Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Azula was born, the sun blazed in the sky. Her father looked at her warm—warmer than his—golden eyes and smiled.

Goddesses weren’t famous for betraying.

(But then again, she was of Sozin’s blood. Her mother once said there was no way of being sure. And maybe she had reasons to believe it ran in her veins.)

She became the youngest member of one of the oldest, proudest lineages. Her great-grandfather Sozin had been the one to wield the fire of life to create a world for himself to govern, at least until his son Azulon rebelled to obtain the throne of the gods.

That quest of power for both himself and his descendants bathed the world in blood, although it had been clear that the spoils of war had been worth it.

( For whom?, had bitterly asked her mother, to Azula’s puzzlement. She had never dared ask for an explanation when she had the chance.)

Her father told them that story many times. After exiling Sozin in the deepest parts of the Underworld, their grandfather Azulon—in whose honor she had been named, her father  proudly declared—took the throne and started the most glorious era for the gods.

The next part of the story her father didn’t like as much. Azulon the Great had chosen his firstborn Iroh to drive the sun across the sky; his second son was appointed only for the Moon. Ozai had never been happy with the arrangement and complained constantly.

(Those complaints had always made her mother uneasy, ever since Azula could remember, but that hadn’t stopped her father. Personally, Azula never saw anything wrong with them.)

Many years passed. She and her brother grew up in Azulon’s palace in the Sky. Their small group was formed by Ty Lee, one of the six daughters of the Goddess of the Rainbow, and Mai, the only one from the God of Dusk. They played together, and trained, and listened to the stories the other gods told them. 

(The ones about the prison in the Underworld and its terrible torments scared Azula, but she never showed it. She didn’t need to fear it, though. She would never betray the King of the Gods, nor her father.)

Azula always strived to be the most agile, most skillful, most exceptional she could at everything her father taught her. She didn’t waste her time with anything else…

(But maybe, if she had taken some time from training with her father, she would have gotten more time with their mother— like Zuko did. Even cousin Lu Ten spent some time in the world outside the palace, though that was probably because he was older.)

The Sun and the Moon roamed the Sky. Despite their constant bickering, Azulon’s own sons never showed any inclination towards treachery, he grew paranoid as his two grandsons grew up.

(It was no secret there was a prophecy. There’s always one, said her mother, but no one knew exactly what it entailed.)

Even someone as oblivious as Zuko could notice the way Azulon the Great, King of the Gods, seemed to observe him with too close attention. And that was never good.

(Their mother’s fear was so great it made Azula restless, and she began listening more attentively to everything Azulon said, following him into hidden corners of the palace she had found alongside her brother when they sneaked out to steal mochi and candy.)

“He believes Zuko or Lu Ten will try to dethrone him,” she told her mother one night. She had followed Azulon and her father, and stayed to hear things she wasn’t supposed to after her brother had left.

As if Zuko would ever be able to do such a thing.

Their mother had paled and ran.

Some hours later, Azulon called all the other gods before him. Their mother trembled like a leaf in the wind while her father only crossed his arms and waited.

Azulon’s voice carried his words with the help of the four winds. 

“The blood of my grandsons shall splatter the slabs of my throne if our empire is to survive,” Azulon claimed. “To-morrow, the sacrifice will take place to strengthen the foundations of our civilization.”

It fooled no one; his true reasons were now bare for everyone to see, even without knowing what Azula had heard.

Her brother’s bright golden eyes turned to their grandfather in wounded surprise. Their mother pulled from their father’s arm, as if urging him to do something.

He remained silent and still.

That night, Azula couldn’t sleep. She wandered outside her room, on their empty wing of the palace. Her brother’s door was ajar, but there was no one inside. Azulon would not risk them escaping, so Zuko and Lu Ten had stayed at the pantheon. 

But all other rooms were empty too.

The following morning, the pantheon was prepared to the exact extent of Azulon’s every order. All other gods had gathered, and her brother and cousin were shackled to the ground.

At dawn, the door opened to let Azulon in. 

Instead, his dead body laid on the floor. Ursa stood over a pool of golden blood that soaked her bare feet.

A new battle started, to occupy the empty throne. Among attacks from the other gods, Ursa fled the pantheon with Zuko; Iroh followed with his own son, thus declaring them allies.

(Azula almost screamed at them when they fled. Did they not remember the stories of the war? Betrayal had only one outcome.

And she did not want them to suffer through it.)

