scolded Zuko, usually more concerned with correcting her daughter’s behavior and excusing her son’s to anyone who saw him for the mediocre, talentless disappointment he was. “Azula’s hurt.”
“Whatever,” he muttered, looking away.
The physician pursed her wrinkled lips in disapproval. It reminded Azula of how Li and Lo had reacted to him—Zuzu had always been boorish and sullen, even as a child.
“All done, princess,” she said, patting her back with a bony, dexterous hand. “Make sure to come back twice a day so that I may change it for you.”
“I’ll do it,” Ursa said. “I know my way around herbs, just give me some bandages.”
“Why can’t the doctor do it?” Zuko muttered, kicking at the leg of the plush daybed the guards had brought for him and Ursa to sit on as they waited.
“I’d prefer that Doctor Ying treat me instead,” Azula said, and Ursa’s brow creased. “Father said he’d be disciplining me tomorrow so I’ll need to visit her in any case.”
Ursa straightened. “I beg your pardon?”
“The little princess visits me at least once a week, your highness,” Doctor Ying said coolly. “She pushes herself very hard.”
“And why wasn’t I informed of this?” Ursa demanded.
“Because you never accompany her to her appointments,” the physician countered. “Princess Azula always comes by herself. She’s a very mature, self-sufficient child.”
“Azula! Why didn’t you say anything?” Ursa scolded.
“Zuko doesn’t need to,” Azula snapped, and her mother went silent. She turned to the physician. “Well done, Doctor Ying. I will see you tomorrow.”
Ursa ordered the servants to prepare a guest room for Azula, considering that the old one was still covered in ash and full of smoke. Then she left, presumably to put Zuko back to bed. Her brother had always been a needy child, even though he was the oldest. If she came back, Azula didn’t notice.
She lay awake for what felt like a very long time. This was either a full psychotic break, which she could do nothing about…
...or she really had gone back in time six years.
Reincarnation was a fact of life. The Avatar proved that. So was resurrection. The Avatar had also proven that, most likely with the help of his pet Waterbender. Even at the moment of her defeat, Azula had noticed her healing the damage her lightning had caused Zuko. She’d most likely done the same thing for the Avatar.
So, if Airbenders could return after a hundred years and Water Tribe peasants could cheat death, was it really so far-fetched to believe that she could have somehow traveled through time?
And if that was the case… Azula had some planning to do.
Notes:
sorry about the wait! i've been outlining this fic pretty extensively, but it's mostly all the political intrigue I have planned for further down the line. i want to establish azula's mindset a bit more before diving into the meat of the story. so we might have one more chapter before things start diverging dramatically.
Chapter 3
Notes:
Warnings for this chapter: physical abuse of a child by their parent, self-harm by proxy
Chapter Text
Azula woke with the dawn. Like most firebenders, she was an early riser no matter how little sleep she got. The bed she lay on was much nicer than the floor of her cell, but harder and smaller than she had been accustomed to before Sozin’s comet. She stayed prone for a long minute, fatigued and confused by her unfamiliar surroundings, before she remembered the events of the night before and felt a sharp smile cut across her face.
She rolled off the mattress, and swayed slightly, disoriented by her smaller, frailer body. Unacceptable. She had to fix this, before someone took advantage of her weakness. She needed to train.
Azula tugged at the sooty nightclothes she wore, awkward and uncoordinated with her bandaged hands, and scowled. She had little memory of the spare’s palace that she had spent her early years in, as her father had moved her into the heir’s quarters when he ascended the throne. Even if she left the guest room to wander the halls in such an unkempt state, she wasn’t certain she would remember the way to the smoldering ruins of her childhood bedroom. And even if she did, there was no guarantee that she’d remember where her training uniforms were kept.
She tried to slam the door open, but it was heavier than expected and the burns on her hands were complaining, so all she managed was a feeble push. Even at this early hour, servants were rushing about, their feet silent on the hallway’s rich red and gold carpet. Azula felt a spike of apprehension; if someone tried to assassinate her in her sleep, she might not hear them coming the way she had in the stone-floored prison.
“You,” she snapped at the nearest guard, standing across the hall instead of at her door. She had refused to sleep until they moved as far away as they could without abandoning their posts entirely. “Bring someone to dress me.”
He jumped to attention, his spine going so straight that he gained a few inches. “Yes, princess.”
“You and your fellows are permanently relieved of your duties as my guards as soon as you find female replacements.”
“Yes—princess??”
“What?” Azula snapped. She closed the door a little more, making herself a smaller target.
“There… aren’t any female imperial guards,” he said, cringing. Azula had never thrown tantrums like Zuko had always been prone to, but even at this age she’d had methods of making her displeasure very clear when she was not obeyed.
“Then find some,” Azula ordered. “Train them yourselves, if you have to, just do it.”
She succeeded in slamming the door closed, this time.
Within minutes, a hesitant tap sounded from it.
“Identify yourselves,” Azula said, standing at the ready.
“We’ve arrived to help you dress, princess,” someone said, an older woman she vaguely recognized stepping inside, followed by a much younger drudge whose arms were piled high with red fabric. It wasn’t the entire posse of maids and ladies in waiting she’d had attending her as the crown princess, but Azula found she preferred this. She didn’t want to be surrounded by anyone right now, not even weaklings.
“Proceed,” she said, holding her arms out, careful to keep both servants in her line of sight. The older woman bowed quickly in acknowledgement before divesting her of her clothes, then putting her into a silk moxiong, obviously high quality despite the childish cut and embroidery. Azula tensed as the servant circled around to tie up the back of the undergarment, but thankfully she was quick and careful not to touch her more than absolutely necessary.
The drudge gasped quietly, her eyes wide behind the pile of clothes salvaged from Azula’s old room. She was staring at the old bruises, half-healed scrapes, and light burns mottling Azula’s arms, legs, and back, which Azula could see herself now that she wasn’t entirely covered by cloth. Her father had worked her hard, in the early days, until Azula was so perfect that he no longer needed to leave marks.
“Don’t you have something to do?” Azula snapped, and the drudge’s eyes fell to the floor.
“The servants have been working all night to fix your room, princess,” the older maidservant said soothingly. Azula thought her name might have been Pei or Fei or Lei. Something to that effect. “Forgive her rudeness, she’s tired.”
“Then perhaps you should have brought someone more competent,” Azula said cuttingly. The rebuke wasn’t quite as chilling as she wanted when said in an eight year old’s voice, but the drudge still went gratifyingly pale. “Pick something for me to train in, you’re wasting sunlight.”
The servant glanced out the window, where the sun had barely started to show over the horizon, but wisely said nothing.
-
Azula remembered little of her childhood home, but she could find her personal training courtyard from anywhere in the capital city. It was where she had spent the vast majority of her time, right up until Zuko had left her to rot in prison. He probably found some deluded sense of justice in driving her out of her home the way their father had once done to him.
She ordered the guards who insisted on following her everywhere to give her a wide berth, something inside her unknotting slightly when they obeyed without hesitation. She had missed having people listen when she gave orders. Then, she set about relearning the limits of her younger body.
Azula’s flames were as blue as the sky above, but the amount and force she could generate was greatly reduced. If someone decided to toss her off a cliff, she wouldn’t be able to slow or control her descent at all. There were also many movements that this body simply didn’t have the reach, strength, or muscle memory for yet, even if she remembered how to perform them perfectly. She’d have to rectify that as soon as possible; contrary to what Zuko always whined about, much of her skill came from hard work and repetition, not innate talent. Perfection was something that had to be earned with sweat and blood; tears and complaints got you nowhere.
The sun was well above the horizon when her father found her.
Azula landed on one foot from a flying kick, scowling at the pathetic plume of azure flame that resulted from it, and dropped into a crouched spinning heel kick, trying to keep her other shoe from touching the ground at all during the transition. She didn’t complete a full 360 degrees before her thigh muscles failed her, the side of her foot scraping the ground and the flame emanating from it guttering out.
“Azula,” a familiar voice said, and Azula didn’t respond, instead restarting the same sequence of movements for the fourteenth time since she’d started this particular set of forms. She’d heard that voice berating her often, in prison, and had become skilled at ignoring it.
“Azula,” it came again, cold with displeasure, and her gaze darted around, subtly checking to see if the voice had a source. The source could be yet another hallucination, of course, but a few months of madness couldn’t completely break her impulse to obey everything that voice said.
Her father was standing at the side of the courtyard, without the crown in his topknot, his face beardless and eyebrows furrowed forebodingly.
Azula landed and rolled to her feet, pressing her fist into her cupped palm, faced outwards, and bowed low. She was acutely aware of the sweat showing through her clothes, the disheveled state of her hair. The imperfections felt like needles driving into her flesh. “Apologies, father. I didn’t notice when you arrived.”
“A firebender must always be perfectly aware of their surroundings,” Ozai said. Azula elected to remain bowing at the rebuke in his voice. “You should be better than this.”
“I will not fail you again,” Azula swore. Not like you failed the Fire Nation, when you lost to a child.
The thought surprised her. Perhaps it shouldn’t have. Now that her mind was… clearer, she could look back on the events that took place during Sozin’s comet objectively and recognize the absurdity of an entire air fleet being downed by three children and the arrogance that led her father to confront the avatar alone. Then he had lost, at the height of his power, his grandfather’s comet making his bending stronger than it had ever been or would ever be.
When Zuko thought he could take her by himself, during her initial psychotic break, he had lost. The avatar hadn’t dared to approach her alone, even while she was severely weakened and in the throes of madness. Azula might have inherited her arrogance from Ozai, but where hers was earned, his might very well be baseless. The notion was treasonous, but it wasn’t incorrect.
The only person who's never put too much confidence in her own skill is that damn waterbender.
“Your inattention may stem from your… episode last night, but that does not mean it is forgiven. Such a loss of control shames your bloodline and your position as a royal. Do you understand?”
“Yes, father.”
“I will deliver your consequences personally.”
“Thank you, father. You honor me.” The words tasted foul. When Azula really had been this age, she’d said them often, and meant them every time. Now, she abruptly remembered how he had stopped sparring with her as soon as she became strong enough to put up a fight.
She couldn’t, now. This body was still too young, too weak, and Ozai had the training of a prince, for all he had never used it in equal combat. He fought only when he thought the outcome was predetermined.
Predictably, Azula lost. Badly. She lay flat on her back, body stinging with new burns and aching with fresh bruises. Ozai looked down on her from above, and she could tell that she had pleased him with her blue flames and improved pain tolerance. (Even at eight, she hadn’t been stupid enough to cry in front of him, but she had usually yielded much more quickly.) A talented child reflected well on the parent, after all. He often told her that fortune had smiled on her when she was born, which was a sign that Agni favored him, and had granted him a better child than had been given to Ursa.
“Make sure to continue practicing. You and your brother will be giving a demonstration to your grandfather in a month’s time. I expect you to do well.”
When Azula had been younger, signs of her father’s favoritism had always thrilled her, and she had done everything she could to keep it. Yet despite being his preferred child, he had discarded her just as easily as Zuko, in the end.
“I won’t fail you, father. I never have.”
-
After scraping herself off the ground, and snapping at her dithering guards to keep their distance and shut their mouths when one tried to subtly steer her towards the medical pavilion, Azula decided that the first order of business was to take a bath. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had one.
Azula had ten muscular maidservants carry a gold-plated tub to her guest room, huffing and puffing all the while, and then made them run back and forth with steaming kettles from the kitchens to fill it. She missed the baths in the basement of the royal palace, heated by a natural hot spring, but she couldn’t visit the Fire Lord’s personal palace without first receiving an invitation, the way her uncle could.
The royal family had a long and proud history of favoring one child over the other, and being named after Fire Lord Azulon hadn’t been enough to make him take notice of a mere princess. Conversely, producing a nonbender heir hadn’t lowered the Iroh's esteem in the public’s eye or his father’s, though Iroh had certainly made Lu Ten work hard to be a credit to his name and not an embarrassment to it. After all, even her own father hadn’t sent Zuko to the front lines—though he had sent her.
Being the favored child involved more risks than rewards, most days; the only reason Azula had survived it was her own preternatural skill and talent. And in the end, it wasn’t her father’s favor that had killed her, but her brother’s hatred.
Born lucky.
“I’m sorry, princess,” the drudge from that morning said, once the tub was full and all but the two servants who had dressed her earlier that day had been dismissed, “The water didn’t stay warm…”
“Stop talking, it irritates me,” Azula ordered, letting Fei-Pei-Lei or whatever her name was peel her out of her sweaty, cinder-smudged clothing. She climbed into the tub—too small for an adult to stretch out in, but comfortable for a young child—and let out a breath that shimmered with heat, though no smoke or flame escaped her lungs. The water became hot enough to sting her scrapes and turn her pale skin bright pink, and she let it seep into her sore muscles, hands held carefully outside the tub so as not to wet her sooty bandages.
This, she reflected, might be better than the royal palace’s hot springs. There was always a number of young, nubile attendants crowding around anyone who had the status to bathe there, and she didn’t want to be touched by so many people. Two was already more than enough.
“You,” she said to the drudge. “Wash me. Fei, my hair.”
“Of course, princess,” the older servant said with a faint smile. Apparently Azula had remembered her name correctly; she could tell from the pleasure in her voice, though even if she were wrong, no one would dare say so. The drudge, whose name Azula hadn’t yet bothered to learn, scooted forwards on her knees, eyes angled subserviently downwards as she brushed over her limbs with a soapy washcloth.
“Scrub, imbecile, you’re not getting any of the dirt off,” Azula said lazily, enjoying the feeling of a sweet-scented oil being massaged into her scalp. She refused to close her eyes, lest she miss any potential threats, but if Fei knew what was good for her then nothing would get in them.
“I-I’m sorry, I just didn’t want to hurt you, your highness,” she whispered, the washcloth gliding over a dark bruise on Azula’s shoulder.
“It’s not going to hurt worse than getting them, now do as I tell you,” Azula said sharply. The drudge scrubbed. “Harder.” The drudge sat up for better leverage. “Harder!”
Azula didn’t let her stop until all her scabbed-over scrapes had reopened and the water had turned pink. The drudge was trembling, tears in her eyes, hands fisted in the newly-stained washcloth. She didn’t seem to notice that it was dripping all over her clothes. Fei was silent, the comb in Azula’s hair unmoving.
For the first time since she’d seen Ursa in the mirror, Azula felt like she could finally breathe. She was clean, when she thought the prison had dirtied her irrevocably. But this body had never set foot in that place. This blood had been shed on her command.
“You’ll be my bath attendant, from now on,” she declared, and then stood. “Now scrub me dry.”
-
After her bath, Azula felt refreshed and ready for the day. It was still too early to get her dressings changed by Doctor Ying, who she knew would be sleeping in after her late-night visit. She didn’t begrudge her the extra time; elder women were to be respected, not rushed. And she wasn’t so desperate that she would allow the apprentice to attend to her. No, the burns could wait. She clenched her fists and dug her fingernails into her bandaged palms, letting the pain ground her.
