Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Your mother thinks you’re a monster,” Father says as she sits beside him at his desk and turns to peer up at him with saucer-like eyes, confused.

She thinks she’s heard the word before, calling to mind the foes in Mother’s favorite plays, but she’s not sure how it applies to her. Those beasts are purposely made to look frightening, and their entire role in the story is to do bad things. She’s already six, but even she isn’t too aware of what her mother could mean. 

However, she doesn’t doubt her father’s words.

Ozai seems to sense her hurt as he cards a hand through the hair that frames her face. His expression is soft, studying her, and she thinks she can see affection in his eyes, a bit like how Mother looks at Zuko.

But she’s not sure. Father’s thoughts aren’t always as forthright as Mother’s.

“I don’t think she’s right about you,” he says, his voice a dry rasp.

Azula nods blankly at the assurance from him.

But there’s a pain in her skull as she thinks back to the different ways in which Ursa disciplines her, and compares it to how gentle she is to Zuko for the same behavior.

How Ursa clutches her wrists and squeezes, or holds her down in chairs by the shoulders to scold her, a hiss in her voice that’s only familiar to Azula. The long lectures that take place before she even does anything to earn them.

It all starts to make sense to her, now knowing what her mother thinks of her. 

It’s always Zuko that Ursa praises, after all, no matter how well Azula is doing. Even though she’s already learning the firebending katas of those twice her age and producing strong, confident flames, as opposed to the wisps of ashes Zuko calls upon. 

Everyone calls her a prodigy but what do they call Zuko? Nothing.

And yet he’s still her mother’s pride and joy.

Except, Father praises her most, she tells herself. He’s the one that had realized early what Azula is capable of—he’s the reason why she’s well on her way to being a master before she’s even reached her tenth year, with the best learning resources supporting her. Of course, Zuko reaps the same benefits, but she’s the only one with anything to show off for it, and Father always says as much.

So, why has her mother never been proud?

Rather, Ursa is always so afraid, even to touch her. 

The only place her mother has ever kissed her has been on the top of her head—as if it’s all she can bear. The quick, necessary motions of affection to maintain a motherly mask, even as each time she chides Azula under her breath. Asking for her to be good. Asking for her to be more like Zuko. Asking for her to stop tormenting him.

Which, realistically, Azula considers her behavior and can acknowledge that at times... she can... take her teasing too far. Like the time she pushed Zuko off a balcony when she’d only intended to nudge him in an attempt to freak him out. She more than made up for it, though—she’d nursed him back to health herself!

But really, Azula can’t help it that her brother is weak. He had a two year head start in life and still lagged behind. How did he expect to survive without anyone willing to toughen him up, when he’d already become this soft? At least she gave him a challenge. What did he do for her?

“Azula, my dear,” her father breaks through her quiet deliberation.

She jolts, cheeks flaming at having zoned out in his presence. Father hates that.

“Yes, Father?”

“How about I teach you myself, when I have free time?”

He says it so casually that Azula restrains herself before she can shout in joy at the surprise. Because Azula knows how powerful of a bender he is—it’s all her teachers can talk about most days, comparing her to him. She even knows that he’s developed his own fighting style, that he guards it jealously, and that no one has ever been able to best him in a fight.

Her father laughs at what her expression must look like, her blank mask faltering.

“Does it make you so happy?”

“Very,” she whispers, before leaning against his shoulder, trying to contain herself. “I won’t disappoint you, Dad. I’ll be the best student you’ve ever had, I promise.”

Or she’ll die trying.

If anything, that just makes him laugh harder, his expression softer than she’s ever seen it. “Oh, Azula, you’ll be the only student I’ve ever had.”

And those words make the nonsense about her mother fade into a quiet memory, as the comfort of being Father’s favorite sinks in and warms her.

“That is, if your brother never shapes up,” he adds, making her go stiff.

Zuko always ruins everything.

.

.

Azula wonders if it’s a rule that firstborns always get the most affection. 

She watches Zuko with her mother and thinks of her father and uncle. She wonders if Father ever felt such things, and if it’s why it has created such a bitter, begrudging relationship between the two.

Only, Azula never met her grandmother, Ilah, who feels more like a folktale than a real person. She had been adored, but hard to get any information on, prone to seclusion and privacy. Soft spoken, and gentle natured by reports of the staff old enough to have known.

A bit like Princess Ursa, they always say.

Father never talks about her. She doesn’t ask.

Azula thinks that perhaps fate is something like a mockery, forever repeating the worst parts of history, and she wonders that perhaps, Azula is only playing her role in an orchestrated play, directed and casted by powers she can’t see or sense. 

The feeling of it chafes already sore wounds.

Tearing her gaze away from her brother and her mother’s laughing faces, Azula stalks away, rushing to yet another lesson. Her father’s insistent that she keep practicing, and given she’s the only one he ever pays special attention to, Azula reasons with herself that Zuko should be the one who’s jealous.

After all, Prince Ozai is the only one with any real power in their family. 

And Azula never wants to be powerless—she’s learned that from watching her mother.

She sees how weak she’s made Zuko.

.

.

Father is only affectionately called ‘Dad’ in particular settings, like in private, or around Mother, who does away with stuffy titles as much as possible. Zuko prefers it too, which is part of the reason why she taunts him with that nickname. The other part being that it mimics an appearance of closeness between them that only their mother seems to appreciate.

The reality is that they haven’t been close in a long time, and Azula can only vaguely remember when they had been. In fact, she doesn’t quite know when the rift between them had become so large. If it had always been there, lurking in the quiet.

Or if Azula and Zuko simply woke up one day, their relationship forever fractured.

In the same vein of thought, Azula wonders if her mother ever loved her, or if it’s always been that she only has enough love for Zuko, and just Zuko, because she knows for a fact that her parents don’t exactly see eye to eye on anything. 

A miracle they’ve born two children, some servants have whispered, because Ursa’s heart is cold to her husband, even as his burns for her. They only grew further divided after Azula’s birth, as if the second child’s existence was the last of the Fire Lady’s effort.

Ursa doesn’t have a sweet name for Ozai, not like she does for Zuko, who she calls her Turtleduck Prince, and a plethora of other equally cavity-inducing nicknames. 

Of course she has one for Azula, too, used only on a rare good day, but it’s ‘Lala’ and Azula has always hated that nickname—she’s already been named for Azulon, she can’t bear the shame of an association to her grandfather’s sisters, Li and Lo, by somehow becoming their La. 

There are no good days if Azula can help it.

But Ozai is almost always His Highness, Prince Ozai, and very rarely, ‘my esteemed husband’—and only to Azula and Zuko, ‘your father’. The point being that Azula has always been aware of the separation between the spouses, but even she doesn’t think much of it.

If something has always been so, why question it? The sky being blue and the young royal couple being at odds, what was there to point out? Same thing when it comes to the siblings, really.

If the two have always been torn between their parent’s sides, then how strange is it actually that the little prince and princess have grown to torment each other? 

And that Azula usually wins, how is it her fault?

.

.

Once again Azula faces her mother’s punishment with her head held high.

Ursa peers down at her, frustration clear in her eyes. “Do you never learn, Azula? You can’t pull tricks on the dignitaries you don’t like—!”

“I never said I didn’t like them,” Azula says back, her tone light, a picture of wide-eyed innocence. “I was only letting them join in on the game. Don’t you always say to not leave anyone out?”

“They weren’t here for games and you know it, Azula,” she hisses back. “You can’t use my own words against me just to get your way.”

“But Father laughed, too,” Azula grumbles, glancing at her feet.

At that, Ursa sucks in a breath. Her voice trembles as she asks, “Don’t tell me, did you target them because you knew your father doesn’t get along with them?”

Azula shrugs.

“What has your father been teaching you?”

Even Azula startles at the borderline treasonous line of questioning as she glances at her mother’s face, who stares at her in shock. Lucky for her, they’re in Azula’s room and no one’s heard her. 

She fixes her expression quickly but not fast enough—Azula has already spied the fear that Ursa attempts to hide.

“Oh, just firebending,” Azula says saccharinely. “Not something you need to concern yourself with, Mom.”

Ursa reels. “Young lady, you don’t take that tone with me, or anyone for that matter! Now, kneel, arms raised high—higher!”

Azula stretches her hands as far as they can go, to the point of pain, just to feel it. Her face is taut with a scowl as she gives up on the smile that might have worked on her father, but never does with her mother.

“Now, think, Azula, on why what you did is wrong.”

“For how long? I have lessons in the evenings,” Azula’s tone borders on a whine.

“Canceled,” Ursa says, and adds to the stunned expression of her daughter, “Don’t look so upset! Any other child would take that as a blessing.”

But Azula is not any other child. Her heart thuds harshly in her chest at the thought of missing an entire evening of lessons. Father is supposed to attend them tonight, and if she can’t make it, she doesn’t know how long she’ll have to wait for another appearance.

He promised last time that he’d demonstrate lighting, but she’s sure that means nothing to Ursa.

“Oh, Azula, you don’t have to cry,” Ursa says, closing the distance between them and gently lowering Azula’s hands from the air with her own and coming to kneel in front of her. She seems to hesitate but grasps Azula’s curled fingers with one hand and brings the other to Azula’s cheeks, wiping tears.

It mirrors a moment she’s seen before, with Zuko and Ursa, after Azula made him cry.

Azula imagines her mother hugging her, just like she had with her brother. She even leans in. But Ursa never closes the gap.

“Can’t you just apologize?” Ursa asks. “It can be so much easier if you do, I promise you.”

“It’s always like this,” Azula says, as she wonders how it could ever be easier. “Even if I say sorry, you don’t think I mean it.”

“Well, do you usually?” 

Azula shakes her head. Ursa’s brows crinkle with concern.

“Do you ever feel sorry?”

“Of course I do,” Azula grumbles.

“Sometimes, Azula, it feels like you never do,” Ursa says, defeated. “Because you keep doing things you know you shouldn’t. And when I ask you to apologize, you make it into a battle between us. Why must we fight?”

Because you’d never look at me otherwise, Azula thinks. 

Because there was a time that Azula tried that, making things easy for Ursa and behaving. And Ursa never spared a second glance at her.

If it has to be one way or the other, that either her mother sees her or she doesn’t, and the only thing she can control is herself, then Azula will do things her way, her mother’s thoughts of her bearing no consequence. Father has always made that perfectly clear.

Azula pulls away.

“Mom, I’m sorry,” she says, attempting sincerity, already having forgotten why exactly her mother had been so furious with her. “I won’t do it again, I promise.”

