On Top of the World

by mindbending

Summary:

“Lord Agni,” Azula says, swallowing a laugh. It’s hilarious that she’s down on her knees, praying like she can rely on any force but herself. “I have power, but I’d like some more if you’d be so obliging. Power to get the things I want. Power so grand, it’ll shock everyone on earth- even me, if you can manage that.” She snorts before adding on her last ridiculous, meaningless request. “Power to match the Avatar’s or outdo him, if you’d like!”

Or: after the Boiling Rock debacle, Azula gets what she didn't quite wish for and wakes up as an airbender.

Notes:

• For Museflight.

This story is a gift for Museflight, who graciously participated in the Fandom Trumps Hate charity event. They asked for "an AU where Azula's firebending is somehow replaced by airbending, preferably during canon."

This fic is part of the Secret Tunnel Big Bang and will feature art by the fabulous Goorin.

Chapter 1

“Azula, please. Come in.”

Father’s voice is light and amused, as it should be. The Day of Black Sun’s ended in triumph. The pitiful invasion was crushed. Azula personally defended the Fire Lord and held the Avatar off, even without fire. Most importantly, Zuko’s committed treason and eliminated himself from the line of succession. 

(An unexpected kindness on his part. It saves her and Father the trouble.)

Azula does not smirk at the Imperial Firebenders as she enters the throne room, because she hasn’t been named the heir just yet and she has no interest in accusations of overconfidence. Still, she lets herself picture herself on the dais for one moment. She pictures herself on top of the world, above even the Fire Nation’s finest ministers, reigning over the world from behind her unbreakable wall of blue flame...

The throne room doors slam shut behind her, and Azula falls to a proper kneel. For a moment, there’s only silence.

For no reason, she shivers.

“I had the most fascinating conversation with Zuko, before he deprived us of his presence,” Father remarks, and now the humor turns sharp like a blade. “He drew his swords on me…”

Azula can’t help the giggle. During the eclipse she felt traces of sparks at her fingertips- a cold, lazy red, but sparks nonetheless. They were the backup plan for if her Dai Li agents failed her. And that meant Father would’ve easily been able to defend himself, especially with his guards a yell away, so Zuko only survived his transgression because Father allowed him to.

“He informed me that he already knew the Avatar was alive, even before I received news of his attack,” Father says, words smooth, every syllable clear as his lightning. “You might be surprised that Zuko would achieve that insight, of all people, but he is the world expert on the Avatar’s affairs.”

Azula chuckles again. Though Father doesn’t seem to notice, the sound comes less easily. For a moment, she counts her breaths, which threaten to speed up without permission.

“I suppose he suspected the death was a sham even in Ba Sing Se,” Father continues. “From the second you failed to strike the Avatar down.”

Azula stops breathing.

But Father’s breaths carry on. She can track each grand inhale as the red wall dividing them leaps, and leaps higher, until his face is entirely obscured by fire. Until she can see nothing of him but the pronged golden headpiece that marks him as Fire Lord.

“I’m sure you suspected too,” he remarks, voice cold as ice.

“I made a calculation to strengthen the royal family-“

“You failed, and then you lied.” Father silences her with precise, ferocious enunciation. “To me.”

He falls silent, and Azula is suddenly very aware that she’s standing where Zuko was, when he challenged that general.

“Out.”

Azula rises and walks out. If she was even a shred freer in her manners, she’d run.

/

At the Boiling Rock, Mai sides with Zuko. Somehow, between his dropped ice cream and fireside tantrums, Zuko won her heart. She’s his now.

Azula shows her no mercy. There’s no such thing, at least for her. For her mercy is another word for foolishness, for allowing your declared enemies a second chance to let you down, and so Mai’s left her no choice but to sharpen her will and clear her mind. Azula has no choice but to extend two fingers, to fire a volley of tiny, precise flame jets that’ll outmatch Mai’s precious shuriken-

She waits a heartbeat too long. She’s made the mistake of demanding an explanation, as if any explanation could justify treachery, and she pays for it, falling chi-blocked to the ground. It’s a pathetic, undignified position for a princess, crashing face-first into the floor, and though the guards prop her up soon enough she keeps floundering, limbs still weak and wobbly.

Despite the warmth from the boiling lake, she’s never felt so cold in her life.

/

It takes a long while to return to the palace- longer than it should, but in a rare moment of common sense her brother ran off with her war balloon. She doesn’t like to admit it, but Zuko’s danced closer and closer to common sense since his exile. 

(Of course, not even the thickest-skulled fool could undergo that Agni Kai without learning some lesson.)

Her fire returns. She makes sure of it, kindles flames in both hands as soon as the slightest control returns. The fire is cold and flimsy, a dull red with mere flickers of orange. It’s an embarrassment. And there’s absolutely no reason for it-

(Not that there’s any reason for her fire to be hot anymore, is there, not when everyone leaves, not when she can’t even win a fight against two non-benders she’s studied all her life or keep Zuko from running away again?)

- until she realizes her chi might still be half-blocked, thanks to Ty Lee’s machinations.

She stretches her fingers, gritting her teeth as they buzz and twinge. She ignores the pain, willing strength and purpose back into them.

/

“It is difficult to lose the support of a confidante,” Li says. 

(Or maybe that’s Lo. Even Father can’t reliably tell them apart. Only Uncle’s ever learned the trick, but it’s not like he’d share.)

“Don’t exaggerate,” Azula snaps at whichever one of them had the misfortune to address her. “This is a minor inconvenience at the most. It has no real impact on the fate of the Fire Nation, and that means it has no real impact on me, either.”

The two of them give each other an inscrutable look. Then the one on the left offers another creaky bit of advice: “Perhaps you might seek comfort from a different source-“

“I don’t need comfort,” she squawks. It’s an uncouth outburst. For a moment she reminds herself uncomfortably of-

(She takes several deep breaths to calm herself.)

(She is far better than Zuko.)

“Of course you do not,” the other one simpers.

Azula’s being placated, like a baby. Though she resents the attempt to handle her, she keeps her composure and an open mind.

“We simply mean,” says the first, “that you may be strengthened by aid from an unusual ally. It was the ancient tradition of Fire Lords to commune with the sun spirit and ask his assistance.”

She’s not wrong. It was an ancient tradition, and it went the way of the Fire Nation’s dancing festivals and similarly outdated relics. The royal family is descended from Agni himself, and according to legend he used to visit them regularly. Of course he hasn’t spoken with a Fire Lord in the past five generations, but that’s the greatest sign of his approval. Recent Fire Lords have been so well-attuned to his will that he could provide no possible correction.

(One Fire Sage whispered there might be another reason for Agni’s silence, and his heresy got him sent to Crescent Island. The last she heard, he got himself executed for some Avatar treachery.)