In the meantime, she was visited by a variety of tutors for her lessons. Her mother and the advisors had wanted her to attend the Royal Fire Academy for Girls with the other noble daughters full-time, but her father had insisted that she was to have the same education as Zuko. In compromise, Azula attended the Academy two days a week, and the other 5 she spent with masters of various disciplines, from midmorning until dinner.
Azula resolved to stop attending the Academy and begin training under Li and Lo as soon as possible. Attending a finishing school was the least of her concerns; she didn’t have to think about entering a political marriage until she began menstruating, and if she didn’t change the timeline, she wouldn’t start that until she was already in prison.
No, Azula’s main concern was figuring out how to prevent her traitorous uncle and idiot brother from causing the collapse of the Fire Nation once more. And she already had an idea for how to start.
She nodded in acknowledgement of the first tutor of the day, who bowed low. He was smart enough not to ask why they were holding their lesson in a guest room, instead of her bedroom. She was glad she’d had the foresight to order Fei to stay, though the nameless drudge had vanished somewhere in the interim.
The tutor rose, and made a dismayed face at the state of her hands. “Princess Azula, are you injured? We need not practice calligraphy if you are unable…”
“Give me the brush,” Azula said impatiently. “I have a letter I need to draft. You can sit there and drink ink, for all I care.”
The tutor sniffed, then flounced away to work on his mediocre haiku. She was still young enough that most tutors thought they were wasted on a princess, when there was a prince available to teach—most didn’t care that she was smarter than Zuko, and only the truly canny ones had begun to notice that being assigned to her over her brother was a sign of favor from her father, rather than a snub. If she recalled correctly, this one wouldn’t last long—and he would try and fail to slither back once he realized that being reassigned to Zuzu was effectively a demotion.
Instead of putting him in his place, Azula redirected all her considerable focus into figuring out how to word her missive to the Dragon of the West.
Azula now realized that she had gravely miscalculated when she bought her uncle’s act of a rapidly deteriorating old man who’d lost his nerve and political acumen after the death of his son. Instead, he’d taken a leaf out of Zuko’s book and blamed the consequences of his own actions on his younger sibling. He’d turned on the Fire Nation, on his own family, and had secretly worked to take it down for years, with the help of some clandestine organization based around that idiotic board game. He’d started molding Zuko into a replacement for Lu Ten, a perfect pawn, as soon as their father took his eyes off him. And finally, he’d taken advantage of the chaos caused by the reemergence of the avatar to become the true power behind the throne, with poor, foolish Zuzu being none the wiser.
The first step to stopping that sequence of events was to prevent Lu Ten’s death. The best way to do that was to end the siege of Ba Sing Se with as little bloodshed as possible.
As galling as it was, Azula was going to have to give Iroh her plans for her most triumphant victory.
Chapter Text
The letter to Iroh took Azula hours to complete; her motor functions at this age were clumsier than she was accustomed to, and the burns on her hands didn’t help her calligraphy. She ended up rewriting it four separate times, denying the tutor’s offers to take dictation with increasing asperity until he stormed off in a huff.
When it was finally acceptable, Azula sat back with a satisfied sigh. Her penmanship was perfect, no stray splotches or dribbles of ink anywhere to be found. Her wording was precise and to the point, laying out each step of her plan clearly and concisely. She had emphasized that he loot the uniforms of his highest-ranking prisoners of war who did not originate from Ba Sing Se and pose as them, rather than infiltrate as a lowly refugee.
What on earth had he been planning, opening up a tea shop in a city that hated him, surrounded by the survivors of his long and bloody siege? He had to have known that he would never have the people’s forgiveness after killing a decent portion of their defenders. And that was saying nothing of his habit of dressing prisoners of war in Fire Nation uniforms and sending them to the front for their own countrymen to slaughter. That tactic had been pioneered by the Dragon of the West as a way to demoralize the soldiers of Ba Sing Se, and adopted quickly by other regiments as a sign of fealty to the one whom they believed would be their future Fire Lord. Even after his disgrace, the practice continued. Azula had never seen the point, when she could destroy the enemy’s morale with nothing but her own words. She and her uncle had never respected each other’s tactics.
However, this time, he would see their merit, considering they would save the life of his son.
Azula remembered little about her cousin. Lu Ten had left for the front alongside his father before she had turned eight; she hadn’t seen him in over seven years, at least in her own mind. The six hundred day siege of Ba Sing Se had ended with his death, the exact date of which she hadn’t cared to recall. All she knew was that it would happen within a few months.
Azula had not mourned Lu Ten the way her mother wanted. When they first received the news, she had been more focused on what it meant for her father, as she always was. Even so, Lu Ten’s death was something she now felt it necessary to prevent. Her father had proven himself a lacking Fire Lord, and maybe Iroh would too, but at least he wasn’t incompetent enough to lose when he had the upper hand (unless his son had recently died gruesomely).
Lu Ten’s position as the crown prince would be shaky, due to his inability to bend, but Azula knew he shared her drive. Either he would rise to the challenge, and become the best Fire Lord since Sozin, or she would lead a coup and depose him. If she could so easily accomplish such a thing in Ba Sing Se, she was more than up to the task on her home turf. At the very least, her cousin would prove a more engaging opponent than Long Feng.
As two scions with something to prove, Azula had felt a certain kinship with Lu Ten. She wasn’t loved and he wasn’t a Firebender; both those deficiencies kept the court from giving them the respect they were due as royalty. When she was younger she had spent all her time not occupied by lessons or playing with Zuzu watching Lu Ten train with his twin dao swords. He had drilled himself over and over and over again, until he could finish a kata without a single hair out of place. Azula had spent hours practicing Lu Ten’s smile in her mirror, because she was envious of the way it made people swallow their words and avert their eyes.
The last time she saw him, Azula had asked Lu Ten what he would bequeath to her if he died in battle. Instead of echoing her mother’s appalled scolding or heeding his father’s disapproving glance, Lu Ten had ruffled her hair out of its neat topknot and promised her that she would get his swords, still covered with the blood of the Earth Kingdom soldier who managed to kill him. It was the first time she’d heard him laugh.
Lu Ten never came back. Iroh was too weak to recover his son’s body. He gave the swords to Zuko, polished to a mirror shine.
Azula didn’t write Lu Ten a letter. There was no point in penning missives to a dead man. She’d see him in person eventually; her plan was perfect. She’d taken Ba Sing Se bloodlessly. Even the Avatar, her first kill, hadn’t stayed dead.
Even so, when Azula Summoned a servant to take her letter to the aviary to be delivered by messenger hawk, she included a small package of hair ties. She understood better than anyone the frustration of imperfect hair.
-
Once the sun was almost directly overhead, one of her mother’s ladies-in-waiting arrived to inform her that she would be eating lunch with Ursa.
“Why?” Azula asked, tone carefully cool.
The lady-in-waiting remained bowing, presumably so as to evade eye contact. Azula had cultivated something of a reputation with her mother’s servants, as a child, so that they would stop reporting back every time she did something Ursa might disapprove of. “My place is not to speculate, but to convey your honored mother’s wishes.”
“Who else will be there?”
“Your elder brother, princess.”
“No.” The refusal was spoken before she consciously thought of it. She fought the urge to lick her lips where the split had been, before she had died.
The lady-in-waiting looked up in surprise, catching herself just in time to avoid meeting her eyes. At this age, Azula had often trailed after Zuko, provoking him into whatever she wanted to see him do next. Zuko had never learned to ignore her, even at age sixteen. (It took Iroh’s intervention for him to manage that.)
“Either he eats with our mother, or I do,” Azula announced. “And we both know who she’ll pick.”
The lady-in-waiting wisely chose not to respond in any way other than bowing out of the room. Azula left soon after, not bothering to wait for her mother’s response. She already knew what it would be.
Azula once again visited Doctor Ying’s medical pavilion, where she endured a lecture about aggravating her injuries unnecessarily. When asked why they all looked so raw and irritated, Azula told her she’d simply wanted to clean them. Lies were best when they contained a grain of truth. Doctor Ying proceeded to give her another lecture on the importance of proper nutrition when Azula admitted that she hadn’t yet eaten that day, despite it being past noon. The thought of having to watch Ursa and Zuko together had turned her stomach, but she allowed Doctor Ying to summon a servant and lambast them for starving the princess, as well as draw up a meal plan ideal for growing girls. Azula vaguely recalled being pickier as a child, but prison had cured her of that, particularly after a few lucky shots to her teeth from various assassins had made it difficult to chew.
Once her newest bruises and scrapes were tended to and the bandages on her hands were changed, Azula hopped off the examination bench and left after complimenting the doctor’s talents. She raised her sparse white brows, but bowed and thanked the princess for her words. Azula hadn’t seen the need to practice social niceties at this age; she still didn’t quite understand what other people got out of them, but she had decided to try her hand at using them even when they weren’t lies. Practice makes perfect.
Azula had always preferred the concrete nature of rewards and punishments. However, she knew now that showering people with privilege and power far beyond their stations wouldn’t keep them from betraying her. Rewards should be reserved for those who had proven themselves worthy.
Ying, who had died loyal when Azula was twelve, had more than proven herself. Ying could have so easily betrayed her by telling tales of all the weaknesses revealed by her injuries over the years. She had never taken the chance. Therefore, Azula would be sure to make her a very rich woman once she re-established herself as one of the Fire Nation’s greatest assets. The doctor would pass on within a few years, but Azula was sure she could raise her status quickly enough to give her an opulent deathbed. Before then, compliments.
-
Social niceties were incredibly tedious. Azula was awful at them, which meant she had to practice them constantly until she was perfect. She even took to thanking her servants and asking her tutors about their personal opinions on various topics, despite the foul taste it left in her mouth.
Her tutors were glad to go on at length about whatever subject the princess expressed interest in. History, economics, science, mathematics, politics, statecraft, rhetoric, strategy, metaphysics, philosophy, everything but calligraphy; Azula studied them with a fervor that she’d previously reserved solely for Firebending.
She’d been a fairly incurious person, in her first life—her main priority had always been to further her father’s goals. Ozai shaped her into a weapon, not a leader. Even after all she did for him, he had only allowed her to ascend the throne once he had a larger one to sit on. She hadn’t been a valued heir so much as a prop to enforce his power, every deed to her name just heaping more glory at his feet.
Now that she had a use for curiosity, Azula found that she enjoyed academic debate. She had taken a few days to realize that it wasn’t something to win, but to further her understanding. Azula made a game of riling her tutors up by attacking their beliefs and expertise, rather than by insulting them directly. Occasionally, they got so caught up that they would reveal a fact that contradicted the propaganda they were meant to be teaching her.
Tensions between benders and nonbenders. Sources of social and political unrest within the Fire Nation. Public opinion about the war.
The last one was particularly interesting. The nobles might be enthusiastic about the war, because of the riches they gained from the colonies, but the common people were considerably less enthusiastic about a conflict that had gone on for generations and showed no signs of ending.
After Azula had thoroughly interrogated whichever tutor let their tongue grow just a little too loose around her, she would practice the newest tool in her arsenal: a reassuring smile. It usually didn’t work, but her promises not to tell her father about their treasonous words so long as they kept her up-to-date on such things were usually enough to stop their tears and groveling.
Of course, her new academic enthusiasm did not extend to the Royal Fire Academy for Girls. She had flatly refused to attend since waking up in the past. It was useless to go, as the Fire Nation had collapsed before she could be betrothed, so she had no need to learn how to be a proper debutante. She was a princess, she’d doubtlessly have a surplus of marriage proposals provided that the current dynasty wasn’t overthrown before she reached adulthood.
Azula also had no desire to see two particular other students of the Academy. She wasn’t sure what she would do, if she did.
Ursa was incensed by Azula’s disobedience. There was very little she could do about it, because Ozai did not object to her playing truant. The fact that she was always in the palace meant that she was always available for training, and he was pushing her harder than ever as the bending demonstration for Azulon drew closer. Zuko was seething with jealousy.
“Azula!” Ursa said, throwing open the doors to her personal chambers. The damage from the fire had been repaired, but they still smelled of smoke. Azula had moved back into them the evening before; she wondered if the only reason Ursa hadn’t confronted her in person earlier was because she didn’t know which rooms her daughter had been staying in during the interim.
“Yes, mother?” Azula said, giving her best social nicety smile. It didn’t work; her tutor of the moment went pale, and Ursa’s frown grew more pronounced.
“You cannot keep skipping school like this.”
“I’m learning far more now than I would in a week at that useless Academy,” Azula replied, letting her smile drop. Her mother had never liked any of her real smiles; she had been wondering if this false one would be less objectionable. Apparently not. “If you would allow the lesson to continue, I will return to my studies immediately.” It had been a particularly interesting lecture on dragons. Even better, it wasn’t just about the best way to hunt them; it was on their former status as a symbol of the Fire Nation, before Avatar Roku and his familiar betrayed their country and Fire Lord Sozin put a bounty on their heads.
“It’s not about that!” Ursa snapped, beginning to pace back and forth. The tutor started studying his nails very intently. “You need to interact with girls your own age.”
Ursa didn’t like it when she did that, either. She’d always scolded Azula for the pranks she played with Mai and Ty Lee and the way they used to tease Zuko as if she’d been forcing them into it. The pair of them had managed to pass all blame for both childhood misbehavior and wartime conflict onto her.
“Girls my age offer me nothing. When I’m here, I can learn from the finest minds in the Nation—” she noticed the tutor start to preen “—and be trained to Firebend by Father.”
“Azula, I am trying to get you away from him.” Ursa burst out. Azula blinked, then cut a look at her tutor. Her mother took the hint, and ordered, with uncharacteristic rudeness, “Get out.”
Her tutors were prideful as a rule, but this one sprung to his feet and bowed out quicker than she thought he was capable of moving, considering his age. She supposed he wouldn’t have lived so many years if he didn’t have the common sense to flee angry royals whenever he was told.
“Why?” Azula asked, as soon as the door closed.
Ursa’s expression softened a bit, and she hesitantly drew closer. “...I know he hurts you, Azula.”
Azula blinked, uncomprehending. “So?”
Ursa made to touch her hair like she touched Zuko’s, drawing back when Azula tensed. “He shouldn’t be hurting you. It’s wrong.”
“He does it to make me stronger,” Azula said. He does it to make himself feel stronger, too. “It’s no concern of yours. What’s your real reason?”
“It is my concern!” Ursa snapped, annoyance entering her tone in the way it usually did when Azula misbehaved, but she paused. Closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. “You’re my daughter, Azula. I care about what happens to you—”
“If you cared you would have noticed without Doctor Ying having to tell you,” Azula said, the words escaping her without conscious thought.
Ursa went still.
“You really never did, all this time,” Azula chuckled incredulously. “I thought you were letting him do it to me so he wouldn’t do it to Zuko, but I didn’t even merit enough of your attention for that, did I?”
