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Chapter Text

Sokka wakes up to find he's still dreaming. A glowing figure stands at the open window, hands resting on the sill. Another assassin?

But she turns, and the truth is much worse. It's Yue, smiling gently, the way she does everything. Sokka thought he was done with dreaming about her years ago.

"Yue," he whispers. "I'm sorry."

She tilts her head to the side. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

"I can't dream about you anymore."

"You aren't dreaming." She glides to the foot of his bed.

"No, Yue..." His traitorous mind. He's terrified she will lean forward and kiss him, and he will wake up in the morning and not be able to look Zuko in the eye. He's not in love with Yue anymore, he's sure of it, but maybe some part of his subconscious just can't let go.

"Sokka?" Next to him, Zuko stirs, and Sokka breathes a sigh of relief. In the old dreams, they were always alone.

He reaches over and runs his fingers through Zuko's hair, and Zuko rolls over with a sleepy smile.

Yue's still there, waiting, her face beautiful and unreadable and still glowing.

Zuko props himself up on one elbow, then startles awake, sending a burst of flames straight at Yue's chest before Sokka can stop him. The fire flickers around her body, then sputters out, leaving her unmarked. Zuko narrows his eyes and lights the lamps.

"Hello, Fire Lord Zuko." Yue bows as if this were a court meeting, and she were the foreign dignitary she would have been in another life.

Zuko doesn't take his eyes off her, but says nothing. Maybe this isn't a dream. It feels too real, the lingering heat from Zuko's flames, the soft night air, the tightness in his throat.

"Zuko, this is Yue." But if this isn't a dream, how could Yue be here?

"The moon spirit?" And your ex-girlfriend, he doesn't say.

Yue nods. If she's here, and she can walk the earth, why didn't she come before?  Was he not good enough? Is she here for Zuko?

Sokka takes a deep breath. He's stronger than the fears, now.

Zuko reaches back and takes Sokka's hand. Even after a couple years, Sokka still wonders at his warmth.

Yue's face stays lovely and serene, but a sadness creeps into her eyes, like the way she looked sitting at the high table with her father.

"Yue?" Sokka forces a smile. "What's it like up there?"

"Lonely," Yue says, and Sokka's smile melts away. "But beautiful."

How unfair, that he's here happy and successful and free with a fiancé he loves, and she's all alone, locked into duty like she's been for her whole life.

"And I get to see the whole world," Yue continues, her lips curving. "Fire Lords and cabbage merchants alike." The edges of her eyes crinkle. She looks older, though not by much. "Here, let's sit at the table. I don't have much time left." She glances out the window.

"All of us?" Sokka asks.

Yue nods. "Yes." Her face sets. "I wouldn't have disturbed you if it wasn't important."

Zuko squeezes Sokka's hand, and Sokka pulls him out of bed. Yue takes everything seriously. It doesn't mean this is a catastrophe. And, besides, Sokka and Zuko have a lot of experience with catastrophes.

Once they're all seated at Zuko's breakfast table, Yue folds her hands together. "It's about your sister."

Ice shoots down Sokka's spine, and his chair clatters to the ground. "Katara! Is she hurt?"

"Fire Lord Zuko's sister. Katara is well."

The adrenaline fades, and Sokka picks up his chair again. If anything happened to Katara...he doesn't know what he'd do.

"Has Azula escaped again?" Zuko runs his hands through his hair. His nervous tic. He swallows. "Did she-did she hurt someone?"

Yue shakes her head. "She is still at the Small Palace."

Anything about Azula puts Sokka on edge.

"But she is lonely," Yue says.

"She burns anyone except me who gets within 30 feet of her," Zuko mutters. "And I can't exactly babysit her."

"She can't burn me." Yue glances at her hands, still neatly folded. It's hard to see with her glowing, but is that a blush? Yue can't possibly...

He can't fault her for moving on. Just - Azula?

"You want to visit her?" Zuko asks in wonder. "Sokka told me you were kind, but-"

"Yes. I want to visit her. I want...I want to see if I can help her." Yue looks Zuko in the eye. The Yue of five years ago wouldn't have done this. At least, being the moon spirit, she's out from under Arnook's thumb. "I can walk the earth every new moon. You visit her on the full moon. This way, she will not be alone as long."

Zuko nods. "That would be..." He trails off. "Thank you. I would like that."

Yue smiles. "Next month, then. I will try not to startle her."

"Why didn't you visit me before?" Sokka asks. He tries to keep the hurt out of his tone. "If you can come down every month?"

Yue's smile disappears. "There's no guide to being the moon spirit," Yue says. "So, by the time I figured out I could walk the earth, you had moved on with Suki, and I...I didn't want to interfere. You two were so happy."

"And after Suki?"

Yue glances at Zuko. "You were hardly ever apart from the Fire Lord."

"It's true," Zuko says. He flashes a wry smile. "He just couldn't keep his hands off me. It was always 'Zuko, I'm so sad and I miss Suki! I need a hug, Zuko! Zuko, let's spar! Zuko, hold my hand while I get a tattoo! Zuko, I'm cold and you gotta come spoon me!'"

"Was I really that obvious?" Sokka likes to think he's smooth.

Yue laughs, and it sounds like bells ringing. "I'm afraid so."

Well, at least Zuko took it well, seeing as he was repressing his own feelings for Sokka. "What can I say?" Sokka shrugs, raises an eyebrow. "Zuko's flaming hot." It's an old joke but a good one.

Zuko rolls his eyes, hiding a smile, and Yue keeps laughing.

For a moment, it feels like all three of them are very good friends, like Yue is a normal woman, not a princess or a spirit but a childhood crush he's now on good terms with.

"Could you visit here again?" Sokka asks, and both Yue and Zuko turn to stare at him.

Yue's shoulders fall. "I don't think I should." She glances at Zuko. "You know how I said there's no guide to being the moon spirit? I set myself rules, and those rules include no unfair advantages to any nation." There, her duty again. "I'm sorry, but I might let something slip, and you two are in a position to use my knowledge to advance the Fire Nation or the Southern Water Tribes."

"But, the avatar-" Sokka starts, hating how small his voice sounds.

"Not all avatars are like Avatar Aang," Yue says.

"And Azula-"

"Azula does not run a government." Yue pauses. "And I don't want to come between you two."

Sokka sputters. "As a friend, I meant! Of course!"

"I know," Yue says.

Zuko sits there in awkward silence, looking away. And Sokka knows that vision of friendship will never be.

"I should be going." Yue stands, and Sokka and Zuko follow her to the window. "Goodbye, Fire Lord Zuko."

Zuko bows to her. "Thank you, Moon Spirit Yue."

Yue bows back, then turns to Sokka.

"I am happy for you, Sokka," Yue whispers, and touches his face. Her hand is cool and soft, and he can't help but compare it to her icy kiss the night they parted. "Be well." He closes his eyes and she presses her lips to his forehead, so gently he can hardly feel it. It's a benediction, a blessing maybe, and he feels cold despite the warm Fire Nation night.