Ursa lets Azula’s hands fall out of hers, but gives one last pat to Azula’s cheek before moving to stand. “I suppose we’ll see if you’ve learned your lesson the next time those dignitaries grace us with their presence. If they’re even brave enough to come back.”

Azula wrinkles her nose. “I didn’t scare them that much.”

Ursa shakes her head, exasperated. “Are you not supposed to be feeling sorry? Don’t drop the act so quickly if you’ve only just decided to put it on.”

“But I am sorry,” Azula says sweetly, looking at her mother optimistically now that Ursa is speaking to her with some humor in her voice. “My lessons aren’t really canceled, are they?”

Ursa laughs softly. “No, Lala, you can still attend your lessons. If they make you so happy.”

She looks sad saying that.

Azula can’t grasp as to why, but nevertheless she beams at her mother. “Thanks, Mom!”

.

.

“Azula, come on,” Ty Lee urges her, the only other child aside from Zuko that would ever rush her. But Azula can’t fault her for her excitement as the three girls wiggle their way through a crowd to see the lantern festival in full bloom. They’ve snuck out for it, and she’s only vaguely certain that there’s no one looking for her.

This festival is only for the peasant’s celebration, after all. There’s an even grander spectacle to be had in the palace in a week's time, but that requires a patience that Ty Lee doesn’t have. If there’s already festivities happening, why not take part?

It’s not a question Azula has ever asked herself and admittedly never would again after Ty Lee posed it to her.

Because if it were not for the joy on her friend’s face, Azula would have already staged a tactical retreat at the first glance of the crowded streets filled with shoulder-to-shoulder peasants trying to get closer to the excitement.

Solar New Year comes and with it comes new expectations. Around her, everywhere, colorful paper lanterns are hung up and glowing, red banners and streamers decorate the shops and homes, with people milling about in their finest, vibrant clothes.

Red is all she sees with every turn of her head, and while Ty Lee oohs and aahs at everything she’s seeing, Azula is unimpressed.

Mai and her share a glance, understanding immediately what position the other is in.

“Well, we might as well humor her,” Mai says in a monotone.

Just as Azula is about to nod, Ty Lee tugs both of them with her in the direction of street performers, who are contorting and twisting their limbs every which way. Even Azula finds herself studying them, and while she spies weaknesses in all of the performers, she also sees the potential.

“Look! They’re so bendy!”

“Are you getting ideas, Ty Lee?” Azula asks with derision.

“Well, it just looks so interesting,” she says, eyes twinkling.

“I bet you’d have no problem doing just as well as they can,” Mai says, and Azula begrudgingly has to nod in her agreement.

Ty Lee’s natural agility and body control is the only thing Azula has ever envied before. Well, that, and Ty Lee’s…

Natural charm.

“Do you guys really think so?” Ty Lee looks touched deeply at the sentiment.

Azula watches Mai smile at her, the subtle doting that she’s only ever seen present when Ty Lee is around. Mai isn’t prone to doting on anyone, but there’s something about Ty Lee that brings out people’s soft affections.

“If you want, I’ll have Father hire a teacher for you. If your home is too noisy, then you can have your lessons at the palace,” Azula offers.

“Oh, Azula, that would be wonderful!”

That natural acceptance of good fortune, no questioning for ulterior motives, no shred of doubt in Azula—Ty Lee surely is a spoiled nobleman’s child, even if she’s one of seven identical daughters. How else to explain such a trusting temperament?

Azula smiles.

She likes that the girl is so malleable, and also likes that Mai is so insouciant. If she can control just enough of their lives, then the two will be the ones who she can rely on most in the future. 

Azula will eventually need that sort of loyalty.

“And as for Mai…” Azula spies a performer throwing knives at a man strapped to a spinning wheel. “What do you think of knife throwing, Mai? If you learn that, then the three of us could spend much more time together.”

Mai raises a brow, and turns her face to watch the performance for a moment. Entirely unimpressed, Mai says, “Sure, Azula, looks easy.”

The sarcasm isn’t lost on Azula. “Well, you don’t expect to leave me and Ty Lee to train without you, do you? And besides, I think blades suit you. Like they do Zuzu.”

Ty Lee and Azula burst into laughter at the joke, Ty Lee because it pertains to the budding romance between Mai and Zuko, and Azula, because Zuko’s firebending is so paltry that he’s had to resort to dual dao swords to maintain his relevancy.

Mai’s face flushes bright red, and yet there’s a shine in her eyes that tells Azula that she’s won.

Pleased, Azula loops her elbows in with theirs, hooking them all together. “Well, come on then, we might as well go look at the weapons.”

Chapter Text

Azula doesn’t typically care for toys, and this one is no exception. It’s simply that the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation has gifted it to her, and she takes a second to study it as her mother sits at a desk, reading aloud the message her uncle has attached to it.

A new friend he’d called it. Azula rolls her eyes at the unsubtle jab as she thinks of the pearl-handled knife in Zuko’s hands. So, he gets a weapon and she, the prodigy, gets a doll? As if she’s ever cared or needed for such a thing. A doll. At her age?

While the insult of being gifted something so unreasonably childish chafed, Azula expresses her distaste for the present with her back turned with a quiet groan, grimacing at the visage of the Earth Kingdom doll. She wonders if this was something Uncle Iroh had gotten for her at the last minute, all the thought and attention having already been wasted on her older brother. Like always.

But then she pictures him picking it out for her intentionally, strolling the market stalls for something she’d like, and somehow that makes it worse. That he’d think she’d care for something like this—it really was that she would only ever be Little Princess Azula to him. 

A sign that he didn’t intend to ever get to know her, the real her.

The girl that wasn’t the daughter Princess Ursa was raising. The girl that flew in the air with ferocious power and unflinching jets of flame, who laughed when fighting men three times her size and weight, even going as far as to taunt them when she got the better of them. 

But then, he’s never cared for that girl, no matter how much she showed off. He has more important things to concern himself with than the youngest child in the royal family. He’s too busy being adored for a siege that’s lasted a full calendar year and is about to become two.

After all, Crown Prince Iroh is known to all of the Fire Nation to be a jovial, good-spirited man. Energetic with his praise and loved by everyone he’s crossed paths with. His smile is famous, even, from the paintings of the Royal Family and his portrait that has been lauded for giving a new hope to the citizens of the Fire Nation—this charismatic, wise man, soon to be crowned Fire Lord, just as soon as his father dies. One great age heralding an even greater age.

The reality, however, is that Uncle Iroh is very specific with his attention, not freely given to just anyone. But he showers his few loved ones with it, endlessly.

All that affection, just for Lu Ten and Zuko.

Azula’s blood runs hot.

It’s not even the first doll she’s ever received, but it’s particularly aggravating when she spots Zuko swinging the knife in the air, joy ever present on his face, grin stretched wide as he attempts to show off in front of their mother.

An idea strikes her. She smiles.

“If Uncle doesn’t make it back from war, then Dad will be next in line to be Fire Lord, wouldn’t he?”

Zuko keeps fighting the air, the whipping sounds making her eye twitch.

Her mother looks up from the letter.

“Azula, we don’t speak that way,” she snaps with a stern frown before it softens, disappointment clear in her eyes. “It would be awful if Uncle Iroh didn’t return. And besides, Fire Lord Azulon is a picture of health.”

Azula thinks of her grandfather’s wrinkled and patchy skin and has to disagree, but before she can get a word in, Zuko turns towards them with one last slash to the air and leaps to join Mother in her defense, asking Azula with a glare, “How would you like it if cousin Lu Ten wanted Dad to die?”

To that, she raises her nose and turns her back to them, not wanting to bother with Zuko’s words, unlikely as they are. “I still think our dad would make a much better Fire Lord than his Royal Tea-Loving Kookiness.”

Azula lifts the doll as she says that and thinks of Uncle Iroh’s face when gazing at the doll’s, recalling how his eyes always seemed to skip past her and over to Zuko. The general disinterest in her that pervaded their interactions. 

She crushes the doll into a fist, tightly, and watches it burst into flames, the fire hot even against her own skin as she squeezes until the doll turns into the ashes that slide through the gaps of her fingers.

From the very beginning, she had no need for such things, because she already has friends. If he even cared to notice.

“Azula!” Ursa shouts from behind the desk, shocked and appalled as she rises to close the distance and reach for her. “What were you thinking? It was a gift!”

“So? It was mine, then. I just did what I wanted with it,” Azula says bitterly, not meeting her mother’s gaze. “Isn’t that what gifts are for?”

“Azula, your uncle will be very hurt if he finds out,” Ursa tells her, her mother’s hands clutching at her shoulders as if she’s barely restraining from shaking her.

“So, what?” I was hurt, too! From receiving such an ugly thing. “It’s not like he can find out if Zuzu keeps his mouth shut.”

“I’m not covering up for you!” Zuko snaps, eyes alight with anger. “Why did you burn it, ‘Zula?”

To that, Azula peels her mother’s hands off and attempts aloofness. “Because, Zuzu, Earth Kingdom fashion is ugly, why else? They’re a hundred years behind our nation in everything—the least he could get is a Fire Nation doll!”

“Oh, Azula, he’s in the middle of a siege, but he still found time to find something for you! Must you be this difficult? Your uncle put a lot of thought into getting you that present,” Ursa lectures. 

She groans at that. “What thought? It’s a doll!”

“Made by a master craftsman! With the best materials! With the intention of being a friend to you!”

Ursa isn’t typically prone to raising her voice, but Azula seems to have a talent. She only ever yells at her. Even when she hasn’t done anything wrong.

Who wants a friend like that? One that can’t even say anything, or do anything. One with no feelings.

But then it strikes her that maybe it’s something that Princess Ursa would have wanted, seeing as she used to be a peasant with nothing to her name except the grace of Fire Lord Azulon who saved her from her isolated village on a far away island.

She’s not even a firebender. Her only claim to anything is her marriage to a prince, and yet she still acts like she knows everything and anything about nobility and the world at large. Acting like her word is the law that Azula has to follow—and she dares to dress it up like she cares about Azula.

Her eyes go to Zuko, who always seems to enjoy when their mother disciplines her.

“I don’t care, Mom!” Azula grinds out, her eyes stinging.

But Ursa is having none of it. “Young lady, you’re going to write your uncle a letter explaining yourself and apologizing for your actions! It’s due by tonight. Do you understand me?”

Wordlessly, Azula nods, jaw clenched and gaze cast to the ground. She’s about to write the shortest letter she can possibly get away with, with the ugliest handwriting she can muster, and find a way to sabotage the messenger dragon hawk before it leaves the Fire Nation coastline, even if she has to stay up all night and leave the palace to do it.