Azula’s tempted to brush off the suggestion. She has better things to do than kneel in a shrine and utter prayers no one’s listening to.

(But she discreetly kindles a flame in one hand behind her back, and she finds it still weak and guttering.)

“Very well.” She smiles at them both. “What harm could it do?”

/

The Head Sage raises an eyebrow, when she issues her request to visit the old royal shrine to Agni.

“It does still exist,” he informs her. “Fire Lord Sozin tore down the main temple of the time and rebuilt one far grander, quite literally elevated. Though Agni’s shrine once stood on open ground, directly under the sun, it is now below the main temple, preserved underground in what’s become the Dragonbone Catacombs.”

“I assume it’s been properly maintained?”

He pauses. “It is cleaned regularly, Your Highness.” He pauses again. “We would be truly honored to have you visit.”

“Of course.” She sniffs. “Show me the way.”

It’s not what one might call a pleasant tour. Though the main temple is showy and glorious, an appropriate reflection of a magnificent country, the underground level is drafty and more than a little grim, even if it’s just as well-guarded against trespassers. Noting the cobwebs clinging to tarnished silver sculptures and dusty bones, Azula tsks. The Head Sage squirms appropriately at her displeasure, assuring her he’ll double the cleanings.

He leads her down a particularly poorly-lit hallway and stops several feet from the end. “Through here, Your Highness. As I am no child of Agni and lack the Fire Lord’s permission, I will not go a step further.”

Azula squares her shoulders and resists the urge to double-check her top-knot. Stepping forth, she unlocks the door with a blast of fire; it’s red, but the Sage doesn’t remark on it. After all, it’s safer to use cooler fire on old doors like this, since cutting-edge blue like hers might overheat the old locking mechanisms.

The door slides open, and she strides into the tiny shrine with a little red flame in her palm to light the place. There are paintings on the walls, but they’re old and weathered from long-ago days in the sun. Azula squints for a moment, bringing her light close, and she makes out a circle cut into quadrants. The bottom half shows a boxy, simplified form of the Earth Kingdom’s symbol, next to a circle with squiggles inside. Up top though, the circumference of the circle is broken, and whatever was inscribed within it has faded, long since gone.

She spends a moment wondering what the meaning might be and then gives it up. Instead she bends down and lights a stick of incense. She’s pleased to see several sticks ready and waiting- even if the sages can’t enter to worship here it’s their job to keep it clean and ready- and she places one in its proper dish. She glances over her shoulder to verify that the metal door’s slid entirely shut, granting her privacy. Then she kneels, falling into proper seiza, and opens her mouth to make her grand address-

Only to realize she has no words.

What is it she wants? To be Fire Lord, yes, but that’ll surely come in its time; she has no intent of wishing a faster death on her father just to get her crown. She could ask for her friends back, but what use would that be, when she knows now that they’d just leave her at the next opportunity? She could ask for her mother back, but Agni would laugh in her face.

(She’d laugh in her own face.)

She’s overthinking this, surely. There’s no reason to choose her words carefully when no one will care, when she’s addressing a god who hasn’t heard a Fire Lord’s prayer in over a century.

“Lord Agni,” Azula says, before she has to stop and swallow a laugh. It’s suddenly hilarious that she’s down here in the dark, down on her knees, praying like she can rely on any force but herself. When she resumes, she doesn’t even bother with the pretense of piety. “I have power, but I’d like some more if you’d be so obliging. Power to get the things I want. Power so grand, it’ll shock everyone on earth- even me, if you can manage that.” She snorts before adding on her last ridiculous, meaningless request. “Power to match the Avatar’s. Or outdo him, if you’d like!”

She waits for her words to quit echoing, rattling around the empty darkness. There’s no whirlwind of flame, no sudden golden glow to shower light on her face, no sign that Agni heard an Agni-damned syllable she said.

With a huff, she shoves herself back to her feet, mentally castigating herself for her own folly. It’ll be embarrassing, if Father hears of this little escapade- he’s long held that begging spirits for personal attention is a waste of time. According to Lo it’s a major point of contention between him and Uncle Iroh. Or it was, until the treason overshadowed it.

She hurls fire back into the locking mechanism. It burns hot, some careless tinges of blue bleeding through. The door slides open obediently, and she marches back out and ignores the Sage’s curious glances. She has nothing to tell him. Like generations of royals before her she felt nothing, no sign of Agni’s favor.

(Nothing but a breeze ruffling her hair before she blasted the lock, a playful current in what should’ve been an airless room. She dismisses that as wishful thinking.)

/

A few nights later, a breeze wakes Azula from sleep, ghosting over her face. She shoots upright, hands extended and ready to throw fire, but there’s no movement. Nothing but the ripple of a red curtain.

She pulls herself from bed to inspect the window and verify that it’s closed. Around it, the heavy fabric of the curtain slows its movements. Of course, it shouldn’t have been moving in the first place. 

(A sign of treachery. Treachery from the guards outside her door, or maybe the guards outside who ought to be watching this window. It was stupid to fall sleep, pretending she could trust anyone.)

Azula whirls around. Then she raises her hands to shoot fire at the light fixture above her, illuminating the room and flushing out any intruders still remaining-

No fire comes out.

She inhales. She doesn’t panic. She dismisses the fear that dares to make her weak and stupid, and she summons another focused stream of flame.

Nothing.

She tries again, and again, punching and kicking and even throwing in some of those savage cries that Zuko can’t bend without, but she just winds up breathless and exhausted in the darkness. When she finally stops, she raises her hands. She inspects them, and wonders if they were the traitors all along.

The curtains are rippling again, though she hasn’t touched them.

“Your Highness.” There’s a knock on her door. “I heard a noise, are you alright?”

That’s a servant, the same one who’s washed her hair for the better part of a decade, and for a moment, Azula thinks of letting her in. For a moment, she thinks of summoning the palace, the entire country, to her aid.

“I’m fabulous,” she snaps back. Then she stays still, listening to the mousy patter of footsteps in retreat.

Azula doesn’t trust anyone. She can’t. Not when her first thought is poison, because Mother told her of toxins that could suppress bending like this, and if someone managed to poison her they couldn’t do it without the help of the guards. There are tasters for this kind of thing. She knows because she’s watched them fall, loyal servants of the Fire Nation, writhing on the floor after one bad bite.

(She may be fourteen. That doesn’t mean this court wouldn’t rather see her dead.)

She reins her breathing in a second time and reviews the other options. Perhaps this is Ty Lee’s handiwork, a variant of chi blocking that worsens over time. But she whips through a kata, a complicated one with a spin and flip at the end, and her limbs work as well as ever. It’s only her bending that’s broken, and Azula read every book ever written about chi blocking before she asked Ty Lee to join her, and she knows this isn’t how the method works. 