Ozai repudiated his marriage with Ursa and declared himself legitimate King of the Sky.

“Azula, my worthy daughter, you will be my right hand.”

Her father’s words filled her with pride. 

“I trust you will use this well.”

He handed her the lightning bolt, a smaller version from his own. She touched it, swearing to herself that she would not disappoint her father, and readied her battle gear to march beside him.

Like Sozin’s, Azulon’s reign sustained its power on control and fear—the way her father had taught her—. But her father had inherited a broken empire where it had not been difficult for the traitorous Ursa to find allies. The Nomads, the dwellers of the Ocean, even the gods of earth and stone, that disliked change so much, fought on the betraying side.

The information made Azula sneer in distaste. Apparently, Azulon had not been skillful enough to instill an adequate amount of fear in his supposed followers.

But there were others who were loyal to her father, like her. She followed him into war, dreams of glory and legends dancing behind her golden eyes, as golden as the blood she shared with the dead King.

She knew the reward would be great.

*

War was long and cruel for both sides; many were injured, many more died. Never before had the world seen the ocean turn golden with ichor, not even during the rebellion against Sozin.

The night the news of cousin Lu Ten’s death came, the letter was signed with her mother’s handwriting. Her father had torn the message apart.

(Azula went back to pick up the pieces, without anyone noticing. I’m sorry, her mother— Ursa had written. Azula wondered if she’d be sorry had Azula been the dead one.)

It all led to one last battle, the first time she had seen the other half of her family since Azulon’s death.

Their betrayal (as well as the one from two of her former friends—no, old allies) left her to stand alone against her brother, now scarred in battle.

But she had one advantage he didn’t: she knew how to wield a lightning bolt, the weapon Sozin himself had perfected.

(When she stroke him, she dared to hope it would not be enough to kill him—

And it wasn’t.

She was glad the first time she killed someone had not come yet. But failure was enough to break her down that night.)

*

Their efforts hadn’t been enough. It was Ursa who had emerged victorious.

This time, she was the one shackled instead of her brother.

The deliberations went on for a week, but to her great surprise, she had been untied on the eve of the second day. When she saw who her guardians were going to be for the remainder of the deliberation—Mai and Ty Lee, other two traitors—, she almost wished they’d left her with the rest of the defeated gods.

She lost interest in time; what did it matter, when she knew the destiny that awaited? The previous war had ended with the losing side imprisoned in the Underworld.

She listened without much interest when Ursa came out to announce the arrangements of the new empire. The ocean dwellers, the stone-gods, even the surviving nomad had received their due.

It was not unexpected to hear Ursa would become the new Queen of the Skies, nor was it to watch her give domains to Zuko and Iroh. Azula’s father was thrust into the Underworld, along with his closest collaborators.

But she wasn’t taken away with them.

Instead, her mother approached her, with pity in her eyes and fear in her extended hand.

(And something else, something Azula couldn’t understand.)

“My daughter shall be the Goddess of Spring.”

She swallowed past the unexplainable knot in her throat and lowered her head in shame rather than in acceptance of the gift.

She wanted life more than she feared her father.

*

It all settled, and Azula received her ephemeral crown of flowers while her brother received the golden one, and the reins to the dragon that moved the Sun across Ursa’s new domain.

It was not what Azula had hoped for when she fought, but it was a crown nonetheless.

Tethered to the ground, in a realm she had never visited before, she buried the old, shattered dreams that tasted like bitter rust and turned them into exquisite flowers. Invested as the Goddess of Spring, she poured every ounce of her talent into the unfamiliar earth.

No matter how menial the task, she knew nothing but excellence.

Kuei’s intervention for harvest was far too chaotic for her taste and rather mediocre by any other standard, but she preferred it a thousand times over trying to work with Bumi, who always ran half-naked on the untouched wilderness. She ignored the rest of the earthly gods as much as possible.

The restless work numbed her to the passing of the years; the time came when only the ancient Bumi kept calling her ‘child’. She spent all her time making sure every detail was taken care of, so the sunlight could shine over perfect beds of flowers and blooming sprouts all year long.

So far from her, her brother passed through the Sky; with pride, her mother looked at him.

Azula watched from afar; she spent a long time designing a new flower, with bright yellow petals encircling a wide, brown center. They would follow her brother’s course across the Sky, just like everyone seemed to do.

