Chapter Text
Azula thinks she's not a good person—no. That's not quite right.
Azula knows she's not a good person. Yes, that's better. She knows it like the truth of the universe; like the sky is blue and the grass is green and she is a monster in a humans skin. She knows it like the fairytales her mother doesn’t read for her, that she has to read herself; of heroes and sidekicks and villains lurking in the shadows.
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Lie: Azula hates her brother, she hates every little thing about him and it shows. Shows in her mocking words and the holier-than-thou attitude she exudes when in his presence. He is everything she hates and more.
Lie: Azula despises her mother. She hates the look in her eyes when she’s helping Zuko up from the ground Azula had pushed him in to. Hates that the only time she ever does something good is when she’s not around.
Lie: Azula loves her father. He is everything she wishes she could be and more.
Truth: Azula’s little family is made up of people who hate her. She loves her brother but his inability to know when to stop scares her, she loves her mother but her mother does not love her back, she loves her father but he does not see her.
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Azula doesn’t know a lot of people, the palace is her home and the Fire Nation is her country. This doesn’t change the fact that the extent of the people she knows is limited to the people in her family and the people she will see once or twice around the palace but who will never look at her.
When she looks at them, however, she sees something she has never seen when looking at herself in the mirror. Azula knows she’s not a good person, her brother is a different story.
Of everyone, Azula thinks that Zuko is the nicest person she’s ever met and that she ever will meet. His body jitters with excitement and he rushes around the palace like a child because he is one. He’s full of a naivety that one wouldn’t expect in the Fire Nation—she’s heard the stories (but this is her birthplace, what is there to do about it?).
And his eyes are filled with an awe that makes her shudder. She thinks she’s scared for him, because Lu Ten has always been kind but he is not around anymore. Her mother loves him in a way she hasn’t seen before, eyes filled with kindness when looking at him, with love and wonder.
Azula wonders about Nature vs. Nurture. She wonders if Zuko would have turned out like this regardless of whether it was Mother or Father taking care of him. She thinks he would; she thinks he would because that’s just who he is.
Does that make her the odd one?
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Lie: It’s her mother’s fault that she turned out like this; jaded and broken. She doesn’t care for Azula, everything about her was a mistake and she doesn’t hesitate to tell her so every single time they come face to face.
Lie: It’s her brother’s fault she’s like this. He doesn’t understand the world despite being the older brother. He doesn’t understand and tries to push his idealistic views on the world on to her. It makes her angry.
Lie: It’s her father’s fault she’s breaking. He pushes and takes and pushes and takes until, eventually, there will be nothing left to take. Until, eventually, she will be nothing.
Truth: Azula is just broken; broken views and broken thoughts and a broken shell leaking her existence into the universe until she is nothing. And she knows she did it to herself because she was too full of hope and the world is a cruel place. She spends too much time on “what if’s” and hypotheticals instead of seeing the world as it truly is.
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Azula rocks on her heels in the middle of the hallway, hands clasped firmly behind her back to hide their shaking. It’s funny, in the Fire Nation, in the palace that represents them, in a city of people born from the heat of Agni’s light, Azula feels, inexplicably, cold.
She doesn’t know why she waits—is it curiosity? A morbid curiosity of what the ending of a fairytale could look like? She doesn’t know what she hopes for while she’s standing out here, she just knows that she hopes.
Soon, too soon or not soon enough, her mother is standing in front of her. Her mother’s hands on her face, tears brimming in the corner of her eyes as she crouches down to Azula’s level. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be feeling in the moment, but the words her mother tells her is enough to start a fire raging in her heart.
You don’t have to worry anymore, she’s told and azula looks down the hall at where her mother cames from and wonders. She wonders until she understands, until her mother is retreating into Zuko’s bedroom and disappearing from their lives forever.
It is the kindest her mother has ever been to her and the handle of a kitchen knife she stole feels warm in her hands. She doesn’t feel as cold anymore. (Zuko is safe, safe, safe. And Grandfather is dead, dead, dead. And Father? Father is on the throne).
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Lie: Zuko is weaker than she’ll ever be, too kind hearted, too soft. He will get himself killed one day and Azula will do nothing to stop it. She doesn’t care for him because you can’t—shouldn’t—care for what won’t—will never—last.
Lie: Uncle Iroh is just the same. He dosen’t understand the need for sacrifice, his son was a sacrifice necessary for the war I miss you, cousin. Please come back home and his despondency is a waste of time.