When he opens his eyes again, she's gone, leaving an oddly shaped hole in his heart.

"Sokka?"

Sokka blinks, and it's like surfacing after a long time underwater. The heat comes rushing back.

Zuko looks uncertain, his hand hovering over Sokka's shoulder. He's not jealous, exactly, but he's more jealous than Suki was, and he doubts himself.

"Don't worry, Zuko," Sokka says, and shakes off the daze. "I'll always choose you."

Zuko smiles his dopey innocent smile, and Sokka kisses him, an entirely different sort of kiss from Yue's. Zuko kisses back enthusiastically, his hand sliding down Sokka's back, and he doesn't have to say it for Sokka to know he'll choose him too.

When they pull away, Zuko's back to normal again, face a little flushed, the way Sokka loves to see it. He can't resist another kiss, a tender one that makes him feel incredibly lucky.

Zuko rests his head on Sokka's shoulder, holding him close. "I never thought I'd get to meet her."

"I never thought I'd see her again, and especially not for the sake of your supervillain sister," Sokka mutters.

"That's rough, buddy." Zuko pulls him into bed. "At least you've still got me." He pauses. "But I'm glad. That Azula will have someone."

And Sokka could say the same for Yue.

Chapter Text

Azula doesn't mind waiting anymore. It's two weeks from Zuko's embarrassingly awkward declaration that the Water Tribe Princess-turned-moon-spirit is her new babysitter to the next new moon.

Two weeks like any other two weeks from the past five years, except now she has something to look forward to. Or, maybe more accurately, a challenge. Zuko brings her new books every month and she's never been a better bender and she's even learned to cook and paint and carve stone, but there's no sense of urgency. She doesn't enjoy Zuko's visits enough to dread his leaving.

But this moon spirit - making this moon spirit serve her, discovering how she could be useful - will be a challenge, and Azula will only have a sliver of time each month to work on her.

Azula marks the months by the moon and by Zuko's visits. Tonight, a waning crescent hangs low in the sky, and Azula watches it from the roof of the Small Palace. The latest science says the moon is an orb of rock just like the earth, spirit or no spirit. Azula likes that. She's never trusted spirits, only herself and her father and, briefly, mistakenly, horribly, Mai and Ty Lee.

The memory burns like ice, and Azula folds it up into a careful triangle and puts it in a box in her head and closes the lid and slides in a key and turns it in the lock. She spends all her considerable focus imagining the click of that lock and the snick of the key sliding out. And then the cold metal of the key in her mouth and its jagged edges slipping down her throat. All gone. Nothing can hurt her now. Nothing and no one.

When she opens her eyes, Agni's light already tears at the edges of the sky. The roof tiles dig into her legs, and she flips off onto the balcony, settling with her back to the door. In this way she has weakened: it is harder and harder to endure pain, the pain she trained with, the pain her father trained her with--

Another thought for the box.

Azula has no idea where her father is, or even if he's alive. The one thing Zuko refuses to bring her is news. He only announces harmless, hopeful things: his coronation; Iroh's tea empire; the avatar's pathetic collection of acolytes; his and Sokka's engagement (that was a shock).

Her brother, Fire Lord after all. The thought has run its freezing, scraping course enough times that now it rattles around in Azula's head like a rock in a tea kettle. It's hollowed her out so thoroughly that she can't dredge up a single response. Her failure? Her inadequacy, in the end? Her weakness? Or his treachery? His what?

Like a dragon eating its tail, she can think herself in circles with this for as long as she wants. Sometimes longer.

Azula eats breakfast in the library. She goes over an old scroll about the trickery of spirits. Some spirits have rules, like no iron or no lies. Some do not, and delight in lying. The key is to figure out which are which.

She takes careful notes. Her handwriting has degenerated so much in the past few years that no one else could possibly decipher it. Or, no one else except for Zuko.

_

That night, Azula sits in the lotus position in the center of the courtyard with her eyes closed and waits for the moon spirit.

After sunset, she doesn't have to wait long.

"Princess Azula."

"Moon Spirit." Azula snaps her eyes open. The spirit is beautiful, sitting with her legs tucked to the side under a long silver dress. Lovely. Soft white hair and full pink lips and smooth brown skin and the most brilliant blue eyes Azula has ever seen. And all suffused in a gentle glow. She smiles, and Azula's heart aches.

"My name is Yue." It sounds like she's speaking from far away, and Azula can't stop watching her lips.

This must be because she hasn't seen anyone except Zuko in years. No one she's not related to in years. No girls in years. Azula should have expected her emotions. She's already slipping up.

"The Fire Lord told you I would be coming?" Agni, her voice. It scatters all her thoughts.

"Yes," Azula manages. "And there's no need to call him Fire Lord in front of me. Zuko is fine, or Zuzu if you're sufficiently familiar."

The corner of Yue's mouth turns up. "May I call you Azula?"

Azula nods. Why is this so much harder than it used to be? Ty Lee was beautiful, and Azula still used her. Mai was lovely, and Azula set her up with Zuko. Katara and Suki were radiant, and Azula hunted them.

"Will you show me around?"

"Why are you here?" The words tear their way out of Azula's mouth, harsh and ugly.

Yue's eyes widen. "You are lonely." She pauses. "And so am I. I thought...we could help each other."

"I don't need help."

"But do you want it?"

"No," Azula says, but she has to force herself. This is it - all her discipline gone. "No, I don't want your help." She closes her eyes. Maybe she doesn't want a challenge after all. Maybe she's a pale shell of who she used to be, and there's no point doing anything but sinking back into the abyss of her life.

"Azula," Yue says, with incredible tenderness, and touches her hand to Azula's cheek. Her skin is soft and cool, like night air at sea, and Azula has so completely forgotten what it feels like to be touched that she shudders.

Her eyes sting with tears, but she keeps them clamped shut, and holds back the water as best she can.

"Can you help me?" Yue asks, and withdraws her touch.

Anything, to get you to touch me again. Weak. "What do you want?"

"A friend?"

"You chose me?"

"I like you."

Azula cracks one eye open, and somehow Yue still looks sincere. "No one likes me. Besides, you've never met me."

Yue flushes, and it's so pretty, her cheeks a few shades darker pink than her lips. "I'm the moon spirit. I see it when people look up at me."

So all those nights- her tears, even- Azula suddenly feels too hot.

"And I do like you. You're - you're interesting."

Azula raises an eyebrow. She has the upper hand now, and Yue's floundering. Maybe being the moon spirit for a few years is just as bad for intimidation as living in a glorified prison cell.

"I like that you read just as many books about metalworking as you do about dragons."

Dragons? Azula smiles. So this isn't a waste after all. "Actually, I think you can help me. Tell me: are dragons back?" It was a tiny slip up in a scroll Zuko brought her, a side note talking about dragons in the present tense, not the past. But it made her wonder. Zuko would not have told her about dragons. But if Yue can see anyone looking at the moon...