Her mother’s breathing hitched.
“You only speak to me when you’re angry at me. So don’t pretend you care.” To Azula’s horror, her voice caught in her throat. Not enough for Ursa to notice, but enough for a wave of humiliation to crash down over her. She abruptly turned her back, staring at the gorgeous courtyard outside her window.
A soft hand hesitantly touched her shoulder. “A-Azula—”
“Get out,” Azula snarled, rounding on her, smoke curling from her nostrils like the dragons she’d been learning about.
Ursa recoiled. Her cheeks were damp. Azula could see the whites of her eyes all around her irises.
Azula found a sick sort of vindication in it. It felt like unwrapping a wound to find it festering, like when she made her drudge scrub her injuries hard enough to reopen them, like when Zuko split her lip and left her to die because he was too weak to finish it himself.
Despite all the lies, Ursa had always known she was a monster.
Why else would a mother fear her own daughter?
Notes:
Unfortunately, a lot of abused mothers end up resenting the kid that reminds them of their abuser.
See you next year!
Chapter Text
Ursa had stopped insisting that Azula attend the Academy since their last confrontation. In fact, she hadn’t seen her mother at all since then, and took that as a tacit agreement. In lieu of finishing school, she asked her father to assign her even more tutors. Ozai had been difficult to convince, because he wanted her to spend all her free time on Firebending, but she was so quickly (re)approaching mastery that even he couldn’t find fault with her. It also helped that most of her tutors were declaring her an academic prodigy in addition to a martial one; only her calligraphy teacher had nothing complimentary to say, even if he couldn’t fault her penmanship. He had been quietly reassigned (demoted) to teaching Zuko less than a week after Azula’s death and subsequent return.
Of course, Azula earned her additional lessons with spars with her father, which increased in length and intensity each time. His smile grew sharper every time he supervised her progress; so did Doctor Ying’s frown.
Azula had been so busy that today she forgot to inquire about the progress of the women being trained to be her personal imperial guards, or even to order Fei to check the aviary for letters during her customary late morning bath. So far she’d burnt three unopened letters in Ty Lee’s childish hand and even one in Mai’s, though it was likely her parents who had insisted she write it.
Azula was growing impatient with her uncle. It had been almost two weeks since she sent him the plans. Even if he was undercover, surely it wouldn’t take this long to take over Ba Sing Se; Azula had done it in a matter of days. The city should be well in hand by now. Perhaps the messenger hawk had encountered rough winds and been blown off course, or been injured by another animal? In the worst-case scenario, it had been shot down and her missive intercepted, but that was unlikely considering the altitude at which raptors flew.
Azula took out her frustration by verbally shredding a tutor’s thesis on the nature of the avatar’s reincarnation cycle. The dullard thought it had stopped due to Sozin’s comet. Azula, who had personally (if temporarily) killed the avatar herself at one point, knew that even that blasted comet couldn’t stop him. That was why someone other than Ozai needed to ascend the throne so she could try something other than head-to-head conflict and hopefully secure the power and prosperity of the Fire Nation for another hundred years. If Zuko got it again, he would likely bankrupt their industry, and by extension their citizens, by using it as collateral to pay “reparations” or some such nonsense. She’d overheard more than a few complaints in that vein during her time in prison, from both prisoners and guards.
Azula knew the grumblings of a sore loser when she heard them; she’d grown up with Zuzu. The people of the Fire Nation knew that their military and technology were superior to that of any other country, and many among the nobility had been incensed by Zuko allowing the avatar, the Earth Kingdom, and the Water Tribes to make so many demands of them following the end of the war. That was why their father had so many supporters even after his defeat at the hands of a child; for all his faults, at least he had the best interests of the Fire Nation at heart. Even the commoners, who were often less nationalistic and thus more likely to support the end of the war, started objecting once taxation went up by a large margin so that the treasury could keep up with reparation payments. The value of Fire Nation currency dropped sharply, and many citizens reverted to a barter system once their money became functionally worthless. Her prison had been meant to detain highly dangerous criminals, but even it saw an uptick in inmates who were down on their luck and needed to steal just to get by. The nation had been in considerable debt by the time Azula died.
Her economics tutor was scheduled to visit after this one. She would ask some pointed questions about how to prevent such a thing, should the worst come to pass once again.
A knock at the door made Azula pause in her tirade, to the relief of her tutor. “Enter.”
It was Fei, who bowed and said, “Apologies for the interruption, your highness.”
Hovering behind her was the drudge, and further back was one of Ursa’s ladies-in-waiting. Fei and the drudge had not permitted them to enter her chambers since Azula last spoke with her mother. She hadn’t personally ordered it, but she preferred this state of affairs and so did not punish their presumption. A good leader should allow their more competent followers to occasionally take the initiative.
“What is it now? Another insincere invitation to lunch?”
“A letter has arrived from the Crown Prince—” began the lady-in-waiting, who cut herself off and took a step back when the drudge turned to look at her.
“Excellent! He certainly took his time,” Azula said, rising to her feet. “Fetch it from the aviary for me.”
“I’m sorry, princess, but your honored mother has it,” Fei replied, sounding as though she did not particularly want to honor Azula’s mother. “She has requested that you join her and your brother so that she may read it to you and give you the gift Crown Prince Iroh sent you.”
Azula kept her face carefully expressionless. “Very well. The drudge can practice her control by keeping my lunch warm.”
Her drudge was the one in charge of Azula’s meal plan, courtesy of Doctor Ying. She was also in charge of keeping her mistress well-hydrated as she trained, and fetched ice water when she practiced her katas, though Ozai always dismissed her whenever they sparred. Azula had once caught her attempting to follow along with her training, and mocked her soundly for trying something so clearly beyond her. She’d made sure to impress on her that the weak should master the basics before even thinking about advanced forms.
The drudge beamed at her order, to Azula’s confusion. Servants acted very differently from nobility, which made practicing social niceties with them frustrating. She really should learn the drudge’s name, at some point.
However, she felt no need to practice social niceties with her mother’s ladies. She gestured for the lady-in-waiting to lead on with a scornful flick of her fingers.
Once they left Azula’s rooms, they soon encountered Zuko being nudged along by another lady-in-waiting. Azula turned her head away.
“Think you’re too good to talk to me now?” he asked.
Azula didn’t dignify that with a response. She quickened her pace.
“Everyone’s saying you’re a genius now. Not just father,” her brother continued, voice bubbling with resentment. He easily kept stride with her. Not for the first time, Azula cursed her short legs. She couldn’t wait for her growth spurt. “What, is showing off to him not enough anymore? You want attention that bad?”
Azula bit her tongue.
“Azula!” Zuko snapped, grabbing her arm. “You’ve been ignoring me for weeks. What’s your problem?”
Of course. He’d hated spending time with her even as a child, and now he hated that she was leaving him alone. He always came up with the most malicious interpretation for her actions. Of course, he was often right, but he’d never cared to notice that Azula was far less malicious to him than she was to most other people.
Azula smacked his hand away. It was a struggle not to burn him. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“Stop being such a brat—”
“What makes you think you’re worth my attention when you’re not worth father’s?” Azula asked coldly. After so long practicing social niceties, it was a relief to let loose.
Zuko flushed and shut his mouth, smoke literally coming out of his ears. He made it so easy. That was why Azula used to try, in her own way, to thicken his skin. It was embarrassing how little self-control he had.
Azula licked the phantom split in her lip and kept walking while the ladies-in-waiting struggled to keep him from running off to sulk by the turtleduck pond. She entered Ursa’s courtyard alone. Her mother looked up, and her brow furrowed when she saw Azula had arrived without an escort.
“Azula,” Ursa greeted her at length. “...How are you, sweetheart?”
Azula bridled at the unfamiliar, stilted endearment. “Don’t call me that.”
“...Of course.”
Another tense silence, and then Zuko shoved past her to get to their mother.
“Zuko, sweetie,” Ursa said, opening her arms, the term suddenly sounding much less unnatural on her tongue. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Zuko muttered, hiding his face in her shoulder. Azula wondered if he was trying not to cry. He really did make it too easy.
“If you say so,” Ursa said indulgently. She glanced up at Azula, wearing the pinched expression she usually got when she suspected her of hurting her son’s feelings yet again. Then she took a deep breath, and said, “But you shouldn’t push your little sister, no matter how upset you are.”
It was the first time their mother had used that diminutive when referring to their relationship. Even Zuko just referred to her as his sister.
Zuko jerked back out of Ursa’s embrace, looking betrayed. “But mom, she—”
“Are you going to read us the letter or do I have to read it myself?” Azula snapped. When Ursa hesitated, Azula rolled her eyes and approached the table set out with three chairs under one of the flowering trees her mother was fond of. One end was set with a couple of Zuko’s favorite foods and a bowl of cherries. On the other end was the letter, which she snatched up, and three packages, which she ignored.
“Azula!” Ursa chided, but Azula was already scanning the letter for any mention of her name.
...And for little Azula, a lovely doll, dressed in the latest fashion popular with Earth Kingdom ladies! Lu Ten got a gift for her as well, and told me to pass along his thanks for the hair accessories she sent him. How thoughtful of her! Make sure to tell her that her plan to end the siege without taking any lives was very sweet, but that young ladies shouldn’t worry about nasty things like war.
For Zuko, a knife from…
The edges of the scroll crumpled in her grip, and for a second Azula considered lighting it on fire. That damn doll. She’d beheaded it the first chance she got. She’d been so jealous of Zuko’s knife, to the point that she had stolen it several times.
She threw the letter to the ground, grabbed the two packages addressed to her, and made to leave the courtyard. She’d use the damn doll for target practice, this time.
“Azula!” Ursa barked, then closed her eyes and visibly reined herself in. “Aren’t you going to join us for lunch?”
“Doctor Ying has me on a very specific diet,” Azula said without stopping. That was half a lie, because Ying had told her she could have the occasional treat, but it wasn’t like her mother would know her medical information.
“But there’s cherries,” Ursa coaxed, in the sing-song voice she had used when Azula was very young and hadn’t wanted to get out of the tub, back when they used to bathe together. “Your favorite!”
Azula remembered spitting a cherry pit into her hand and what had followed and suddenly her world was falling down around her again. “I hate them,” she choked out.
“Azula? Azula, are you all right?”
Zuko was staring at her like he’d never seen her before.
Azula fled.
It was humiliating. This was Zuzu-level behavior. She was better than this, better than him.
Until her father left her behind and the comet came and that damned Water Tribe peasant ruined everything—
Azula had trained all morning, as she did every day, but right now she needed to destroy something. The doll would be a good start.
Azula had forgotten that Iroh still thought of her the way he thought of all women and girls, though thankfully his blood relations were spared his lustful attentions. He might have loathed her even more than Ozai, when she’d entered the war, but at least he took her seriously. He had known that she could take a city without killing a single person because she’d done it. (Except the avatar, which didn’t count. Damn him and his miracle worker Water Tribe girl.)
No one took her seriously now. No one feared her. No one except her mother, but even she called her sweetheart and offered her cherries and Azula had absolutely no idea how to respond to that.
Azula stopped running when she reached her training courtyard. She ripped open the larger of the two packages, revealing a familiar doll that she promptly threw in the air and hit with a plume of blue flames before it could reach the ground. Something in her was soothed at the reminder that she still had her fire, and then a fresh jolt of an emotion she still couldn’t handle overwhelmed her when she remembered that the avatar could take it away again and that Iroh hadn’t listened to her plan and she had changed nothing and she wasn’t in control.
She tried to silence the noise in her head the way she always had: with perfection. She trained until the sky turned orange, but she was still too weak, her muscles not developed enough to complete the maneuvers she used to perform with ease. She wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t better than Zuzu. She wasn’t good enough for her father and she was too much of a monster for her mother and her brother had left her to die.
Azula, sweaty and sooty and gasping for breath, bent double and screamed, fire streaming from her mouth like the Dragon of the West. Her hair, untidy and in her face and out of place, caught fire. Azula watched it burn, entranced.
“Princess!” someone cried, and then a pitcher of ice water was dumped over her head.
Azula blinked. She looked up, and there was her drudge, trembling like a small animal under the hungry gaze of a hawk. She was holding an empty pitcher upside down over Azula’s head.
The noise in her head was still there, but it was much easier to ignore when she was dripping wet and a piece of ice had fallen into her collar and was now slowly sliding down her back.
“You’re lucky I’m not in the mood to punish you right now,” Azula announced. She was pretty sure she’d fall over if she tried.
The drudge nodded rapidly. “Yes, princess. I’m sorry, princess. Thank you, princess.”
Apparently, when one didn’t know which social nicety to use for the occasion, one could just use all of them. It seemed a bit undignified; Azula resolved to become perfect at them so that she’d never sound as stupid as the drudge did right now.
“I want a bath.”
“Of course, princess.”
Azula tried to get up and found she couldn’t. Her body was still too weak. She’d trained like she had when she was fourteen and in peak physical condition, but she wasn’t either of those things anymore.
She felt very small, all of the sudden.
“Fetch me a palanquin,” Azula said, trying to sound like Mai did when she wanted to exhaust servants for fun. Then she realized that she didn’t want any large and burly men around her, especially not in this state.
Something must have shown on her face, because the drudge blurted, “I can carry you, princess,” and then immediately looked like she wanted to swallow her own tongue.
A stiff breeze blew around Azula’s training courtyard. It wasn’t quite cold, but the ice water made it uncomfortable.
“Very well,” Azula said. “Take me through the servant’s passageway.” The last thing she wanted right now was for her family to see her like this.
“Y-yes, princess,” stuttered the drudge. Azula closed her eyes.
A moment passed, and then tentative hands fluttered over her, as if the drudge was trying to pick her up without actually touching her. And then she was lifted into surprisingly muscular arms, bouncing her a little to get a better grip on her.
Azula couldn’t recall ever being carried, before. It felt almost like an embrace, and only Ty Lee had ever dared do that. She stiffened at the unwelcome sense memory, almost expecting to smell her flowery perfume.
“I’m so sorry, princess! I was trying not to press on your injuries, are you all right?”
“Get on with it,” Azula tried to growl. It came out as more of an exhausted mumble. She couldn’t get her eyes to stay open.
“Yes, princess.”
Azula didn’t fall asleep, because she was a dignified princess of the Fire Nation and it would be undignified in the extreme to fall asleep in a servant’s arms. She simply meditated a bit.
Movement. The drudge was walking very carefully, as if there were a skittish messenger hawk on her shoulder and not the princess’s head. A couple people called greetings to her, but she did not respond.
“Aw, Umi, who’s this little one?” someone teased. So the drudge’s name was Umi.
“Shhhhh,” Umi implored, panicked. “She’s sleeping.”
“Is she your little sister? How cute. Was she playing in the laundry fountain?” The voice was warm, male, slightly flirtatious. Azula’s grip around Umi’s neck tightened, but she was still so tired.