*

It didn’t take long for her brother to find someone who wanted to range the sky with him. The daughter of one of the Kings of the Ocean; she never really bothered asking whether it was from the North or from the South.

She never really bothered much with getting to know her, in fact. Not because she was avoiding her new sister-in-law and the loving gazes she exchanged with her brother; merely because she was busy.

At the wedding, Ursa of the Golden Feet gave away the silver crown that she had kept from Azula; after all, it would not be the first time a pair of siblings were in charge of that.

(But she had been on the wrong side of the war. She had lost… And, with the rest of her family either in the Sky or imprisoned in the Underworld, she felt more alone than ever.)

Azula did what she did best. She took that resentment at her bitter destiny and created a flower; the night-blooming jasmine expanded its fragrance in honor of the new Goddess of the Moon, welcoming all the guests.

It was then when she saw him for the first time.

Tall, draped in white and face partially covered with the hood of his tunic, he stood over a barren patch of soil, leaning on a wooden staff.

The last one, so young, so sad, the whispers followed his every step, as did the death of the plants beneath his feet.

He had a clear destination. Two minor water gods waved and greeted him with joy; many more minor gods joined them, exchanging smiles and companionable pats.

A pang of ivy-green jealousy climbed her veins at the sight. He was the one clad in mourning-white, while she adorned her dress with all the colors she had created; he was the one with the smile on his face and joyful people beside him.

She, the Goddess of Spring, had nothing but collaborators, while the King of the Underworld had friends.

As if invoked by her thoughts, Ty Lee approached the merry group too. Azula turned away, angry at the tears that threatened to spill on her cheeks.

(She would never admit to missing her— or Mai. Or anyone else, for that matter.)

She was better off alone.

Later, close to dawn, the people dispersed.

She had stayed by her new, fragrant trees. He had parted from the other minor gods. Their gazes connected for a moment— he had a tattoo on his forehead, she noticed before he turned around and sunk into the earth.

Her thoughts stayed with him for the rest of the following day.

*

She took her role seriously. Not once did she deliver a dull spring.

The efforts did not weigh her down. She, in fact, liked hard work; it kept her from thinking.

There were times, though, when no matter how hard she tried, the feelings she seeked to transform into flowers remained ugly. Ugly, and slimy, and thorny. So unruly in their refusal to leave her body in the shape of petals that she could nearly feel the way the thorns grew and elongated and punctured her skin and how each perforation would leave a trail of golden blood in their wake.

It didn’t happen often, but when it did, she always wanted to be out of her family’s gaze. Those feelings reminded her far too much of the last battle— and of her shameful breakdown.

She made her way up a mountain she had explored many times before, one plentiful in sheltered platforms, superficial caves and waterfalls that covered the entrances. The havens there were far from her mother’s sight; though rain during the spring was plentiful, her tears ought to be private.

And finally there, in a darkness as absolute as the one that surrounded the roots of the flowers she grew, tears finally came out.

But this time, it was not only gentle tears like the morning rains. This time, the thorns were sharp enough to bring her to her knees.

She cried and screamed and clutched her chest at the puncturing pain, but when she looked down, there were no thorns and no blood staining her colorful, flowy dress. No more scratches than those she’d accidentally gotten on her way across the mountains and those weren’t bleeding but then why did it hurt so much, oh please make it stop, Mother! Why did you spare me only to punish me worse than you did Father? What is wrong with me that you cannot love me as easily as you do my brother?

After so many years of this, there was still that spark of mistrust whenever her mother smiled at her, so far from the unabashed pride that shone through when she looked at Zuko. She had known what to do to get her father to look at her with pride. It was only with her mother where she was at a loss. What did she want from her? All the Springs were perfect, all the flowers she created were beautiful! 

What else?

But, like always, no answers came and everything receded like the waves.

Slowly, tears stopped too, and there remained only a ghost of the pain that made her shiver.

That trembling, weak state reminded her so much of her last battle on the losing side. She had sworn nobody would see her like that again, and she went great lengths to ensure it. 

So the anger was tinged with mortification when she noticed the white outline of someone sitting near.

What was he doing there?!

His gentle eyes glimmered in the darkness of the cave, though she did not see any light anywhere else.

“Some caves are entrances to my realm,” he explained, voice as soft as a breeze. “Especially when there’s a river so close.”

“I didn’t mean to trespass,” she looked away, biting the inside of her cheek.

“I was not implying you did. I only wanted to make sure you were fine.”

He smiled and she frowned.