"Yes." Yue's gaze lingers on Azula's lips. Or is she just imagining that? Focus. "They never left, in fact."

"Where are they?" The old thrill of the chase rises in Azula's throat.

"High in the mountains, the last of the Sun Warriors guard the last of the dragons." Yue slips into a storytelling voice, like the masters who sing Fire Lord Sozin's praises every year on the anniversary of his comet. Azula's read of Sun Warriors, but only recently, in crumbling scrolls Zuko's kept bringing her. "The Fire Lord and the Avatar went to visit before Sozin's comet's return."

Yue stands, and her dress ripples with every motion. She starts across the courtyard towards the palace building, up the stairs to the library, and Azula can't help but follow.

"They danced with the dragons," Yue continues. She walks through the doorway of the library and spreads open one of Zuko's Sun Warrior scrolls Azula left lying on the table. "And the dragons showed them how to firebend for life, rather than death." Yue smiles, tracing her elegant fingers over a symbol drawn in the middle of the scroll. "Which is your firebending about?"

Azula ignores the question. "How many dragons are left? Do they stay in the mountains?"

Yue tells her story after story about the dragons, and Azula soaks it all up. Their culture, their skill, their raw power. They skim through scroll after scroll. Every time their fingers brush, it feels like bending lightning. All her notes about spirits strike her as foolish and simplistic next to the real thing.

"Maybe the dragons will roam free," Yue says, "now that the Fire Lord has passed a ban on hunting them."

Azula's heart beats faster to think of a dragon streaking across the sky, spewing fire like Sozin's comet. Like her father's towers when he crowned himself Phoenix King and left her behind.

Yue turns to her, face open. "Is there anything else you would like to know?"

Azula's stomach churns. "My father. Is he dead?" What is she hoping for? Does she even want to know?

Yue goes horribly still. "No."

Azula's heart pounds, her hands tingling like they do when she bends lightning. Sparks skitter from her fingertips to the ground, playing over Yue's feet. Can she ask? Should she ask? After so long, what would her father say to her? He'd be horribly disappointed. She's a disgrace.

"The avatar spared his life," Yue says gently.

"He lost to the avatar?"

Yue nods. "Avatar Aang took his bending away."

Azula's whole body clenches, and it's all she can do to keep from vomiting up her dinner. To lose her connection to the sun? To lose the exhilaration of lightning, the pure power and singular clarity of a perfect blue flame? Whenever she watches fire, Azula swears her heart beats in time with its flickering. Bending is as much a part of her as her eyes or her blood.

And it would be a pathetic Fire Lord who would rule with no firebending. As weak as Zuko can be, she still dreams about the clash of their flames at the final Agni Kai. A haze of emotion distorts all those memories, but she can't forget the fire.

She's making excuses. Her father should rule. Her father would restore her. Or he would condemn her for her overwhelming, all-encompassing failure. But she deserves it, deserves his judgment, his final verdict, now that she's fallen so far. It doesn't matter what Zuko says.

"Azula?" Yue's voice pulls her back to reality. Blue flames lick up Azula's arms, along the balcony rails, over Yue's skirt.

The fire doesn't hurt Yue. Probably why she's here.

"I need to go. It's almost dawn," Yue murmurs.

Azula puts out the fire. "Go, then."

Yue nods. "I would like to return next month, if you will have me."

"Yes," Azula says. More dragons. More stories.

Then Yue touches her face, and all other thoughts melt away.

Azula closes her eyes. Yue's fingers brush over her cheek, and it must be her lips on Azula's forehead. Azula's knees go weak, and her whole face tingles.

"Goodbye, Princess Azula." Yue floats a few feet off the ground, almost horizontal, a vision in silver and soft light, her cheeks that same berry pink. She fades away.

For a while, Azula stares at the space where Yue was, and, for a while, the cool feeling of Yue's kiss lingers on her forehead.

The sun spills over the horizon, trailing fiery orange and pink. For the first time in five years, it's blessedly easy to keep her box of memories locked up tight. Dragons and Yue fill her mind like war and her father used to.

Could she fly away on the back of a dragon? When Azula pictures this escape, a tiny, traitorous part of her wants Yue riding behind her, arms around her waist as the dragon carries them far far away.

Chapter Text

Azula's lost all her skill at waiting. The twenty-eight days to the next new moon inch by. Yue brings the most excitement she's had since her last escape attempt two years ago. Thinking of Yue makes Azula's heart beat faster, and she's coming dangerously close to feeling more than a natural reaction to seeing someone other than her brother for the first time in years.

She doesn't expect that Yue returns her feelings. She's a failure and a prisoner, and, besides, the Northern Water Tribe has always been traditional about that sort of thing. But Azula's still beautiful, the most beautiful she's ever been. Maybe some part of Yue shares Azula's recent foolish longing for a lover's embrace. Maybe Yue's also thinking of how they would kiss, thinking of Azula's lips on her neck--

Much more of this and she will sink into a delusional fog again.

Zuko can tell she's distracted at his next visit. He asks her how she liked Yue's visit and she brushes him off, but somehow he latches onto that and damn it, he's gotten so much better at reading her since he turned traitor the last time.

"Yue didn't...hurt you?" He asks. His hands worry the ends of his hair.

She laughs. "Her? Hurt me? Of course not. She wouldn't hurt a fly." Zuko cares about her? Or does he? She still can't figure that one out. "Have you forgotten what I can do?"

"No. I have not." He tenses, turning his scar away from her. So long, and still he flinches at the memory.

That hurts, just a little. Even though he keeps her locked up.

On the night of the new moon, Azula eats dinner at sunset, then goes to wait in the library with a pile of scrolls.

Yue appears in the doorway, just as lovely as the month before, and Azula's breath catches in her throat.

"Princess Azula," Yue says, with a soft smile that makes Azula's heart skip a beat. Not normal. "I missed you this month." An unfamiliar emotion flutters in her stomach.

Azula raises an eyebrow. "I'm flattered." Does that count as flirting? Well, she's certainly not admitting to missing Yue. "But we don't have time to waste." Azula's official plan doesn't include flirting. Or chatting about the past month.

Yue frowns. "Azula?"

Azula unrolls the first scroll, casting it open on the drafting table. She lights a lamp above the table. "Tell me everything you can about the Northern Water Tribe capital."

"Why?"

Azula smiles. She almost feels like her old self again. "I'm curious." Azula's always been a proponent of 'know thine enemy.' She spent sleepless nights researching Ba Sing Se before infiltrating it.

Yue almost smirks, and the expression sends a jolt down Azula's spine. "Then I'm sure you'll want to know about the Festival of the Northern Lights."

This wasn't in the plan, but, actually, she kind of does.

"I won't tell you the capital's weaknesses," Yue continues, in a softer tone. "I won't give up our secrets. But if you want knowledge for knowledge's sake, or because you feel trapped here, I'm happy to talk all night."

"Very well." What was she going to do with their weaknesses anyway? She's adrift.