That man is not deserving of any apologies from her.

Ultimately, Uncle Iroh never does get that letter.

And when her father hears of the incident, his booming laughter tells her everything she needs to know.

.

.

Weeks later, Azula’s ears are still buzzing hot from all the new information she’d been informed of that morning. She contemplates momentarily what to do with it, mulling over her next words.

It would be easier if her brother weren’t still slashing the air.

“You waste all your time playing with knives. You’re not even good,” Azula points out derisively from her seat, watching her brother swing his knife wildly before abruptly groaning and collapsing with his hand clenched over his heart. A pulled muscle.

Zuko rises to glare at her harshly, his cheeks blazing from the embarrassment as he raises a fist at her. Because he knows she’s right.

And he’s still so full of pride.

“Put an apple to your head and we’ll find out how good I am!” he yells.

Azula scoffs, leaping off her seat to close the distance between them as she interjects with the real reason she’s sought out Zuko in the first place, “By the way, Uncle’s coming home.” Her tone is pointedly nonchalant.

Zuko relaxes at the mention of him, but doubt and confusion cross his features, and he takes a step and a half back from Azula. 

She knows it’s because she’s the one telling him this news. If she’s telling him, there’s always a catch. Azula loves this game she’s created over the years of being the bearer of bad news to her older brother. He never knows what to believe.

And he’s too stupid to realize the obvious solution—hello, spies? He acts as if they aren’t in control of a sea of people within the palace. He could easily get someone to gather intel for him, yet he complacently waits for someone to tell him.

“Does that mean... we’ve won the war?”

“No,” she says, exasperated. “It means Uncle’s a quitter and a loser.”

“What are you talking about?” Zuko asks incredulously, watching her walk away from him and towards a support in the ceiling, using her grip on it to swing around to face him again. “Uncle’s not a quitter.”

“Oh, yes he is!” Azula shoots back, leaning back against the pillar. “He found out his son died and he just fell apart. A real general would stay and burn Ba Sing Se to the ground, not lose the battle and come home crying.” 

Azula’s smile is mocking.

“How do you know what he should do?” Zuko argues back briefly before he deflates, his worry casting shadows on his face. “He’s probably just sad his only kid is gone. Forever.”

It’s the type of sentiment that draws Azula up short. Not because she thinks she’s wrong, but because Zuko’s words only provide a stronger argument for hers.

While not completely overcome by grief like everyone else is, she is angered by the loss of the Crown Prince’s heir and his inability to take revenge for him. As if the Fire Nation’s Royal Family can be walked over by those slovenly, dirt-encrusted savages, when their brightest battle plan is pushing rocks down hills. It just doesn’t sit right.

She liked Lu Ten, too. Everyone did.

So, how can Uncle Iroh return, when his duty to his own son is so neglected? How can he possibly make for a good Fire Lord?

But just before Azula can say anything, her mother’s figure comes to loom in the archway.

“Your father has requested an audience with Fire Lord Azulon,” she informs them, quickly adding, “Best clothes, hurry up!”

Zuko rushes out immediately to satisfy their mother.

Alternatively, Azula takes her time, lifting herself off the pillar with a nonchalance that she’s had plenty of practice to master. “Fire Lord Azulon,” she echoes in a ridiculing tone. “Can’t you just call him ‘Grandfather'? He’s not exactly the powerful Fire Lord he used to be.”

Her mother barely reacts to that much heat from Azula, but that’s all the encouragement she needs.

“Someone will probably end up taking his place soon,” she bites off gleefully in a sing-song, watching her mother’s face stiffen in outrage.

“Young lady! Not another word,” she threatens, her lovely features drawn into a scowl.

With that, Azula rushes off, satisfied—but is still within earshot when Princess Ursa wonders, beneath her breath, “What is wrong with that child?”

Her father’s words come to mind as Azula runs faster. She thinks of Zuko’s reaction to Lu Ten’s death.

Maybe she’s right. Maybe I am a monster.

.

.

“And how was it that Great-Grandfather Sozin managed to win the Battle of Han Tui?” Father asks Zuko, putting him to the test in front of the Fire Lord, who watches without expression from his high seat on the Dragon Throne behind a wall of fire.

Everyone stares ahead, but Azula can still hear the nervous clear of his throat before Zuko attempts to answer. “Great-Grandfather won...” he begins as a pregnant pause fills the air. “Because...”

Azula latches onto the weakness—and who else could put him out of his misery if he couldn’t answer such an easy question?

“Because, even though his army was outnumbered, he cleverly calculated his advantages. The enemy was downwind and there was a drought. Their defenses burned to a crisp in minutes,” Azula recites from memory, reveling in the victory against Zuko as she closes her eyes with a smile.

“Correct, my dear,” Father says, his tone pleased.

And she knows that her brother has lost the advantage of having her father’s support in the meeting.

Azula slides a glance at Zuko to tell if he’s noticed that, too—what he’s just missed out on because he’d been too dumb to remember such simple information.

“Now, would you show Grandfather the new moves you demonstrated to me?”

She rises at the opportunity to show off and let Zuko know first-hand just how far behind he is compared to her. She’s only gotten stronger since the last time.

Azula keeps her face blank but on the inside, she hums with energy, her inner flame responding to her eagerly as she walks to the center of the room and readies her stance. Her body remembers everything, the actions having been repeated so many times that she can probably do this much in her sleep.

Every motion is clean and perfected. She doesn’t need a mirror to know that, but works through the katas with a feverish dedication, the power in her limbs cutting through the air and igniting powerful bursts of flames from her hands that she uses to unleash a volley of attacks. Moves that had made Lo and Li, as well as her other firebending masters proud to the point of a standing ovation.

The brightest, most prodigal student any of them have ever taken on. Not to mention the pride in Father’s eyes.

Confident, Azula masterfully molds the flame into a comet-like shape, weaving it through the air, tossing it like a whip and wringing it closer, her steps sure-footed and gliding across the floor as she makes good use of the space in the room. Swinging, lashing movements, a bit like dancing.

At last, she extinguishes the fire in her hands before rushing towards her grandfather, her body moving before she can think better of it. She doesn’t hesitate, leaping skyward and throwing a kick through the air, sending a burst of flames into the fire wall that guards the Fire Lord.

Azula lands softly and kneels in front of Azulon.

Behind her, Ozai exclaims, “She’s a true prodigy. Just like her grandfather for whom she’s named.”

Azula sneaks a peek and spots the smile on his face, and the tension in her melts off, the abruptness almost making her sag. She’s quick to correct that, rising.

Maintaining her expression, she makes her way back to where her family still sits in seiza, landing next to Zuko. Unable to resist after the high that her performance has left her, she whispers under her breath, “You’ll never catch up.”

And Zuko—he always takes her bait.

He leaps up to his feet. “I’d like to demonstrate what I’ve been learning!”

In the corner of her eye, her father loses his smile.

Azula stays perfectly still, even as eager as she is to see Zuko fail. Which she knows he will.

Her brother starts off alright, not perfect, but he knows the katas well enough to work through one and to the next—but when it comes time to make a flame, it’s a mere puff, and comparing it to the infernos that Azula has just wielded like child’s play, Zuko shames himself.

He fumbles a Leaping Dragon kata, and lands on his butt, his groan an echo in the quiet room. Through his shock, Zuko still finds it within himself to get up and try again, but this time, as he dares to orchestrate an even bigger Leaping Dragon than the one he’s just failed, he takes an even harsher fall.

This time, he stays down. Azula smiles.

Groaning, Zuko shifts to lay face-down where he’s at, and Ursa rushes to his side, gentle hand on his shoulder as he says, devastated, “I-I failed.”

“No. I loved watching you,” their mother tells him as she helps him into a sitting position, hands coming to his face as he begins to quietly cry. “That’s who you are, Zuko. Someone who keeps fighting even though it’s hard.”

Azula withholds a sigh.

“Prince Ozai,” Fire Lord Azulon cuts through, his tone filled with disgust. “Why are you wasting my time with this pomp? Just tell me what you want,” he mutters, waving his hand in a shooing motion as he dismisses the others. “Everyone else, go.”

Azula is quick to leap up, following her mother and brother to the door, the picture of innocence before abruptly reaching for Zuko and yanking him to her side at the last second, guiding him into hiding behind the curtain drapes, a well-practiced move on her part.

“W-what are you—!?”

“Shhh.”

She leads him deeper, finding a part in the blanketing red curtains and spying out into the throne room, feeling Zuko move next to her to do the same.

“Father,” Ozai begins, “you must have realized as I have, that with Lu Ten gone, Iroh’s bloodline has ended. After his son’s death, my brother abandoned the siege at Ba Sing Se, and who knows when he’ll return home.” He lets that thought sit before pressing on, rising from the ground. “But I am here, Father, and my children are alive.”

Azulon scowls at his youngest son.

“Say what it is you want!” he snaps.

“Father, revoke Iroh’s birthright.” Ozai steps closer. “I am your humble servant,” he says, kneeling, “here to serve you and our nation. Use me.”

Azulon shifts to the edge of his seat, the outrage on his face clear. “You dare suggest I betray Iroh? My firstborn?” The flame wall expands in his anger, rising to the ceilings as the flames burn hotter, licking the air with a ferocity that surprises Azula. “Directly after the demise of his only beloved son? I think Iroh has suffered enough! But you... your punishment has scarcely begun!”

The flames roar as he shouts this, enough that the curtains are pushed back, startling Zuko like a badgerfrog as he takes off, fleeing.

Azula doesn’t move, turning back to the scene with eager eyes and a smile, wondering how Father will escape punishment, and what her grandfather can even do to make her father suffer.

“Father, you know I want the best for our nation—!”

“Enough.”

And even Azula is stunned to hear what her grandfather says next.

.

.

“Dad’s going to kill you!” Azula sing-songs as she lets Zuko’s bedroom door swing open after a nudge. “Really, he is.”

He sits up from bed, scowling. “Ha-ha, ‘Zula. Nice try.”

“Fine, don’t believe me. But I heard everything,” she begins, passing the doorway and nearly gliding the distance between her and Zuko. Inspired, she mimics the recreations of theater performances they used to do as children, deepening her voice to recite Azulon’s words, and marching from one end of Zuko’s bed to the other with a raised fist, “You must know the pain of losing a firstborn son, by sacrificing your own.”

Azula uses a hand on the supports of Zuko’s canopy to swing around to face him, taking in his expression.

“Liar!”

She softens her tone, but the mock in it never really goes away. “I’m only telling you for your own good,” she tells him, pretending to think before taking a seat on Zuko’s bed. “Oh, I know! Maybe you can find a nice Earth Kingdom family to adopt you.”