Just in case, she tries breathing a tongue of fire, a move that won’t tax any of the limbs Ty Lee attacked. She doesn’t get a single spark. She does feel a pleasant warmth in her exhale, but anyone’s breath would feel warm in such a cold room.

Oh. The room’s cold. 

Azula hasn’t properly noticed ambient cold since she was four or five. Not since she was in novice firebending lessons, still dependent on clothes and her mother’s embraces to keep from shivering in the draftier parts of the palace. She hasn’t entirely forgotten the sensation though, not when her hands turn cold sometimes as some sort of misplaced reaction to stress.

Her hands are cold now, and her entire chest too. There’s nothing but a chill where her inner flame ought to be.

She remembers another bit of research, too, that she thought relevant to Zuko but never to herself. When her teachers bored her at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, she’d taken to slipping in scrolls from the library and reading them instead of listening. Her teachers could hardly call her out for it, and she’d gotten through an unusual amount of recreational reading for someone her age. Somewhere in there, there’d been a text on firebending psychology. She’d chuckled at the outdated assumptions, and the absurd insistence that firebending came from “the heart” as opposed to, say, the lungs and the muscles. But there was one passage that stuck in her head, entirely without permission.

“If struck by a sudden twist of fate, a firebender may lose their purpose and their bending with it. In cold darkness will they wander, as if trapped under a perpetual eclipse.”

Azula nearly laughs at the absurdity of her losing her “purpose.” She’s lost Mai and Ty Lee, but they’re irrelevant, aren’t they? Valuable weapons but nothing more? She never did anything for them. She did it all for the Fire Nation, and for Father and for herself, and she hasn’t lost any of her devotion to those three entities. 

She might’ve been betrayed by two of her friends- her only two friends- but that’s no excuse for her bending to abandon her too.

“Your Highness?”

“What?” she barks, glaring at the door.

Whoever’s on the other side has the sense not to come in. Through the door they declare, “Prince Zuko and the Avatar have been traced to the Western Air Temple. Your father requests that you lead the forces against them.”

Azula ought to rejoice. Instead, she thinks of feigning sickness and suggesting someone else- there are more than enough generals and admirals on hand, given all the planning for the comet. She can’t take on the Avatar, not without her fire.

“Princess Azula?”

But this is a second chance, an opportunity to redeem herself for her failure at Ba Sing Se and all the lies that backfired. She can’t waste it. She can’t turn it down.

Father isn’t known for showing mercy.

“Prepare the airships,” she says, throwing the door open. “I’m going to kill him this time.”

(A second later, she realizes she doesn’t know which of the boys she means. As the adrenaline floods her, filling her chest with purpose and what had better be fire, she doesn’t particularly care.)

/

Azula stations herself in the grandest of the airships. Marching about the cockpit, she plots out strategy and barks orders and looks down her nose at the soldiers scurrying to carry them out. The ships are outfitted with vaguely draconian cannons that belch fire and explosives to rival any firebender, and as they hone in on the temple and begin lobbing bombs, there’s obviously no need for her to engage personally in combat. The Avatar is doomed. So are all his allies, surely reduced to ash by the explosions- 

Until Zuko charges out of the smoking wreckage and lands with an ominous clang, somewhere on her ship. It’s followed by an even more ominous boom, rattling the entire structure.

In synchrony, the entire crew turns to look at her, expecting her to fix it.

She smiles at them. The smirk feels fragile on her face, but she strides out like a Princess of the Fire Nation ought to, utterly undaunted. Perhaps her fire’s taking an unapproved vacation, but stopping her brother from blowing up her ship ought to count as “purpose” by any definition.

She climbs out to the top of the ship and finds him there, throwing fire at every delicate bit of machinery in sight. With surprise, she notes they’re strong yet quiet blasts, without his characteristic hollering. He gets in a particularly precise shot at a neighboring ship’s engine, and it starts to veer off course, smoking. Azula makes a mental note to fire an engineer.

He doesn’t notice her at first. Really, it’s unacceptable.

“Looking for something?” she calls, mockingly pleasant.

He twists around and immediately kicks flame at her. She dodges it easily.

“I’d fight back,” she says, dancing towards him and weaving through his blasts. As at their first battle against each other, she doesn’t attack him with her own fire. She can’t attack him, because she’s still cold, cold and so jittery one strong gust could blow her away. “But Father wants you intact. He’s got something special planned for you. Maybe he’ll finally even out that face of yours!”

She means to destabilize him, goad him into tripping up. He doesn’t. His firebending doesn’t waver for a moment, as if he’s stolen her power for herself, but still she manages to lunge close and sweep one leg out from under him with an ordinary non-bending kick. One shove to his chest, and he goes sprawling backwards with fire still in his hands. His body slides right off the side of the ship, without nothing to catch him.

One down.

Then an inhuman bellow echoes behind Azula, and she spins to see that bison charging through the chaos, shielded by a mask of stone. There’s a flash of orange on his back- the Avatar. The Avatar’s flying straight towards her. With a wordless yell Azula throws her full body into a single attack, willing two massive cones of fire from her palms. Nothing comes out, not even a hint of light.

Oddly enough, the bison’s shield disintegrates anyway, crumbling to rubble. It zooms past her, and Azula squints at it, wondering if the earthbenders purposely destroyed their shield for some reason. The bison loops downwards and then zooms back up. Now Zuko’s sitting pretty on its back, because the Avatar and his friends must’ve decided he was worth saving, though she doesn’t understand it, she can’t understand it-

Crash!

The damaged airship collides with her own. There’s no grand explosion- the velocities are too low to break the shielding- but the impact still throws Azula off-balance. Though she struggles for balance, she too slips off the edge of her ship, into the clouds. The ships disappear from sight, swallowed by the fog. She tries and tries, but she can’t manage a single spark in the damp chill, and no one’s coming to catch her. Steadily, she plummets into the abyss.

“Agni,” she pleads as she breaks out of the clouds on the other side, as the unforgiving rock below comes into sight. She has no hope of being heard. “Agni, please, no.“

She doesn’t panic. No, she takes one last gasping breath and forces fire out of her hands. Nothing comes out. She can see there’s nothing.

And yet she slows. She slows, propelled upwards by nothing. She wafts to the ground like a feather. Once she scrambles to her feet, not even slightly bruised by the landing, she places her palms together, and tries to push fire out of her right hand.

She feels her left hand get shoved away by nothing. 

By nothing but air.

That’s when she panics.

Chapter 2

The ride back to the palace is a quiet one. Azula glares at any soldier who dares approach her, even to discuss the repairs. By the third time they learn to leave her alone.