Yue and Azula spend the night scribbling over scrolls, talking about folklore and the Northern Water Tribe and the Fire Nation, the moon and the sun.

Azula asks about waterbending, and Yue explains that only the men fight, while the women heal.

"Agni, that's primitive," Azula laughs. "No wonder they would've crumbled without the avatar."

Yue shrugs. "It is tradition. And duty. It is not what I would have chosen if I could have designed our society, but my people are not primitive."

Azula scoffs. "Tradition does nothing but hold people back." She didn't topple the Earth Kingdom by following tradition. Her traditional uncle sent her a doll and her brother a knife, while traditionally leading a 600 day failed siege. Her traditional mother wanted her to be a traditional woman, to moon over flowers and let Zuko leave her behind. And yet...

Yue inclines her head. "I did not want to marry a cruel man I hardly knew. But it was what was best for the tribe."

Azula is silent.

"Do you do what is best for the Fire Nation?"

"I did what my father wanted."

"That's not the same."

Azula shifts on her feet. "My father was the Fire Nation."

"He was the Fire Lord." Yue looks at her with infinite sadness in her eyes. "The people living downriver from Ozai's coal factories are the Fire Nation. The children who grew up without dancing are the Fire Nation." Her voice softens. "The soldiers who died on the front lines of Sozin's war were the Fire Nation."

And again, Azula can't say anything, but her eyes feel prickly.

Yue brushes her thumb across Azula's cheek. Azula's crying. Why is she crying?

"Why am I crying?"

Yue leans forward and embraces Azula, and Azula freezes.

She can't remember the last time anyone's hugged her like this. It feels like Yue's melting into her. Like sunshine on the beach when she was too little to understand anything more than sand between her toes and tiny pretty sparks in her hands.

A sob shakes her, and then another and another and another. Maybe she's screaming. But once she starts, she can't stop, and the emotions collapse over her again and again and again. Her utter, complete failure. And Yue's arms still around her, as steady and easy as a tiny flame in her palm. Her inadequacy. How completely, how thoroughly she's lost her chance to ever be enough. But Yue's arms, still around her.

When it all subsides at last, Yue still holds her. The tiniest, most foolish thought stirs in her mind: maybe staying right here is all she's ever wanted.

Yue isn't afraid of her at all. The list of people who aren't afraid of Azula at all has one other occupant: her father.

But the way Yue isn't afraid of her is entirely different from the way her father wasn't afraid of her. Yue doesn't have power over her. Azula's sources of power - lightning and reputation and Fire Nation royal blood - mean nothing to Yue.

Yue strokes her hair, and Azula freezes again. She feels like her insides are all hollowed out and she's empty of everything that made her Azula. A sick feeling starts in her chest, and she pulls away.

"Azula? Are you alright?" Yue's so gentle, so kind and soft. Everything Azula never was. Maybe if she'd been more like Yue, her mother would have wanted her.

"Why are you here?" The words come out in a guttural rasp, scraping at her throat. "Why do you care about me when my people spent a hundred years killing yours? Why do you want to be with me when you are so kind and I am..." She trails off. And she is what? A monster.

"I want to help you. As the moon spirit-"

Azula laughs. "I don't want your pity. Do something for yourself for once."

Yue steps back. "Okay. I will." Her eyes flash. "That's why. I'm here because you interest me. Because I've seen you stare up at the moon night after night and I can't stop thinking about you. Because no one else has been able to help you, but I think I can. And..."

"And?" Azula's mouth goes dry.

"And I'm lonely," Yue says softly. "And I want something new. You make me feel new things."

Azula turns away. What does she say to that? New things? "If you could have designed your society, what would you have chosen?"

Yue takes it as the olive branch it is. "And look - no one else has ever asked me that before."

"Why not?" Azula spins back to look at Yue. "You're smart, you're a princess, and you know a lot about how a society works."

Yue flushes deep berry pink, and Azula's stomach flips over. "Princesses don't have the same powers in the Northern Water Tribe as here." She pauses, head tilted to the side. "I would make a more equal society. You're right about some traditions, but we can salvage festivals, architecture, and much more. There would be no status difference between women and men, and I would make room for those who don't identify as either." Yue smiles. "I appreciate that about your culture and the Earth Kingdom's. And I love what Aang's doing with the air acolytes. Everyone is on the same footing, peasants and nobles and royalty alike."

"Peasants with royalty?" Azula raises an eyebrow.

Yue looks right back at her. "You aren't a firebending prodigy because you're royal."

Azula considers it. "True. Look at Zuko." Except Zuko defeated her. And here she goes, thoughts crowding in again. In the end, all her talent couldn't save her.

Yue's laugh cuts right through the fog of her mind. "Would you believe Zuko tried to fight a waterbender in the middle of a glacier?"

Azula blinks. It does sound like something Zuko would do. And then she's laughing too, a real, genuine laugh. There's not a lot to laugh about as a prisoner, so she laughs until her sides hurt. Yue has a delicate laugh and a different belly-deep laugh, and Azula could listen to either of them for hours.

"He is a good Fire Lord, though," Yue says, wiping tears from her eyes. "And he's gotten a lot better at firebending since the siege of the North." She glances at Azula. "So have you. You're mesmerizing."

Azula shivers. She practices katas and her own forms under the moon sometimes, to get stronger without the power of the sun. "Watch for me this month."

"I always do." Yue meets her eyes, and Azula can't look away.

"You're fading out."

Yue startles. "I lost track of time." She glances at the sky, and Azula can see the morning star through her shoulder. Then, she turns back and places her hands on Azula's shoulders. Azula can hardly feel it, but the touch still makes her weak. "Look at the moon tomorrow night, and I will look back."

Azula nods. "Watch for me," she repeats. And then Yue's gone.

Chapter Text

For the next few days, Azula's at a loss for what to do. Without Yue, her day-to-day life seems colorless and aimless. When the moon comes out, she plays with fire - sheets of it and handfuls of it, blue flames and lightning and dusky red ones. She builds arches and stars and flowers and waves.

Azula likes Yue. It goes beyond attraction: Yue is perceptive and smart and deeply knowledgeable, with a surprisingly sharp sense of humor. Their conversation reminds Azula of being with Mai and Ty Lee, except Yue has no problem saying things that will piss Azula off. Actually, though, Azula kind of likes that.

And, as annoying as it is, Azula admires Yue's dedication to her role. She inhabits it, like Azula tried to inhabit being a princess, and then being Fire Lord, but Yue does it confidently.

"You seem different," Zuko remarks at their next meeting.

Azula glares at him, but she feels different. "Different how?"

"Happier?" He asks, head tilted to the side, hands tangled in his hair.

"In your cage?" She raises an eyebrow.

Zuko goes blotchy. "I wish it didn't have to be like this. I want to be friends." He can't look at her. Coward.

Azula's hands shake. Zuko doesn't blunder around into her traps anymore, doesn't fill up with emotion. More and more, being with him leaves her off-balance.