“Stop it! You’re lying. Dad would never do that to me!”

“Your father would never do what to you?” Ursa cuts in, the tension racketing upon her arrival as she enters the room. “What is going on here?”

“I don’t know,” Azula says with an innocent tone.

It doesn’t work.

“It’s time for a talk,” Ursa says darkly, reaching for Azula by the wrist and dragging her out of the room, a grip impossible to break out of. She knows by now not to even try, and steps after her mother with a frown, preparing herself.

Behind her, she hears the barest trace of Zuko’s age-old mantra.

Azula always lies... Azula always lies.

But really, what could she get out of lying about this?

.

.

Azula slips open Zuko’s knife with a smile, but almost as if he knows she’s taken it, she hears his slight footsteps running through the halls, his panic apparent as soon as she takes a look at him.

She reveals herself immediately from behind a pillar, sliding the knife shut.

At the sight of her, he asks, “Where’s Mom?”

Azula looks away. “No one knows,” she tells him, bringing the end of the knife’s scabbard to her chin. “Oh, and last night, Grandpa passed away.”

“Not funny, Azula!” He points. “You’re sick—and I want my knife back, now,” he demands, stepping towards and reaching to take Uncle’s gift back from her.

But she’s just too quick for him. Azula dodges and dangles it to taunt him. “Oh? But who’s going to make me? Mom?”

His answering horrified expression is all too funny. The dawning realization of what has happened.

Appeased by it, she lets him take it when he reaches to snatch it for the second time, watching with bemusement as he takes off running, as if a komodo rhino is dogging his heels.

Oh, but this was all going to be so much more fun now, wasn’t it? Without Princess Ursa to nag, that is.

Now that Prince Zuko is all alone, his back might even straighten out, with no one to lean on. He might even take their father more seriously. Might realize just how heavy the burden of succession is. Might realize how weak their mother has made him. Might think that Azula is always right, instead of always lying.

So, Azula doesn’t wonder at her mother’s disappearance, doesn’t worry if she’s dead or alive. Even if she doesn’t know—and Azula usually knows—what has happened to Fire Lady Ursa, it’s really that she can’t bring herself to care.

That’s the kind of monster child she is.

.

.

“Azulon. Fire Lord to our nation for twenty-three years. You were our fearless leader in the Battle of Garsai, our matchless conqueror of the Hu Xin Provinces,” the Great Sage says to the crowd gathered for the funeral and subsequent coronation. “You were father of Iroh. Father of Ozai. Husband of Ilah, now passed. Grandfather of Lu Ten, now passed. Grandfather of Zuko and Azula.”

The Great Sage turns his back to the crowd to face the obscured body of the deceased Fire Lord, reaching for Azulon’s crown. “We lay you to rest,” he says, lifting the golden headpiece into the air as two other sages, dressed in white, light the body on fire, funneling flame into the pyre.

“As was your dying wish,” the Great Sage continues, letting Ozai get into place in front of him, sitting on his legs, before he announces, “you are now succeeded by your second son.”

With that said, he affixes the crown into Ozai’s top-knot, expression grim and cast into shadow by the flames that burn hot behind him. He steps back and shouts, “Hail Fire Lord Ozai!”

The sea of people flattens as they bow, knees to the ground. The cheers are near deafening, and beside her, Zuko is trembling. She doesn’t spare him a glance.

Instead, Azula smiles, seeing the whole of the Fire Nation fall into her father’s hands. Just as he promised her years ago.

Chapter Text

If Zuko expected Father to stay the same as before he became Fire Lord, then he’d be stupid. Well, he’s stupid regardless, but he’d certainly be digging deeper into his own pit of despair.

At least Azula knew Father would change—though, truthfully, even she’s surprised by how much. (Really, she almost pities her brother for how blindsided he must be.)

She still thinks of the expression he had from when she complained about being tired from school and training, her attempt at mimicking the cute daughters of the nobility, like Ty Lee to hers. The deep scowl marring his face before he succinctly told her, “You’re not allowed to be tired.”

How, at her opening mouth, and the flush that consumed her face in an instant at the embarrassment of being scolded by him, he added derisively, “Is your stamina really so weak, your body so frail? You’d dare fail my expectations?”

Azula hadn’t been prepared, stammering out an apology, stunned by the transformed man she saw before her. He may have the same face of her father, but the man that wears the crown is a different being altogether.

She still doesn’t know yet how to adapt.

No longer is he her father, Prince Ozai; instead, he’s the Fire Lord . And not in the old, haggard state of a man at the end of his life, but as a ferociously powerful, golden-eyed dragon that has only just come into the peak of its power. 

Not even Azulon had terrified her so much with just a single scathing look.

Azula used to sneer behind the back of that old man, used to laugh at Father’s ridiculing jokes he told to her in private. But she can barely recognize him.

And now, as she stands before him in his private chambers for yet another conversation concerning her behavior, she somehow sees an aura of fire reminiscent of the throne room. His expression is strange in a way that she can’t read, his mouth a thin line, eyes dark and impassive.

She has disappointed him and her heart is thudding harshly in her chest. How does Zuko, who is so much weaker than her, deal with an irate father?

“I’ll do better, Father,” she vows.

He appears perfectly unmoved.

“Of course you will—have I ever let you deliver anything less than perfection?”

She shakes her head, and he tilts his head back, his dark eyes considering her for a moment. The silence is suffocating.

Finally, he smiles, ever so slightly, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You must be aware, now more than ever, that I have two heirs. Do you understand what that means?”

Azula stills.

Her father has never been so forthcoming in the topic of succession.

Where before his crowning she was his prized child, he still named Zuko his heir at the first chance he could. All she could do at the time was stifle her anger over the matter.

By most rulings, Azula hasn’t a chance at the crown. She’s neither first born nor a son, and while that doesn’t inherently bar her from it, as long as Zuko is alive, the Fire Sages will never want to consider her.

But… Did that stop her father? The man who she most resembles?

“If Zuko fails, I’m next in line.”

He’s smirking. “Azula, I’ll tell you once. If there’s ever a chance, don’t waste it.”

Ever dutiful, she nods.

“Your brother is soft of heart from his mother’s influence. But you, I raised you myself. Don’t forget.”

Azula cracks a smile at the reminder. Perhaps this is what she wanted out of playing that childish daughter-father game she witnessed those idiotic girls play.

A mistake to fall to the illusion that either of them were like any other Fire Nation family where such a thing can be entertained. Truthfully, she should have never held expectations otherwise. She has grown up special. Her temperament and relationship to her father should reflect that.

The Fire Lord finally gazes at her with pride. An expression she’s sure Zuko has never seen.

But it strikes an odd thought through her heart: Father has never wanted a daughter. But he will always need an heir.

“In the future it just might be you,” he says.

He alludes to the crown and Azula yearns for it. The ultimate signifier of status and power, an inheritance that Zuko hardly deserves even the temporary title of.

It stings, knowing Zuko is the heir, where she’s proven to be better than him in every regard, but if Father is going as far to say this, she must remember his words and keep an eye out for the chance to take her rightful title.

Privately, she’s not all that worried about it—Azula and Zuko have never been anything alike. He’s never been what Azula considers competition. 

Something that has always been self-evident.

.

.

“Is he even trying?” Azula wonders to herself, observing her brother’s training from afar. She watches him get increasingly frustrated, sweat perspiring through his clothes. His flames lack control, wild and frantic, almost a match for a fast heartbeat, pulsing in and out.

Her eyes analyze his stances, the flow from one move to the next, mystified by how perfunctory and predictable each step he takes is, how gutless his performance is. He uses too much of his head, with little confidence in his body.

In a battle, Azula would wipe the floor with him.

Of course, credit where it’s due. He’s at least better than eighty percent of the Fire Nation military, his movements meticulously learned and practiced. He’s a strong bender, by most standards. He’s had to be, to survive Father’s assessments.

Except, he lacks regulation. 

He lets doubt and fear cloud his judgment, only motivated to push past his limits when he knows Father is paying attention. 

How embarrassing!

Eventually, Azula tires of watching him struggle and moves away with a smirk playing at her lips.

At this rate, he’s several years away from catching up to her, and even then, it’ll only be to her current abilities. 

Hardly the makings of the next Fire Lord.

.

.

She’s experimenting. It might be out of boredom, because she’s not exactly meant to be experimenting. She’s meant to be doing drills, and yet, Azula can’t contain her curiosity.

There was a time not long ago that she perfected the ability to absorb heat and redirect the flow of it, to take a source of fire, find the core of its frenetic heat and temper it until the heat cooled.

In that same vein of thought, Azula wonders if she can amp it up, to produce a flame far hotter than the standard. It does entertain the question of whether it will throttle her control, that the higher the temperature is, the more difficult it will be to wield. She might not be capable.

And yet Azula still stuns herself when her orange flames begin to shift in color. At first, only briefly, and immediately, she’s intrigued by the feel of it—so much hotter than she expected it could be, but it strangely feels like a relief, like pressure releasing.

Overtime, Azula learns how to control it, by sheer force of will, and she controls it fiercely. 

She’s already done the work of fine tuning her mind, honing her mental acuity through various education methods, and with her bending, it’s yet another expression of that work paying off. Her adeptness with bending has always gone hand in hand with the techniques her father has taught her.

It’s merely weeks later when she’s presenting the blue flames to her father for assessment, and all the while that she performs, Azula has entered into a quiet zone in her head. Her inner constraints fall away, ever so briefly, and she feels for a moment as if she herself has been made into flame, her infernos an extension of her flesh and bones.

Comets of blue and white sail through the air, directed by her body, her feet gliding over the ground, fleeting footsteps that make it appear as if she isn’t in contact with the earth.

She succeeds with a deftness that’s unmatched by anyone, her innate calm providing itself to be a virtue.

“Excellent,” Father says when she shows him, smiling. “Blue like the sky that upholds the sun.”

Her heart sings from the praise.

But she can do better, she knows she can. She has her sights set higher, she’s studied the technique more than she’s studied anything else.

Yet when she first begins to conduct lightning, it’s nothing more than sputtering sparks, scattered, hot, fickle. Not even worth calling it anything but a failure.

She recalls the examples given from Father, and the single time that she ever saw Uncle Iroh bend lightning, she knows what it should look like, and she also knows what she wants it to look like.

But she can never get it right. There are even times it explodes in her hands and she has to soak her hands in water for days, smearing salves and gritting her teeth through the shame.

She knows it well, when Father next sees her progress, that it isn’t enough.