She stares at her hands- pale and cold like she’s left them in ice. Like they’re someone else’s entirely. 

She understands instantly what happened. It was that damned prayer. She lowered herself to begging, and she was heard, and her careless prayer was warped beyond recognition. “Power to match the Avatar’s,” indeed. She’s certainly shocked by this twist. Anyone else would be, anyone who came to know the change in her bending.

Of course, she can’t actually let anyone know.

For the first time, Azula wishes that she wasn’t quite so diligent a student, with such a thorough knowledge of the Fire Nation’s history. It’s why she knows the real stories, the ones passed down in the palace behind closed doors, the ones kept carefully out of the pages of the Fire Nation’s textbooks. She knows what happens to airbenders, during Sozin’s Comet. She knows what happens to them all, even the ones who surrender, even the children. Being young and naive and innocent is no defense.

She knows too, what’ll happen if she goes to Father and asks for his help. She knows what happens to royal children when they’re deemed useless, unworthy of the Dragon Throne.

(Disobedient, her mind strays to the dragons. Sozin went after them too with the power of the comet; rumor says he spent the night at the palace, waging war on his own mount. Like the airbenders the dragons were precisely, willfully exterminated. The proof is in their bones, packaged up neatly and neatly forgotten in the catacombs.)

Azula is an excellent student of history, and she witnessed its making herself when a Fire Lord walked into an Agni Kai, into a spectacle orchestrated simply to remove an unsatisfactory heir. Zuko had begged on his knees for forgiveness, for a second chance. Unfortunately for him, Father’s never been known for showing mercy.

(Disobedient, one hand rises to her left cheek, as if to check it’s still smooth and whole. Perhaps it’s shallow, but Azula rather likes her face as is.)

She understands perfectly well how she lost her bending. She let her tongue slip, just for a second, and she angered a spirit- one of the very few monsters more terrifying than her. She could return to the shrine and beg for her own power back, but it wouldn’t work. Practically speaking, she can’t even get past the fire-powered lock on the door, not without commanding a Fire Sage to open it for her in blatant violation of tradition, and the Sages would only do that on the orders of the Fire Lord.

Fire Lord Ozai, who can never discover her weakness.

Practicalities aside, there’s another flaw in her plan. She can’t beg forgiveness effectively, not when she’s unaware of her crime. Is this punishment for poor wording? For hubris? For inadequacy? Had she simply never deserved her fire in the first place? She can’t apologize without knowing why she’s fallen from grace, why she’s been expelled from Agni’s embrace. Why she’s been exiled from her birthright, from the warmth she’s known all her life.

(Is this how Zuko felt?)

/

Azula banishes the servants from her quarters, and threatens to banish them from the country if they don’t stay out. She throws out the tutors who dare infringe on her territory. Thank you, but no, she doesn’t want a firebending lesson right now, not when she already knows all the firebending she can possibly use. The absurd honesty of that statement sends her into peals of laughter.

Get out, if you know what’s good for you.

What are you still looking at?

Left blessedly alone, she offers up a simple prayer. “Agni, please let me have my firebending back.”

In reply, she gets another of those taunting breezes, batting her ears. She presses down the urge to glare it into submission, instead turning one hand palm-side up and attempting to kindle a flame. All she gets is an unruly burst of air that tickles her nose.

For a moment, she thinks of ordering Mai and Ty Lee released from Boiling Rock. She could use Ty Lee’s babbling right now, the endless stream of chatter that might alight- if accidentally- on a usable idea. She could use Mai to watch her back, to remind her dryly that as bad things might be, at least they’re not worse. She wonders if they could tell she’s in trouble just by looking at her, because she didn’t let the hairdressers dawdle quite so long this morning or because there’s been some shift in her “aura”-

Stupid. This is a stupid daydream, and a waste of her time. Dangerous, too, because even if she let Mai and Ty Lee out they’d just be watching for their next opening. For another chance to stab her in the back. The knife would probably be literal, this time.

A proper airbender would probably just let it happen.

There’s a knock on the door. She hurls it open, wishing she could throw fire in the face of whoever’s ignored her orders, and then she’s very glad that she can’t. It’s a group of Dai Li agents- the only people she hasn’t banished. It’s good to see them. (She’d impressed them all with that “divine right to rule” speech back in Ba Sing Se. They’ll stay with her, until they realize what a lie that was.)

“I have a mission for you,” she informs them. “Top-secret. If I find out you’ve spilled it to anyone else, I’ll send your tongues back to Ba Sing Se without the rest of you.”

The agent closest to her gulps. “Anything for you, Princess.”

“Fetch me a pair of spark rocks.” As they exchange odd looks, she lifts her chin and dons her most frightening glare, the one that flashed across Father’s face when he caught her lying. “Now.”

They go running.

/

The Dai Li bring her the spark rocks and ask no questions but “Will you require anything else?” 

“Not yet,” comes her answer.

(The irony’s not lost on her- she’s princess of the Fire Nation, and the only people she still trusts are the Earth Kingdom’s most elite earthbenders.)

Azula sits before the candles she’s used for meditation all her life, silently fuming as she lights them. Their flames used to follow her when she was two or three. She doesn’t remember a time when candles weren’t ruled automatically by her breath- or her father’s, or her grandfather’s, whoever was the most powerful firebender around- but now there’s anarchy in their flickering, each flame following its own errant rhythm. She observes the wavering rabble and then waves her hand, summoning a breeze.

At last united, they all wisp to nothing.

It takes a couple clicks- it’s not her fault, she doesn’t know how spark rocks work, it’s not as if she’s ever fallen so far before- to relight them. Then she closes her eyes to meditate for a few minutes, and she forces out steady, uniform breaths as if the wayward flames aren’t taunting her, their weak, wavering lights blazing through her eyelids. Eventually, she opens her eyes and considers the candles in a new light.

Fire is half air, after all. There are other components to a flame- heat, light, some fuel to burn, but no fire can blossom without air to fan it.

She stares at the middle candle and places one hand over it. Then she jerks that hand away, a long-practiced firebending movement. In another world, she might use it to elongate the candle’s flame into a full stream of fire. Here, she reaches not to the fire but the air that catalyzes it, attempting to draw it away. The flame tilts, as if tugged by a string, and then returns to normal.

She tries the motion again, now referencing her memories of the Avatar’s combat style. She sweeps her hand more freely, with a softer curve to her wrist. The resulting motion is smoother, more sinuous.

The air follows her, leaving the candle behind.

The fire goes out.

Azula stares at the smoking wick for too long, flirting with the embers of a plan.