"But could you live in the palace and not interfere?"

Could she? Does she even want to ever set foot in the palace again? The palace, where she failed, where she ended up all alone and unwanted, where her mother's ghost still walks the halls.

"I thought so," Zuko says softly, and gets up to leave.

When Yue returns, Azula brings out her scrolls on spirits and asks about what it's like to be the moon.

"What did you do on the new moons before..."

"Before I started visiting you?" Yue smiles.

Azula nods, and her heart skips a beat.

"I traveled the world."

"You can visit anywhere?"

"If you would like, I can take you with me." Yue's cheeks flush again.

Azula drops all her scrolls. Anywhere? "How?"

"Spiritual projection. You will need to meditate."

"I can do that." Azula has always been good at meditating, but, after five years of empty time, she's extraordinary. "Now?" She raises an eyebrow. Her hands shake. She wants to see the ocean, see a volcano, see everything.

Yue nods, pink-cheeked, a smile spreading across her face. "Now."

Azula folds herself into the lotus position right there on the library floor and empties her mind. Then Yue places her hands on either side of Azula's face, and her mind fills back up again. Fuck.

"Azula?" Her voice doesn't help either.

"Give me a minute." Azula spreads her mind into a vast empty blue sky, like a noonday sky. Usually, it isn't nearly this difficult. She imagines Yue's hands are on someone else's cheeks, irons out all thoughts of Yue, all thoughts of dragons, until the sky fills her from her head to the hard wood beneath her.

"Very good. You can open your eyes." Yue's not touching her anymore, and Azula feels beautifully, incredibly light.

Azula opens her eyes. She's hovering about a foot off the ground behind her body, where Yue kneels. The world looks the same, and the night air feels the same, though maybe now it blows through her.

"Do you feel dizzy?" Yue stands and looks up at her, or rather her spirit.

"No," Azula says, but seeing her body sitting there, calm and composed and alone, starts a twisting feeling in the pit of her incorporeal stomach.

"Here." Yue takes her hand, and Azula suppresses a shiver. "Don't look at it. That will help." She leads Azula away from the library and out to the balcony.

Azula can feel Yue's hand soft around hers the same she would in her body. Their hands match, now, glowing spirit with glowing spirit. Yue's palms are smooth from growing up a glorified doll. She should let go, but somehow she can't bring herself to.

"When I first became the moon spirit," Yue says, "I didn't leave a body behind. I just...floated away." Her lips curve, but the smile doesn't reach her eyes. "I kissed Sokka, then that was it and I was in the sky and everything looked faraway."

Sokka? Really? Why does everyone want to be with Sokka?

"You're upset?"

Of course she's perceptive. She's the moon spirit. "I'm still getting used to this spiritual projection," Azula lies, and snatches her hand away from Yue's, pretending to examine the glow. The memory of crying in Yue's arms last month fills her with a sick twisting feeling.

Something flashes across Yue's face. "I understand." And her polite, lovely mask is back. "Of course, Sokka is engaged to the Fire Lord now-"

"Zuko," Azula spits.

"Engaged to the Fire Lord," Yue continues, and Azula's shoulders tighten. "And, anyway, being the moon spirit isn't a good occupation for romance." Her voice fades out.

Of course it isn't, and Azula is a fool. Clearly five years of isolation have made her forget how people really are. Yue's still in love with Sokka, and all she can do is pity Azula. See her as the failure she is. What did she expect? That Yue would forsake her upbringing after all and beg Azula to love her? No. No one fears her anymore.

"Where do you want to go?" Yue asks, and Azula shoves those thoughts back into the box in her mind. For later, definitely. For now, she can still make use of the moon spirit.

"I want to see the dragons." It's the only answer, really. She's spent the past month dreaming about them all day and all night. Well, dragons and Yue.

Yue smiles, and this time it does reach her eyes. "Very well." Yue takes her hand again. The world twists away.

***

Wind roars in Azula's ears and whips right through her spirit. She stumbles, and Yue reaches out to steady her.

"I'm fine," Azula says, and plants her feet. They stand on a high rocky cliff, a stone bridge and some kind of intricate pavilion far below them.

"Just- be careful. Don't stand too close to the edge."

Azula spins around. "Can I die in this state?"

"I don't know." Yue bites her lip, and something burns in the pit of Azula's stomach. She shoves it aside. "But I don't think we should test it."

Azula nods, swallowing hard. "Fair." She turns back to the cliff. "What am I looking at?"

"The ancient civilization of the sun warriors," Yue says. She sits on the edge of the cliff at Azula's feet, eyes wide, looking out over the canyon. "They preserved the original purpose of firebending - to create life."

Azula laughs.

"Is that funny? What do you think the purpose of firebending is?"

"Firebending is pure focus. Mental energy, neither creative nor destructive. The will in a tangible form." Azula smiles. "Fire differs from the other elements because it is always powerful and always requires focus. There are no simple glasses of fire to drink, no pebbles of fire cast aside, no gentle breezes of fire. Fire does not come in halves. It can always grow."

Yue tilts her head to the side. "And lightning?"

"Lightning is fire distilled further, to its source. Most wildfires are caused by lightning."

Yue folds her hands together. "Water is already in its most essential state."

"You are the most essential state of waterbending."

Yue flushes bright red. "I...suppose so."

"All the men who stop women from fighting draw their power from you now." Azula's heart beats a tattoo in her chest, and she feels like she's walking a razor blade, the kind of rush she got from outwitting a general when she was fourteen, except she's building Yue up instead of tearing someone down.

"Sometimes I wonder how many of them know."

"If they knew, they would let women fight." Azula sits next to Yue, feet dangling off the cliff edge. Below, the wind whistles through the empty pavilion, visible only by starlight.

"The moon isn't a warrior. I'm not a warrior. Traditionally, men draw healing from women the way they draw strength from the moon." Yue touches her ankle to Azula's. "And I think the culture is changing." She smiles. "This month, I saw a young girl join the class of waterbending warriors at the North Pole. I am proud of my people."

"I fought the moon like a warrior," Azula says. The words sound hollow and far away.

Yue turns to look at her. "What do you mean?"

Azula shrugs. It takes all her effort to remain nonchalant. Yue must be able to tell. "The moon made my enemies stronger. I hated it."

"Waterbenders are not your enemies anymore."

Azula can only stare into the darkness of the sky. She no longer knows who her enemies are. Essentially, always, she battles the weakness within herself. Besides that, she can't say.

"Do you still hate the moon?" Yue's voice is soft, and her arm brushes against Azula's.

"No." How could she, when all the moon makes her think of now is Yue?

Yue exhales. They're sitting so close that Azula can feel her shoulders move.

They fall into a comfortable silence, waiting, listening to the wind. It makes a kind of music on the rocks.

The stars shine brighter away from Caldera City, and there's enough light that Azula can make out a drawing of fire consuming a figure down on the bridge. That's another thing about fire: it cleanses, like water, but in an entirely different way. Fire is not gentle.