He stares at her for a long moment.

“Do you expect praise for a mere attempt?” he asks.

Azula has to force herself not to look away, hating that her body shakes.

“You’re just not good enough,” he says, eyes cold.

Truthfully, Father’s emotions have never been particularly forthright, or even very discernable. She can usually only assume his thoughts.

Yet it’s now that he makes it all too clear. She’s never seen him so… disappointed in her.

“Don’t let arrogance make a fool of you, Azula. You look like an idiot, flaunting mere sparks. Perfect the skills you already have, before trying to show off next time.”

Azula nods, knowing he’s only telling the truth.

“Go. I don’t want to see your face.”

Azula leaves quickly, running to her courtyard to begin practicing immediately.

The shame is all consuming.

She’s spent years studying her father, his infinitesimal expressions, mastering them by piecemeal, inducting his attitude and opinions as her own. He’s her beloved father and she just wants him to like her.

What is she to do if he’s displeased?

Azula ask no one to ask.

So she tells herself:

He was only so mean to make her better.

Father doesn’t tell lies or dress things up, because he doesn’t want to make her weak. He’s not like Uncle Iroh or Mom, who babied Zuko.

So if she isn’t good enough, if he tells her she’s not good enough, she believes it to be true.

Already, her practice is hedonistic in nature, an eager, zealous student. She spends hours fine tuning the details of every minute detail, down to the way her toes point and her breathing sounds. She measures heartbeats and seconds in how fast her reaction speed is, tests her battle senses by sparring with whoever is willing.

But if even that isn’t enough, she will find a way to deliver more.

It has to be perfect. It all has to be perfect. Beyond expectation and assessment, she has to be perfect.

“You are your father’s daughter, Azula.”

“Yes, Mother,” she tells the voice that sweeps in with the wind.

It will only be a matter of time that she conquers lightning, even if it takes years to get there, no matter what pain she has to endure to get there.

.

.

Her relationship with Zuko is strained, sure. But hasn’t it always been? Azula struggles to determine if anything has markedly changed between them since their mother has exited the picture.

If anything, Zuko avoids her more than anything. Her taunts fall on deaf ears, her glares directed at his back. He’s always scurrying somewhere, rushed in a myriad of directions. His schedule is more frantic than hers, she thinks.

Playing catch-up.

At least for Azula, she has the benefit of always having taken her studies seriously. She has built and maintained the stamina to be on her feet and physically active within every waking second of her day, only permitting five hours of sleep to recover her energy. She’s as dedicated as a soldier, as resilient as steel and while prodigious, she’s still an ardent lover to practice.

Unlike the Crown Prince, who really fits into… none of the categories? If compared to her, at least.

The irony is that, if Zuko is to be compared to even the most senior bender in their top elite squadron, then Zuko would do remarkably well against him—Azula can say so, considering she’s wiped the floor with the man several times—but even with that, he lacks the mental fortitude to beat him.

And the reality is: Zuko isn’t in competition with elite benders, his rival in all things is Azula, and the effects of that make all of his achievements and strengths look mediocre.

Not her fault, it’s not as if she determined Zuko should be named Crown Prince. If anything, their father should have attempted to give his son some face and hold off on the matter, but alas, neither the Fire Sages nor Ozai cared. An heir needed to be named, and Zuko happens to be the first born son.

Azula wonders what her brother thinks of it all. How interested he is in the role.

Zuko’s expressions are always pinched, taut with worry, mind distracted. He greets Azula in passing, but doesn’t linger to hear a response.

There’s something in his attitude towards her that strikes a chord of discord within her.

She wants to, just a little, talk to him. Much more than observing him from afar. Out of boredom, of course, not genuine interest. 

Just that, life in Royal Caldera can be so cyclical, and with nothing to break the monotony, Azula has to content herself with manipulations within the palace staff.

It’s just not the same. Everyone else does as she asks of them, anyway, and on the rare occasion that they don’t, Azula only has to mete out what punishment she promised.

He really should just hand the title over to her himself, she often thinks. It would certainly make things easier for everyone. After all, she just can’t imagine Zuko inheriting their father’s mantle—it’s just not Zuko’s place, he simply doesn’t have what it takes.

Even with their mother absent, his heart is still so soft and full of humility.

How can it lead the Fire Nation into any other direction but doom?

.

.

Eerily, her beliefs are confirmed when a fateful incident occurs in a war meeting. Zuko’s very first one. 

He didn’t even make it past the first one.

And although Azula wasn’t in attendance for the meeting in which Zuko shamed himself, Father does ask her to attend the Agni Kai.

It’s the first time she decides to wear makeup, to make the special occasion, so she looks older than the eleven years that she’s lived. She’s been practicing her smile for just this reason.

And what an occasion!

There’s an energy in the room, an undercurrent of unpredictability that sends Azula into high alert. There are secrets, whispers being passed around, so hushed, she has to strain her ears to sense it. The heat in the room is oppressive, the fires raging in her peripheral vision as well as surrounding the arena in which her brother is standing firm, even with the heavy gazes from Father and all of his allies.

There’s no one in attendance that will fight for Zuko, and when their father steps in place for the general Zuko slighted, Azula sees how powerless her brother is.

Of course, he can’t fight Father.

When Zuko is punished, she doesn’t look away, unlike her cowardly uncle. She continues to smile, even grinning. A mask to cover her racing thoughts.

She never knows who might be looking, and even before she understands what’s happening, she knows that she can’t express anything but the utmost support.

She finds one of her hands clenching into a fist, and she presses it to her chest.

Even if her father is preoccupied, she knows someone always has an eye on her, and for this, her mask must be perfect. She’s never been allowed to be anything less, both because Father won’t be forgiving to even the smallest discrepancies, and because she’s had to be even harsher on herself than him to ensure her future.

It’s one thing Zuko will never understand, even as her father intones, “You will learn respect, and suffering shall be your teacher.” 

Azula's heart thuds in her chest as he lights a fire in his hand, approaching his kneeling son, who’s still begging for mercy, prostrating himself with tears.

Her father’s words ring in her head as Fire Lord Ozai places his fiery palm on Crown Prince Zuko’s face, dispassionate to his son’s desperate pleas.

Azula’s mind goes blank as she hears her brother’s agonized screams, watching the flame burn for minutes, the naturally burn resistant skin of a firebender bubbling and blistering.

Her smile twists, deepens. She’s sure she looks pleased, watching this. Or perhaps deranged. But she’s actually not sure how she feels, seeing her brother’s form writhing in pain. Rather, it’s strange. By all accounts, she should be happy Father is rightfully doling out punishment, but something in her gut tightens as the scent of burned flesh wafts over.

Zuko’s words are unintelligible, gasping, choking things, and anyone else might feel pity, even abject horror. At least, she thinks so. Admittedly, she doesn’t scan the room for expressions to be sure, unable to tear her gaze away from her father standing over his son’s body.

Like everything he’s set out for her before, she’s certain there is another meaning to this than at first glance, and Azula ignores the Fire Sages that come forward to collect Zuko’s collapsed body to speculate.

For what reason was the eleven year old princess in attendance? For what reason had he insisted, letting her take a free day from training and studying?

Almost at once she understands.

While his burn has served as Zuko’s punishment, her invitation is also a thinly veiled warning to what might happen to her if she is to make the same choices he did. His way of saying, Azula, respect the generals, the army, and their plans for the war.  

Respect the hierarchy of the Fire Nation, beloved by the Fire Lord.

Things that have been drilled into her since birth, but that she used to find ways to skirt around to get her way, back when Mother was still around. Back when she was nine, and it still felt like there was time to be spent enjoying a mundane evening in her mother’s garden, playing pranks and teasing her friends and Zuko. Even if she ended up punished more often than not by her mother.

But her father never punished her then. 

Not until Princess Ursa vanished and newly crowned Fire Lord Ozai’s smug satisfaction remained a permanent feature on his face. Not until Azula’s temperament, once chilled by Ursa’s scolding, began to bite at anyone that crossed her path, and especially those closest to her.

At one point, Father encouraged her, even. Until it stopped amusing him, and his aides recommended harsher punishments for the wayward princess who was beginning to thwart all attempts to control her. Like she was a wild child.

Azula hated the shame of it, even more than the tasks or restrictions her father forced on her, and this he seemed all too aware of. Worse was when Zuko found out, who knew to mock her in front of others to Father’s satisfaction. Not that she didn’t do the exact same when the situations were reversed. Azula understood that much, though she still made a point to get back at him.

Zuko never is able to keep up.

It’s all the same now though. Just like then, Father is carefully, albeit ruthlessly, teaching her what she needs to know, and even if things have changed now that Mother’s gone, Azula is still her father’s favorite.

Learn restraint, Zuko’s punishment tells her. Follow your betters.

But there’s something else to it. A hidden meaning that Azula carves for herself out of an aching desire.

Soon, I won’t have to follow anyone’s orders.

Because there’ll be no one better than her. There’ll come a day where such threats are a fond memory, where the only voice she has to listen to is her own.

So, for now, controlled is what she becomes, and thereafter, her face is always painted.

.

.

It’s years later when Azula finds out that she was lying to herself. That Father never had any secret meanings for her in his actions, just that it can really be so simple. That Zuko can merely displease him and be tossed away, his son’s life meaning only that much to him.

Same as when he tosses her aside at the moment her usefulness dries up, even his favorite child being discarded at his convenience.

And Azula has to wrestle with the phantom of her mother and the thought that maybe she was more right than she’d ever given her credit for.

“I love you, Azula, I do.”

Azula pants, unable to breathe.

Those words that she can’t remember ever hearing. Not by her mother, not by her father.

They burn her now, the blistering heat of it made even worse by the infernos she unleashes from her mouth, hands shackled to the grates she’s been trapped over—bested by a trick she would have never fallen for in the past.

She screams, all rage and agony, and jerks against the chains that pin her arms behind her back, uncaring to the pain in her joints or the rest of her body. At the lack of give, she rears back, twists and bends, screams and sobs, and the finality of it hits her.

Azula lost.

“It didn’t have to be like this, Azula.”

But she can’t even see her mother as she says it, too blinded by the tears that she can’t control.

Chapter Text

A mental break, the doctors call it. 

A period of psychosis. Hallucinations disrupting her sense of reality. Inability to reign in her emotions. Inability to focus or stay lucid. They talk at her when they say these things. Mother keeps agreeing.

They study her childhood. Find that she has always been different. Unable to empathize. 

She spies her in the reflection of the medicine cabinet. Taunting her.

“Do you ever feel sorry? ”

Azula shakes her head.