“I really need to go—do not touch her.” Umi’s tone was abruptly ferocious, which Azula never would have expected from her meek little drudge. She moved quickly back, surprisingly sure on her feet.
“Okay, okay. Protective, much?”
Azula turned her head from where it was pressed into Umi’s shoulder, cracking one bleary eye open to assess this new threat. It was a weedy young man with an unfortunate overbite, whom Umi had several inches and probably fifteen pounds of muscle on.
“Oh, Agni, is that the princess?” the servant yelped, scrambling back and trying to shrink into the opposite wall of the cramped, windowless hallway.
“Yes, and she’s had a long day, so you’re going to shut up and go away so she can rest,” Umi ordered.
“Right, yes, sorryyourhighness,” the servant squeaked, and then Umi was moving again, a hand coming up to cradle the back of Azula’s head.
Azula drifted in and out, occasionally hearing more people gasp or ask, “Is that—?”, but other than that the trip was uneventful.
“Halt—princess?” a deep voice said, all power and authority vanishing from their tone at the second word.
“Her highness is tired and she needs to be put to bed,” Umi said severely. “She’s been training all day.”
“I, um, yes, my apologies,” the guard replied. “...Sweet dreams, princess.”
Azula stirred and tried to frown at the patronizing words, but even her facial muscles took too much effort to move.
Then they were finally in her quarters and Fei was there, quietly fussing over Azula’s wet clothes and the state of her hair. She drifted in and out as they changed her clothes and tried their best to dry her hair, Umi having learned enough from Azula’s criticisms to heat it with her hands without setting it alight. Even a servant wasn’t careless enough to do what Azula had done. Normally, she would be incensed, but she couldn’t focus enough to care.
“I’ve never seen her like this,” Umi whispered. “She seems so…”
“Young?” Fei asked, amused.
“Well…”
“It’s easy to forget, sometimes, but she is still a child.”
Notes:
am i implying that the fire nation would most likely have a lot of similar problems as the weimar republic after their fire lord got overthrown at the height of his power and now his "disgraced traitor" 16yr old son is on the throne trying to make nice with countries led by adults that have a hundred years' worth of grudges, instead of just four? yes lmao. atla is a kid's cartoon, but let's face it, everyone would want payback, not peace. and aang is 12. avatar or not, no one would bother to maintain quality of life for the common fire nation citizens after the global hegemon powered by their labor so abruptly and unexpectedly gave up.
gentle reminder that azula's views are not my own! i may disagree with how other characters often treated her, because she is a mentally ill child soldier treated like she's somehow worse than many of the adult war criminals (seriously, zuko tried harder to reach out to ZHAO), but the fic is tagged villain protagonist for a reason. she's gonna develop in a different direction than in the show, but she's never going to be a hero. the azutara is still pretty far in the future, but it will not be cutesy fluffy wholesomeness. that would be out of character, and more importantly, that would be boring.
you have been warned!
Chapter Text
The next morning, Azula got up to train. She ignored the way her muscles screamed in protest. She ignored Umi’s insistence that she eat a bit of breakfast first. (Azula never ate immediately before training, because her father might show up and she didn’t want to risk vomiting while they sparred. Once was enough; she was not eager to repeat the experience.) She ignored everything but the sun on her face and the fire in her lungs.
Once she was breathing more smoke than fire and her muscles were trembling too hard to continue, she noticed the package from Lu Ten, still lying where she’d dropped it the day before. Azula was mildly surprised it hadn’t caught on fire; the doll had been reduced to a little pile of ashes and shards of porcelain smaller than her baby teeth. (Azula was eager to regrow her adult molars. She wouldn’t let them get knocked out again.)
Azula scooped up the package and opened it. It was a hairpin, fashioned to look like a fire lily, with a blue glass bead shaped like a teardrop dangling from a chain at the end. Azula tried to snap it in disgust, but couldn’t; when she yanked the bead, trying to pull it off, a stiletto blade slid from the cleverly disguised ornate sheath painted to look like a flower stem, the blossom serving as a sort of hilt. Upon further examination, the bead was hollow, and could be popped open; it was a compartment for hiding poison.
Slowly, Azula smiled.
After a visit to Doctor Ying for something to treat inflamed muscles, Azula had Fei fix her hair after her bath. Umi had doused her before too much of it was burnt off, but Fei still had to cut it to her shoulders to even out the damage. Azula was tense and watchful, jolting every time an uncomfortably familiar pair of golden shears snipped too close to her neck, but she grit her teeth and bore it. She had suffered an uneven hairstyle from her imprisonment to her death, and she refused to do so again. She was the princess; her perfection was the Fire Nation’s perfection, her shame their shame.
Fei wisely did not comment on her jitters, working quickly and gently, painstakingly careful when she combed linseed oil through Azula’s shortened tresses and twisted them into a half-up, half-down style. Azula didn’t have the golden hair crown typically worn by the Fire Lord’s daughter yet, the one she had been so proud to receive when her father ascended the throne, so the loss of her usual topknot did not bother her overmuch. She’d grow it out again, when the time came. Instead, she told Fei to secure it with Lu Ten’s gift, instead of one of the many red, flame-tasseled hair ties she had used at this age. She’d sent most of them to her cousin, anyway. It was more of a trade than a gift.
“You look like Rangi, Avatar Kyoshi’s Fire Nation lover!” Umi said. Talk of Avatars, past or present, in anything but derisive terms was heavily discouraged, but the taboo had eased slightly in the hundred year interim before his reappearance. Even Azula had to admit that their consorts tended to be good looking.
“Be silent,” Azula snapped, and resolved to be meaner to her servants for the next few days.
-
After seeing to her hair, Azula decided to oversee the training of her new guards. Her current guards had taken to tiptoeing around her whenever possible, which Azula preferred to them getting too close, but their demeanors grated on her. They did not sweat and stutter and go pale, as her sailors and the Dai Lee used to do when they had displeased her. Instead, they spoke softly and quietly, like Ursa did when Zuzu was in one of his moods; they had taken to shoving male servants away if they dared come into her line of sight, and politely but firmly turned away the rare military official or courtier who ventured too close on the rare occasions that she was in the main palace, rather than studying in her chambers or training in her private courtyard. They seemed to take particular pleasure in denying audiences to Zuko’s new calligraphy teacher, who was trying to ooze his way back into her good graces even sooner than he had the first time; Azula once heard them laughing among themselves after they told him that his skill was better matched to the prince’s talent than the princess’s.
Predictably, her guards fanned out around her and her attendants as she made her way to the barracks of the royal guard, barking orders and announcing her presence to all and sundry. It occurred to her that they had probably been bored, with nothing to do for the past three and a half weeks but watch her train and study from a strictly enforced distance. She had yet to leave the palace at all, since her… since she got her bending back. Perhaps Azula would put in a good word for them with Ozai, once their replacements were up to snuff.
Once she reached the barracks training grounds, everything ground to a halt so that the off duty men could bow before her, from the highest ranking drill sergeants barking orders to the greenest recruits cleaning the latrines. Azula felt the ghost of a smirk hook the corner of her mouth. This was how she deserved to be treated. She had almost forgotten.
A number of the green recruits were women; Azula eyed them speculatively. They all seemed to have the martial artist build of a firebender, rather than the variety of physiques and specialties she had expected. She recalled, too late, that royal guards only accepted benders. She’d have to rectify that, considering that the most talented chi blocker she knew had turned traitor so unexpectedly.
Or maybe she should have expected it. Maybe Ty Lee had been an even better liar than Azula from the beginning.
“Princess Azula,” someone said, in the tone of someone who had repeated himself more than once, and she snapped to attention, unsure of how long she had been lost in thought. Umi was standing ever so slightly in front of her, putting her body between Azula and a large man with a pronounced frown. His ornate collar and lack of helmet marked him as the captain of the guard.
Around her, her guards shifted uneasily; none of them asked him to move back to a more appropriate distance or to remember his place. Azula decided not to recommend them, after all; they should not hesitate to prioritize a member of the royal family, even in the face of their commanding officer.
“I’ve come to observe the progress of my new guards.”
The captain’s brow twitched in annoyance. Azula raised her own; he might see her as nothing more than a spoiled child, but she would prove him wrong soon enough. The demonstration for Fire Lord Azulon was mere days away.
“Well?”
The captain beckoned a sergeant over and ordered him to put the new recruits through their paces through gritted teeth. Azula settled in a chair Umi had commandeered from an officer’s quarters as women scrambled into position. She watched their drills with a critical eye; as expected, these women were skilled and had something they wanted to prove by joining a regiment historically barred to them.
For all her father’s flaws, he did not subscribe to sexist nonsense like his brother or his forebears; Azula was proof of that. Once he ascended the throne, the number of women in the ranks had grown slowly but steadily. He wouldn’t object to her starting the process early, and Iroh was busy terrorizing Earth Kingdom women for the moment. Azulon’s opinion didn’t matter; he would be dead soon, anyway.
“Umi,” she said, after the recruits had worked up a sweat.
“Yes, princess?”
“Join them.”
Umi started, her dark eyes wide. “Your highness?”
“If you progress at an acceptable rate, you will lead them.” Azula rested her head on her hand, her forefinger on her temple. “If you fail…”
She was going to threaten Umi with banishment, but something made her pause. She had learned that, no matter how rich the rewards, fear was not an effective long-term motivator. And getting rid of a skilled employee for not living up to Azula’s exacting firebending standards might be… wasteful.
“If you fail, you will return to my service as a maidservant. I won’t be giving you a second chance to learn to bend.”
“Of course, your highness,” Umi said, sinking into a full kowtow. Azula blinked; she’d previously only ever seen this from people begging her for mercy. “I will not waste this opportunity you have given me.” She raised her head, eyes shining. Azula fought the urge to look away, abruptly discomfited. “Thank you, princess. You honor me.”
“Enough,” she snapped. “Dismissed.”
And then Umi sprang to her feet and ran to join her new sisters in arms. The smile on her face looked like something out of a painting; Azula had certainly never been the cause of a smile like that before.
That was the wrong attitude to take into training. Azula would order them to run drills until they dropped.
-
Azula returned to her chambers several hours later, smirking to herself. Umi had looked a lot less gleeful once she was picking herself out of the dirt for the fifteenth time. It didn’t help that Azula had so obviously singled her out; the other women all wanted to prove their superiority to her, and she was the least well trained of any of them. Either she would prove herself and earn their respect, or she would go back to being a maidservant, this time surrounded by guards who would rightfully treat her as their inferior.
Azula was pleased that Umi would face consequences for failing her, even if Azula didn’t inflict them directly. She was getting very good at delegation.
“Welcome back, your highness,” said Fei, who was rolling out one of Azula’s many luxurious carpets with a bit more struggle than Umi typically showed. Perhaps Umi’s muscle tone came from all the rug beating and laundry and bathwater hauling she did; Fei was also gifted in the art of delegation, and Umi was an easy target.
“Remind me to get another maidservant, Fei,” Azula said.
Fei went gratifyingly pale. “Forgive my brazenness, princess, but did Umi displease you in some way?”
Azula let the silence stretch and her smirk grow, until she could hear Fei gulp. “The opposite. She performs well, so I’ve promoted her.”
“...Ah?”
There was a question lingering in that sound, but Azula didn’t care to address it, and Fei was too courtly to ask directly. Perhaps this would prompt her to overachieve until she figured out that Umi’s new position was not one she wanted.
Azula was about to indulge in a rare moment of relaxation—it had been quite a while since she last meditated—when the door to her rooms opened without so much as a knock. Fei leaped to attention; there were very few people in the Fire Nation who could get away with that, and all of them outranked Azula.
“Azula,” her mother said, oddly coaxing, “I know just the thing to cheer you up!”
“What is it now, mother?” Azula said coolly, in a lotus pose atop the low table she took her lessons at, not bothering to open her eyes.
“Look who’s come to visit you!”
“Hi, Azula!” a saccharine voice chirped, pattering over on light feet to wrap her in an enthusiastic embrace.
Azula went as still as stone.
“Why aren’t you coming to school?” came a second voice, dull and with a hint of annoyance. “It’s boring without you there.”
A fist grabbed her guts and twisted. Her gorge rose, and for a second Azula thought she was going to be sick all over her freshly beaten carpet.
She opened her eyes, and was met with Ty Lee’s childish beaming face.
Azula had dreamed about burning her alive hundreds of times, but now she felt like she was the one burning.
“Don’t touch me.” The words tasted like smoke, but her voice was ice cold.
Ty Lee shrank back, but she maintained a tremulous smile. Azula could see the cracks in her mask so easily; how had she missed it before? “I’m sorry, Azula, I just missed you so much—”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“Azula, you shouldn’t say such things to your friends,” Ursa said, but the scolding rang hollow. Azula could read the confusion on her face, as this latest attempt to assuage her own guilt went wrong.
Her gaze cut to Mai, the only person wise enough not to say anything in the face of Azula’s mood.
“You’re right, mother.” She bared her teeth in a rictus grin. “Girls, let’s go play.”
Ursa hesitantly smiled back. “All right. I hope you and your friends have fun before you all join us for dinner.”
“...Okay,” Ty Lee whispered. She reached for Mai’s hand.
Azula whirled so she wouldn’t have to see it. “I’ll see you at dinner, mother. Fei, why don’t you fetch us some tea.”
“Of course, princess,” Fei said, leaping to her feet and power walking out the door after Ursa.
Azula stared out the window for a few long minutes, digging her nails into the freshly healed burns on her palms and biting the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. She could hear Ty Lee fidgeting and Mai’s carefully regulated breathing.
She wanted to rip them to shreds. She wanted them to suffer. She wanted to watch them die the way she had. She wanted them to be sorry.
Azula conjured a blue flame in her palms and waited until it grew and shrank in time with her breaths. She stared into it until she could pretend the burning in her eyes came from its smoke. It would feel so good to use it, but ultimately pointless. These were not her Mai and Ty Lee. If she killed a couple of children, she would set her progress back massively. At worst, they would toss her back in prison six years early, even more defenseless than before.
Only the Fire Lord could get away with doing what she wanted to do.
“Why are you here,” she said at last.
Ty Lee shifted her weight, perhaps sensing the danger they were in. Finally, Mai spoke.
“To visit you. Your mother invited us.”
Azula let the heat of her flame bake her face into a hard clay mask before she turned. “Well, I didn’t.”
“We’re sorry,” Ty Lee blurted. “I’m sorry, Azula, we can come back later.”
“I don’t want you to come back later,” Azula said. “I want you to leave and never come back.”
They both flinched, at that. Ty Lee was always sensitive to Azula’s moods. Mai was sensitive to her reliance on Azula's favor, as the daughter of provincial nobles who had risen from relative obscurity in large part due to their daughter’s association with the crown princess. It was Azula who had suggested that Ozai give them Omashu.
“Azula, have we annoyed you somehow?” Mai asked.
“Oh, no more than usual,” Azula said airily, sitting on an ornate daybed and crossing her legs. “But I’m getting bored.”