Maybe Azula left the burnt-out, burnt-away shell of who she's been for the past five years in her prison. Maybe after so much time there she has become inextricably bound to the place, and leaving could metamorphose her like an insect.

At some point, Yue leans her head on Azula's shoulder, and somehow it spreads warmth through Azula's whole body.

"Can spirits get cold?" Azula asks.

"Not really, but you are still nice and warm. Even as a spirit."

Azula can't stop a smile.

After a while, a procession winds its way along the road to the pavilion. The people carry metal, and it glints in the starlight. At the center of the procession, a single orange fire burns in a brazier.

Azula leans forward.

"Careful," Yue says, and reaches around Azula's waist to grab a fistful of her robe.

"I'm not going to fall," Azula mutters.

The procession marches up to the pavilion and settles into a semicircle. Drums beat out a heartbeat, making Azula's spirit blood burn. She clenches her fists.

The drums intensify, and one figure takes a piece of the fire in their hand. The figure proceeds up the steps to the bridge, followed by another with their own piece of the first fire. They stand on either side of the middle of the bridge, facing two caves in the cliffs, and hold out their flames.

The earth trembles. Azula braces herself, dizzy with anticipation.

A dragon shoots out of each cave. Azula leaps to her feet, and Yue yanks her back. The dragons of reality make the dragons she'd imagined look like turtleducks. One is red and one is blue, and both ripple with power, twisting and turning around the bridge like twin flames, like her and Zuko's fire during Sozin's Comet.

The dragons breathe fire, and it surrounds them like a second skin, trailing around the bridge, searing against the night.

The first firebenders. The reason she is who she is.

The figures on the bridge begin to move, and Azula can't help but follow. She dances in a mirror of the sun warriors below. In this projection state, she can't produce fire, but she learns the steps, and she can picture exactly how the sparks will travel along her muscles, how every turn of her foot builds the power, can feel the phantom presence of dragons alongside her.

When the sun warriors finish their dance, and the dragons retreat into the caves, Yue claps for her.

"I forgot to tell you how beautiful your firebending was this month," Yue says.

Azula feels her cheeks heat. She opens her mouth to say something, but the dawn creeps up behind them and far below the sun warriors beat out a welcome to the new day.

In an instant, Azula settles back into her body. Her eyelids are heavy and sticky, and her legs ache.

"Goodbye, Azula."

Azula forces her eyes open. "Goodbye, Yue." She pauses. "Thank you."

Yue smiles as she fades into the azure sky.

Chapter Text

For the next month, Azula practices the fire dance over and over again. Her flames have always felt like an extension of her, but with these steps they feel more like they are her, like they're more a part of her than her own mind.

She can't help but smile at the moon like she's sharing a secret.

On the night of the new moon, Azula waits on the balcony, her heart fluttering like a broken bird in her chest. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

When she exhales and opens her eyes again, Yue stands in the courtyard below. Her hair floats around her in a corona of light, playing over her collarbone, illuminating the hollow of her throat. Azula's heart skips a beat.

"Where do you want to go this month?" Yue calls, eyes bright.

Azula smiles. "Take me to your favorite place." She leaps over the balcony railing and flips down to the courtyard.

Yue claps, and Azula's pulse pounds in her ears. She can still taste the clean mountain air from last month, and wherever Yue takes her will be at least as glorious. This is what she loves - going places, fitting the world together in her mind, understanding the way the land moves and the best way to use it.

Azula settles into the lotus position, rests her hands on her knees, and closes her eyes. She's had more practice meditating away thoughts of Yue, and, this time, she leaves her body with no trouble. She can't manage spiritual projection on her own yet, but she focuses on the feeling of unhooking from the physical world. Maybe she'll be able to replicate it this month. Azula's always done better with a project to sink her teeth into.

This time, seeing herself sitting straight-backed on the ground does nothing more than make her arms feel light. Then, Yue takes her hand, and everything feels perfectly natural.

Yue shows her to the grassy shore of a vast mountain lake. It perfectly reflects the moonless sky, stars scattered like water lilies. The mountain range stretches into the distance, covered in patches of shining snow.

"Where are we?" Azula asks.

"This is Jingzi Lake." Yue drops her hand and leans down to trail her fingers through the water. "I used to come here to watch meteor showers. It's the most beautiful place I've ever been."

"It would be more beautiful with the moon," Azula says softly. She glances at Yue. Of course Yue loves it here - it's open and free and clear.

Yue smiles, cheeks pink. "Look," she whispers, and leans forwards. "Beautiful."

Azula glances down, and her own face, clear before her for the first time in five years, sends ice through her veins.

Her hair falls to her waist, dangling around her. The idea of cutting it takes her back to the day of the last Agni Kai, to her ultimate failure. Her cheekbones are sharper than they were then, eyes hollower, face slimmer. She looks her age, almost twenty, but for years she's been walking around picturing herself with her fourteen-year-old face. The woman staring back at her is deeply unfamiliar.

It's like looking at herself in the mirror she shattered. This time, though, it's Yue over her shoulder, not her mother. And Yue doesn't love Zuko better.

Yue's reflection is almost as lovely as the real thing. Azula wants to take a cup and scoop up their image to save for a darker day.

"Your fire dance was stunning this month," Yue says softly, and Azula watches her lips move in her reflection. "I loved to watch it."

Azula's face heats. Below, her reflection flushes, the red stark against her pale skin. Is that really how she looks now? She is used to being watched. For as long as she can remember, she's felt her father's eyes on her like a jealous god.

Yue dips a hand in the water, and their reflections scatter into ripples. Her father can't see her here.

"Let's do the fire dance. Here," Azula says. "There are supposed to be two people." She jumps to her feet.

Yue touches her face. "Oh no, I couldn't-"

"You can." Azula smiles. "I'm sure you've learned to dance."

"Not like that!"

"Fighting and dancing are not so different." Both are a show. "We start here." She assumes the first stance.

Yue stands, blushing.

"Do you have pants?"

Yue blinks. "Pants?"

Azula grins. "You can't kick in a dress!"

"I..." Yue's blush deepens. "I've never worn pants."

"Really? Never? What a shame." Azula raises an eyebrow. The idea of Yue in pants is very appealing.

Yue presses her lips together. "Okay." She closes her eyes, and her silver skirt shrinks into a pair of diaphonous pants, shimmering in the starlight. "How do I look?" She opens one eye, and her face scrunches up like a moon flower in daytime.

Azula's heart skips a beat. Yue is, for sure, the sweetest being on the planet. "Stunning."

Yue smiles. "Thank you." She takes a cautious step forward, then jumps into the air, twisting her legs apart. "You're right about pants." She bends backwards, then arcs her legs through the air, landing lightly and easing up to standing. Kind of like Ty Lee, but without the annoying perkiness. Yue moves like moonlight slipping through a window.

Azula swallows, her mouth suddenly dry.

"Let's dance on the water," Yue says.