/

Like a firebending child, she masters her candles first, hours blurring as she inspects their glow and repeatedly, methodically snuffs them out. One day later- or more, perhaps- she summons the Dai Li to obtain a pailful of charcoal.

Fire may elude her. She turns to smoke.

She sets the charcoal alight, fury jangling in her head with every clack of the spark rocks, and with her eyes she traces the harsh smoke curling up from the wreckage. She tracks it carefully. Then she bends it, using the black to see the shapes she’s making, refining the methods of firebending for a new medium. She holds the smoke like a ball in her hand, juggles it from hand to hand. She loops it like a chain around her wrists, and she breaks it with one stabbing exhale. She stretches the smoke into a long jet and sends it soaring overhead. 

Her airbending could pass for playful, if it wasn’t a death sentence.

She takes smoke and forms it into a knife, like a flame-dagger. Rather unlike a flame-dagger, it cuts through the cloth of her coverlet. She tries it next on a bedpost and leaves a deep gouge. 

(It could be someone else’s death sentence, if she needs it to be.)

/

She sends the Dai Li out for food and reading material. She orders things she doesn’t need, and she obfuscates her motives, and she veils her wishes with enough vagueness she might just get away with it. She reads the histories of the Air Nomad genocide- the real ones, still dusty from the Dragon Catacombs, that say the airbenders died without attempting a single blow, just begging for mercy that never came. She reads the law that declared execution the penalty for airbending.

It’s an old law. Not enforced in decades, because the airbenders are all dead or driven so far into hiding they’ve forgotten their own power. It’s an old law, never repealed.

Azula reads, and she keeps all of her other servants out of her territory. Her room has gone stale with smoke. The surfaces are stained by soot, and the ashes are piling up from her experiments. She doesn’t care about appearances. She doesn’t care about time, not when she can no longer feel the sun. She falls asleep with candles burning sometimes, not caring about the risk of death.

She wakes to voices calling her before Father. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? Surely her traitorous servants reported the oddities in her behavior, and it was only a matter of time before he demanded her presence to determine her crime and deal the penalty-

She blinks, and scans the room, and dares a peek outside the door. She can find no speaker.

/

Father doesn’t call for her. Azula stalks around her room, curtains drawn, door locked and barricaded, and wonders if anyone remembers her at all.

/

“Your presence is required by the Fire Lord.”

Azula has to blink twice, to assure herself the servant at her door is really there.

(She’s not Dai Li. Mid-twenties, all in red, clearly on the verge of nervous collapse.)

“The- the preparations for the fleet’s attack are complete. The Fire Lord requests you meet him at the port by noon.”

Azula glances at the clock- neatly framed by linear dents in the wall, from her attempts to render fire pinwheels with air.

(Her control’s rotten. The harder she tries to hold onto the smoke, forcibly keeping it to its intended path, the further off-course it veers.)

She has just enough time to make it there. She glances at herself in the mirror- when had she gotten so untidy, her hair looks like a boarcupine latched to her skull- and then submits to the servants’ ministrations.

“You and your fellow servants are not to enter my room while I’m gone, do you understand?”

She punctuates that statement with a jab of the finger, not touching the woman’s sternum but coming close.

Azula can feel her inhale, a slightly panicked gasp. The way she once sensed flames without seeing them, Azula can feel the air being sucked in through the mouth, before slipping away to the lungs. It’s a curious feeling-

“Of course,” the woman says, stealing Azula’s focus. “If you’d please come to the bath…”

/

Noon approaches. 

Azula focuses on her own breathing, only to be distracted by the constant rippling of the gauzy white curtains around her palanquin. She resists the impulse to freeze the air and lock them in place.

(Rippling white like funeral robes, or like the drapes in the hall outside Zuko’s room when Mother went away, drapes she must’ve walked past to bid him goodbye. The hall outside Azula’s room had red curtains. Not that it mattered- there were no pretty farewells for her.)

Azula parts the curtains and sticks her head out.

“Slow down,” she snaps at the palanquin bearers. “A princess requires a more dignified pace.”

They obey her. Azula takes the time to compose herself, counting breaths- one, then two, then three. If it’s a march to her death, she intends to buy herself time. Why, she doesn’t know. What good does time do her when she’ll be ushered onto an airship at the end, expected to firebend with all the power of the comet, with all the top firebenders in the army and with Father watching her, with them and metal caging her in and stranding her in midair-

She lost count.

Then the palanquin stops, and she’s not breathing at all.

She keeps herself steady and upright as she disembarks, a feat of intense willpower even if no one will ever know about it. Elegant as a princess, she drops into a kneel before her Fire Lord.

“There has been a change of plans, Azula.”

Her head snaps up, and it’s all she can do not to topple sideways.

(Does he know? Can he smell the airbending on her? Can he sense the void where her inner flame used to be? Can he crack her with that glare like lightning, can he pluck the thoughts straight out of her head-)

“I've decided to lead the fleet of airships to Ba Sing Se alone,” he continues. “You will remain here in the Fire Nation.”

She goggles up at him, witless and wide-eyed. “Excuse me?”

That sounds like good luck. That sounds like a chance to hide, to stay at home and use the advantages of her natural habitat, to spend the comet away from a Fire Lord bound by law to execute any airbenders who cross his path. They aren’t saying it out loud, but the Avatar will likely intercept this attack. Given the chance, the Fire Lord will remove the airbenders for good-

“I need you here to watch over the homeland. It's a very important job that I can only entrust to you,” he says, sounding almost like a kind father.

(The act doesn’t suit him. She might prefer honest cruelty to this saccharine farce.)

“And for your loyalty,” he finishes, “I've decided to declare you the new Fire Lord.”

Oh.

Not good luck, then.

Father’s gussied up the declaration for the crowd around them, but she hears the real meaning. She’s his decoy, the same way she was during the eclipse. A shiny object to distract their myriad enemies, only made shinier by the title. She’s a weapon in this fight, a tool that allows Father to deflect some of the incoming fire.

(It’s a challenge, and it shouldn’t scare her. It wouldn’t scare her in the slightest, if only she still had fire of her own.)

Father declares himself Phoenix King, and she bows before him and tries to make it feel less like cowering. The scene suddenly warps into a coronation. Father dons new armor. New banners whip into the air, emblazoned proudly with avian insignia. It’s a perfect theatrical scene, right out of a play. 

It’s well-rehearsed.

It would’ve taken time to cast the armor and sew those patterns. It would’ve taken weeks to choose the title and arrange the legal technicalities. To pull off this dramatic reveal, half of Caldera would’ve had to be in on the plot.

Half of Caldera knew, and no one told her.

/

She dismisses her Dai Li agents. Kicks them right out of the country for their failure to warn her about the coronation. She screams when they stutter out their excuses, protesting that they assumed she already knew, because surely her father would’ve told her himself.