“Bored?” Ty Lee asked, wringing her hands. “You don’t have to be bored! We can play whatever game you want!”
“Oh, Ty Lee,” Azula cooed, in a mockery of her sickly sweet voice. “Why would I want to play a game with you? After all,” she lifted her hand to inspect her nails, “I can just get another one of you anytime I want, right?”
Ty Lee recoiled. “What?” she whispered.
Azula met her eyes for the first time since she’d walked in the room. “You’re replaceable, Ty Lee. There’s nothing special about you.” She smiled. “Even your family thinks so. That’s why you’re always acting like such a clown, because no one would notice you otherwise. I bet the only time people pay attention to you is when you’re talking about me.”
The tears that filled Ty Lee’s eyes and trailed down her cheeks weren’t nearly enough, but they were a start.
“Azula, leave her alone,” Mai said quietly. Azula’s lips twisted into a frown.
“Well, Mai, who else would I talk to? You?” She laughed as if it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. “Who wants to hear what you have to say? Even your parents don’t.”
Mai’s fists clenched.
“I was wrong when I thought you might be smart, Mai. No one cares what you think.” Her lips curled into a feline grin. “No wonder your parents want a son so badly, when their only daughter is such a bore.”
“Be quiet,” she said. Her voice was shaking.
“Oh, but that’s the only thing you’re good at! You’re not even good at sitting still and looking pretty.” Azula leaned forward at the sight of tears in Mai’s eyes. It was the first time she’d managed to cause them herself; she’d only ever seen Mai cry about Zuko. “I kept you around because I thought Zuzu might like you, but he thinks you’re ugly and that your crush on him is gross, so you’re worthless. I can’t be friends with a girl my brother hates.”
Of course it was that that made the tears finally fall. Typical.
Azula leaned back and made a shooing motion. “You can go now.”
She waited for the door to slam shut behind them before she buried her head in the plush daybed and screamed.
It was burning by the time Fei returned.
“Your highness!” she cried, upending the teapot over it. “You’ll burn your hair again!”
Azula looked up blankly. She wasn’t sure what Fei saw on her face.
“Oh, princess,” she murmured, reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “Did you get into a fight with your friends?”
“They’re not my friends,” Azula said. “They never were.”
Chapter Text
When Azula arrived to dinner with her family alone, Ursa was visibly dismayed. Ozai, kneeling at the head of the long table in their private dining room, nodded once when she bowed to him. Zuko was at Ursa’s side, and watched her with uncharacteristic apprehension (at this age, anyway) as she made her way into the room. She could tell from the tension in the air that Zuko had said something stupid in front of their father again.
“Azula,” her mother said, a familiar sharpness to her tone, “Where are Mai and Ty Lee? I invited them to join us.”
“Oh no, they’re here?” Zuko groaned, slumping over the table.
“I sent them away,” Azula said, kneeling primly at her father’s right hand. He gestured for the servants to serve dinner, once she was seated; it was a habit to smirk tauntingly at Zuzu over this show of favor, even though she knew now that it was worth little. “They aren’t welcome here any longer.”
“Why not?” Ursa demanded.
“Because they’re low-rank social climbers with nothing to offer me in return.”
Ursa closed her eyes and sighed. “That is an awful thing to say about your friends, Azula.”
“They’re not my friends,” Azula snapped back. Something in her tone made her mother pause. Instead of interrupting, for once, Ursa listened as Azula continued: “I don’t need gutless lackeys who will let their discontent stew until they get all they want from me and then betray me for whoever offers them something they want more. As a princess, I have no equals, so I have no friends. I have loyal subjects and I have enemies. Some of those enemies might pretend to be loyal, which makes them more honorless and more dangerous than those that don’t, so I needed to be rid of them.”
“That’s a really long way to say they got sick of you and don’t want to be around you anymore,” Zuko snorted.
Azula’s nails gouged the underside of the table. Zuko was the worst kind of traitor, a royal who turned on his nation, his subjects, and his family in favor of honeyed lies and the scraps of affection their uncle and the avatar gave him, once he realized he was too weak to earn it from their father.
“I suppose you would be the expert on that, Zuzu.” She turned to the servant who had set down a lacquered bowl and a pair of intricately carved ivory chopsticks in front of her. “Thank you.”
Another servant dropped the roast beaverduck he was holding. It hit the floor with a wet smack, steaming sauce splattering all over Zuko’s back. There was a quick and violent flurry of motion as the clumsy servant immediately dropped into a kowtow and his fellows scrambled to clean up the mess.
“My deepest apologies, your highnesses,” a nervous steward said, bowing to Ozai at a perfect 90 degree angle. “Another dish will be brought from the kitchens immediately—”
“How dare you, you filthy peasant!” Zuko yelped, leaping to his feet and ripping at his clothes. Only Ursa’s staying hand on his arm kept him from kicking the boy on the floor.
“Zuko, sweetie, he didn’t mean to,” Ursa implored. She yanked off Zuko’s silk vest and threw it at a maid, then reached for the cowering boy, who looked to be only a few years older than Zuko. “It’s all right—”
“Enough,” Ozai said, and everyone went silent. “Fetch the guards. The boy can spend a few nights in the dungeons as penance for disrespecting a member of the royal family, and then he will be thrown from the palace in disgrace.”
“No,” the boy gasped, going white as a sheet. “My prince, please, I will spend a month in the dungeons, but please don’t fire me!”
Azula shook her head in disgust. Pathetic pleading only ever annoyed her father. The servant noticed, his jaw snapping shut.
“Very well, make it a month,” Ozai said, smiling in a way Azula recognized from her own reflection, “Then throw him out.”
He was lucky Ozai was too dignified to act on the obvious pun.
The boy was quick-witted enough not to beg for mercy or drag his feet when a pair of Azula’s guards came for him. She could tell they had wanted to show off for the second prince; they had been on the scene quicker than his own guards. They were out of luck. A weeping youth covered in beaverduck sauce did not cut the most intimidating figure.
Her family and especially the servants spent the remainder of the dinner in silence. Once their dishes were cleared away to make room for dessert, Ozai spoke.
“Your demonstration for your grandfather is in two days’ time. Do not disappoint me.”
Zuko ducked his head. Even he had to have realized by now that his outburst at the servant did not impress their father. Azula met Ozai’s gaze.
“I am confident that I won’t.”
-
They received the news about Lu Ten the next day.
It did not go quite the way she remembered—she and Zuko weren’t playing together, for one. Ursa had had to send a lady-in-waiting to pull her from her studies, for another. And for a third…
“Iroh and Lu Ten are coming home.”
Azula almost stumbled at the announcement. She eyed the fountain in Ursa’s favored courtyard, wondering how inconspicuously she could splash her face with its waters.
“What? Did they win?!” Zuko asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Did they capture Ba Sing Se? That’s amazing!”
But Ursa’s expression was solemn. There was no sign of the tears Azula vaguely recalled from the first time around, but she clearly wasn’t celebrating in the way Ba Sing Se’s fall had warranted when Azula took it, either.
“Zuko, your cousin was terribly injured. The siege is ongoing, but Lu Ten can no longer fight.” She turned to Azula, her face inexplicably going soft. “Azula, are you all right? I know you and Lu Ten… get along.”
“I’m fine.” Better than, actually. It wasn’t until that moment that she fully believed that she could change anything. A part of Azula had thought this life was doomed to end the same way as the last. But if Lu Ten could escape his fate… “If Lu Ten is alive, why is Uncle coming home? He should stand and fight.”
Ursa frowned. “His son needs him.”
“His nation needs him. Sending the Crown Prince and his heir running with their tails between their legs will galvanize the Earth Kingdom a hundredfold! His army will be sitting turtle ducks!” Though she was far from surprised. Sending countless Fire Nation sons to their deaths was fine with Iroh, so long as it wasn’t his own.
“Now is not the time for this, Azula,” Ursa snapped.
“He is a hypocritical, honorless, cowardly old man. He is betraying his men,” Azula growled. “He’s betraying us. Are you really so stupid that you can’t see that?”
“Hey!” Zuko shouted. “You can’t talk to mom like that!”
“What is wrong with you?” Ursa said, and Azula almost laughed at the predictable words. This was far easier for her to deal with than her mother’s strangely docile behavior over the past few weeks. “Azula, I have tried to be patient with you, but I’ve had enough of your attitude. Don’t you understand that he is our family and his son is hurt?”
“People get hurt in war all the time! Isn’t that the point?” Azula asked, throwing up her hands. The tacit rules that made something “right” or “wrong” in the eyes of her mother were incomprehensible to her most of the time, not least because they were so arbitrary. “The goal is to hurt enough of them to stop them from fighting back and hurting us. How many more Fire Nation soldiers will die while the army scrambles to fill the Dragon of the West’s cast off shoes? Will any of them get to go home when their sons die?”
Thousands had been killed the first time around, after Lu Ten’s death and Iroh’s flight. While the Crown Prince was off doing Agni knew what Agni knew where in the months following, the Fire Nation army had taken so many losses that Ba Sing Se broke the siege altogether. It was the most humiliating defeat the Fire Nation had suffered over the course of the entire Hundred Year War, until the avatar showed up.
“We are not having this discussion anymore, Azula,” Ursa ordered. “Your father has requested an early audience with the Fire Lord. Go get cleaned up.”
Azula turned on her heel and stormed off in a huff, trailed by a cacophony of footsteps that must have been Fei and her useless guards.
Azula’s courtyard was far away from Ursa’s favorite haunts (perhaps by design), and her legs were short, so it wasn’t long before another annoyance caught up to her.
“Azula! Azula, wait up!” called the person she least wanted to speak to right now.
“What, Zuko?” Azula snapped, herself, Fei, and her unnaturally hovering guards clanking to a halt. She was too fed up to feign the fondness necessary to use his nickname.
Zuko’s ponytail had been ruffled by his pursuit; he’d obviously stayed to comfort their mother and then had to run after her. The flyaways and the wide golden eyes made him look very young. “Are… are a lot of our men really going to die?”
“That’s how war works, dumdum,” Azula said, some of the wind unexpectedly leaving her sails. Perhaps she was more thrown off-kilter by Lu Ten’s survival than she thought. “It’s a soldier’s duty and honor to die for their nation. But when we lose Ba Sing Se, all those lives will be wasted.”
“We’re not gonna lose,” Zuko said hesitantly. “Uncle—the Fire Nation never loses.”
“Uncle left, Zuko. Don’t you get it?” She grabbed his shoulders, digging in her nails when he tried to pull away. “Uncle doesn’t actually care about us, or our family, or our country. All he cares about is himself and what he wants. Why can’t you see that?!”
Zuko flinched. “No, you’re lying. You always lie. You sound crazy right now.”
Azula wanted to slap him. She wanted him to taste blood whenever he saw her. Instead, she laughed, and let him go. “Believe what you want to believe. It’s not like I can change your mind.”
When she reached her rooms, the guard who normally opened doors for her hesitated. “Princess…”
“What now?” she said, clipped. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Please, your highness, just a moment of your time. My brother is a member of Prince Lu Ten’s royal guard. Please… if you find out what happened to him…”
Azula sighed, massaging her inner canthi. “If my cousin was badly injured, your brother either died in the line of duty or he’s a traitor, which means he will soon be dead.”
“Please,” the guard whispered. For such a hulking man, he looked seconds away from collapsing in on himself.
“Ugh, fine. I’ll let you know if I hear anything. Anything else?” she snapped, sweeping her eyes over the rest of her guards in a way that implied there would be hell to pay if there was.
The next person to speak was Fei, which was the only reason Azula listened at all. “Princess Azula, what you said about Ba Sing Se—my son is stationed there.” To Azula’s disgust, there were tears in her eyes. “If the Crown Prince really has left, I… I don’t know what will become of him. Could you raise the concerns you shared with your honored mother with the Fire Lord, when you see him?”
“You are severely overestimating the esteem my grandfather holds me in,” Azula said, turning her head away from Fei’s hitched breathing so that she wouldn’t have to see her cry. It really was disgusting. So unlike the quiet, dignified Fei Azula had grown accustomed to. “But I’ll speak to my father, so stop sniveling.” She glared at the guard blocking her door. “Either open it, or get out of my way.”
Three guards jumped to open it for her, none quicker than the guard in question.
Azula ordered Fei to sit and compose herself, lest she smear snot and tears everywhere, and dressed herself. It was a little difficult, even with the burns on her palms fully healed, but Azula was enough of a perfectionist that she looked immaculate in no time at all, though she couldn’t quite figure out how to twist her hair up with the fire lily. Azula ordered Fei to do it, since her servant had stopped weeping quite so loudly, and hurried from her chambers.
Azula did not recall thinking of this situation so urgently, the first time around. She had been entirely focused on what it meant for Ozai and his ambitions. Lu Ten’s death hadn’t exactly been a pleasure for her to hear about, but Lu Ten had been dead, so she didn’t have to think about him after that.
She would have to think about him now. Azula hadn’t expected him to live, once Iroh discarded her plans. She would have to ask him how he managed it.
Despite the time it had taken for her to get ready, Azula was not the last to reach the Fire Lord’s hall; her father and mother were already waiting outside the ornate bronze doors, but Zuko, perhaps predictably, was nowhere to be seen. He was incredibly skilled at choosing the worst possible times to annoy Ozai; when she was younger, Azula had sometimes thought he did it on purpose. If he was going to be mediocre, the least he could do was stop drawing so much attention to it.
Ozai was immaculately groomed, his eyes gleaming; he had been waiting for an opportunity like this for a very long time. Ursa was still and quiet beside him, as she typically was, her eyes on the richly carpeted floor.
“Father, what happened to Lu Ten and his men?” Azula asked, once she’d gauged that he was in a decent mood.
“An elite squad of Ba Sing Se soldiers ambushed him and his guards after dark, killed his men, then tortured him for information; apparently one of his arms was so badly crushed that it had to be amputated,” Ozai said, with no small amount of relish. Azula twitched; she recognized Dai Li tactics. Perhaps if Iroh had bothered to read her letter in its entirety, the entire debacle could have been prevented. “Such a shame that the Crown Prince’s heir was brought so low before he managed to escape. I told my brother not to bring his nonbender son to such an important battlefield, but Iroh has always been hungry for glory.”
One of her guards, hovering at a polite distance from the royal family, made a choked noise.
“Do not interrupt my father when he’s talking,” she said without looking at him. “Dismissed.”
While he staggered away, she asked, “And what will happen to the siege?”
“That’s Iroh’s campaign,” Ozai said. “I’m sure he’s thought of something. And I’m sure my nephew is honorable enough that he didn’t give anything up.”
“I see,” Azula said. She had been too young to fully grasp it the first time around, but now she understood why her father had done nothing to mitigate the disastrous end of the siege; all of it made him look better in comparison. A significant percentage of their fighting force had been sacrificed to strengthen the claim of the Fire Lord who had gone on to lose the Hundred Year War.
What a waste.