On the water? Fuck yes. Azula takes a careful step out, and, with a little focus, lets her spirit self drift over the lake.

She eases into a couple simple katas, never dipping below the surface. The water's cold seeps in through her shoes, but not the damp. Perfect.

Yue claps, and Azula takes the first position. "Ready?" She asks.

"I'll try," Yue says, and stands to face her. Their reflections reach towards each other.

"Do you know the steps?"

Yue nods. "I learned them this month, watching you."

Azula's face heats. "Shall we?"

Yue flashes her a smile, then turns away, assuming her first stance.

They pause for a second, steady on the water, no gap between their real selves and their reflections.

Azula moves into the second stance, lunging forward. Yue follows, and, effortlessly, they dance over the unbroken lake. High above, the wind whistles through the mountains, and closer, Azula's own breathing comes even and measured, and Yue's ragged and shallow.

Someday, Azula will teach her how to breathe. For now, she leans into the ancient dance and lets clear power run through her movements. If she closes her eyes, the wind sounds like a dragon.

She arches her arms over her head, and Yue's fists meet hers. Azula's reflection mirrors her, and Yue mirrors her, four women on the lake.

If she were free, if Yue were free, Azula would want to do this every night.

Yue lets her arms fall, breathing hard. She laughs, and tumbles to the shore, spreading out in the lush grass, face vivid and lovely.

Azula follows her back to solid ground, drawing her robe tighter around herself.

"You're like a sun spirit, so bright and burning," Yue says, smiling up at her. Even now, with no firebending? No crown?

"I'm not bright like I used to be," Azula mutters, sinking to the ground. Or was she bright? Did her father ever love her? Or did he think of her as a more useful Zuko?

Yue sits up and takes Azula's hands in hers. "You're the brightest you've ever been. The strongest. Your heart makes you strong."

Azula swallows. "You really think so?"

Yue nods. "I really do."

Azula blinks, eyes pricking. She's always thought her brightest moment was sitting on the throne in Ba Sing Se, victorious, before the cracks began to show.

Yue brushes a thumb across Azula's cheek.

"Brighter than when I was the Fire Nation's golden girl?"

Yue sighs, and her hand falls to her side. The roses fade from her cheeks. "I will never forget the terror of soot falling on our city," she says, "of the streets overrun with the engines of war." Yue takes a deep breath, drawing her knees to her chest.

Wind disturbs the lake's surface, scattering ripples through the stars. All the reflections distort. High above, a cloud drifts, and its reflection morphs into gray flame.

Azula shudders, unable to shake the cold. Not so long ago, she stood in her city, covered in soot, living in fear. Maybe the cracks were there from the beginning. "The Fire Nation...was wrong?" Even saying it as a question makes her afraid, makes her small. But her father cannot see her here. He will never know.

Yue looks at her, and for once her eyes are more like stone than water. "So very wrong. I've learned over the past five years that the citizens are just as human as the other nations, but the government's actions, your father's actions, your actions hurt countless people."

At last Azula looks it in the eye, past all her elaborate and intimate rituals of denial. This time with Yue cannot exist by itself, cut off from the rest of her life and the abyss of her past.

It will swallow her whole. She's satisfied no one - not her mother, not her father, not her brother, not Yue, and not herself. Hopelessly inadequate, forever unloved, just as she'd always feared. The prison is her forever; her life's work is failure. It's best she's not around other people. Soon Yue will see her fully and leave. Like everyone else.

"You deserve so much better," Azula says, and lies down, staring up at the moonless sky. She'll turn liquid, and seep into the earth.

Yue sits behind her head, her glow distorting the top of Azula's vision. "What you did was wrong, but you were a child," Yue says, and gently undoes Azula's topknot.

Azula freezes. She's disgustingly weak, like she's always been, soaking up Yue's excuses for her.

Yue runs her fingers through Azula's hair, and Azula can't stop a soft noise escaping her lips. Yue's grip on her hair tightens, then releases. Agni, it feels so good.

"Ozai used you," Yue continues, voice rougher. "He tried to mold you into an extension of him, but you were a child and it was too much-"

Something burns inside Azula's chest. "So were you!" She spins around and Yue yanks at her hair but she doesn't care. "So were you and your family forced you to be their pretty little doll, their tragic beautiful dead hero!" She grabs Yue's hands and pins her to the earth. "But you're a real person, and they used you just as much as Ozai used me!" Her breath burns in her mouth.

"You're beautiful," Yue says, and kisses her.

Azula kisses back fiercely, doesn't need to think. It's everything she dreamed it would be and more, electric feeling, warm and human, her pulse pounding in her ears.

The rest of the world falls away.

Azula pulls back, and this version of Yue, lips red from kissing, breathing hard, hair undone, eyes locked with hers, makes her blood run hot.

Yue slips her hands free and strokes Azula's hair again.

"You like that?" Yue asks, and Azula's done for.

"This isn't very Northern Water Tribe of you," Azula says, a while later, lying tangled up with Yue in her bed.

Yue laughs. "You'd be surprised." She winks. "In the last few years, I've learned the peasants are much less uptight than the nobles."

Azula tucks her head between Yue's shoulder and neck. Yue smells like cool night air, and, now, a little like sweat, spirit or no spirit. Azula closes her eyes, breathing her in. "Is it like that in the Fire Nation?"

Yue shifts, wrapping an arm tighter around Azula's waist. "It's like that everywhere."

Azula leans back to look at her. In another life, they could have been peasant women in a no-name village somewhere far away, stealing a night together. In another life, she could have become Fire Lord and only ever looked at the moon as an enemy. In another life, they could have met as rival princesses, and maybe Yue would have been the one imprisoned.

"Lovers pray to the moon spirit." Yue traces swirling shivery lines along Azula's back. As always, Azula can't stop staring into her endless crystalline eyes. "The prayers of those with lovers of their same gender or those who were neither woman nor man were no less beautiful than the prayers of those fulfilling the roles my tribe's elders valued. Under my gaze, all love is sacred."

Azula's cheeks heat, and Yue leans forward and kisses her gently, her tongue sliding over Azula's bottom lip.

Azula loops her leg over Yue's waist, and the rest of the night slips away.

Chapter Text

"I want you to give me the real history of the war," Azula says, standing in the doorway just before Zuko leaves. Her heart pounds in her throat, and three images play in her mind: soot falling on Yue's city, the avatar convulsing with her lightning, and Yue curled asleep and glowing in her arms. The three come from three entirely separate realities.

Zuko blinks. "The real history?"

"Not what our father gave us."

Zuko's hands shake, but Azula closes the door before he can say anything.

Azula learns the secret history in a series of desperate porings-over of the scrolls and letters, interspersed with the dragon dance when the emotions threaten to drown her.

One day, she will scorch this dance into the earth so deeply that it will become her most lasting memorial. For now, a ravenous rage boils and gnashes in her stomach, and at the same time a desperate fear enfolds her in its suffocating wings.

