Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

    For the first six months of Azula’s life, she was raised by nurses. She had no memory of this, of course. She’d been an infant. But she knew -- because the servants had told her -- that it had been a difficult birth, followed by a long convalescence in both body and soul. Ursa could barely look at Azula for a long time, felt convinced there was something wrong with her. This had been evil spirits affecting Ursa’s weakened mind, of course, the servants reassured her. Azula was a good girl, a bright girl, and now that Ursa had recovered, she could see that as well. 

Azula had nodded her small head obediently. It was easy to please the servants with her behavior. They demanded so little from her. Mother was more difficult to please, of course, but that was as it should be. The more important someone was, the more you had to do to earn their attention. That was why Father and Grandfather never paid her any attention at all -- she was not the crown prince like Uncle or the princess like Mother or one of the heirs like Lu-Ten or Zuko. If she wanted any sort of attention from them, she would have to do something wonderful.

    Azula was not sure she could do something wonderful. She was small for her age. Obedient, neat. Not unattractive, but not bubbly and pretty like Ty Lee and her sisters who came to play sometimes. Her tutors focused on etiquette and literacy, not fighting and strategy like Zuko’s. She would be, like Mother, a well-bred, educated woman who would raise loyal noble children and manage her husband’s household and business ventures while he fought the Fire Kingdom’s battles. 

    She mastered her other lessons, but struggled with etiquette. Much of it relied on unspoken rules. Azula did not do well with unspoken rules. When her tutors stated concrete expectations, she met and exceeded them, but how could she be perfect if they did not tell her what to do? Azula followed their rules to the letter and still, somehow, was doing it wrong. She received critical looks and quiet corrections that were painfully mild compared to the devastation she felt inwardly. She was an obedient child, and no one was actually angry at her for her mistakes. She wasn’t important enough to rate anger. 

    When Mother said the wrong thing, Father would roar at her for hours and Azula would creep into Zuko’s room to hide with him. He would hold her, thinking she was afraid, and she was afraid. She did not want to fall short of Father’s expectations. But she was also jealous. She wanted to be important enough that what she did mattered. That Father noticed. 

    Zuko was taught firebending. Azula hid behind the curtains of the dojo and spied on the lessons, quietly imitating the breathing, the movements. When she mastered an exercise more quickly than Zuko did, she felt the small, hungry animal inside her chest roar in victory. 

    One day, she caught the curtains on fire and was discovered, and that was the day that everything changed. She was quiet, strangely expressionless as they bandaged her hands and arms where the fire had burned her when she tried to beat it out. They asked so many questions that after a while, the sounds stopped making sense. How long had she been able to do this? Why hadn’t she told anyone? Why had she been hiding?

    Why would she tell someone when she wasn’t able to do it right yet? She had planned to show Mother once she could do it properly. Maybe Mother would even tell Father. She would get an approving look at dinner, and sometimes he would ask how her firebending lessons were progressing the way he did with her brother. She would be important. She had it all planned out.

    When her burns healed, and she was called before both parents -- both parents!-- and told to show her Father how she could firebend, she gathered her courage and executed each move Zuko had been taught with as much focus and precision as she could manage. She was shaking slightly by the end, but when she lifted her eyes, she saw awe and fear in her mother’s eyes, admiration in Zuko’s. But Father was looking at her with something hungry and cunning and approving that she’d only seen before when he was discussing Earth Kingdom territories to be conquered. 

    “She’s stronger than Zuko,” Father said softly, and Azula’s heart leapt. 

    Her lessons were different after that. As well as attending a more prestigious school, she had firebending lessons, and Li and Lo, Emperor Azulon’s own sisters, were called to the palace to teach her statecraft. They were not kind, like the servants and tutors before. They were harsh, demanding, unrelenting, and Azula reveled in it. They understood what she was capable of. They expected great things from her. They taught her about the kinds of power. They had been great beauties in their time, consummate politicians, and deadly fighters, and they told her that she could be the same. That she could be someone who mattered. 

Mother did not like Li and Lo, and they did not like Mother. Azula learned that defending her Mother to them would earn her swift punishment for impertinence, so she adopted the same lightly scornful attitude towards her as Li and Lo did. She saw how this pushed Mother further away but at the same time, intrigued Father. Li and Lo cackled and told her she was learning her place at last. Azula glowed and worked harder and held her head higher. 