“I’m here, I’m here!” Zuko said, running to meet them. “I’m sorry I’m late, Father!” His eyes looked red—he’d been crying. Azula didn’t recall him crying for Lu Ten when he’d died the first time around, since the two of them didn’t like each other.
Ozai didn’t bother to respond. He just swept into the Fire Lord’s hall, where across the room, wreathed by sacred flames, Azulon waited for them all.
Notes:
THE TWENTY-FIRST NIGHT OF SEPTEMBER
Chapter Text
Azula’s namesake looked as old and tired as she remembered; even the firelight struggled to lend his face color and life. Azula had rarely ever interacted with her paternal grandfather, and had accepted her father’s grumblings about him being senile and past his prime as the absolute truth, but she’d learned her lesson about underestimating her bloodline. Iroh had to pick that facade up from somewhere.
After a round of social niceties that Azulon didn’t bother to reciprocate (Azula ground her teeth in envy), Ozai started on his first objective: proving that his offspring were worthy of replacing Lu Ten in the line of succession. Azula already knew it was futile—he hadn’t managed that even when his nephew was dead, instead of just maimed.
Ozai began with a quiz about their dynasty’s history, though almost all of it was contained to Sozin’s conquest. This time around, Azula didn’t bother to interrupt to spare Zuko (or Ozai) the embarrassment when her brother floundered and stumbled his way through most of the questions. Even his correct answers were only nominally so; Azula’s tutors could rip them apart easily. Naturally, the questions posed to her were all even easier to answer than before, given her own experience on the battlefield; she allowed herself to make well-reasoned conjectures about Sozin’s reasoning and temperament where appropriate.
Azulon looked at her more than once, which was more than she could say about any other time she’d been in his presence. Her mention of Sozin’s anti-poverty programs and how that might have influenced the morale of the rank and file soldiers in a particularly grueling campaign even made him stroke his beard in thought.
Azula waited until Ozai was visibly angry and Azulon was visibly irritated by Zuko’s fumbling and Ursa’s soft encouragement to start steering the conversation in the direction she desired.
“Father, why don’t we discuss grandfather’s strategies and victories?” Azula piped up. “After all, he’s been Fire Lord for most of the Hundred Year War. He has even more deeds to his name than great grandfather Sozin.”
Ozai shot her an approving look, but Azulon remained stone faced. Had she been laying it on too thick?
“And maybe my older brother will remember our family’s history better if it’s more recent.”
The jibe made Zuko flinch, which was satisfying in its own way, but she was watching her grandfather closely enough to spot the corner of his mouth twitch up. Interesting. Perhaps he’d stoked the sibling rivalry between his sons for more reasons than just favoritism.
“An excellent suggestion, my dear,” Ozai said. He only used that endearment when he was very, very pleased with her; Azula had once been so desperate to hear it that she had conquered cities in his name.
Azulon was remarkably more patient when hearing about his own triumphs and accolades. It was most likely egotism, but it couldn’t hurt that his favorite grandchild was still alive and his favorite son hadn’t deserted his army quite so obviously this time.
After a quiz spanning most of the last century, with special attention paid to the Battle of Garsai and the conquering of the Hu Xin provinces, the topic finally turned to the latest and greatest of Azulon’s accomplishments.
“In what year was Southern Waterbending finally eradicated?”
“94 AG was the year of the last raid on the Southern Water Tribe,” Azula said, interrupting Zuko for the first time. It was recent enough and notable enough that even he could remember it. “Grandfather, may I ask you a question?”
Ozai cut her a quelling look, but Azulon, perhaps softened by his family’s appeals to his ego, gave one decisive nod.
“Why did you stop?”
The sacred flames flared ever so slightly. Azulon’s ever-present frown became marginally more pronounced.
“How could he continue?” Zuko said, pouncing on the chance to redeem himself at her expense. “There aren’t any Waterbenders left in the South. What’s the point?”
“That’s not what father said,” Azula countered. “Southern Waterbending may be gone, but so long as there’s a tribe left, there could always be another Southern Waterbender. The South won’t seal themselves behind ice walls and let the rest of the world burn like the North or Ba Sing Se. Even now, their nonbender sailors are disrupting our supply lines; it’s only a matter of time before they manage to produce another Waterbender.” She turned back to Azulon. “Why don’t we destroy them like we did the Air Nomads?”
A mad, desperate sort of hope was rising in her chest; if she played her cards right, maybe Azulon wouldn’t die tonight. Maybe that Water Tribe peasant with cold hands and pitying eyes wouldn’t live long enough to pull the Avatar out of the iceberg.
“Azula,” Ozai said, a warning in his tone that made her burns and bruises ache with sense memory.
“Apologies, father. Allow me to show grandfather how my bending has been progressing.” She was on her feet and moving forward without waiting for approval. Azulon’s frown was thunderous.
Azula took her stance. It was one that neither Zuko nor Ursa would recognize. Not now, at least. She could almost feel Ozai’s gaze burning her, but he made no move to stop her yet.
With slow, circular movements, she built to her finale. This would take longer than she would like, but she bit back the impulse to fill the silence too quickly. Something told her Azulon was not as easily manipulated as Zuko or Long Feng.
Sensation danced along her palms; she coaxed the static to grow. Her hair frizzed into a halo.
Azulon leaned forward ever so slightly.
It was audible now, instead of just in her head. She heard Ursa gasp behind her. Azulon’s brow furrowed. Time to strike while the iron was hot.
“Imagine there is a Waterbender my own age left in the South.”
White light crackled through her fingers, so bright she could see her bones and veins through her skin.
“Look what I can do already, grandfather.”
For a split second, Azula moved as if to point her fingers at him, watching carefully to see if he registered the mortal peril she could have put him in. Azulon was sharper than her father gave him credit for, if she was reading his microexpressions properly, but everything was moving too fast for her to be sure. She pointed at the ceiling. Lightning shot from her fingertips, dazzling her, making even the sacred flames look dim and weak. There were shouts and screams when the clap of thunder followed a split second later, tile and timber raining down from the hole she’d blown in the ceiling.
The silence that followed was oppressive in comparison to the enormity of the noise that had preceded it. Azula’s ears were ringing faintly. Even Ozai had been shocked into silence.
Azula bowed low, and said, “Why not eliminate the threat entirely?”
“Because, you foolish child,” Azulon replied, his voice thin and his knuckles white, “This war will never be won if we do not make surrender a valid option.”
And then the Fire Lord’s guards escorted her, Zuko, and Ursa out of the room, while Ozai remained kneeling.
Her father was looking at her like he looked at Zuko.
-
Later, in her darkened chambers, Azula could admit to herself that she had taken a massive risk. Azula was too young and too female and too much her father’s daughter to get away with that kind of nonsense. Azulon would have to respect her skill, as rumors of her lightning bending had already been spread around the palace by his guards (who were somehow even chattier than her own). Even so, he would not accept her as a suitable heir to the throne after that impetuous display. Now she just needed to wait for Iroh’s return and eventual ascension. Even if a better man would have taken vengeance for his heir on the battlefield, Iroh did not feel that obligation he had for his bloodline and his people. He would return quickly, with Lu Ten still alive and in need of protection. He wouldn’t vanish for months this time. He couldn’t.
Azula rolled onto her side and curled in on herself, willing her hands to stop shaking. Ozai wasn’t stupid enough to attempt a coup after his favorite child put the Fire Lord’s life at risk. Azulon’s guard was up now. This, coupled with Iroh’s anticipated return to the capital, would surely prevent Ozai from making a play for the throne for the sake of his own greed.
Azula’s demonstration had been far more disrespectful than Zuko’s war room outburst, and she hadn’t yet established herself as enough of an asset to escape an extreme punishment. Not banishment, since she was useful, and not permanent facial disfigurement, since a woman needed to be beautiful to be married off, but she knew he would do something drastic to her.
Unless she did something to definitively prove her worth, and soon.
As if summoned by her thoughts, the door gently creaked open.
Azula sat up, her fists igniting and her heart pounding, a million sense memories rushing through her head—
But the face that flickered into view was not an inmate or a guard, but her own mother’s, shadowed by a dark cloak.
“Azula,” she said softly. “I didn’t expect you to be awake.”
Azula slid out of bed, opening one fist and feeding the flame within it to further brighten the room. The other stayed raised. “What are you doing here at this hour?”
“...I just wanted to kiss you good night.”
“You stopped doing that years ago.”
Ursa’s face crumpled. “I shouldn’t have. I should have told you a story and tucked you in every night. I wish I had done so many things differently.”
Something was off. There were rapid footsteps and raised voices in the distance, even though it was past midnight.
Surely she hadn’t. Azula had attracted Azulon and Ozai’s ire this time, not Zuko; Ursa had no reason to take action. Ursa hadn’t visited her before her disappearance, either. Everything she did was for him. So why was her mother here visiting Azula, and not her son?
“What did you do?” she said, trying to conceal the worry in her voice.
Ursa stayed silent.
“You owe me,” Azula spat, anxiety churning into fury in her stomach. “You can at least give me an answer, if nothing else. What did you do?”
“Something I should have done a long time ago,” Ursa said, moving as if to touch Azula’s face, heedless of her flames. Azula flinched back; she’d be less concerned if Ursa had tried to hit her.
Ursa withdrew, cradling her hand against her chest as if Azula had bitten her. “I’m sorry, Azula. For everything.”
The words hit her like she imagined lightning might.
“Why are you here? Why are you saying this now?” Azula said, floating somewhere outside of her body. She could see the room as if from above, see the blue firelight shining in her mother’s hair. She wasn’t wearing her crown.
“I was so convinced that he was turning you into him that I… I forgot that I was supposed to protect you, too. I will always be sorry for that.”
“...Monsters don’t need protecting.”
Ursa’s eyes were damp. “You’re not a monster—”
“Then why don’t you love me?”
Ursa lurched forward, arms outstretched. “I love you, Azula, I do, I swear—”
The lightning was instinctual. Curbing its strength was not; Azula had never deliberately weakened herself before.
Her mother collapsed at her feet, dazed and twitching, but alive. Not even burned.
If she meant what she said, then Azula would use her to protect herself.
“Guards, guards, come quick!” Azula said. She was crying.
Good. It would make her more convincing.
Evidently, her guards had abandoned their posts in the unrest that was brewing outside; it was Umi, of all people, that burst in to answer her cries.
And then Azula was sobbing in earnest, running into Umi’s arms and unable to breathe around the painful lump in her throat.
“Princess, what happened?!” Umi said urgently, lifting her up and gasping at Ursa’s groaning form on the floor.
“She—she said she did some-m-thing to—to grandfather,” Azula wailed, coughing and clinging to Umi’s broad shoulders. “A-and she was going to do it to m-me, too! I had to stop her!”
Umi set her back on the floor, gently detangling the fingers that Azula hadn’t realized were still clinging to her clothes. Her face was grim. “Stay behind me, your highness.”
Ursa’s hands and feet were already bound by the time Azula’s actual guards thundered in, and Umi gave them the tongue lashing of a century for leaving the princess unprotected. Another guard, perhaps to save face, set about searching Ursa’s cloak, and exclaimed in horror when he found packets upon packets of poison. Azula hadn’t even needed to plant the knife Iroh had given Zuko, but he found that, too.
“She was planning… to use this on the little princess?” someone whispered, and at that point Fei had arrived to sweep her away, shielding her from Ursa’s silent, watery stare.
Azula wondered what prison she would end up in. Maybe that smug, taunting vision would finally cease to haunt her if they switched places.
Maybe someone would finally realize that Azula hadn’t deserved her fate if they were made to suffer it.
-
The next day, the assassination of Prince Ozai was announced to the Fire Nation.
Chapter Text
“Princess,” Fei said softly, “It’s time to wake up.”
It was an unnecessary reminder. Azula hadn’t slept.
She was hustled to Doctor Ying’s pavilion as soon as dawn broke. Ying, more furious than Azula had ever seen her, interrogated her about everything she had eaten and drank the day before and checked every inch of her for injuries. At the end of the appointment, she took Azula’s hand as though it were made of glass and told her that she could come to her for anything at any time, injury or no injury.
Azula couldn’t bring herself to respond; she made a beeline for the door as soon as she was pronounced “as well as she could be, given the circumstances.” She refused breakfast and went to her courtyard to train until she couldn’t breathe through the smoke.
Azula’s guards were closer to her than she typically allowed, bristling with ceremonial weaponry that caught the sunlight in a way that clashed with their duller on-duty armor. It was a foolish attempt at an intimidation display. She knew for a fact that most of them could bend far better than they could use a blade. None of them were wearing their skull masks; the dark rings under their eyes matched Azula’s own.
As the air shimmered with heat around her, Azula was vaguely aware of them driving away courtiers and tutors in funeral white; vaguely familiar servants; and military officials Azula had once commanded in the Earth Kingdom, their beards darker and their faces less lined. Around noon, one of her mother’s ladies dared to prostrate herself at the edge of the courtyard. She was married to someone too important to be thrown immediately into the dungeons, but evidently someone had taken her punishment into their own hands, judging by the bruising. Umi did not hesitate to kick her away, murmuring a threat that made the lady’s face change color to match her mourning robes.
As the sun dipped lower in the sky, Azula let the smoke clear and rinsed off the worst of the soot with the contents of the water jug Fei had brought her to drink. Umi offered to draw her a bath; Azulas’s refusal was venomous. The thought of anyone touching her bare skin made her want to scream. She wiped herself down with the contents of her washbasin after ordering Fei to wait outside her chambers with Umi and the rest of the guards. She dressed herself; her hands had finally healed enough to make it a simple task.
The regalia set out for her was not nearly so grand as it had been for Azulon’s funeral; there was no crown for her hair, no gold accents, merely crisp white funeral clothes with crimson lining. Instead of the heavy pointed boots she remembered, some idiot had delivered thin silk slippers more akin to something Mai or other well-bred noble girls wore to banquets. Azula made a mental note to have the soles of their feet caned while they were wearing the damn things.
The sky was still blue when Azula set off for the funeral, ringed by her guards. Were they not at war, there would have been a procession through the streets of the Caldera so that the peasants could mourn their fallen prince. Were the prince not murdered, the rich would have been able to bribe their way into the ceremony. Were the murderer not the princess, most of the courtiers and highly ranked nobility would be permitted to attend. However, Azulon had locked down the palace in an attempt to slow the news; as Azula walked through the halls, she saw only soldiers moving freely. Almost everyone else was confined to either sumptuous guest chambers or servants’ quarters, with the occasional milk-faced unfortunate being frog-marched to or from an interrogation. Even Fei and Umi had been detained after Azula declared that she no longer needed them for the day.
Umi, who had been at her side since the night before, was reluctant to leave. “How can I trust you with the princess’s safety when none of you were there when she needed you the most?” she asked furiously, coming dangerously close to knocking away the hands of the interrogators attempting to guide her away.
On any other day, Azula might have been amused by the way Umi gaped when her guards, to a man, bowed low to her. When the interrogators led her and a flustered Fei away to be questioned, it looked more like an honor guard than a detainment.