“Well, you’ve seen I’m fine. Now you may go.”

“Are you really fine, Azula? It doesn’t seem like that.”

Startled, she gritted her teeth.

“You know nothing but my name,” she scoffed, a breeze of petals following the elegant movement of her hand. As if he hadn’t just seen the very most shameful part of her. “How can you judge whether it’s true or not?”

“Oh, but I do know you,” he sighed in response. “Though withered and dry, the echoes of your glory reach me. All the flowers offered to the dead, are they not your creation?”

She tilted her head so her bangs hid the white of his clothes from her sight. He continued.

“I have seen the depths of your works. The fire lilies, the sunflowers, the night blooming jasmine. All of those colors… I am not often on the surface of the world, but sometimes I wish I could, if only to see them in all their vibrance.”

She didn’t know how to answer that.

“What better way to get to know someone than through the product of their ingenuity?”

He lowered his voice to a quiet whisper.

“That’s the reason I can tell you that I know too what loneliness feels like.”

Azula wanted to sneer at him, wanted to answer that she was not lonely. She had a father, imprisoned as he was. She had a mother, the Queen of the Skies. She had a brother, and a sister-in-law. 

Then, why had she been crying, hidden from all of them, in this cave behind a waterfall?

She swallowed. Her hands were nearly trembling.

“At least let me accompany you back to the mountain path.”

She did not answer, but got up and walked beside him back under the waterfall. She inhaled deeply the moist, fresh mountain air. Her work was flawless; fireflies abounded all around, placidly blinking their light over the terse blooms and growing grass.

“I need to return,” he said, one step away from her.

He said no more, but she heard it nonetheless.

Come with me, said the soft mourning of the owl-dove, sprinkled with the sound of the fluffing of its feathers. To the land where there’s no sky.

In such a land, she would not need to hide.

Yet, she just watched in silence as he left again.

*

The third time she saw him, she sat on the branch of a willow. He stood on the barren soil of an old battlefield.

Nothing grew there.

Therefore, there was no reason for her to approach. She did it anyway.

He never turned around, but spoke when she was near enough to hear.

“Our biggest affinity used to be with the wind,” he raised his eyes to the sky, where Yue poured her silvery light over the world. “All of my brothers and sisters perished during the war.”

“Were they numerous?” she asked, taking a seat on the rock next to him.

“As numerous as the stone-gods are still,” he reached for his wooden staff, and it transformed before her eyes. No longer a mere gnarled branch, it was a polished stick, with a folded piece of orange and yellow fabric at the top. “We used to soar in the Sky, in every corner of the world.”

“And… in the Underworld?” she asked, eyeing the entrance from where he had probably arrived.

He shrugged.

“Sometimes. We were some of the few gods who had visited that place when the war started.”

With her fingers, she started twirling a stem while she listened.

“And after I fought Ozai,” he didn’t look at her, and she swallowed at his words, “nobody wanted the Underworld, though it’s the biggest of the Kingdoms. One of the richest, too.”

Colors felt dull at night. It wasn’t the usual hour for her to be outside when it was summer.

“When the Queen of the Skies offered, I accepted to move there. I could be closer to the memories of my people this way.” 

He smiled again, a full, carefree smile she couldn’t help but marvel at.

“You wouldn’t believe the kinds of stories the dead have. It’s similar to when we gathered to tell the stories we had heard during our travels.”

She thought of the lonely wing of the sky palace where she had spent her childhood. The long, empty hallways, full of echoes, where the only sounds were made by their small group. No, nothing like what he described had ever happened there. Perhaps it was more like the wild parties thrown by Bumi, around a raging bonfire right before harvest time.

She kept twirling the stem, not really thinking about the flower forming between her fingers.

“Are you happy there? Death is so sad…” Like with cousin Lu Ten. I’m sorry. She cleared her throat. “That’s what everyone says.”

His smile mellowed into something akin to nostalgia.

“Death is sometimes a relief. It is just another step in the cycle… One right before the beginning of new life.”

New life… the yellow flower in her hand withered and bloomed again in a sphere of plumous filaments. Each one was attached to a seed, and they departed with the next gush of wind.

Her gaze followed the flying specks of death, that carried new life within them.

When she turned, she found him looking at her in awe. 

Come with me, whispered the wind combing through the weeping willow’s branches. To the land of no sun.

The intensity in his eyes assured her that she wasn’t imagining it.