To her credit, she doesn’t yet cry.

/

She’s allowed to use the throne room, now as the Fire Lord-to-be. Ever parasitic, Li and Lo swarm in like maggots, insisting that she ought to seize her place on the dais. Why won’t she follow tradition and take meetings there? How can she stain the honor she’s been given by staying in her dark lonely cavern of a room?

Banishment shuts them both up.

(Do they think she wouldn’t take the throne room, if she could? If she could, she’d be holding court up on the literal pedestal where she’s belonged all her life. But sitting in that throne room means raising a wall of fire to mark the literal boundary between her and a cold cruel world. She ought to be shielded by a veil of blue fire. But she has no fire of any color, and that means the throne room can never be hers, not properly.)

She’s considered fleeing the palace herself. Father won’t bother hunting her down until after the comet, and perhaps her only good option is to follow Zuko’s footsteps and leap into exile, hiding from the laws that want her dead and the standards she’ll never meet, that she has no hope of meeting without firebending. She can’t be a good Fire Lord. For that matter she can’t in substance be a Fire Lord at all, even if she technically holds the title. 

(Fire Lords require fire. It’s in the Agni-damned name.)

But she can’t leave. Azula’s no expert on spiritual matters, but she knows her best chance is to take the throne and immediately bully a Fire Sage into unlocking the shrine for her and demand that Agni hear her properly this time. She can beg him to at least explain his punishment. To tell her how she can possibly atone. That’s her last sliver of hope, and she’ll let it make a fool of her.

(And if she did leave, where would she go? Who would still want her?)

Azula doesn’t run.

Chapter 3

Azula’s top-knot won’t sit straight. 

That’s certainly an unconventional way to lose a crown- letting it clatter to the ground because it can’t stay upright in your hair. When Azula finishes giggling at the image she calls for a servant to help her. Minutes pass, and she calls again.

No one comes.

So she attacks her hair with a comb, yanking out knots and doing her best to brush it into submission, but it only turns bushier and unrulier the more she goes at it. Her hair was always odd, an indeterminate cross between straight and curly, thick and heavy and unmanageable. Nothing like Zuko’s hair- delicate and fine, like the softest silk thread. He and Father were lucky in that respect.

Azula has her mother’s hair.

Hair matters. The style tells people where you’re from, and how important you are, and how your luck’s been. She’d laughed for days when she saw Zuko’s old wanted poster, the bald head with the lone ponytail sticking out like one last grasping pretense at dignity. But Azula is a student not just of modern fashion but of history, so she knows why the Fire Nation came to value long hair in the first place. The philosophers said a child’s hair belonged to their parents, and so to cut the hair was to injure that special connection between parent and child.

The scissors are in Azula’s hands before she knows it. There are indeterminate half-curls already strewn about her feet.

(Father wouldn’t care about the old philosophy. He doesn’t care how she presents herself outwardly, within reason. Unlike all the other fathers at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, he didn’t make a single comment when she began wearing makeup, almost like he hadn’t noticed.)

(Azula glances backwards, like Mother might materialize there, might come back just to protest this insult. There’s nothing there but air.)

She scrutinizes her hair in the mirror. The cut’s uneven, so she snips a little more from the left side to make things fair.

Now the left side’s too short.

She hacks away at the weight on her head, bit by bit. Disobedient, the two sides only grow more unbalanced. Eventually she gives up the whole enterprise, and she throws her scissors aside, and she marches away without cleaning up. She leaves her mother’s hair, scattered across the floor.

/

The comet comes. So does the coronation.

Azula kneels before the Head Sage. She kneels before Agni, asking him to bless her reign like she’s supposed to, and wonders if his lightning will strike her from the red-stained heavens for her presumption.

The crown glints in the Sage’s hands, mere inches from her grasp. She could grab it. He lifts it out of reach, and she inhales deep, waiting for the weight to fall upon her head-

A sky bison’s roar splits the sky. It splits her plans and her schemes and her head in two, and she grabs at new hope, spinning it wildly. She never dared dream the Avatar would choose her over Father, but perhaps luck shines on her still. He may be a master of four elements, but she’s got one-and-a-half and a certain creativity in her style no one can match. If she can somehow subdue the Avatar, Father will accept her in his new regime. He’ll love her again, even in her broken form.

She rises with a smile to face the Avatar-

“Zuko?”

Zuko descends from the bison’s back. The Water Tribe girl stands with him, but the Avatar is nowhere to be seen.

Azula thinks, for a second, of asking Zuko for help. But he is fierce under the comet’s eerie light, almost gleaming from the fire barely contained in his limbs, and she grows small under his stare. She dismisses the idea as impossible.

(She is a student of history, and so she knows how Roku, the only great airbender in modern Fire Nation history, met his end. He trusted Sozin. He paid for it. And though one might want to deny it, Zuko is Sozin’s heir just as much as she is.)

“One of you may forfeit your claim to the throne,” the Head Sage is droning. “Otherwise, it is the will of Agni that such matters be decided in battle, through an Agni Kai.”

Zuko stares at her with burning golden eyes, and he doesn’t forfeit. He never would. Not when his footfalls strike the ground with all the weight of destiny. 

Azula doesn’t forfeit either. She can’t.

(Zuko will turn on her too, if she gives him the chance. It doesn’t matter if he knows about her bending- he will remove her, because she’s spent years establishing herself as one of his greatest threats. He will cut her down as ruthlessly as Father would, reclaiming his honor and his right to the crown and his place in history, all in one fell swoop. How could he do otherwise?)

“Agni Kai,” she says, granting Zuko a somber nod. 

(She’s never seriously considered the possibility before, but it might hurt more to die by Zuko’s hand than Father’s.)

The girl tugs at Zuko’s elbow and whispers something, perhaps trying to talk him out of this. He narrows his good eye, stare locked on Azula, and mutters some response that’s not meant for her. Just one more secret everyone knows but her.

Then he raises his voice, tone vicious and controlled. “You’re on.”

She can hear Father in that voice.

Father’s voice rings in her head even as she kneels once more, not bothering with the traditional prayer. Agni’s already made it clear she’ll never win his favor. She wins this on her own wits, or not at all.

(Not at all, of course.)

Azula can’t fight. She can’t use her new bending. The Sages may be out of sight but they’re still watching, always watching from some safe perch inside the temple, diligently inspecting the battlefield for signs of foul play. Only honorable bloodbaths allowed here.

She can’t fight, but she has no other choice. The sky is glorious, red as if the ether itself has been set alight by the comet’s fury. She may be an airbender, doomed by history and fate and Agni himself to die this night, but she is no pacifist nomad. She won’t go down quietly.