The sky was shot through with orange and pink by the time Azula exited, the sun just barely touching the western horizon. It was being held in the largest courtyard in the palace, where Ozai had once and would never ascend the throne and where Azula had won one Agni Kai against her brother and lost another to the Waterbender.
Azulon was seated, wrapped in floor length white and gold, looking even more old and tired than he had in his coffin the first time around. Zuko stood behind and slightly to the side of the makeshift throne used for such occasions. His mourning robes were similar to hers, other than his boots. His eyes were red, his face splotchy. He was trembling.
Azula took her place beside her brother. She let her hand brush his, and he seized it hard enough to hurt. Part of her wondered if it was intentional.
The Fire Sages soon began their droning recitation of funerary rites and sutras to a mostly-empty courtyard; the only people in attendance were generals and admirals, their faces grim.
Her father’s funeral was not nearly as grand as Azulon’s had been. That one had been held at sunrise. Granted, it had doubled as Ozai’s ascension ceremony, and the death of a Fire Lord was much more momentous than that of a spare (and an unfavored one, at that). But it should have been; lightning should have rent the earth and Sozin’s comet should have dyed the sky red.
Instead of a celebration of the legacy of the last Fire Lord after his timely death and the ascension of his young, handsome, even more warlike son, this was a direct blow against the stability of the royal family. The dispirited Earth Kingdom and Southern Water Tribe would be rejuvenated at this news, believing the killer to be one of their own striking a heroic blow at the very heart of their enemy. The people of the Fire Nation would be frightened and confused to see one of their princes fall at the height of their power, to say nothing of the chaos that would emerge once the identity of the assassin inevitably spread. Rogue elements such as Jeong Jeong and Piandao would be bolstered, and malcontents previously content to grumble amongst themselves would be emboldened into defecting outright.
Finally, the sutras ceased, and everything went silent when Azulon rose to address the assembled mourners.
“Honored defenders of the Fire Nation, I thank you for joining me today. As you know, my son, Prince Ozai, was murdered last night.” He paused, as though waiting for exclamations or questions. There were none. It was as if everyone in the palace were holding their breath. “And we have determined that this was murder, not an assassination. Some are still being questioned, but the perpetrator has already confessed. My son would not have fallen to Earth Kingdom scum or Water Tribe beasts; this was a betrayal in the heart of the palace itself.”
There were a few gasps, at that. One of them came from her right.
“My subjects, I share with you now that Prince Ozai’s wife has gone mad. She poisoned my son and attempted to kill one of my grandchildren as they slept.”
Zuko’s nails dug into Azula’s knuckles hard enough to draw blood.
Azulon turned to them. His face was the picture of resilience and sorrow, but his eyes were like a hawk’s. “Princess Azula, step forward.”
Azula had to drag Zuko behind her; she could hear his fast, uneven breaths and feel his pulse against her palm. Azulon’s eyes narrowed, displeased, but Azula was long used to covering for her disappointing older brother; she put herself between him and the crowd so that he wouldn’t embarrass the family further.
“The madwoman went to her own daughter’s chambers to kill her after murdering her father. Any child would have quailed in the face of such evil from their own mother. But the little princess’s royal blood ran true; she, at the tender age of eight, had the presence of mind not only to save herself, but to overpower her traitorous mother and leave her alive for questioning. No one showed more patriotism, more proof of the supremacy of the Fire Nation and of my father Sozin’s line than her that night.”
A slow, metallic thudding began around the courtyard in the midst of Azulon’s speech; she spotted one of her guards in the back, standing at attention and hitting his breastplate with his fist. By the end, the generals and admirals and even a few of the Fire Sages followed suit.
“Warriors of the Fire Nation!” Azulon cried, louder now to be heard over the rhythmic thuds. “Follow your princess’s example. Allow no hint of treachery, no chance of dishonor, even from your most beloved. Your loyalty is to the Fire Nation, to your princess, to your Fire Lord!”
Cheers broke out from the guards ringing the courtyard, with even a few generals joining in; all were applauding. At some point, Zuko had let go of her hand.
But all of that was unimportant. As the sun sank below the horizon and the Fire Sages set the coffin ablaze, sparks rising in defiance of the moon, Azula saw her father.
Ozai stood in the midst of the mourners, his Phoenix King robes resplendent in a sea of black armor and funeral white.
-
Azula dined with the Fire Lord in his private chambers that night. It was just them, the guards, a few fawn-legged servants, and a nervous food taster. She didn’t know where Zuko was.
“You conducted yourself admirably at the funeral, Azula,” said Azulon. She thought he might have said her name more that day than the entirety of her prior lifetime. “It reflects well on you that you have already inspired such loyalty in your men. I was unaware that so many in the palace hold you in such high esteem.”
“Thank you, grandfather,” she said. What little komodo chicken she’d managed to stomach sat like lead.
For the first time, he shifted in his seat. “What did your mother say to you last night? That female guard in training reported that you said Ursa spoke of me during your… confrontation.”
That, of course, had been a lie. Azula was trying to incriminate her mother for a crime that hadn’t been committed this time; mariticide was a much less severe transgression than regicide, in the grand scheme of things. She chewed her perfectly sauced cabbage rather more times than she needed to while formulating a response.
“She said… she said she had killed a tyrant, and would now kill his legacy,” Azula said, letting her voice quaver. “Father always told me that I was your legacy. That’s why I’m named after you. I didn’t know she meant someone else.”
That answer seemed to discomfit Azulon. His eyes, which had been steady on hers up to that point, slid away. “I see.” He cleared his throat. “Ozai was right to name you after me. You have lived up to it.”
Azula hummed agreeably. Someone was watching her from the corner; she could feel the heat of his gaze. She didn’t dare turn to look.
“Ursa will be publicly executed upon Iroh’s return. You will testify of her crimes to the crowd beforehand.” He hesitated. “You need not stay to watch, if you do not wish to.”
Azula’s stomach twisted. “Of course, grandfather.”
He studied her for a moment, a myriad of microexpressions playing across his weathered features. “Ozai was right, when he spoke to me of how exceptional you are. He would be proud of you.”
Azula didn’t look in the corner.
They took the rest of their meal in silence. Once the dishes were cleared away, Azulon asked if she liked fruit tarts; Azula politely demurred, saying that she wasn’t fond of sweets. Azulon, looking a bit relieved, dismissed her from his presence.
Azula spent the rest of the night vomiting until all she could produce was bile. In the corner of her room, someone was watching her.
Chapter Text
The day of Iroh’s return was overcast, a shroud of clouds obscuring the sun’s face. It had been three weeks since they received the news about Lu Ten; Azula had forgotten how slow travel was before the invention of airships. She resolved to introduce the concept to the royal engineers as soon as possible.
The preparations to welcome home the returning war heroes were comically lavish compared to Ozai’s quick, subdued funeral. The Royal Plaza was lined with soldiers in ceremonial armor, pennants streaming from their spears, the road from the harbor to the Caldera strewn with fire lily petals. Peasants thronged and nobles watched from their palanquins, bright cotton festival attire and silken finery all flapping in the stiff sea breeze. Azula understood the necessity of the display; they needed their citizens focused on the heir to the throne and his as-yet unbroken string of victories, not the embarrassing death of the spare at the hands of his own wife. The execution would likely be more elaborate than the funeral, if only due to the inherent pageantry of burning someone to death—the mandated punishment for any crime against the royal family.
The figure pacing back and forth in her peripheral vision was less understanding. He’d always had an eye for the ostentatious; even now, he wore his Phoenix King regalia.
Azula, Zuko, and the Fire Lord waited atop a hastily constructed platform festooned with tapestries bearing the insignia of the Fire Nation. She hadn’t seen Zuko since the funeral. His young face was gaunt, with dark shadows under both of his perfect eyes. He wouldn’t get his scar unless she gave it to him herself.
Azulon stood tall in celebratory red and gold. He had refused a chair. The only sign he showed of his age was the weight he occasionally leaned on Azula, disguised as a grandfatherly hand on her shoulder. He was smart enough not to rely on Zuko for anything. Azula quelled her discomfort by imagining all the ways she could hurt him if his hand moved anywhere she didn’t want to be touched. The ship was taking an interminably long time to reach the harbor.
Once the ship was close enough for them to make out the individual figures on deck, someone signaled for the musicians to start up a triumphant cacophony of horns and drums. Azula doubted the sailors would be able to hear it over the wind and the crash of waves against the prow, but it had the desired effect of whipping the peasants into a patriotic frenzy. After the tense and fearful period after the funeral, they seized the opportunity to celebrate with alacrity.
The crowd’s mood dipped audibly once they finally disembarked. Iroh was in fine form, clad in armor for a proper triumphant return, but Lu Ten did not make an appearance.
“Father,” Iroh called, vaulting onto the platform with the ease of a much younger man and delighting their subjects with his lack of ceremony. He had more brown than grey in his beard and even in his receding hair. Losing Lu Ten had aged him.
“Iroh,” replied Azulon, more warmly than Azula had known he was capable of. Iroh bowed low, emphasizing his fealty by contrasting it against his informal arrival. Azula was a bit embarrassed that she had written him off before it became clear who was pulling the strings. Every move was calculated, especially the affectionate greeting he gave Zuko, which reeled him in like a fish on a line.
“And Azula,” he said, his tone genial but his eyes piercing as he stared at the hand on her shoulder. Iroh’s own rested atop Zuko’s head, making Zuko look every inch the dog Azula had accused him of being before he left her to die. “Lu Ten will be pleased to see you again. Your letter brought him much comfort as he convalesced.”
Azula doubted a document outlining the siege’s failures and offering a far superior alternative (that he didn’t take) did any such thing.
As Iroh turned to address the people, Azula noticed that the crew were already unloading the cargo. Unusual, for a triumphant return. Especially the box they carried into the lighthouse with utmost care.
The hand on her shoulder squeezed in warning. When she looked up, the Fire Lord gave a miniscule shake of his head, then directed his gaze at Iroh’s grandiose gesticulating. Point taken. Azula carefully kept her eyes forward for the rest of the ceremony, even when the pacing figure came so close she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.
She didn’t have to wait long; the voyage must have taxed Iroh, though he hid it well. He wrapped up his address in minutes and the music kicked in again to distract the rabble.
“Announce to the nobility that I will be holding court in the Komodo Rhino Pavilion today, and not my throne room,” Azulon ordered the closest servant, who just so happened to be Fei. (She was forever underfoot recently; someone must have promoted her.) There would be a mad dash to join the queue to speak before the Fire Lord—he hadn’t held court since well before the funeral. Repairing the hole in the roof of the throne room took precedence over hearing the needs of their subjects, since Azulon would not risk rain extinguishing the sacred flame that had burned since the dragons lit it to honor the first Fire Lord. Preserving it was especially important considering that Iroh would soon kill the last one; he’d originally done it during his sabbatical after Lu Ten’s death, so Azula wasn’t sure how that would affect the timeline. Perhaps, if she trained hard enough, she could steal his trophy. Not that Iroh had bothered to take one; instead of its head, he had just presented a tuft of its beard, claiming that the skull was too large for a lone traveler to transport. He’d had a fireproof dragonwool scarf made out of it, instead of mounting it on a wall or putting it in a display case.
“Azula, you will join me.”
Azula blinked. The hand on her shoulder was heavy with more than just an old man’s weight. Zuko was wide-eyed, but thankfully remained silent. Azula hadn’t heard him speak once that day.
Iroh’s reaction was even more subdued; his smile faltered only slightly. “I see. I would attend, but I must see to Lu Ten.”
So he hadn’t died in the voyage. Azula had half expected the box to contain his corpse, since it seemed a rather undignified way to transport a living royal invalid. Perhaps Iroh still cared more about his image than his son’s health, since he was now a living embarrassment rather than a dead justification.
“Do not allow him to weigh you down now, Iroh,” Azulon warned. “The nation needs their crown prince, not his crippled nonbender spawn.”
Iroh’s mask didn’t crack. “Please allow your foolish son his indulgences. I am weary from the voyage and would shame my title if I were to speak before the court in my current state.”
That was a lie, considering how well he’d just played to the crowd. Azula glanced up at her grandfather to gauge his reaction and was perturbed to see him soften, if only slightly. Her father would not have tolerated such defiance from his favorite.
“You will hold court tomorrow, then. You must relearn the ways of the capital after your years at war.”
“Understood, Fire Lord,” Iroh replied, bowing just as low as he had before. He set off for the lighthouse with Zuko trailing behind him like a turtleduckling; Azula wondered if he’d forgotten his nephew was there.
“Come, princess,” the Fire Lord ordered, steering her firmly towards the royal palanquin. (Another palanquin rested unobtrusively near the lighthouse, much less ornate but just as large as the one they had used to get there.) The guards would beat back the traffic until they reached the palace. This was her all-female guard’s first public appearance, and they were chomping at the bit to handle any inconveniences that might present themselves. Umi cut an especially imposing figure in her new captain’s uniform. The gleam of teeth visible through the slits in her skull mask somehow contributed to the effect, even though her grin normally made her look like a buffoon.
The trip back was uneventful, other than Azulon’s order that she periodically open the curtain and wave at the common folk. Azula hadn’t anticipated the cheers and well-wishes and teary blessings. People typically prayed for their own safety and longevity when they saw her, not Azula’s.
The bloodthirsty howling for Ursa’s death was, of course, natural. At one point they passed what would be her pyre. Azula kept the curtain closed for that leg of the journey.
The Komodo Rhino Pavilion was made of roughly hewn stone, instead of the painted tile and carved wood found in the personal gardens of the royal family. Its only ornamentation was the weathered komodo rhino heads chiseled into its four corbels, which faced each of the four cardinal directions. Each had a different expression for what they represented: ferocity, strength, resilience, steadfastness. Azulon may as well have been beating the nobility over the head with his message. Azula was correct to spend just as much time with her tutors as she did training—she would not have understood, otherwise.
A warrior without sufficient knowledge was just a weapon. Her former wielder had set her aside, foolishly believing himself invincible while unarmed, and the Fire Nation had paid the price for it. She shouldn’t have lied that Zuko was the one to strike down the Avatar. Maybe then he wouldn’t have thrown her away like everyone else did.
He was watching her now. He wasn’t the only one. A long line of courtiers and military officials snaked around the courtyard.
Everyone holding or seeking power ( who could be spared from the war front) had flocked to the Caldera to mourn one prince and welcome home another. This was Azula’s first official appearance before the court, and instead of some banquet or dance arranged to introduce her to the children of the elite, she was kneeling beside the Fire Lord as he listened to the desires of the elites themselves. It was hardly unusual to introduce royalty to the political sphere at an early age, but that was typically reserved for teenaged crown princes, not eight-year-old princesses outside of the line of succession.