“Do you have any regrets?”

“Should have killed her,” Azula mutters, but even she can’t call to mind the face of who she’s talking about.

Her mother. That waterbender. Herself?

“Is there someone you want to hurt?”

Azula nods.

“Who do you want to hurt?”

The waterbender. Mai. Ty Lee. Zuko. Her uncle. Her mother.

Azula sighs. Seconds, maybe minutes, tick by.

“Have you always wanted to hurt people?”

“Stupid. That question is stupid. Who always wants to hurt others?”

“But, do you?”

Azula shakes her head, another sigh. She feels she’s been asked this before, a very long time ago, and she suspects that even then, she didn’t know how to answer.

She feels the ghost of a hand gripping her wrist, a tugging sensation.

“Just sometimes,” she concedes after her scattered thoughts tear pinpricks into her resistance.

“Can you elaborate?”

She falls silent.

“Who are the people you want to hurt?”

Who? Again, this question… Why must it matter so much?

Azula turns her head and notices the man in the room, and is startled to have come back into her body. The lucidity of the moment only mounts the horror she feels. The wrongness.

“You,” she grounds out, and struggles inside the straitjacket. She doesn’t recognize him and that scares her. Usually she recognizes them. “How did you get in here? You shouldn’t be here—guards! Guards! ”

The burgeoning panic threatens to bubble past the threshold of her control as her voice continues to raise.

“You were doing so well, Princess,” he says to her, disappointment clouding his face. 

“It could be so much easier than this, Azula.”

“Has she talked to you, too? You can’t trust what she says. I’m warning you, you can’t listen to her, she’ll lie to you, she’ll just lie!”

“It’s going to be okay, Princess.”

“I promise you. ”

“She’s lying! She’s lying. She’s lying…”

At the prick of a needle, Azula fades.

.

.

A setback—that’s how Azula is seeing this as, just as soon as she strangles enough of her cognition back into her control. It took some time, but nothing that can’t be recovered from. 

(She tells this to herself routinely, an ardent mantra.)

All of this will soon just be a temporary defeat to lead to a larger victory. 

Currently she is imprisoned in supposed psychiatric care, but she won’t always be, and the moment she gets the chance, she will leave.

As long as she can get away, recover her health and assess what tools and people she has at her disposal, she can begin the work of regaining what she has lost.

She will borrow her father’s turn of phrase. She will be a phoenix that rises over the ashes of the past. She will find that waterbender and end her. She will find the Avatar and end him, too.

And Zuko… Well, she can hardly allow him to live after what he’s done to her.

Not only did he steal her crown, but he’s entirely forgotten about her, having turned her over to the staff of the institution, encased in what might as well be a prison cell—no, a prison cell would be more forgiving. 

Her existence is an issue he has cleaned his hands of. She has been cast off, a limb torn from the body of the royal family, a wound cauterized—stripped of everything short of her title as princess.

Remarkably cold, for Zuko. She wouldn’t have predicted it.

But she’s been discovering lately that she doesn’t have much talent in predicting those closest to her. They all have turned out to be strangers in the end.

Otherwise, how could a princess be treated in such a manner? How could Zuko, her own brother—who was always lauded in the past for his soft, gentle heart—allow for it?

In any case, Azula has everyone so frightened of her that she’s outfitted in straitjackets any moment someone is in the room with her. When she’s alone, she has padded cuffs around her wrists and ankles that restrict her movements by more than half. Where movement and privacy are allowed, she is shunted into a darkened room, entirely absent of windows, and given an incense length of time to bathe and fix what she can of her hair, all without the help of a mirror, not that she would want one. She can’t bear to look at herself, not without…

Seeing…

Azula persists.

Her only pleasures have become the moments she’s allowed to converse with the other girls in the institution. They are all mostly daughters from nobility who have failed to reach their family’s expectations, and they are easily entranced by Azula, like eager puppies come to beg at the heel of a new master.

They’re not so frightened of her, not when they all have a common enemy in the staff. They all want out, and they all need a leader.

That’s easy enough. In hindsight, Azula has spent a lifetime manipulating such types of girls.

It brings up long forgotten memories of Mai and Ty Lee from childhood, but Azula doesn’t linger in them. All of those memories carry a greasiness that upsets her stomach, nauseating her.

Instead, Azula represses the thoughts of all those that have wronged her. While motivating, it’s too distracting. The most important thing now is to escape, and for the first few weeks, that’s where she puts her energy.

It’s easy enough to assemble a plan of escape together. These girls have been with the institution much longer and understand the schedules and layout enough to divest that information. Azula spends some days observing the girls, watching for potential. She’s not wholly impressed, but she can’t be picky with her limited resources.

Azula ends up spending weeks, in the incremental time that she can spend with them, teaching the girls her expectations and formulating a plan for their escape.

None of them are trained for combat or tactics. Every precious moment she has with any of the girls is spent ironing out the wrinkles in her plan. She’s wary and cautious, it’s ages before she makes her first attempt.

Yet ultimately, grudgingly, Azula realizes that the girls are as prepared as they can be. As they can ever be, really. They are daughters, nieces, sisters—decidedly, not soldiers. Molding them will take time she doesn’t have. 

In the end, when she says the word ‘go’, the resulting clamor disrupts the entirety of the institution.

As eager as the girls are, as patient as she had been with them, they fundamentally lack the ability to execute. So of course it fails ingloriously, more due to a result of one moronic girl's foolishness.

The escape attempt ends with quite a few people sporting permanent burns after the fact, creating enough chaos and fear in the institution that Azula’s social rights are immediately revoked.

It brings a death kneel to her initiative.

She spends months only seeing and speaking, pleading, screaming to staff that are either too skittish and frightened by her to talk, or too apathetic that they ignore her every attempt to engage. Of course, she knows what they’re doing, sending only the ones she can’t easily manipulate.

As for her counselors and doctors, there is only one who stands out to her, but even he isn’t listened to enough to hold any weight in her care.

At least he brings books with him. It’s more useful than anyone else has been, and the books are mildly interesting in the way they broach topics she never would have cared to learn about before. And really, they become the only escape from the ennui and despair that have begun to fester in her mind.

So for a time, Azule spends her days reading, wondering why he brings books about growing gardens, Fire Nation folktales, and historical recounts from times that might as well be fiction for all she cares for them.

But not asking him why.

Just like she also doesn’t ask if she’ll ever see the outside world again.

And when it becomes a little more difficult each day to remain anticipatory to the future, she tells herself she just has to be patient a little while longer, she tells herself that eventually she’ll be free again.

Azula has a lot of experience lying.

.

.

“I regret to say, Lord Zuko, we still don’t know how close to rehabilitation she is, not at this rate,” Azula’s lead psychiatrist, Xianzu says in his latest update.

Nearly a year later and it’s the same report.

“But since allowing her social periods, she continues to behave well with the other patients. In fact, when in the company of the other girls, she seems to come back to herself more than she ever has before, much more alive. Though, of course, her interactions remain heavily scrutinized—you can be assured that the last incident will not be repeated.”

Zuko winces at the reminder that they’d started letting her meet others again, and he can’t even be glad at the news that she’s getting along with the patients he knows are actively being recruited for another escape attempt, that the resulting lucidity is because of that.

“Is she... is she still hallucinating?”

Xianzu nods, expression grave. “It’s sporadic still. It comes and goes. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with her, actually, how aware she is of the reality of her situation.”

“Is it still the same hallucination, though? It hasn’t changed?”

Another nod. “Her, er, your mother. As far as we know, it’s still the only hallucination present.”

Zuko sits back in his chair, as unsure about the situation as he had been the first time Xianzu sat across from him. In that perspective, he only grows uneasier—Azula never makes anything in his life easy. Is he to have these meetings once a month for the rest of his life?

He thinks of his professor’s words, of the ancient Earth Kingdom philosophy that has been weighing on him since first hearing it almost a week ago. 

“Family is in essence a small nation, and the nation a large family. In treating his own family with dignity, a ruler learns to govern his nation with dignity.”

When everyone in his family is estranged from him, save his Uncle, how will he ever become a ruler that holds a candle to that ideal? How is he not doomed to repeat the mistakes his father made, if he’s no better than him when it comes to his treatment of his family?

Not for the first time, he wishes his mother were here to tell him what to do. Give him advice and support, ground him when his mind races past what he can control. But she’s been missing for so long, and even after exhausting every avenue he can think of, he’s no closer to finding her than he’d been when he first heard of the truth of her banishment from his father.

He’s been waiting for this meeting to lead him forward, but he still can’t help but weigh his options heavily.

If Azula is unable to get better, how else will he find his mother? If Azula really is the only way to get that information out of his father, when he can’t even torture the man if he wants his dignity to remain intact.

“If I might say something...” Xianzu broaches hesitantly.

“Go on.”

“It might do her some good, to give her some... extended release from the jacket.”

Zuko tenses.

“We tried that before.” Thankfully no one died, but there had been burns.

“That was a mere month after her mental break. Now that time has passed, I think she’d be benefited by another attempt—even if it’s only just that. After all, part of what led to her breakdown had been her loss of control—.”

“Because she didn’t get her way, one time.”

Xianzu falters but there’s steel in his gaze as he continues, “It’s a bit more than that, Lord Zuko. For a child her age to experience a mental break, for her to experience such severe hallucinations that have lasted long after the initial break in her mind, the reasons for it are much more severe than her not getting her way. But granting her some control over herself might—.”

“Now's not the best time,” Zuko interjects. “I just have one more question.”

“Yes?”

“How ready do you think she is, that she’d be able to meet my father?”

.

.

When Azula sees her father for the first time in over a year, she’s expecting the deranged look in his eyes. But she isn’t expecting to see him half the size of the man she used to fear more than death, his aura of intimidation entirely erased.

He’s truly been made powerless, and it’s an eerie sensation that crawls up her spine, meeting his gaze and seeing how far he’s fallen.

There's a reigning silence that neither of them care to break for a long while.

She spies the limp, greasiness of his hair, the sallowness of his cheeks, and finds great irony in the way that she might as well be looking in the mirror.

Both of them are encased in straitjackets, restricted in all ways except their ability to speak.

Frankly, Azula doesn’t really want to talk to her father anymore than she wants to talk to anyone else. She thinks it’s the same for him.

But Ozai, even in prison, seems to entertain the notion that he’s in front of his daughter, the only family member he has left that might help him. She won’t, of course, but he’ll think she can and that’s important.

Azula wants to be the Fire Lord, not bring one back that’s already been made useless by the Avatar.

The irony in their reversed roles isn’t lost on her. Neither is it lost on her that in this scenario, she has only a slightly better hand than he does.

