Chapter Text
7
The darkest night of Azula's life, ironically, was not actually all that dark.
It was the middle of summer, and the sun was still setting when they went to see her grandfather- Fire Lord Azulon.
The words she'd heard that night still showed up in her dreams.
You will know the pain of losing a firstborn son.
In the end, Ozai did not actually lose anything that night. Instead, Azula lost, and watched her father gain everything.
6
Azula held her breath as she waited for the moment to escape. When she felt certain all the attention of the room was fixed upon Ozai and Azulon, she darted out from the curtain and ran faster than ever before.
Iroh had not returned, and it was no secret why, but she had no time for greif now. By luck, Master Piando was visiting the palace now, and she needed to get to him.
She burst into the Sword Master's room.
"Azula!" He said sharply. He had stood the moment she'd come in, and already there was a blade at her throat. She did not care.
"It's Zuko!" She exclaimed, "they're going to kill Zuko! I need you to help me!"
His eyes were wide now, and she explained all she had seen. She told him of the many tunnels hidden throughout the palace, and her plan to use them, and then demanded his help. When asked why she had gone to him, she held out her lotus tile.
5
Zuko had been confused, of course he had been, but he was Zuko.
He trusted her. She trusted him.
But a part of him still trusted Ozai, and she had nearly exploded with panic over how much time it took to make him go.
"But he wouldn't-"
"He would! Zuko, you need to trust me, I know what I saw!"
When he finally walked through the tunnel, he had paused to look back at her, his eyes shining. He had hugged her then, and she'd wanted to hold on to him tightly and never let go.
"Whatever distance lies between us," he had whispered into her hair, "you will always be my sister."
"And you will be my brother," she had choked back, before pushing him away.
She was so numb she hadn't even registered the object he had pressed into her hand. It was a pendant which held a lock of his hair. She had seldom taken it off her neck since, and never had she allowed it to be spotted beneath her robes.
4
That night, shortly after she had rushed to her bed, she heard a figure enter her room. Her mother, by the footsteps. The Fire Lady grabbed her shoulder harshly and attempted to shake her awake. In response, Azula pretended to wake up.
"Azula," she whispered in a hiss, "where is your brother?"
"What?" She whispered back, playing the part of a groggy young girl trying to wake up.
"Where is your brother? Your father went to check on him and told me he is missing! Do you know of this?"
Went to check on him indeed, she though bitterly. Of course.
"No," she said out loud. "What are you asking me for? What buisness of mine is it if he's running through the hallways?"
"Azula!" She scolded. "Tell me what it is you know!"
Azula realised then that Ursa truly did think the worst of her. On the same night she had gone half mad to save her brother, her mother came to accuse her of conspiring against him.
If that's how you want to see me, then I shan't dissapoint you, she thought.
"I don't know anything," she asserted. "But if I am finally free of this sibling nonsense, perhaps things are turning up at last."
"Azula!" Ursa shouted. She stepped back from the bed, looking stricken and horrified. "Why must you say such things?!"
"Because I don't care, all I want to do is go back to sleep-"
"Don't you understand!" She grabbed Azula's wrists tightly enough to hurt, and Azula had to clench her teeth to fight the urge to firebend.
Ursa was a nonbender, and her skin burned easy, but she was still shouting and it was so hard to concentrate and it hurt hurt hurt-
"-er is gone, and he could be hurt, Azula, how can you be such a monster-!"
At that word, Azula's mind went numb, and her control finally slipped. Blue flame danced across her arms, burning her own wrists as well as her mothers hands, and both of them jerked back with a scream. Ursa recoiled from her with shining eyes, but Azula's gaze was fixed on her own wrists. She had never burned herself before. She wouldn't have this time, if her own flames hadn't been trapped by Ursa's hands.
The burns on each of her arms were in the shape of Ursa's palms and fingers, and as the gaurds walked in, Azula felt a sob build in her throat.
3
To Azula's amazment, she had not gotten in trouble.
The next morning, she had been woken up hours before her training would often begin.
The sun hadn't even risen yet - in fact, the first sign of Agni's warmth had only come an hour after she was pulled from her chambers.
When she was dressed in white robes, she knew. She had heard the entire conversation between Ozai and Azulon, after all. She knew what her father wanted, how far he would go to get it, and she knew what these robes meant.
When she kneeled to the ground and watch her father crowned before Azulon's corpse, she could find no sign of her mother.
No funeral was ever held for Lady Ursa, and no one ever asked Azula about what happened that night.
( She started wearing cuffs on each wrist. One person asked about those. Everyone else knew better after that.)
2
In the years since that night, Azula got even better at lying than before.
It had always come naturally to her, and yet it had weighed on her all the same. She felt at peace with herself only after talking to her brother, the one person she did not decieve. And Lu Ten, once.
Her brother wasn't here.
(Niether was Lu Ten.)
Her father was here. And Azula never dared be honest with him.
1
She didn't think about that night much anymore. Not in specifics, anyway. But even the parts she did allow herself to remember filled her with fear.
It woke her up at night sometimes. The knowledge of how greatly she may have miscalculated, how far she failed to plan ahead.
It was a fear she knew may one day consume her.
She didn't know when she would see her brother again.
0
A knock on her door prompted her to look up.
"Enter," She said.
A serving boy came in with a bow, holding up a tray with a letter.
"Summons from the Fire Lord, Your Highness."