She breathes, carefully, pressing down the despair that’s sunken in her gut in place of an inner flame. She kneels, and then drops the heavy cape that threatens to weigh her down, and rises to face her foe.

For a moment, Zuko stands on the other side of a courtyard, staring at her. Waiting for an attack that won’t come.

“Go ahead.” She spreads her arms wide, not even remotely attempting a combat pose, and she laughs, a bitter clanging sound. “Try it. You have no idea what you’re facing.”

Ever the slow one, he takes a moment to examine that declaration as if he has any chance at comprehension. Then, finally, he draws back a fist and punches down.

It’s like no attack she’s ever seen, at least not from a firebender. It’s an earthbending move, meant for ripping up the ground of a battlefield, ripped wildly out of context.

It’s like no attack she’s ever seen. One second there’s Zuko, and the next he’s obscured by a massive maelstrom of flame, capable of flattening a building. Azula’s always held some doubt towards records of the comet, but for once the Fire Nation’s histories didn’t exaggerate. The sheer scale of Zuko’s attack would win her wonder, if it didn’t promise instant death.

She inhales and then pushes away the air around her, shielding herself with a vacuum. The fire dies, melting away as it hits a void in the air. Once safe, she releases her hold and takes a giant breath as the air floods back to her, now blistering hot.

From the outside, it looked like a perfectly executed firebending block.

Azula seizes her breaths and offers Zuko a preening smirk, the best and oldest mask she’s got in her repertoire. “Is that all you have?”

This is all she has- jibes and faux-firebending blocks, in the hopes that he might tire himself out like he used to as a child. That hope wanes as he throws out another punch, a cone of fire twenty feet wide. Flame swallows Azula up, flowing in every direction around her little airless sphere, and it flows and flows and doesn’t stop, even as she runs out of air. For a moment, it seems she has no choice but to let down her defenses and be engulfed-

She runs. Vacuum and all, she hurls herself to the side and emerges from the fire, gasping like a doomed fish. Across the courtyard, Zuko looks unruffled. Inhumanly confident.

It isn’t fair.

Azula’s prepared for his next attack. With an exquisite inhale she dives straight into the next red tide, her brother’s fire now fluid and rippling like water across the whole length of the arena. He’s showing off, high on the greatest power he’ll ever know, and the fire sprawls wide, and it keeps going and going and going. His extravagance will be his undoing.

She disappears into his flame. She uses it, turns the deadly light into cover to slip closer. She hones in like a Yuyan Archer’s arrow on the orange-yellow core of the heat, flooding from his fist. He realizes his mistake when she emerges from the fire unscathed, almost within arm’s reach, close enough to see his functional eye go wide.

Rapidly, what had been a long-range bending match turns into something rougher, more intimate. Years ago they’d tussled in the sand on Ember Island, wrestling for the same shovel to build their sandcastles, and it’s not so different now. He’s fast and still armed with fire, his daggers lengthening naturally to full-blown dual swords, but she flips between them more easily than ever. 

“What are you doing, Azula?” he says, watching her warily.

“The same thing as always,” she replies, smiling.

The shake in her voice is irrelevant. She dances circles around him, stalking him like a puma-leopard on the prowl, sizing up the vulnerabilities in his form. She fakes an attack she doesn’t mean, just to spook him, to throw him off-guard. She does it again.

Then she feints and means it. It’s a trick he never learned to see coming, no matter how many times she tried it on him a hundred times in childhood. She moves as if to strike the left side of his face, only to change targets and aim squarely at his lungs-

He’s learned.

Lightning-quick, he shoves her hand aside, and its invisible weapon with it. The blast of air- exquisitely focused, capable of cutting through bone at close range- shoots off to the side, diffusing as it goes. It shoots off into the waterbender, and why is she standing there, has she got no common sense-

It smacks her. Sends her stumbling back. Ruffles her long hair like no other element could.

They all freeze.

“What?” Zuko breathes.

Slowly Azula forces herself to turn her gaze from the gaping waterbender to him. She steels herself against any expression he might be wearing. Horror. Revulsion. Rage, hatred, triumph at finally, finally proving his superiority-

She steeled herself, yet it steals her breath away.

His face is soft. She can’t place that look, an impossible mix of awe and puzzlement and unexpected kindness, of pity like he’s facing a wounded animal, of affection. For a moment there isn’t a trace of Father in him. 

(It’s Mother’s face, gazing back at her with love so bare it hurts.)

Azula lifts two hands. Steals the breath from his lungs.

Zuko gasps. He groans and gurgles, and he tries to speak before realizing it’s a waste of the precious little air he’s got left. His hands fly to his throat and then out to her. She steps out of reach, but for some reason his fingers don’t ignite. They just reach for her like an embrace, like she’d ever trust that. That’s Mother’s face, and Mother’s look of love, and it means as little as ever. Azula can’t leave Zuko alone because he’ll leave too, leave her behind without a second thought, leave her charred just outside their childhood home because there is no such thing as mercy for her. It’s just common sense for Zuko to eliminate her, because that’s what you do with monsters, you put them down-

The pale skin of her arms splits. Azula recoils and loses her grip on the air, and Zuko crumples to the ground, maybe living, maybe dead. The waterbender reels back an ice dagger, now tipped with blood.

“Stop it,” the girl orders, her tone almost regal. The gleam of the sky reflects off her eyes, flashing almost golden. The water whips around her are threaded through with ice, rippling and sparkling and crackling like lightning.

Azula lifts her arms to steal her breath next. The girl gasps too.

Then the whole world is red, blood-red spraying everywhere. It takes Azula a moment to realize it’s spurting unnaturally from the cuts on her own arms, as the waterbender hardens her hands into claws, as she tears Azula’s body up from the inside out.

(She looks like she’s about to cry. That’s the last thing Azula sees before her own eyes turn wet, maybe from a bending attack or maybe from her own laughable weakness-)

Azula drops her arms. Wrenches them away from whatever invisible force is holding them up. Throws a clumsy wild gust to blow the waterbender backwards. She flees in the confusion, past the Sages who have emerged to scold or more likely kill her. Ignoring the calls of her name, Azula flies across the courtyard and away from the temple. If she was still a firebender she’d cauterize the wound, but instead it bleeds freely, trailing red.

Drawn like the needle of a compass, she darts to the palace proper, realizing the futility as she goes. North, south, east, west- she can run as far as she likes, but there’s no way out. Not when the Sages are on her heels, with the Imperial Firebenders behind them. Not when the whole world will wake up under Father’s rule tomorrow morning.

Azula arrives at the foot of the palace. Glances up at tiered golden eaves.