It’ll be important how she plays this, but Azula has long known what to do, ever since Zuko first asked for her to get Mother’s whereabouts from Ozai uncovered. Maybe even long before then, when Azula first uncovered the letters written by Ursa to Ikem.

So, when she’s sure Zuko can’t hear them, Azula asks one thing.

“Is he your son?”

Ozai shakes in laughter.

“Against his mother’s best wishes, of course he is. But I imagine that the letter might still prove fruitful to you if used correctly, regardless of certain realities.”

Azula twitches. She already knows that.

“You’re my daughter, Azula. The best of me. The worst of me. I wonder...”

“This won’t end like you hope it will,” her mother whispers in her mind.

But Azula can’t bear to listen.

.

.

“It all ends right now!” Azula howls, one hand cupping her blue flame and the other at the throat of her mother.

“I don’t know... what you’re... talking about,” Noriko—bah! Ursa weakly whispers.

“Oh really, Mother? So I’ve imagined all this? You haven’t been trying to take me down since the moment I was born?”

“Azula, let her go!” Zuko cries.

“Stay back, Zuzu, I’m warning you,” Azula grounds out, her eyes narrowed in on the fake face her mother has chosen to hide behind.

All that talk about taking off her mask to see her destiny? And Ursa thought she could escape her fate with a different face and identity? As if all the things she’s done never mattered? As if Azula would let her get away—.

Ursa reaches a hand to Azula’s cheeks, briefly stunning her. 

She’s brought all the way back to when she’d been a child, crying at missing lessons and being consoled when she was meant to be enduring punishment.

“If what you say is true... If I really am your mother... then I’m sorry I didn’t love you enough,” Ursa says.

Azula’s eyes fill with tears.

The apology is rough like sandpaper to hear. It sounds so forced and unnatural—.

“No! ” Zuko yells, wrenching her away from Ursa by her wrist and shoving her.

Azula rights herself quickly, shooting a blast of fire at Zuko and dodging the flaming kick he sweeps at her feet. It’s a much stronger flame than she remembers Zuko ever being able to make when they’d sparred, that fateful Agni Kai not included.

Enraged, Azula fires shot after shot, guided by her fury as she narrows the distance between them. Yet he keeps dodging, keeps getting out of the way just in time, not staying in one spot too long and before she knows it, cabinets and dressers are caught aflame in blue, spreading to the walls of the house.

“Oh, for crying out loud! Stop moving!” Azula snaps, anger boiling her blood as she readies her lightning in the tips of her fingers. 

She stares him down.

Steals her heart.

“Don’t do it. I told you already, I know how to deal with your lightning. I can redirect it anywhere,” Zuko says, the threat in the last word clear.

But where he makes threats, Azula never hesitates.

Lightning, mad and hungry, arcs from her fingertips as it leaps for him, and it’s so fast—so fast, she’s flung back, hit directly in the chest, crashing into the dresser that crumbles beneath her weight and the flames that engulf it. 

The pain is scorching and her limbs flail against her command, her body shaking and jolting as the lightning sings through the flesh of her chest, lighting up her internal organs with pain. Her blood heats to the point of agony, coming to a boil that she can’t tamp down.

Azula has been struck by lightning in the past, but it’s something else when it’s her own lightning shot back at her. Her heart pounds as if it’s fit to burst. Everything slows. 

She fights to take air into her lungs. 

Somehow, whether it be by will or by adrenaline, Azula locks gazes with Zuko, and spits, “You used...”

But she can’t finish the sentence, choking on the blood that she coughs up.

Fear strikes her then. She’s become so weak.

“You gave me no other choice,” Zuko says, his expression strange. She can’t name the emotion on his face, because she’s never seen it before.

Azula’s eyes widen.

“Zuzu,” she chokes, as it dawns on her. How different things have become. “Don’t you get it, Zuzu? You and I could... have been free! You, of the throne you never really wanted, and me, of this incessant nagging in my head!”

“No, you’re wrong.”

“Oh, stop kidding yourself,” she whispers, too weak to get up even as she struggles with her still shaking arms, not yet able to wipe the blood that dribbles down her chin. “The other morning when you had me over the cliff, why didn’t you just let go? You could’ve gotten rid of me and the letter! But you waited, until now, why?” Azula cries, forcing control over her limbs as she pushes herself up. “It would have been so easy. Admit, you need me to help you be free!”

He sighs.

“In my heart, I know...” Zuko begins, his expression turning cold as he reaches for his crown and hair tie, fixing his hair up into a top knot to adorn himself, looking exactly as he always did in her nightmares.

Azula stares.

“I’ve always known that the throne is my destiny.”

Zuko steps closer. His expression is desperate. Earnest.

“That morning on the cliff... Azula, our relationship is so messed up. It’s been like that for as long as I can remember. And maybe it’ll be like that for the rest of our lives. But one fact never changes. No matter what, you’re still my sister.”

Azula closes her eyes. “Shut up.”

She takes a breath, readies her flame. 

“Find your true destiny, Azula. Please.”

“Shut up! ” she screams, jumping to her feet and sending a scorching blast from her fist. It’s all she’s able to do before she falls to her knees, her vision swimming as she pants, loud and harsh, fighting to stay upright. 

A fresh agony tears through her heart, after effects of the lightning that leave her consumed for what feels like a short eternity. Firebending has only made it worse.

“Hnng—!”

She smacks her palms to the floor, groaning as she lists forward. Blood seeps out of her mouth.

“Azula!” Zuko cries, rushing to her side.

“Don’t touch me!” she screams as she spies his hand reaching for her.

He falters, eyes wide and scared.

“I don’t need your help,” she bites out through gritted teeth. “I know how to handle lightning.”

“Azula…”

“Oh, Zuzu, you think you’re the only one who’s been shot with lightning before?” Azula’s tone is droll yet guttural. “You think you’re so special?”

Zuko sucks in a breath.

“You’re not,” Azula tells him mockingly, before losing consciousness.

Chapter Text

When she wakes up, she’s alone.

Her mouth feels dry, her entire body sore and tender. Her energy is barely enough to sustain her breathing.

Mutely, she recognizes the bed she’s in, and the hung wall-scrolls, the canopy and the gauze that hangs from it delicately, but lifelessly. Her bedroom. Which she hasn’t slept in for over a year. 

Not since the night before her failed coronation.

Azula attempts to sit up, but finds she can’t, at the immediate pain lancing through her chest when she goes to rise. Her vision dots as her back hits the mattress with an indelicate thud.

“Uhhng!” She squirms through the tight, burning sensations that ignite across her skin.

Not seeing the point in pushing through the pain just yet, Azula lets herself go limp, accepting where she lay. She notes the lack of her straightjacket, the tight feeling of bandages on her chest, and eyes the rest of the room, filing details away for the sake of her eventual escape. 

The sheets, same as she remembers, are freshly laundered by the smell of it, and the layout of her bedroom hasn’t changed—as if no time has passed at all, or as if it has been waiting, paused in time, just for her.

The line of thought rankles and she forces her mind elsewhere, eyes sweeping through the room for any minor discrepancies. Not as if her room has much to begin with, a military starkness found in everything but the bed.

The very one she’s used since childhood, the large frame having once swallowed the sight of her, and finds not much has changed. Azula has always been very slight, short and impish. Not that time kept in the captivity of the institution has been great for growth. She’s still as she was at the age of fourteen.

If not for the pain, she might even think that everything that already happened is just a bad dream. An achingly long nightmare, set on the eve of her coronation.

But Azula didn’t sleep that night, she remembers that much.

What else she remembers is a daze, the all-consuming panic and paranoia that had led to her undoing. The fear that swallowed her, and the voice of her mother, who’s mirage had spoken to her long before then, in the worst points of her life, but had yet to appear until then.

She never went away after that.

Always hoping for Azula’s failure, her plots and schemes , starting since Azula’s birth. Twisting the minds of those around her, her closest friends betraying her, her mother’s shadow working to undo her, all while she escaped with a completely different face, different name, made a brand new family. New memories.

A new daughter.

Kiyi, with her wide smile and red cheeks, those glittering eyes of hers and cute laughter.

Completely unlike Azula. As opposite as two can be.

Azula doesn’t realize she’s crying until her vision is already blurring, the wet heat slipping into her hairline, tickling her.

It’s something she laughs at. How painful it is, for a mother to reject a child so completely, and yet still... the ghost of her clings to that child. Saying words she’s never said, masquerading as a loving, gentle spirit. As if she wants Azula happy, nothing more. When all she really wants is her son on the throne.

The lie of it infuriates her.

“Die,” she says to the room, in case she’s listening. “Die. Just die.”

But her words come as a croak, throat so dry it chafes to talk.

Azula glances to her left, a pitcher of water sitting tantalizingly close on the nightstand beside her.

She forces herself to look away. More fearful than anything else. In case of a reflection.

“Why am I alive?” she asks to no one as she closes her eyes.

If not to have the throne. If not to serve her father. If not to lead wars across enemy soil, letting blood and ash coat the world. Why then?

The truth is, Azula does know. That, though he didn’t intend to accept Zuko, her father never aimed for her to be the Fire Lord or take his mantle. She was a failsafe to him, and even then, he empowered her, not as a leader, but as a general who he wanted under him with unflinching loyalty. What he wanted as the Phoenix King, she imagines, is a Fire Lord that would have led his battles for him when it suited him, while he ruled over the ashes of the old world and let his loyal followers shape the new world to their own making.

All she was ever meant to be was a weapon, groomed for a war without end. 

A war that everyone says is over.

She still finds it hard to believe. Azula can’t shake the feeling that the world she’s in isn’t real. It can’t be. It’s all just a terrible, unending nightmare. She’s still fourteen. She’s still her father’s daughter. The war isn’t over. 

Tomorrow is her coronation. Tomorrow she will be Fire Lord. Tomorrow, she’ll be so glad for it all to just be a dream.

.

.

Azula wakes next to a cool hand on her forehead, stiffening and choking on her fear. Confusion steals her breath, as she tries to orientate herself, and when her eyes open to see the canopy of her bed, she knows the nightmare hasn’t ended.

“Azula?”

Seizing up translates to pain as she groans, jerking her head away even as the hand attempts to linger.

She knows that voice. 

Against the will of her protesting muscles, she turns further away. There is something so frightening about the way her scent perfumes the air. Nostalgic and bitter, to the point that Azula wants to retch.

“Mother.”

“Azula, I—.”

“Get away from me ,” Azula spits out, her voice cracking.

“Please, Azula, I know I have much to apologize for—.”