    Father asked after her progress, and praised her even as he grew impatient with Zuko. Zuko was not living up to his initial potential. Zuko was too soft, too childish. Mother tried to argue that Zuko was still a child, and Azula sneered. Being a child was no excuse. She was a child too, technically. That was no reason not to already be establishing her place among her peers and advancing past the basic katas to real combat training, according to Li and Lo. That was no reason to waste hours reading plays and feeding turtleducks and climbing on the palace roofs the way he did. Zuko could be amusing on occasion, but he wasn’t going to get anywhere if he didn’t focus. 

    Azula knew how to focus. It was more difficult to stop focusing. Sometimes she lay awake at night, running things over and over in her head when she couldn’t sleep, mentally rehearsing each word and gesture the way Li and Lo had taught her. These were the ways to win another woman’s loyalty. These were the ways to make a woman fear betraying her. These were the ways to win over a man when you wanted his respect. These were the ways to destroy a man’s pride if he crossed you. This was how to plant an idea in someone’s head without saying it outright. This was how to hold your face and body so that no one could tell that you were lying.

    She would be the best. She would make everyone proud. 

    When she was nine, Father poisoned Grandfather and Mother took the blame. When she found out later that Mother had taken the time to say farewell to Zuko and not to her, she told herself that she did not care. The only thing that woman had ever offered her was a timid, conditional affection. Affection was a weak, toothless thing. A princess did not beg for love. A princess elicited fear and awe. She practiced her katas with intense focus and tried to ignore the sound of Zuko sniveling in the next room. A princess, she decided, did not really require a mother. She was no child, to weep for someone who had, in the end, not been so important after all.

    When she was ten, her father found a pretext to challenge Zuko to an Agni Kai, and Azula knew what that meant. Now that Ozai was Fire Lord, Zuko was the heir, and his weakness could no longer be tolerated. He had been found wanting too many times. He would lose his place as heir, and Azula, the worthier sibling, would take it. It was a political ploy that had been used several times in Fire Nation history to put a preferred candidate in line for the throne. Her father would defeat him easily, and he would lose his royal title, but keep some of his honor, depending on how bravely he fought. He’d likely be redirected toward a stricter military training, something appropriate for his diminished status. Azula suspected that he might actually be more suited for battle than politics. He was too impulsive and got tied up in the details, but he was able to take direction, and had respectable athletic ability. He’d be a more than capable sergeant or patrol leader once he honed his bending a bit more. He wouldn’t even have to pretend to care about his men to gain their trust-- he genuinely did care, for some reason. 

    Then, the day of the Agni Kai, Azula sat in the arena with her smile frozen on her face as her absolute moron of a brother cowered and refused to fight. What was wrong with him? A cold horror grew in her stomach as she saw her father’s expression change. Instead of conducting himself honorably and displaying courage even as he lost his position, Zuko had shamed the Fire Lord publicly with his surrender. There would be no coming back from that. Her fist clenched and she shook it at him, willing him to do something, to fight back. Do something. You idiot. She did not, could not allow her face to change. She smiled wider, as if enjoying the spectacle. She watched as her father marked him as a traitor and a coward and pretended that she wasn’t screaming at Zuko inside her head. 

    If she had nightmares for some days afterward that it was her in the Agni Kai arena, with Father’s hand pressing fire into her flesh, she did not speak of them, and the servants who had come to investigate when they heard her night terrors knew better than to say a word behind her back. 

    She hid her rage at him. Acted, like everyone else, as if he no longer existed. She took careful note of the fact that her Uncle Iroh chose to follow him into banishment. Li and Lo considered Iroh dangerous despite his decline, and had cautioned Azula not to underestimate him. He was still the Great Dragon of the West. Azula found it hard to reconcile this with the gentle, distant old man who had bought her stupid dolls and fans and talked about nothing but tea and pai sho, but she accepted their council and considered what his motivation was. Why would he cast in his lot with a disinherited prince? He was still next in line for the throne before Azula. Why would a pai sho player make such a strategically dismal move?

    It was years before she realized the truth. Uncle Iroh, like Mother, had simply liked Zuko better than Azula. She told herself that that only worked to her advantage. He was an old man, and by the time Father grew too old to lead, either Iroh would be dead or she would be strong enough to challenge him for his place in the succession. She knew Father guessed at her goals and approved of them. 