With a stubborn shove she thrusts herself up. It’s an ugly lurch, nothing like her smooth fire jets, but she does her best with what she’s got. That’s all she’s ever done, and she dangles from the eaves and somehow heaves herself up, her breath coming in short, panicked jabs, her arms shining and reflecting the red above. Azula clambers up, one level at a time, refusing to rest. She throws herself to the main tower and keeps clawing her way up, up, until the world below her turns small and unreal. It’s a world full of bloodbenders and Fire Lords, and she dangles far above, just maybe out of its reach. Her head is so light, and the world is blurring and someone’s making an awful ruckus, all cackling and choked-off wails, but she bends and pulls and forces herself up and up and up, until she’s got hold of the golden prongs that crown the highest tower. She clings to those spikes, feeling wisp-small and suddenly very fragile.

Her hands shine red, and the prongs are slick in her grasp. Slowly, slowly they slip, and then all at once.

It’s a rule of nature, that fire must consume air.

As she falls, the last thing she sees is the red flame of a comet, hurtling up to meet her.

/

Azula’s eyes are open, but she’s fairly certain she’s still dreaming. There’s no rational explanation for why she’s in the palace hospital with no chains on her limbs. No possible reason why Zuko’s slumped in a chair beside her, fast asleep in the bright morning light, visibly exhausted but entirely alive, with a five-pronged crown tucked securely into his top-knot.

“Princess,” says one of five guards stationed by the door of the room. She bows to Azula, hands shaping the flame. Inexplicably, she then makes no move to restrain her or blow off her head.

Zuko stirs at the noise and blinks open bleary eyes. Surprise flits upon his face, surprisingly pleasant, before he schools his features into a guarded look.

“You haven’t killed me,” Azula remarks, trying her best to match his neutrality.

“If you stop hurting me and people I care about,” he replies, “I’m not going to hurt you at all.”

She watches him with a face of stone. His face softens in response, and she doesn’t trust that, but she also doesn’t strangle him for it.

“You don’t believe me,” he observes.

“Would you believe me if I said that to you?”

“No, but you always...“ Zuko sighs. “Look. I’m not going to hurt you. I’ve told the doctors to help you, actually. I’ll keep proving it, until you believe it.”

Then he gets up, royal robes rustling as he stands, and he busies himself with a teapot on a nearby table, swirling his fingers around it to reheat the contents. With a delicacy she’s never associated with him, he pours out a cup.

“Is it poisoned?” she asks conversationally, taking it.

He shakes his head. “It’s medicine. I can have a doctor come in and explain it, if you want.”

Considering him with narrowed eyes, she supposes that if Zuko wanted her to assassinate her, he could’ve done it more neatly while she was still asleep. She brings it to her lips and finds the tea bitter, like herbal medicine always seems to be. The first swallow doesn’t hurt her though, just soothes her parched throat, and she suspects that it’s not going to kill her.

(At least not on this cup.)

“I noticed that loophole you left yourself,” she says, even as her mind goes soft and dreamy. “You’re not going to hurt me, but you said nothing about your army, or your uncle, or any of your friends. I assume the Avatar killed Father off-“

“He didn’t, actually.”

“Which means I’m next,” Azula finishes like he hadn’t spoken.

“It really doesn’t.”

He rubs his hand across his face, looking like no one but his thirteen-year-old self, when Azula snuck into a hospital room much like this one. He looks just the same, tired and ancient and impossibly young.

(Mother used to say they looked just like each other, brother and sister. It still might be true, under the scar and the make-up.)

Azula drinks again, a long gulp that clears the cup in one try. Suddenly light-headed, she lets herself fall back, onto soft downy pillows. 

“Am I dead?” she murmurs as her eyes grow heavy.

Zuko frowns. “What makes you say that?”

“The absurd imagery-“ she waves vaguely at the crown on his head- “and the fact that I definitely took a lethal fall.”

“You didn’t,” he murmurs, reaching out to her left cheek. She prepares for flame, but he only brushes a hand through choppy curls. “I caught you.”

/

When she wakes again, it’s nighttime. There’s a lone figure in the shadows, and Azula flirts with opening her mouth, wondering if anyone will come when she screams-

“Shhh!”

A flame lights a nearby candle, illuminating the Avatar.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” he whispers, eyes wide. “You gotta stay quiet, or Katara will kill me.”

Despite herself, Azula snorts in genuine amusement.

“I just came back from the Dragon Catacombs,” he adds, eyes repeatedly darting to the door. “Zuko said I could go to the royal shrine and ask the spirits what’s up.”

Azula’s breath catches. “You’ve discovered the official terms of my curse?”

He cocks his head to the side. “You’re not cursed.”

She dramatically rolls her eyes, tipping her head back with the motion. “What else would Agni mean, when he stole one of his own children’s firebending-“

“It’s a gift,” the boy blurts. “See, fire’s the element of power, but air’s the element of freedom. And the spirits thought you could use some freedom from all the Fire Nation’s expectations, so Agni figured you’d like being an airbender instead!”

(Oh.)

(Azula wonders what it says about her idea of parental affection, that that makes any sense.)

“I thought I saw you airbending at the Western Air Temple.” His babbling’s apparently irrepressible. “But I didn’t dare hope…”

She lifts an eyebrow as he trails off. “What’s hope got to do with this?”

“...Do you like it?” Aang says, suddenly nervous. “Airbending, I mean?”

She spends a moment gawking at him.

Then she looks at her hands. “Does it matter? It’s not as if I’m doing right.”

“Yeah…” He winces. “Suffocation’s not really how airbending’s supposed to be used.”

Azula doesn’t want the Avatar’s judgment just now, not on top of her own horror and churning regret. She lets her gaze drift to the candle instead, growing and ebbing with his breaths. She waits for the impending threats.

(He might not bother with threats. He might strike her down on the spot for twisting airbending past recognition.)

“You’re not going to do that anymore, are you?” he asks, surprising her. “You’re not going to hurt people?”

(Thought she can’t understand it, he shows her mercy instead.)

“...No, I’m not.”

It surprises her, the fact that she means it.

He nods solemnly, and then grins. “Turns out airbending’s actually got a lot in common with firebending. I’d love to teach you how normal airbending works, if you’d like that!”

It’s a joke. It must be. But his voice sounds light and hopeful in a way it definitely shouldn’t, and despite her brain’s screeching protests, her heart trusts it.

“...when?”

“Now, if you want!”

Her voice betrays her. She can only nod, shakily, limbs warmed through by hope of her own.

“Okay, okay, let’s do it.” He’s practically vibrating with excitement, beaming freely at her like no one ever has. “You know how fire’s born from air? Well, why don’t you try meditating on that candle, like a firebender? Just now you’re making the fire grow by feeding it more air…”