“The last thing I want from you is an apology.”

“But, Azula, you have to know that—.”

“Where’s Zuzu? He can’t have let you come in here on your own.”

“Azula, please.”

But she’s heard enough of her mother’s begging to last a lifetime.

“No more. I’m tired.”

She sighs.

“Alright. I know you must be exhausted, so I won’t press you further. But, one day, I hope soon,” Ursa murmurs, voice laden with emotion, “we’ll talk.”

She hears Ursa’s clothing shuffle as she pulls away, her footsteps softened by the length of her robes.

“Wait.”

“Yes?”

“Tell Zuzu to come here.”

.

.

Her brother arrives with his cohort not long after, trailed by the Kyoshi Warriors and his gaggle of friends that she pointedly ignores.

She wastes no time. “Why am I in this room?”

“It’s your room, Azula,” he says, and there seems to be an attempt at nonchalance. But he’s never been very good at acting, and Azula hears the warble in his voice.

He has to get better at that, she thinks, if he wants to be a ruler with any modicum of respect .

Outwardly, she snaps, “I know that, but why am I here ? Instead of... there.”

“Xianzu suggested we bring you here.”

Azula relaxes some.

The image of a balding, portly, round faced man comes to mind. Wizened kind eyes. A man with specific weaknesses that Azula has long calculated for. While Azula has never endeared herself to anyone, Xianzu is a man who makes assumptions. It also helps that he has daughters.

“Did he? And I wonder just what made you listen to him this time?” Azula stares Zuko down. “Why only now?”

Her brother flinches and she scoffs.

“It was very nice, wasn’t it? When you could just hide me away from your mind—where the only time you had to reconcile with my existence was a monthly update that you could sit through with deaf ears.”

Zuko sucks in a breath, frowning. But he can’t seem to say a word. He doesn’t even give a weak denial or deflect with some moronic insult that can’t land because Azula uses her self-esteem as a shield, where his has always left him vulnerable.

“Oh, shut up, Azula!” Ty Lee bursts out with, eyes hot.

Azula remembers distantly when she first met the girl. From then, to now, Ty Lee has become unrecognizable in all the ways that matter. Yet she still only traded one sisterhood for another, in the end.

“Ty Lee,” she acknowledges. “Could hardly recognize you. All of you just look so similar.”

Ty Lee’s cheeks flare, her eyes filled with hurt.

“And you’re just a bully!”

Azula sighs, flicking her hand dismissively—or tries to.

She must appear threatening despite being practically bed-bound, because several of the Kyoshi Warriors in the room react by grabbing her arms and legs and pinning her down.

Azula grunts, gritting her teeth to bear the pain. It makes her vision go white, her blood swimming with rage and an echo of the agony, the ghost of her lightning. It might not be the worst that she’s faced—but she is weaker than ever.

Prey for the very first time in her life.

And Azula can’t stand it. She refuses to—not on a logical basis. It’s bone-deep, entirely instinctive. Everything Azula is composed of. What her father has made her into. What she had eagerly become.

If she can’t use her hands, her feet, she will use what she has left.

Distantly, Azula can feel the flames warm her cheeks and the scent of smoke as her canopy catches flame as she screams. She thrashes, fighting the hands on her body.

A part of her hopes for something she can’t put to words.

“Azula!”

Ah. Why is it?

“Azula, stop! ”

Why?

“You’re hurting yourself, Azula!”

Can’t she escape?

.

.

The straight jacket returns. And that nameless hope has eluded her.

Azula awakens with a splitting headache, but that much is familiar. She has already lived an entire year like this, in the institution. The candlelight makes it difficult to focus, and she’s drowsy, unable to fully raise her head or open her eyes.

But her rousing is noticed.

A familiar man meets her gaze.

Azula laughs.

Ah, she’s finally earned a visit from him! Under the most fortunate conditions, of course. He’d never show his face to her for anything less.

He must have been asked to leave his home in the Earth Kingdom by Zuko. Possibly Ursa, too.

Or wait.

Azula’s laughter gets louder, even if it begins to hurt her ribs. She snorts and giggles, incensed by the hilarity of his appearance. Oh, it really should have been more obvious.

He’s here to see her mother!

Azula is an errand to him, then. Visiting her is just an expectation he can’t refuse without his image being dirtied. Although, his image might still get dirty, just by the proximity to her alone. That they’re related can’t look good for a man who’s meant to only obsess over peace and tea. She certainly knows Zuko laments ever being born as her brother.

“Feeling cheerful today, Niece?”

Azula’s laughter stops cold immediately.

Niece. It rings in her head. He hasn’t addressed her like that since she was of toddling age. It’s such a distant recollection that Azula gets nauseous trying to confirm the memory, her head spinning, thoughts in complete disarray.

“Princess Azula,” he says, and the return to normalcy brings her mind into focus. “You’re only here so that you won’t hurt yourself and others.”

Oh, that’s a thought.

“Yeah, I’m sure I earned it,” she agrees, voice a dry rasp. “I knew it wouldn’t last long anyway.”

“It’s just until you get better.”

Azula laughs again, much softer this time.

Get better? By whose standards? 

Until when? How long?

Azula can’t keep doing this. She can’t. She is not made for this. 

Father didn’t instill in her the idea that she would ever be in a position so defenseless. She’s never prepared herself for defeat. Contingencies upon contingencies, her mind has always formulated new objectives, categorically sorting changes and making immediate action, adapting to whatever the situation calls for. 

If anything, she used to be so risk averse, so wary that she’d theorize every possible route of failure and circumvented each possibility in her head before even attempting anything.

Her plans never failed.

They used to never fail! 

The memory of her brother with the crown flashes in her mind. That look in his eyes that exposed a fundamental change in her brother. An incalculable change that had appeared in her blindspot.

She doesn’t know what to do when all that’s in her mind now is blank. Completely out of ideas.

Azula really lost. She lost.

Everything.

“Why am I still alive?”

Uncle Iroh’s expression falls.

“I don’t understand,” she tells him. “I did everything I was told.”

From the start, she was a filial child. Society told her she was a blessing for it. An obedient daughter who listens to her father. Who fully matured at the age of nine, and was an adult by eleven.

Is it just because her mother hated her?

Was it Ursa’s resentment for her that blotted out her chance at happiness? A curse for the girl who dared go against her beloved Turtleduck Prince?

“Perhaps consider,” her uncle began, expression filled with pity, “that you listened to the wrong voice.”

Ah, of course he would say such a thing.

“Is that it?”

Just whose voice should she have listened to then? When one was her father and the other was a disembodied ghost of a woman who left her behind to be raised as a weapon?

“When hurting others, has there ever been a voice urging you to stop? A part of your soul that cries out for the pain of others?”

“Do you ever feel sorry?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes, it feels as if you never do.”

Azula sucks in a breath.

No one believes her if she tells the truth on the matter. All they see is an unflinching killer who wields blue fire and lightning that never misses. Whose mind isn’t quite right, whose motives are not quite discernible.

In many ways, they aren’t wrong for that.

But if she were to say that she didn’t necessarily want to hurt others, that she never made needlessly wrathful plans, they would still assume the worst. She’s the cold, calculating sort, after all. She may plan for casualties, but never to the point that it’s a mindless slaughter. It’s all with a purpose, an end in mind.

Azula is not a sadist. Perhaps when she was younger, feeling gleeful at teasing her brother in awful ways, but as far as other people, Azula doesn’t go out of her way to bring torment without anything to gain from it. Mostly because she doesn’t care, and maybe, from how everyone else sees it, that’s even more egregious.

How is that child so cold?

Unnaturally callous. Someone who wields people’s lives by measuring costs and benefits, who doesn’t flinch or feel much of anything when thousands are injured or killed, let alone if it were at her command or not. A girl who looked at human suffering, could see the devastated lands invaded by the Fire Nation, and merely wonder what her father’s expectations would be for the land after the fire ran its course and the survivors fled.

For her entire life, Azula’s moral code has been informed entirely by her Father’s divine right to rule. If he said it was just, Azula believed it to be just. Almost reverently, she held all his beliefs as her own.

She used to believe that by helping her father, she was cementing her power. That the fruits of her labor would be to rule over a united and greater world.

Of course that path would be tread in blood.

Father told her so, when she was a child, not to be attached to any one person. Not to be wary of betrayal, but with the deep seated belief that she would be wielding the knife. That if she must, Azula must be able, and more importantly, willing to end a person’s life.

As a princess, she could not entertain the thoughts of philosophy and morality. With her father as Fire Lord, there had really only been one voice to listen to.

Her uncle’s thoughts of her… really could not bear understanding.

He made everything sound so simple, and she’s known never to trust it. Not to trust him.

“I heard that everyone else within Father’s main circle received prison sentences,” Azula says. “Where is mine? Will it be when I’m deemed recovered? Or is this place my sentencing?”

“Oh, Princess Azula, you were so young, you still are—.”

“Has that ever meant anything? The Avatar was twelve, and he won the war.”

“The Avatar had the wisdom of all his past lives, the support of hundreds. You had—.”

“No one? I had the support of the entire Fire Nation! Father’s circle might have been small, but many more than just them were just as complicit in the war. Every family sent a son or daughter. Every week, taxes were collected, donations received. Every child learned beneath the shoe of our family’s authority. We drained every last valuable resource from the lands we razed, and you were integral to the worst of the slaughter, long before I was even born. Do you think of yourself as redeemed, Uncle? For being a traitor? Then what of the people who stayed loyal! How many have to be imprisoned for the blood to be repaid? How many thousands should be killed—!”

“Do you wish for a prison sentence?”

Azula screams.

“Grovel at the feet of the people who you’ve murdered! Beg and plead for their mercy for the years of suffering you wrought at their door, all the sons and fathers that you’ve taken from this world! Ever dutiful son of Fire Lord Azulon! You think you can be redeemed? Lu Ten died and you did nothing! Lu Ten died and you came home a failure! ”

Azula wrestles in her constraints, hot fury making her hands scorch the leather of her straightjacket, watching as her uncle cast one last look at her, expression indiscernible, before shutting the door on his exit.

Her eyes fill with tears.

“You can’t be forgiven!” Azula screams. “Not even if you live among those savages! Not even if they drink your disgusting tea and listen to your Agni-blasted advice! You’ll always be the Dragon of the West! You can’t erase the past! Someone will always remember!”

Eventually a needle is pressed into her arm, but she has built a tolerance over time. She still has enough awareness to scream, as shrilly and loudly as she can, to the point of pain, “You’ll always be hated! I’ll always hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you… I hate you… I hate…”