Azula endured volleys of praise. No matter the grievance or the request, everyone had something to say about her talent, her luck, her intelligence, her prudence, or her skill. Were she a prince, they might have mentioned her strength or her ferocity, but those terms weren’t considered compliments when delivered to young ladies. Each virtue was, of course, attributed to Azulon or to Sozin or even, occasionally, to her grandmother Ilah.
No one noticed or spoke about the figure looming behind her. He hadn’t had the chance to do much of note before he died. And no one dared to imply that Azula had any similarities to his killer.
One word became increasingly common as the day wore on. Beautiful. Almost always from a man’s mouth. Many of them had brought their sons. Many of them didn’t have sons. They all eyed her like they were appraising livestock. Azula wanted her green female guards, not Azulon’s company of battle-hardened veterans. They were standing too close. Were they looking at her like that, too? Her vision swam. Her palms and the insides of her cheeks bled, unable to withstand the abuse of her nails and teeth. She had made sure to fix the strands of her hair that the ocean winds that enabled Iroh’s return had blown out of place, but she could tell that they were wrong again.
And then, like a knife in the back, appeared Mai and her family.
“My humble greetings to the Fire Lord,” Ukano began, bowing low. His wife and daughter followed suit, picture perfect and mechanical. Azula couldn’t remember his title, since she hadn’t elevated him to governor of one of the cities she conquered yet. “We have no requests. We simply wish to convey our well wishes to the young princess. My own daughter has often been her playmate, and we hope she may once again lift Princess Azula’s spirits.”
Mai wouldn’t meet her eyes. Her face was as smooth and cool as porcelain.
“Ruin her,” someone whispered in her ear. She could smell the ashes of the funeral pyre on his breath.
“Grandfather,” she said, just loud enough for the courtier next in line to hear. She let the rage heating her blood appear as a maidenly blush. “That girl was never actually my friend. She had designs on my older brother.” She whispered the next words, but didn’t lower her volume in the slightest: “I stopped associating with her after I found her in… his bedroom.”
There. Let the nation chuckle over their youngest prince’s precocious virility, even as they declared Mai forever stained. Her parents would suffer almost as much for reaching so high above their station in an attempt to force a marriage. It wasn’t even a lie. Mai had thrown herself at Zuko the moment Azula gave her permission.
She claimed to love Zuko more than she feared Azula. Azula would teach her just how foolish she was. Let Mai suffer just a fraction of the punishment she had dodged by warming her brother’s bed.
Mai’s mother gasped. Her father went white. Azula struggled not to smile as Mai’s porcelain facade didn’t just crack, but shatter. She hid her red, crumpled face in her sleeves and fled; she was smart enough not to speak out in her own defense, even if she might not yet grasp just how comprehensively Azula had torched her future.
She was still a child, after all. Just like Azula had been.
Chapter Text
Azula was permitted to visit Lu Ten the next day.
“Follow your cousin’s example and do what must be done for the sake of your nation,” the Fire Lord intoned as he walked her to the heir’s wing. These halls were more familiar to her than any other in the palace, but as far as he knew, she had never set foot there before. “Remember that your mother tried to do to you what those Earth Kingdom worms tried to do to him.”
He wasn’t bothering with subtlety. Azula supposed young children were usually too stupid to recognize blatant manipulation. Some, like Zuko, never grew out of it.
Azulon’s hand was heavy and uncomfortably warm on her shoulder. He was ninety-five years old, but his grip held the strength of a younger man, enough to make Azula nervous about having it so near her neck. They were ringed on all sides by Azulon’s guard, the elite of the elites. Following at a respectful distance was Azula’s female guard; her original batch of incompetents had been reassigned to the peripheral guest quarters where provincial nobles from the colonies stayed while on official business.
They came to a stop in front of an ornate door, covered with fierce hawks inlaid with bronze, that Azula vaguely recognized as the entrance to what had been Zuko’s chambers in the brief years between Ozai’s ascension and her brother’s banishment. Azula, being the Fire Lord’s favored child, had stayed in the heir’s chambers, their doors etched with snarling silver dragons. She would have to train herself to think of them as her uncle’s again—it wouldn’t do for her to stumble there in the throes of an episode.
One of the guards announced their presence. A servant answered, but his ability to stall was on par with Fei’s; he begged for their patience as the invalid gathered himself in order to greet them properly.
Azula wrinkled her nose; the lingering sickly sweet scent wafting from behind him told a slightly different story. Lu Ten had picked up a distasteful habit in the Earth Kingdom.
They were still waiting when Iroh rounded the corner and approached them at a clip slightly too harried to be welcoming. Lu Ten’s servants were loyal as much as they were professional, it seemed.
“It’s a surprise to see you here, Father,” Iroh said, surfacing from a hurried bow. “Were you looking for me?”
“No, though Agni knows you’ve been lingering here too often since your return,” Azulon retorted. “The princess wished to visit her cousin.”
Iroh greeted her as though noticing her for the first time. He may not have been acting; Azula was small at this age, and dressed in plain training clothes that Azulon’s finery and draping sleeves easily eclipsed. Rather than meeting her eyes, his gaze was once again locked on Azulon’s hand where it rested on her shoulder.
“It is a sweet thought, but Lu Ten is injured, and in no fit state to entertain young ladies, family or otherwise,” Iroh declared.
“I’m sorry, uncle,” Azula lied. “I was so eager to see Lu Ten again that I didn’t realize he wouldn’t want to see anyone, even family.” She knew for a fact that Iroh had brought Zuko to visit Lu Ten earlier that day, since Fei’s new coterie of underlings had taken to reporting all of the royal family’s comings and goings to her, but challenging Iroh in front of her grandfather was a bad idea.
“It matters little if Lu Ten is in a fit state to receive the Fire Lord,” Azulon said. “The princess is here to learn what evil our enemies will wreak against the royal family, and why we must repay them tenfold.”
“...I see,” Iroh replied, the skin around his mouth tightening, “But I fear this may be too harsh a lesson for a girl so young. Please let Lu Ten rest a while longer before he entertains Azula’s whims.”
“We are here at my pleasure, not hers,” Azulon said, a note of finality in his voice. “If he is to be your heir, Iroh, he has fiercer storms to weather than this.”
A muscle in Iroh’s jaw ticked, not quite concealed by his beard, but he relented. Azula subtly relaxed her stance, still concealed by Azulon’s sleeve, and stayed by his side as he swept into Lu Ten’s bedchamber. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled when she felt more than heard Iroh follow.
It was past noon, and the room was favorably situated with a courtyard to the east and windows to the west, so it gave the appearance of being light and airy even if the atmosphere was decidedly heavier. There was no lingering smoke, despite the strong sickly sweet smell, which spoke well of her cousin’s willpower, or maybe just the speed at which his servants could air out a room.
“Grandfather,” Lu Ten said, “Forgive me for not greeting you properly.”
Azula almost didn’t recognize him. The Lu Ten of her memories was tall and broad, proud and strong, with an unreadable smile and eyes like embers. The figure lying propped by pillows in his bed seemed shrunken in comparison, despite the bulky dressings encasing his three remaining limbs. His neat sideburns had grown over his chin like untended scrub, his sleek topknot traded for a wild tangle falling over his shoulders. He hadn’t lost the golden brown tone of his skin, but it had an unhealthy gray undertone that matched the bags under his eyes. Even the embers in his gaze were slightly glazed over.
He was lucky he had only lost one limb, but it didn’t surprise her. The Dai Li’s stone hands were much more precise, and thus less lethal, than attacks from the average Earthbender. Long Feng was an overcautious man by nature.
“Welcome home, Lulu,” Azula said, letting the smile she’d borrowed from him spread evenly across her face. “You owe me a pair of swords.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Iroh bridle in offense—
—and then Lu Ten burst into laughter.
Iroh sat down heavily. The air in the room got a little easier to breathe, but Azula kept a weather eye on him as she approached Lu Ten’s bed.
“Ah, don’t write me off just yet, little cousin,” he chuckled, his grin wide and sharp, his eyes a little less glazed. This close, the sickly sweet scent of smoke on his clothes mixed unpleasantly with the sour tang of sweat. She made a mental note to have Fei take over his sponge baths, since his servants were obviously more interested in reporting to Iroh than wiping him down properly. “You’re not getting those till I’m cooking on my pyre.”
“I wouldn’t have much use for them, anyway,” she sniffed, sitting primly on the edge of his mattress. One of his manservants made as if to shoo her away from the prince’s bandaged legs, but Lu Ten shook his head and he subsided. “Has Doctor Ying visited you yet? She’s undoubtedly better than whatever butchers you had in the Earth Kingdom.”
“She and her apprentice both,” Lu Ten said, subsiding into something approaching the unreadable smile Azula had once envied. Hers always looked a little sharper, but there wasn’t much she could do about the shape of her face or her inability to grow facial hair. “They fixed me up as best they could.”
“They could have done better with your hair,” Azula said, eyeing the tangle on his head with distaste.
Lu Ten snorted. “Forgive me, I lost most of your hair ties in the heat of battle.”
The imperfection was beginning to needle at her. She felt the phantom weight of matted hair on her shoulders.
“I’ll comb it out for you,” she decided, and turned to the servant who had kept her waiting at the door for so long. “Fetch me that, and something to tie it with.”
Azulon sighed, but there was no heat in it. He’d been watching them intently in silence; she had noticed that it was a habit of his over the past few days. An unusual one for a Fire Lord to have, though she supposed it was why his reign had been as stable as it was. “Come, Iroh. We have much to discuss. Leave my grandchildren to their reunion.”
Iroh was not in the habit of silent observation, since he loved the sound of his own voice too much for that, but she’d been watching him watch her since she came into the room. He nodded slowly, his eyes flicking between her and Lu Ten. He stood and approached the bed. Azula fought the urge to spring to her feet.
“Send for me if you need anything,” Iroh said, a tender hand clasping his son by the back of the neck, and then he did something he’d never done before. He patted Azula on the shoulder, in the same spot Azulon was so fond of leaning on.
Azula had to tense every muscle in her body to contain her first two reactions, a violent outburst and a dramatic recoil, respectively. She’d never seen Iroh touch a woman in a non-lecherous way before; she much preferred the condescending pat to the horrible alternative, but it still made her skin crawl.
Lu Ten also went tense at his touch. She could tell Iroh noticed. Something in his eyes went wet and wounded, as though he hadn’t been the one to push his son to the front lines in pursuit of glory. He departed without another word, glancing over his shoulder as Azulon drew him into hushed conversation on their way out.
Once the servant brought Azula a comb and a hair tie, Lu Ten dismissed them, as well. They sat in silence for the next few minutes as she worked the comb through his greasy knots. She knew she yanked out quite a bit of his hair, but he didn’t utter a word of complaint. Any pain or discomfort likely paled in comparison to the indignities captivity had heaped upon him, however short. Azula could relate.
Recreating his perfect topknot was an order of magnitude more difficult than tearing through tangles with a comb. It took five tries, but Lu Ten allowed it without complaint, his shoulders relaxed and his breathing slow and deep even when Azula scratched his scalp and yanked him this way and that in search of a better angle. It might have been wiser to wait until he could fully sit up to attempt this.
“Send my servants in with a fresh pipe on your way out,” Lu Ten said drowsily once she was finished.
“No. It’s a filthy habit and a weakness, Lulu. You don’t need it.”
Lu Ten’s eyes snapped open. She was gratified to see them burning with contained rage; with the topknot, he looked almost like his old self.
“You know nothing about what I need, Azula. A pampered bender princess like you will never experience anything half as painful.”
“I know enough about pain to recognize a crutch,” Azula snapped. “You’ll shame the royal family if you become an addict.”
It took visible effort for Lu Ten not to react to that. His face looked a bit like Ozai’s did when Azula managed to singe him during a spar. “You know a lot about things you shouldn’t, little princess.”
Azula found herself reacting like she did when she knew her father was about to hurt her: going still, going silent, and waiting for the strike to land.
“How does a sheltered, pampered princess know so much about the Dai Li?”
Azula didn’t answer right away. She needed to tread very carefully.
“Well?” Lu Ten prompted. “My father barely skimmed the first paragraph of your letter, but I read it in its entirety. It’s the only reason I escaped. You knew exactly how they would hurt me. How they would humiliate me.” For the first time, his voice shook.
Azula closed her eyes for a moment. She’d wondered if they had him at their mercy long enough to get around to that. Eunuchs had fallen out of fashion in the Earth Kingdom since the onset of the war, but Earth Kingdom soldiers often made a point of targeting their opponents’ virility. The Dai Li's precision meant that it was one of their go-to field interrogation tactics.
No matter. She’d deal with the ramifications of that once Lu Ten was on the throne. This was an opportunity to cut the head off the snake. Iroh would still have his fangs, would still drip venom in her brother’s ear, but even if things went wrong he wouldn’t be able to slowly choke the Fire Nation to death the way he had before. If she played her tiles right, he might even take revenge on the appropriate target, and not his own people.
“I don’t know how much you’ve heard about my mother’s betrayal,” she began.
Lu Ten’s brows furrowed. “My father wouldn’t say much. Zuko even less.”
Of all the times for her brother to learn how to hold his tongue.
“She killed my father, and she tried to kill me,” Azula said. She made herself go stone faced; the smell of burning meat abruptly overpowered the sickly sweet scent of Lu Ten’s pipe. “But… I haven’t told anyone everything she did. Not even grandfather. Maybe he knows I’m holding something back. Maybe that’s why he wanted me to visit you, before she’s executed tonight.” To her horror, her voice wavered; she needed to get through this. She needed to convince him.
“What did she do, Azula?”
“I don’t want them to think she’s even more of a traitor than they thought,” Azula said. Her throat was closing up. Her eyes were burning. She used to be such a gifted liar. What was wrong with her?
Lu Ten, with a groan of pain and effort, leaned forward enough that his forehead nearly brushed hers. “Azula. You need to tell me.”
“…I read one of mother’s letters in the aviary before her ladies in waiting got there.” The lie was like sand in her throat. The smell of cooking meat was growing stronger. “And then, while I was waiting for uncle's response, I read more. She was corresponding… conspiring with an organization called the White Lotus. To kill you. To topple the Fire Nation.”
This was the most unbelievable lie she’d ever told, including the one about the 400 foot tall purple platypus bear with pink horns and silver wings. She wouldn’t even be able to trick Zuko, much less that damned Earthbender or her cousin. This was a disaster.
“Why wouldn’t you tell anyone?!” Lu Ten asked. Of course, he was seeing right through her.
“I don’t know who I can trust,” Azula said, her voice breaking around the lump in her throat. She turned, finally unable to resist looking, and instead of Ozai burning, it was Ursa, her eyes full of tears. “They have agents in our nation, in our family, Lu Ten, and grandfather is so old. He’ll die soon whether they kill him or not. I don’t know how to save our nation.” Something hot and wet streaked down her face. “I’m scared I won’t be able to.”
“Azula.”
She couldn’t look away from the burning apparition.
“Azula.”
Through a throat full of ash, it rasped, “I love you, Azula.”
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