But if he really wanted her to go, he would need to say it.

This time, she was the one to walk away, back to the land where life could bloom.

*

Spring began once again.

She stood on an open field, not minding the pouring water falling on her nor the rivulets wrapping around her ankles.

The stormy clouds weren’t as black as the night sky. The cracking of thunder clamored at every lightning bolt a few seconds after its arrival. 

Her eyes scanned the darkened sky, marveling at the textures in the clouds that were revealed only when that second of light exploded.

Her fingers itched at the memory of that power, when she had been able to command the lightning. Each one lasted for so little time, less than any flower, and yet, it was that for which she yearned.

(This life she had now… it was exile, just like her father’s. Only slightly more merciful.)

Here she could cry. The tears mixed with the heavy drops of rain; nobody would see them.

So she listened for the thunder, looked at the sky in search of lightning and cried for the life she had lost. For the beautiful sights of the clouds, for the room she used to have in the Sky Palace, for the family she barely saw anymore.

Like most spring downpours, it didn’t last long. Soon, she was simply looking at the night sky, and both tears and rain dried from her cheeks.

“Do you miss it? Being in the Sky?”

This time she was not (too) startled at finding him there.

She didn’t answer, only tilting her head.

“I know you used to have a lightning bolt,” he said quietly, and her shoulders tensed. Every other god avoided any mention of war and weapons at any costs when talking to her, as if they feared an attack if they brought it up.

Fools, the lot of them. But not him.

“You were legendary.”

Her throat closed at the evident admiration in his tone.

“I like watching the storms because of that,” she said, before she could realize it. He nodded, as if it was the answer he’d been waiting for.

“Will you come find me?” He seemed to understand the way his words could be taken, and recapitulated. “To the cave when we first spoke?”

She had already shared much more than she had intended. This was the second time he saw her cry. She should not want to see him again.

(She wanted to.)

“Now it’s spring. I can’t.”

“If there's something I learned after the war, it was patience,” he smiled. “When summer begins?”

She observed him for a long, long instant.

Then, she nodded.

Come with me, the ancient stones beneath his feet murmured with tired, weak voices. To the place of the stories.

She knew, just by looking at his gray eyes, that it would take the smallest trembling of her lip, the tiniest twinkle of her eyes, the most imperceptible hint of acceptance on her part, for him to reach his hand to her. 

But, if anything, she was good at controlling herself.

She didn’t move, and he disappeared.

*

Summer began. The mountain had no more courting fireflies when she trespassed the waterfall into the cave.

He was already there, waiting for her.

“Shouldn’t the God of Death be busier?” she asked in a slightly biting tone, to disguise the jolt of happiness she felt at seeing him.

A good-humored smile accompanied the shake of his tattooed head.

“Death… There is no God of Death, the same way there is no God of Life. Those are forces that were well before the gods existed, and will continue to be after us.”

“How could that be?” Azula frowned. “My great-grandfather was the God of Life.”

“No. He was the god of fire. He wielded it to mold life and create a new world, but he wasn’t life, the way he wasn’t fire. Death is much the same.”

He must have interpreted her blank stare.

“Come.”

To his realm? Her joy tinged with apprehension. She remembered the stories from her childhood...

“Don’t worry, this place is not yet the Underworld.”

Further inside the cave, there was a window in the rocks. That was the Underworld; thousands upon thousands of candles burned in every stony surface of a cave much bigger and deeper than the one they were standing on.

It was nothing like what she had imagined.

“This isn’t common fire,” his gesture encompassed the whole space. “Those are mortal’s lives.”

Azula observed with fascination.

“The kind of fire Sozin used to create the world. The wind that blows across those candles is also not like the wind outside: it’s the counterpart, it extinguishes lives forever. A breath, an instant, and all there’s left is a tendril of smoke. Once it disappears…”

Like the fragrance of flowers, fleeting like a lightning bolt. Of neither of those things remained any evidence.

Yet Azula found them beautiful in their ephemerality.

“That wind takes their souls to the Underworld, but never before their time. It is not something that ought to be done.”

His gaze was hard, for once. Steel-gray, like the products of his domain.

She understood. She had never wanted to kill. She had just wanted…

(She didn’t dare finish that thought. Such things were not for her. Love and family and peacefulness were things reserved for her brother.)

“I have something for you,” he interrupted any further sombering of her thoughts. His hand held a brooch of radiant white. “Your father’s lightning bolt was shattered and the pieces destroyed. But this one splinter was buried in the ground… I thought you would like to have it.”

