Chapter Text
The advisers and generals were talking about a minor rebellion in the outskirts of Caldera.
Azula bit into the steamed sweet mango-potato and listened silently alone from across the room.
“Combined with the recent famine and the firstborn prince’s betrayal, public resentment has peaked.”
The man cautiously glanced at her, and continued with a lower voice,” they say the firelord is no longer blessed. Is it true?”
She instinctively wanted to demand his immediate death for such outrageous words,but the reply piqued her interest. The speaker was a fire sage of considerable rank.
“The Caldera flame extinguished yesterday. Any attempt at relighting it ended in failure. What more can I say?”
The flame of Agni was dead. On the day her father was triumphed by an allegedly-blessed turtleduck.
Azula retreated into her chambers to reconsider her position.
Father didn’t allow anyone besides his favoured physician to approach him.
Months later, he returned to court with a gold plated mask covering the left of his face. He did not waste any time on her and instead announced the decimation of several noble families.
The men screamed and clawed as they were taken away.
Azula stared at her Father’s mangled wreck of a face on her 12th birthday.
''Father, it was not my intention-"
Her father pressed his palm into her wrists and seared the lesson into her flesh.
She let out a strangled cry but quickly gritted her teeth as her wrists screamed white hot pain.
Father had never burned her before. Zuko made stupid mistakes, but never her.
It seemed an eternity before Father let go, and Azula's wrists hung limp by her sides.
She could taste iron.
"I apologize, father."
She didn't look up.
She couldn’t properly firebend for two weeks after that.
Fire came, but as little puffs of smoke, useless and pathetic. Like Zuko.
Father looked at her with cold eyes. Like he did with Zuko.
She’s not Zuko, she’s not, and never will be.
(She occasionally hopes that there would be a small figure crouched next to the turtleduck pond when she returns to the courtyard)
"According to your instructors, I believe you have mastered your most recent set of Katas."
Azula nods. Eyes lowered.
"I expect you to successfully sustain your cold flames by the end of this month."
"I will not disappoint, Father."
There's the sweeping sound of silk against woolen carpet as Father left the room.
Azula dismisses her mortified servants and returns to her training grounds alone.
She starts with the basics, puffs of orange flames pummeling from her fists until white flickers in. She twirls and kicks and spins, mind racing as fast as her limbs.
Father is slipping. The mash of scar tissue on his face makes it hard for most to differentiate between Ozai's expressions, but Azula knows her father too well to be bothered by it. There's a foreign glint of paranoid terror in his eyes.
Consequent of Zuko's Agni Kai.
The palace staff calls it the Turtle-duck incident. They giggle in hushed groups. They think she's oblivious to their traitorous whispers, but she knows all too well.
The fire lord is insane, they say.
He is no longer blessed.
The fires of Caldera no longer burn as bright.
She hears the whispers, and Father does too.
That's why the palace is under shutdown, executions constant, the staff cut off from the rest of the nation. He fears the rumours.
It didn't stop them from spreading like wildfire.
Father is furious. And hence volatile. He lashes out towards his staff and advisers and daughter. Burns them, sometimes into crisps.
Father no longer visits her lessons.
When Zuko was around, it was easier for her. His incompetence bloomed her perfection.
Now that he's gone, there's no one to compare to. Azula had to drill harder, decent forms perfected, just to have Father throw a glance.
That infantile hope didn’t last. Father doesn't come for her lessons anymore.
“ You are of dragonblood, and you will act so. You will learn to seek weakness in prey and predator alike.”
And that she did. She set her gaze on her godlike father, his once burning eyes and obsidian stance. She took in every outrage, every flinch. And Azula could fear him no longer. Not this pathetic hermit, disposed by Agni. He's shut himself in, terrified of every judging glance.
He’s so afraid of being seen as weak.
She'd never have thought so before, when Father was father . She has juggled with traitorous thoughts but never believed in it. Father was the Fire Lord, ruler of her nation, her life was his to claim.
But she recalls the paranoid scarred man that no longer towers above her and...
He's pathetic .
Azula's flames flicker blue from a strong kick.
I’m better than him.
She twirls, and the flames remain blue.
On the other side of the ocean, an uncle approached the Earth Nation shore. A feisty nephew trails closely.