Lie: Father earned the throne, he is exactly what the Fire Nation needs to continue in its prosperity. Azula will serve under him as his daughter and greatest confidant and she will continue to stay by his side even after.
Truth: Azula is a weak, weak person. Her cold attitude and apathy will get her nowhere in life. She misses what she and her brother could have been, she misses her cousin lost in a war that doesn’t need fighting, she misses her mother who is gone to the world, she misses. And misses. And misses. Until there is nothing left to miss.
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Azula stands on the sidelines of the arena. She has always prided herself on the ability to act, but at times like this she has never been able to. The general is not the one to fight her brother and she grits her teeth as Father stands from his throne.
He is flourishing about it, a great big act to display his power. Zuko refuses to fight and Azula wants to scream, wants to yell and rage and break (break down, break something, break someone. Just break). Don’t just stand there and take it, she wants to beg but she cannot because her tongue is caught in her throat and the words don’t leave her lips.
Fire Nation children have always had tougher skin, skin that was harder to break especially against the heat. A body more resitant to harsh weather because they run hot. That resistance is nothing, though.
It is nothing in the face of a fire that burns thousands of degrees held in close (so. Very. Close) proximity to the skin. She doesn’t gag at the smell (what does that change? If her pain is nothing compared to the loss her brother is going to suffer because she stood by and just took it) of burning flesh, of melted nerves, of searing skin.
She doesn’t and neither does her Uncle and neither do the generals or the soldiers or whoever is left there to watch. They do nothing and say nothing and feel nothing—and Azula?
Azula is right there with them with a face as cold as ice and a heart as heavy as a stone in the river and heat that makes the hair on her arms bristle.
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Lie: Azula is her father’s daughter. She is logic above emotion, she is the nation’s people before her own people. She is cruel and demanding. She is a sharp bark and an even sharper bite. She is fire coursing through the veins like hatred and she thrives on the fear it causes.
Lie: Azula is her mother’s daughter. She is emotion above logic, she is her family before she is stranger. She is the dragon that billows smoke through it’s nostrils in the face of dangers against it’s herd. She is both the sharp bite and the sharp tongue. She is fire coursing through the veins like passion and she thrives on the love she feels for her family.
Lie: Azula is neither. She is the darkness, she is the shadows. She is the one that watches and never acts, she is the one that reacts. She is a shell of a person—is she even human?
Truth: Azula is both her father and mother’s daughter and she is angry.
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Azula stands by the edge of her brother’s bed. The infirmary is quiet and he looks so still lying there, nearly motionless. There’s a crease between his eyebrows that speak of pain worth a thousand suns.
He is older, but older does not mean wise. You would have been fine, she thinks as she brushes her fingertips over the palm of his open hand. You would have been fine had you just fought. She’s a hypocrite, she knows. That does not change the fact that it is not her that was burned, it was him.
And that changes things.
When Uncle Iroh enters the room, she leaves as quickly as she came; with a steady stride and a nonchalance she does not feel. He says nothing as she brushes past her, but the look on his face tells her eons more than words would ever need to.
Her grandfather had died by poison in his tea; an assassin, the people had been told. Is it not only fate that her father is the same?
(Azula is nothing if not her mother’s daughter, and then she is nothing. Azula is nothing if not her father’s daughter, and then she is nothing. Azula has always been nothing, but she is empty if she is not her brother’s sister. And she will not be empty, even if the cost of it is her own life.
It doesn’t have to be, and it
isn’t.)
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Lie: Her father dies by an assassin the guards could not catch. The same assassin who had killed the Fire Lord before him. Azula weeps by his still form and pleads softly for him to wake up. The people comfort her as she is ushered away.
Truth: Her father is killed by her hands in the middle of the night. Tea is served and she does not drink. She watches him choke on his own blood as the poison tears him apart. She does not weep as she stands by his casket, nobody comforts her.
Truth: Hundreds of miles away, destiny shifts. A boy meant to end the war is suddenly left without purpose. Two Water Tribe children keep their promise of staying by his side. A small earthbending child does not understand but offers her comfort anyway. Two non-benders wonder what had changed. And an exiled Fire Nation prince joins the heroes just as he is informed of his father’s passing.
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Truth: Azula is still the villain of this story. One day, in the near future, this group of heroes will return. Hatred runs deep into the veins of people who have been wronged and Azula is at the center of it all.
Truth: She will not fight them because there is no reason to. She has done what she was meant to and the fire burning in her heart has been quelled.
Truth: The only family that matters to her is safe. This does not mean that she is part of theirs.
Truth: Azula does not want to die.