A familiar heat now rested in her palm. A piece of her past.

She clutched it against her chest.

“Thank you,” she didn’t try to hide the tear rolling down her cheek.

A cool wind blew inside their side of the cave.

“Come with me,” he said, as the wind came to a sudden stop, in absolute silence. “You don’t have to be alone.”

But I don’t want to be trapped either.

Her feet were frozen to the stone floor of the cave. His bright gaze dimmed slightly before he disappeared into his realm once again.

And without him, her exile was truly lonelier than ever.

*

It was the last day of summer.

Ever since that day, the brooch of lightning adorned her colorful dress. She knew her mother wondered about it sometimes—she felt her gaze over her, following her movements across the lands—.

But, for once, she wasn’t fixed on whether her mother would be worried or happy; she couldn’t stop thinking if it had been the last time she would see him.

She had spent the nights awake, restlessly designing and undoing flowers under the willow where she had seen him once.

Could there exist a flower that would not wither? Such a bloom would survive enough to arrive to the Underworld in all of its glory, as he had said once. Could a flower survive there?

She had never tried to achieve anything remotely similar to that.

But she had never shied away from a challenge.

Her hands worked swiftly over the efforts of the whole season, a bush that grew with stiff materials she had never thought of using before.

The resulting small flower with six elongated petals, in pristine white, was not perfect once again.

“It must be,” she muttered to herself. This was her gift for him, to apologize about the offer she had rejected too many times. She would call it ‘asphodel’, and he’d be impressed and he’d look at her the way her brother looked at his wife… “It must be flawless.”

“Maybe this way is enough.”

A weight lifted from her chest when she saw him standing at the edge of the battlefield.

“Aang,” she breathed, and he swallowed.

“You had never used my name before.”

There was no time to be flustered about it.

“I didn’t think you would come back.”

“I said I was patient… Not much,” he smiled bashfully, looking at the harvest moon above them. The door to the depths of the earth was open behind him, unlike the previous times, when he had simply disappeared. “Come with me.”

He extended his hand. 

“Be my queen.”

Her heart jumped, welcoming the unbridled joy she felt when her hand joined his.

And this time, she followed him without looking back.

Chapter Text

Ursa of the Golden Feet scrutinized her entire domain with careful eyes. It was not yet dawn; the first day of Spring was about to begin, and where her daughter ought to have been the most active, she was nowhere to be seen.

“Mother? Did you call for me?” her son peered through the open door, adjusting the richly embroidered sash of his celestial garb.

“Yes,” she could barely tear her eyes away from the outline of the land where Azula always started her work for Spring. “I can’t find your sister.”

Her son inhaled sharply.

“Are you sure? It’s not yet time to start, she may arrive at dawn…”

He knew as well as her that those were empty words. 

And Ursa, who knew in the privacy of her heart how similar Azula and her were, had an ominous sense of foreboding about it.

“I will search for her. Tell the other Gods of the Sky,” her son finally nodded, walking out once they saw the Goddess of Dawn started her work.

Ursa looked at the Earth once more. So many folds, crevices and hidden depths.

Where was her daughter?

*

“They’ve finally told us,” the Goddess of Earthquakes snorted in good humor, crossing one leg over the other in the elegant marble furniture of Azula’s new home. “It was about time, I’d say.”

Azula smirked. Today marked the three months since she had followed Aang down to the Underworld. For almost three months had the Gods of the Sky tried to mask her absence.

The happiest three months of her life.

“Are you going to give us away?” she asked, drinking her tea with not a speck of worry darkening her visage.

“Hah! I would never,” the small goddess clapped on the armrest of her seat. “This is the most fun I’ve had since I started working with metals!”

She smiled.

“Cherries?” Azula offered her the carved quartz bowl, waiting until she had touched it.

“Delicious,” she said between mouthfuls of pitted cherries. “You have no idea, the Gods of Summer refused to keep working and there are almost no plants alive on the surface. The offerings from the mortals have really reduced in quality.”

Not for her, who could procure herself fresh fruit whenever she wanted to. It was not a task she usually performed (it fell more on the Gods responsible for the Harvest), but she had discovered it didn’t pose a problem if she didn’t need to spread her energy into so many blooms and flowers.

