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He’s gorgeous— he is. Azula wonders what his lips would taste like between her teeth. She thinks that a lot, when she sees him walking past.
It isn’t always just him, either.
She just wants to be loved— she doesn’t remember when that became too much to ask for. When she took Ba Sing Se, when her brother and his waterbender chained her up in front of her throne? She wanted power because she couldn’t have love— she never could have— her own mother thought she was a monster—
And now she’s reversing the clock and she wants love and it’s something she cannot simply find. She knows love, love in power, love in belonging, love in strong arms and—
She wonders if Chief Hakoda could love her.
She knows it’s wrong, but she doesn’t want to be a monster.
“Azula.”
“Go away,” she sniffs out. Her brother is so absolutely impossible, and he has everything. He has the love of her friends, what he’d taken from her at the Boiling Rock— he has the Avatar and everyone else in that gang, the waterbender and her brother, the earthbender who could speak with her feet. She should have ended him, that day, at the temple—
Later, she had learnt that he had been hiding on Ember Island.
She loves Zuko, but she hates him.
“Are you alright to go?”
She teases him half-heartedly. “Are you going to take my bending away? Like you did to—”
“Leave it alone, Azula. It’s— I just want to keep you safe. They need to know that you’ve changed—”
“Do you think I have?” she breathes, roughly, her hair falling across her face. She’s out of the asylum, in her rooms, but she doesn’t leave very often. Who would accompany her? “Do you, really?”
“Yeah,” he breathes at her, his voice tight in the lowlight. She wants to laugh— as much as he tries, even as much as he tries not to be, Zuko will never be their father. He will never love her that same way, for the monster inside of her. Zuko wants her to be good— he doesn’t understand that she’s simply not. It burns.
“You’re a liar.” She turns on her side. “Will the water tribe delegations be there?”
“Of course— why?” he looks genuinely confused, and she wants to laugh.
“No particular reason. I’ll go.”
She has been held up as somewhat of a war prize for the past several years. That means that she sees him. She has seen him— she knows him. He is not her father, almost a dark opposite. A Chief, not a King; a man, not a monster.
He is muscular and sharp and looks wise, looks handsome, in such a way that she can feel only drawn to him. She dresses in red armor for the party, because she will never wear any kind of frilly artifice. The war is over, but the world should know her for what she is— a warrior, still.
Don’t water tribe men respect warriors?
Azula has never been the best at approaching men, but her time in solitude and with her thoughts has given her a hazy viewpoint on the real world. She walks up to him through the center of the room, her outfit second only to her brother’s, Lord of a nation, and presses a hand to his chest.
“Chief Hakoda.”
“Princess Azula,” he questions, as though this is completely out of place. And it is— she has never approached him like this before. This has lived in her thoughts, inside of her head. He does not know her.
He looks strong. She wants to know him. He’s wearing water tribe clothes, and her fingers move across his shoulders, and she gives him a shark-teeth smile. He looks more frightened than anything else, and before she knows it Zuko is there, looking distraught.
“What— Azula—”
“He’s attractive, isn’t he?”
“Azula?” he sputters out, as though put beside himself, and she can’t quite blame him for that reaction. She shrugs and her shoulderpads expand next to his. “Were you trying to—”
“I wasn’t trying to do anything, Fire Lord.”
Her hair is all perfectly in place, her armor is perfect, her eyes are lined and her lips are red, but Zuko can look through her and see the mess inside. He knows her. She doesn’t like that.
“Come on, Azula.”
“Why do you do this?”
She’s Azula, Princess Azula, Fire Lord Azula, Phoenix Queen Azula. She doesn’t cry. “I’m not doing anything.”
“I thought you were getting better!”
“Maybe I didn’t need to improve!” she snarks back, her demeanor upset, and Zuko sighs and drags her into the courtyard, forcing her to sit next to the fountain, near the turtleducks. They’re quiet at night. “I just wanted to have fun—”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “You just wanted to have fun— with the ruler of another country— a man twice your age—”
“I . . .” she fades out and turns into the waters, staring at them below her. “He’s a powerful man.”
Something thuds the ground, and gold glints. Zuko has thrown the Fire Lord’s crown down onto the ground. Some part of her wants to yell about that, insist that he pick it up and stop stepping on the work of their ancestors, but instead she bites her lips.
“That’s what it’s about.”
“It’s not about anything—”
“Azula,” he looks heartbroken. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fix this.”
“What’s there to fix?”
“I want you to get better.”
“I’m better—”
“This is not better. It’s not better. You need to confront him.”
“You’ll take me to see him?” she doesn’t quite know how she feels about that. She does not want to see her father, but she wants an ending, and she is angry— angry that he lost— angry that she is just Azula— angry that— she’s angry. “I don’t want to see him.”
“You don’t?”
“Why do I— don’t make me see him, Zuzu. Please.”
“I’m not. I’m not. Let me help you, Azula. What do you need?”
She doesn’t know. She needs anger, she wants someone to love her, she wants muscles and she wants power, she wants love the only way she’s known it. She wants love. Her mother thought she was a monster. Her own mother thought she was a monster. And she was right. How could she have been right?
“Am I a monster?”
Zuko runs his hand through hers and stares at the pond, too, at a turtleduck mother. “Of course not.”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes, Azula,” he looks into her eyes. “I do. You’re my sister. I just want you to be okay.”
She wants that, too. She doesn’t know how to get there— how quite— but she thinks she wants that, too.