    It was oddly quieter with Zuko gone. The table was emptier at meals. She felt his absence in a way that she hadn’t felt Mother’s, and it made her burn with rage every time she saw his empty place at the table. If only he hadn’t been so stupid.

    Even as her rage flared, the flames of the candles that now sat on the table during meals stayed almost entirely steady. Control, Father said, was essential. If she could not display control at even a quiet family supper, she would be sent back to her rooms in the hopes that hunger would sharpen her focus. As always, Azula did not need to be warned more than once. She sat demurely across from him and crushed her emotions mercilessly between her teeth with every bite of food.

    Her fire grew hotter, more concentrated, until it was a shade of blue that she secretly wished she could wear without seeming unpatriotic. She was working towards lightning. Father occasionally allowed her to display her skills publicly by calling on her to punish a wrongdoer. Some of his advisors thought it shocking, but Azula understood perfectly. Father was incapable of love and, since she was not yet of age, she could not be given a position of political power. He was giving her the most valuable thing that he could -- he was giving her other peoples’ fear. It was his way of rewarding her, and she walked taller for days afterwards. 

    When he gave her an even greater chance to prove herself, she took it. Ba Sing Se. The Avatar. The Dai Li, who were in need of stronger leadership. Azula had never really gotten on with other firebenders, but she found she rather enjoyed fighting alongside earthbenders. Their precision, given how imprecise an element they had to work with, was really rather impressive. She even managed to manipulate her feckless brother into coming back home where he belonged. For a short time, she tried to make him happy. She allowed Mai to indulge in an attachment to him, she took him to the beach, and she tried to do normal teenager things. He was, after all, a normal teenager, not a prodigy, so this would make him happy, right? If she pretended to be normal too?

    (Secretly, Azula was lonely. Secretly, she envied Ty Lee’s ability to shrug off her exceptional skills and mingle with ordinary people, to find wonder in ordinary things. She tried it, for a bit. It didn’t take, of course. There was probably something wrong with her aura.)

    (She did not make Zuko happy. He left again. Like Mother, he didn’t bother to say goodbye.)

    Being a teenager was stupid and painful. Azula decided she preferred to be a predator. 

Chapter Text

She had done everything right. But after Zuko left, everything began to go wrong. She hunted him, of course. Mai and Ty Lee joined her. 

Mai and Ty Lee betrayed her. Chose Zuko over her, just like Mother and Uncle. 

What was so special about him? He couldn’t firebend his way out of a teacup. Now that he was scarred, she was by far the more attractive, and her personal grooming was impeccable while he had the fashion sense and personal hygiene habits of a peasant. He lacked her ease with witty comebacks and barbed insults, lacked her subtlety. Was it his combat skills? Surely proficiency with swords wasn’t that important to everyone. Firebending was the more noble art. Anyone could swing a sword. Azula could have learned swords if she’d wanted to. Was it his vulnerability? She had heard that some people sought out friends and companions who would rely on them for sympathy, nurturing, and advice. Uncle Iroh was an example of one of those who liked to be depended on for their wisdom and kindness. It was a sound manipulation tactic, but one Azula did not have the patience for. She preferred to surround herself with stable, competent allies. So why were those allies abandoning her one by one?

She had always thought that Mai and Ty Lee were her friends, not Zuko’s. 

Then Father went off to conquer the world, and left her behind.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. What had she worked so hard all these years for, if not to be worthy of a place at his side? He was leaving the Fire Kingdom for bigger and better things, and she deserved to be right there with him. 

She’d done everything he’d ever asked of her. She did not deserve this. She had earned more than a cold throne in an empty palace while the rest of the world burned and fought and lived . 

Zuko came back at last, holding himself like he was worth something. At some point, while he was gone, he had stopped being a child, and she could see a hardness in his eyes to match her own. 

Such a pity he hadn’t found his spine back when they could have fought side by side. Still, now she could have her revenge, for Mai and Ty Lee and Uncle and Mother. Maybe when he was a smoking corpse on the cobblestones, the shaking in her hands and the pain in the hollow of her ribs would go away. 

(Maybe if he won, they would all come back, and she wouldn’t have to be alone.)