The tall gates to the hall opened, and Azula smiled at the newcomer. The King of the Underworld smiled beneath his characteristic white hood for a moment before taking it off and reaching for Azula’s hand.

“Azula,” he kissed the side of her head in greeting, making her blush furiously. Then, he turned to the other Goddess. “Good to see you, Toph.” 

“I could say the same, but you know, I’m glad I don’t have to see you being like that with each other,” she crossed her arms and got up. “I can still feel it though. Since I’ve delivered the information, goodbye.”

She disappeared in a cloud of dust and into an opening much more rough than the ones Aang used to move between realms.

“Did you enjoy your morning?” he asked her, hugging her from the waist. She automatically placed her hands behind his neck.

“I can’t complain,” before she could share with him the news Toph had brought, his lips were over hers to kiss her breathless.

When they parted, he bore that ever-present smile, all kindness and warmth.

“My morning is much improved now.”

She couldn’t help but smile.

*

Their peace didn’t last for long enough.

On the eve of the three months since Toph’s visit, there had been someone else at the main entrance of the Underworld.

She knew by the hard look on his eyes that it wouldn’t be pleasant.

“This is a visit I must receive alone,” he told her when the knocking on the door became insistent.

The protest faltered in her throat. He asked her to leave not because he considered her weak, but because he didn’t want her to be upset if he could avoid it.

She left, walking away for long enough so he wouldn’t notice her slipping back to the adjacent room.

“So you have her!”

Her brother’s enraged voice pierced through the stone walls, disconcerting in all its vivid sentiment. Why was he so mad? Shouldn’t he be happy he didn’t need to deal with his traitor sister anymore?

It was difficult to hear Aang’s answer, but there must have been something.

“Then let her go!” her brother demanded. “How could you assume we would let you abduct her and do nothing?! Free her!”

Free her? As if Aang had done anything other than setting her free! Free from lies, from expectation, from pain.

From loneliness.

Her indignation was almost enough to storm inside, but the next time her brother spoke, it was in a much calmer tone.

“If what you say is true, then let us speak with her. We will be waiting tomorrow at dusk.”

The doors to the Underworld, the ones guarded by Appa, closed again. She was left in turmoil among the myriad of burning candles of that realm, wishing time could stand still.

*

It was necessary, he told her. They had been discovered, her visit to the surface was unavoidable.

Deep down, she understood. But after so many years of doing things she didn’t want to, and half a year of doing only what she desired, she resisted.

“What if they don’t let me come back?” she willed her voice not to tremble.

“There’s a way,” he took out something from the table. A fruit, by the looks of it, but with metallic skin.

His fingers made swift work of a stripe of the skin, revealing the interior of a pomegranate, each seed juicy and bright as a ruby.

“Anyone who eats this is bound to return to the Underworld.”

She practically tore it from his hands, but he didn’t let go completely.

“Twelve will bind you to this place forever.”

Her hands still pulled from the fruit.

“Eat six.”

The surprise at his words made her speechless for a moment.

“Only six?” There was no point in trying to hide the hurt in her voice, wary. Was this some kind of ploy because he didn’t actually want her around him?

“Six,” he begged. “You can always come back and eat the rest.”

He had come back, again and again, when she was on the surface.

“Will you wait for me to return?” she asked in a thin voice.

“I will.”

There was no hesitation, nothing but sincerity in his eyes. It was enough to convince her.

Carefully, she picked six of those red diamonds, not really savoring them. With her crown of silver, amaranthine asphodels and her chin high, she walked out of the passage he had opened for her.

*

Her first sight of the surface was that of her brother in armor, as if ready for a battle.

She let no emotion show on her face. Was it because he expected a fight with the Underworld, or with her?

Tension thick enough to emulate ice didn’t thaw until she was right beside her brother and the creature that accompanied him; tall, regal and covered in gemlike scales, she looked at the figure in wonder.

Dragons had gone nearly extinct during the war, yet it was a dragon who brought her back to the Skies. They ascended through layers of heavy mist and dense clouds that blocked moonlight from an earth as bare as Azula had never seen outside old battlefields.

Her eyes remained dry when she stepped in the Palace she spent her childhood in, that she hadn’t seen in years.

The sight was as magnificent as she remembered.

“Azula is here, Mother.”

The Queen of the Skies turned her back to the cloudy and dark landscape of night. 

And ran towards her without a look at her brother.

Azula felt cleaved to the floor, unable to move or react in any way at the thousand feelings those eyes conveyed.

