Work Text:
They tell her that her brother is dead, and Azula cackles.
She saw Father burn Zuko, visited him as he lay writhing on a healer’s cot, and laughed to his face over his patheticness. He can’t offer any more excuses now.
She knows he’s marred, scarred, whatever you want to call the state of the right side of his face, but dead?
It’s ridiculous.
She doesn’t believe it. Not for a minute.
Zuko can’t be dead. He’s always been pitiful, of course, but in a too piteous to die sort of manner.
(Azula would know — she tried enough times, even pushing him off the roof of a building once.)
He was lucky to be born and lucky to still be leaving.
For him to be dead by this?
As she paces her room, her fingers curl into fists until her nails slice her palms.
Zuko. Dead. Zuko. Dead.
She whirls around.
Zuko. Dead.
There probably won’t be a funeral, she realizes. Banished princes don’t get funerals — they’re forgotten by everyone except the gossiping kitchen staff.
Briefly, she wonders if Father is going to burn him out of the family tapestry, but her anger is growing too quickly, too hotly for her to be concerned with that for long.
She wanted to be the one.
She always pictured Zuko’s face the moment he died. The shock. The stupid wonder. Perhaps even the pain, the realization that he wasn’t good enough to stay alive.
Now, he is simply gone. Like smoke.
Dead, apparently.
She doesn’t want to believe it.
She wants to burn something until the heat from the flames fleshes him out from wherever he’s hiding. She wants him to cower as he realizes just how much he’s sparked her wrath.
Looking down, she realizes blue flames have come to life on the tips of her fingers, and she snuffs them out before letting them come back brighter.
She narrows her eyes.
Hanging on the wall across from her bed is a tapestry filled with depictions of baby animals.
She’s never liked it.
As she watches it burn, a hunger rears inside of her.
A small part of her wants to let all the flame inside loose and watch the entire building burn into ashes, but she reigns it in as quickly as it comes.
Spinning on her heels, she marches from her room.
Zuko’s is down the hall.
Once, they were next to each other, but Father gave her larger quarters after she successfully performed a difficult kata that Zuko failed twice.
No one’s there. Zuko never bothers locking his door unless he was purposefully trying to hide something from Father, so Azula throws open the door.
Without any lamps lit, the room is dark. Azula brings fire to her hand and lifts it, almost expecting Zuko to pop out of his wardrobe in a paltry attempt to scare her.
He does not.
“I’m stealing your theater scrolls, ZuZu,” she sings in an attempt to provoke him out as she moves across the room to his desk.
Nothing.
Silence presses down in the empty air.
She trails a finger across one of his favorite scrolls and pauses.
Still nothing.
Zuko is dead. Zuko isn’t coming back, just like your mother, a little voice in her head sings.
Zuko’s left you.
Zuko never loved you.
“I didn’t need his love,” she snaps. “Father loves me. Zuko doesn’t matter.”
Zuko doesn’t matter anymore.
A strange feeling bubbles up inside her.
It’s similar to her anger but hotter and thicker.
It nearly chokes her, and when she blinks, she realizes the world is blurred before her as though she’s looking through cracked glass.
Zuko is dead.
Zuko isn’t coming back.
Zuko is dead.
Zuko isn’t coming back.
Revolving in her head, the words turn into a tsunami, twisting until her vision turns red.
Carefully, she breathes in and out.
(Meditation is one of the first things young firebenders are taught.)
Wandering away from the desk, Azula finds herself standing next to Zuko’s bed.
For a moment, she sees him lying there, his right eye covered in bandages and his left glazed over with fever.
Then, it returns to the plain blanket.
Sitting in front of Zuko’s pillows is a stuffed animal.
A turtleduck.
It’s ratty and worn. If it were hers, Azula would have burned it already. She was far too old to own, let alone sleep, with such childish things.
Zuko loved turtleducks.
(She remembers him yelling at her, crying when he found the one she killed.)
She imagines him, as broken as its small body.
He really is dead.
Dead, dead, dead.
Her mind starts singing the word, but she ignores it, letting her gaze trail over the room.
She wonders what Father is going to do with all of Zuko’s belongings.
Burn them?
Store them safely in a vault underneath the castle?
Throw them out like spoiled cabbage?
( Maybe, there’s something you want before it’s all gone, her mind tells her before returning to its chant of Zuko’s dead, Zuko’s dead. )
The fire seems to be going out. Azula feels...lost.
For the first time since their mother disappeared, she is empty.
She never gave Zuko permission to die.
As her grip tightens on the stupid turtleduck stuffed animal, her eyes fall on the wall, where four hooks protrude. They’re meant to hold swords, but they’re empty.
Zuko’s dao swords.
Uncle Iroh gave them to him, she thinks.
She wouldn’t know. She doesn’t care about such things.
But they are gone.
Zuko was not wearing them at his Agni Kai. He was incapable of returning to his rooms to retrieve them, too.
Dead people don’t need swords.
Azula stands.
A new kind of anger is starting to grow in her, but it doesn’t flash and disappear.
It starts small and steady, feeding on the kindling that has been laid for it.
Now, it is only glowing embers, but soon?
Soon, it will be a raging inferno, an everblaze that the fire lord himself can’t stop.
Azula leaves the room, a turtleduck tucked underneath her elbow.