Once upon a time, she believed that, if she could only beat out Zuko for her father's favor, she would secure her future, bright and shining, covered in gold, at her father's right hand and then standing beneath his portrait and then immortalized in her own portrait, utterly untouchable, safe forever, made of fire.

But those who came before her failed her utterly, and she was born into a lie and a doomed regime. Her father, her mother, generations back to Sozin, all of them constructing the nation into a cage of mirrors.

It's as if the lid has fallen off the world, and Azula can't breathe with the horror.

She spends the next new moon crying in Yue's arms, and holding Yue as she cries in Azula's arms. At the end of it, Azula's raw and remade, like she's cried out all the poison of her life.

"Thank you," Azula says softly, near the end of the night. Yue curls tear-stained and shimmering in her bed, her silver dress draping like water over her body.

Yue gives her a watery smile. "Thank you."

Zuko and Sokka hold their wedding on the night of a new moon, officially to represent mutual vulnerability without the sun or the moon but unofficially so Azula and Yue can attend.

The ceremony starts at sunset, and Azula and Yue slip in at the back a few minutes after Iroh and Hakoda's opening proclamation, dressed in long cloaks and festival masks.

After the wedding, Azula shows Yue her old rooms in the palace. They're untouched since her meltdown. She expected they would strike her as childish, but instead they feel impersonal and adult, like rooms a housekeeper would prepare for an important and perhaps hostile guest.

She sits down on her old bed, staring at the broken mirror. Almost six years now since that horrible night. Her fourteen-year-old self is almost a stranger to her now, overlaid against the starlight, desperately looking for a glimpse of her mother in the mirror.

Did her mother love her after all? Or did her mother look at her as a monster?

Or even somewhere between the two? Or will she never know?

The not-knowing carves out a hollow space in her chest.

Yue sits next to her and interlaces their fingers.

"I'm sorry," Azula says. To Yue, and to her past self and to the world.

Yue squeezes her hand. "What will you do to make amends?"

Azula knows what she has to do, feels it like the air before lightning, feels the rest of her life clicking into place, a road stretching out in front of her for the first time in six years.

But, first, she has a visit to make.

Azula and Yue sneak into the prison through the secret royal passageways, right up to Ozai's cell. Azula's heart pounds in her chest, so she closes her eyes and clears her head. What if all the lies her father told her could crumble like paper in fire?

"Are you okay?" Yue asks, a cool hand on Azula's cheek. They stand in a dank archway, tucked into a nook in the stone.

"Yeah." Is she? The wall presses cold into her back.

Yue presses her lips to Azula's forehead. "Go." She touches her hand to Azula's chest. "And remember your worth is in here, in your heart, no matter what he says."

Azula shivers. But her skin seals her in like it never used to. She inhabits herself, right here right now.

Her father sits in his cell, a pathetic man now, hunched and ratty, hair greasy and unkempt. His eyes still gleam royal gold, but they don't catch light like they used to.

She steps through the doorway and drops her hood, removing her mask to reveal her spirit face.

"Azula," he says, low and chiding, and all she feels is a visceral disgust, her insides grinding together. His voice is like a skin she shed years ago that now fits too tightly.

His gaze reduces her to fourteen again, ready to present him with a list of all she's done, but he's shrunk, lost muscle and lost his ornate regalia. Yue was right. He could never have made her feel like enough. He shaped her like clay in the hand, like a flame he conjured, a weapon clenched in his fist.

"Azula, how far you've fallen."

Before she can say anything? Before he could even see what she's learned, how much stronger she's gotten? The chains are so clear now, his knife at her pride, still believing she lives and dies by his whims. Still thinking she can't see his failure. He's the one who has to grovel for her favor now, even if he doesn't realize it.

"I hate you," Azula says, soft and low. "You failed. I'm not afraid of you anymore."

He opens his mouth, and she really doesn't care.

Prisoner or no, Azula feels the freest she ever has.

A few hours before dawn, Yue breaks Azula out of jail. It's not difficult - most of the guards are away at the post-wedding feast, and those remaining don't expect a visit from the moon spirit. Azula sneaks her physical body out into the city for the first time in years, feels the city streets open up for her, feels her way down to the water. The starlight paints it silver.

The journey to the mountains takes months. Azula completes it entirely on foot, selling palace scrolls and jewelry to afford food. No one here knows who she is, and it's oddly fascinating to become someone entirely new, to leave behind both the prodigy and the disgraced princess.

On new moons, Yue joins her. They walk together and sleep together and watch the stars together. They hold each other.

"I'm afraid," Azula says, on the last new moon before she arrives. "I'm afraid they will judge me and find me a failure." Again. But at least this time they would burn her to cinders instead of casting her aside.

She and Yue sit on a high cliff over a river gorge, nestled together in the lee of a boulder. Below their feet, the earth falls away into thin air. And, far above, the stars make new shapes.

"You aren't a failure," Yue whispers. She tucks her head under Azula's chin.

Azula shrugs. All the memories hurt to recall. Her father may have fallen further, and she's got a chance now, but that can't change the past.

"You saved me."

"I? Saved you?" But - Yue's laughter at the lake. Yue's face, lighting up at Azula's questions, lighting up when she saw the dragons. Yue, wearing pants for the very first time. Yue's lips on hers, again and again and again.

Yue, watching her from the sky.

"I haven't been this happy since..." Yue trails off, eyes clouding over. The wind lifts her hair. Since ever. Yue doesn't have to say it.

Azula tenses. She'll survive this, and then she and Yue will have more new moons than she can count, new moons to go anywhere in the world, to sail all the oceans and dance through all the stars. Maybe someday Azula will be able to leave her body to visit Yue on the moon and watch the earth and its people with her. She'll survive this. She has to.

Yue kisses Azula's cheek. "I don't think you have to be afraid."

Weeks later, Azula comes to the valley of the sun. The warriors watch her take the sacred fire with narrowed eyes and crossed weapons.

"You have much to answer for," one says, leaning against a mammoth tree.

Azula presses her lips together and forms the flame into a perfect sphere.

The last sliver of the setting sun slips behind the mountains, and Azula ascends the steps to the dragon bridge. Her heart pounds, her pulse in her ears as loud as the wind screaming around her, sharp-tongued thoughts hissing in the back of her mind.

She holds the sacred flame out in front of her, undamaged and pure. It keeps an ancient story, death and life in an eternal circle. Life. Focus. Energy, distilled. The fire flickers through her arteries.

An eternity later, a moment later, as the cold seeps into her bones, the mountain rumbles.

Azula eases her stance and clears her mind of everything but fire. Still, her mouth goes dry.

The dragons rush her, out from their lairs, sinuous and vast and ageless. Their scales shimmer like sparks. Their teeth gleam.

Azula.

The fire surrounds her until it swallows the sky, vermilion, saffron, emerald, violet. Utterly beautiful. It will devour the night until the sunset slips through a new dawn. The heat sizzles the air into waves, her skin crisping.

Azula closes her eyes, opens her hands, and begins the dance. She is not afraid anymore.