“You’re safe.”

Azula didn’t answer. She didn’t know how.

The Queen’s attempt at a smile fell.

“Leave us alone, please,” she told Zuko.

He obeyed, softly closing the door behind him.

“I was very worried,” the Queen made another attempt. “Zuko told me you were in the Underworld. Are you unharmed?”

Again, Azula kept quiet.

Her mother stepped aside, placing some distance between them.

“Let me tell you a story, then.”

She stared into the distant horizon.

“I was once a young Goddess too,” she said. “Daughter of the God of Theater and the Goddess of Simulation, there was a place for me as a minor Goddess of a city, perhaps of a craft within my father’s field.”

Despite herself, Azula listened with attention. The Queen of the Skies had never shared much of her youth, not even during Azula’s childhood.

“But I dreamed of something bigger.”

It made no sense, but she kept quiet.

“When I met your father, the son of Azulon the Great, I was captivated by what he symbolized. He promised me a part of that greatness, he said it was his right.”

Yes, that sounded like her father’s words.

“When he insinuated that he was willing to marry me, I was overjoyed. My parents weren’t happy and so, we arranged for him to abduct me.”

Of that, Azula had never heard before. It made sense, if it was something Azulon the Great didn’t want repeated all over the world.

“For a while, it was everything I had ever dreamed of.”

There was a wistful gaze on her mother’s face that disappeared quickly.

“Until it wasn’t.”

It was the same face she always had in Azula’s memories of her father speaking about his ambitions. Apparently, at one point they had been shared.

“I understood too late what I had sacrificed in the name of that idea of power, the true price behind it. I entered a place where fear and subjugation were at the root of everything. I loathe the idea of you being trapped like I once was, Azula,” her mother’s eyes shone with tears. “I just want to protect you from someone whose plans for you may be what your father planned for me.”

A hand Azula didn’t take extended towards her.

“Tell me you didn’t eat anything he gave you.”

Azula’s mind was blank. Her mother had felt trapped, but it had ended with her as the Queen of the Skies. It was much easier to judge from there.

Anger started to surge in her veins.

“What if I did? What if I ate six of those seeds? I would have gladly eaten them all!”

Heat fanned her anger into a burning wrath.

“You say you wanted to protect me? Protect me? For so long I was forbidden from coming back to this Palace, exiled on the surface of the Earth!”

For the first time that day, a knot appeared on her throat.

“Neither you nor my brother visited but once or twice a year! How can you claim you worried about me? Do you even know who he is? The way he asked me to go with him?”

Her voice got caught in her throat and her hand flew to the lightning brooch on her silver dress.

“You deprived me from the only thing I yearned for.”

She did miss the lightning bolt she used to wield, but she missed the most was being treated as if she mattered.

“He offered me what no one else did,” she caressed the brooch. “Do you really think he forced me to stay in the Underworld?”

For the first time, she saw her own pain reflected in someone else’s eyes.

Maybe her mother understood a little, after all.

*

Her wedding was a quiet affair, at least when compared with her brother’s.

In any other aspect, it was anything but quiet. The place had been enclosed with delicate wind chimes and bells that sang with the currents of air.

“The Nomads loved the music of the wind,” he told her in melancholy.

“I do, too,” she said, quietly.

*

For all the pain I have caused you, the world will mourn with me.

Azula looked at the Sky, gray and covered in clouds. It was the last day of summer. 

Her mother had reached an agreement with the Gods of Summer and the Gods of Harvest. If Azula helped during summer, they would ease the strain her absence brought for three months.

That left three months of coldness and barren earth.

Enough to know her mother hadn’t been lying when she spoke of mourning.

Despite everything she remembered from her childhood, she had come to understand that lying wasn’t her mother’s style. Nor her brother’s.

She could still remember the way he had approached, hands tightly gripping his elbows over his dull garb. He hadn’t worn the golden one that was his right as the Sun.

“I was jealous,” her brother had confessed. “You were always so good at what Father taught us. So much better than me.”

He had apologized for things that went further before, deeper into the past, that neither of them were fully responsible for. Also for things that happened after.

“I didn’t think you’d want to see me. I’m sorry I ever made you feel alone. I do love you.”

I love you, had said her mother.

Unwittingly, tears came to her eyes at the memory.

She loved them too.

But this time, she was thinking of someone else she loved.

At midnight, under the Moon’s gaze, she would return to the Underworld.

She would return home.