Chapter Text
Azula smirked and looked at the baby on the ground.
"So you're Zuzu's daughter?
You're the one supposed to rob my destiny? The first female Fire Lord?"
Azula traced her nails over the child’s cheeks before sliding them down to her neck. The warm skin had a rapid pulse under the light pressure of her fingers.
The little girl was frowning at the unfamiliar voice. Over the past three days, the agents had told her she was a difficult child and fussy all the time.
“I'll never let you have what is going to be mine!"
Azula's tone was cold, not loud, yet firm. Something Izumi had never experienced and it confused her enough to stay silent.
"Everything I ever wanted…"
Azula bent toward her.
She ignited her enraged blue fire, feeling the strong heat coming from her fingers.
"You're not even worth lightning. Just a tiny flame will do."
The baby’s smile and her eyes widened with wonder at the shiny blue thing appearing suddenly in front of her. She reached for it and tried to grab it.
Azula laughed. "You're not even scared of fire? You don't even know it's frightening and fatal?"
Izumi fussed as the flame disappeared and tried to reach for her hand
"You want to die so bad..."
She stumbled when Azula refused to hold her hands, and fell down.
She cried and with her tiny fists grabbed at Azula’s leg, as a gesture to ask to be picked up. Then raised her hands upwards. “Mmmmm” she was frowning. No one ever had rejected her.
Azula raised her in front of her face and stared into her shiny crying eyes.
"Do you feel anxious because you’re alone? I never had that luxury. Now you’ll doubt if they ever loved you or not. Your parents never came for you, but I’ll let them regret it once you're dead! I want to see them falling apart."
She stared at Azula with wide, confused eyes. Azula saw the reflection of herself in the very similar eyes. Azula paid attention to her complexion for the first time. Her irises looked enormous compared to her small face. The resemblance cracked something in her.
“Did I look like you? …I deserved to be loved too!"
Izumi babbled something. “Q… Q…Q”
"And now they raise a child who's safe enough to not know fire can burn???" She clenched her teeth. "No you’re just brainless. No child would know it's dangerous..."
Izumi seemed uninterested in the conversation. She turned her head away and continued to utter unclear sounds. “Qua Qua Qua”
"But you will still think it's harmless, right? You'll also have that fancy fire philosophy??" Azula let out a laugh. “I’m even jealous of that!”
“Quack quack.” Izumi’s murmurs became clear to Azula.
She was mimicking the turtle ducks quietly.
"Turtle ducks? You play with them? THEY WERE ALSO MINE! I HATE THOSE ANIMALS! How did even those creatures avoid me as if I am a monster?” she screamed and cried “I DIDN'T HURT THEM THEN! I was once like you! I hadn’t burned them!!”
Izumi pouted at the shout and screamed as well.
“Enough. You're really disgusting. You are sickening me!"
She sat down. With her left hand she framed her neck and with the other lighted fire.
This time, she saw the reflection of fire in those eyes. The pupils constricted as it was too bright in front of her face. The very eyes that were carried with their blood, along with their fire. Those amber gold eyes.
And her flame went away.
“Quack quack quack”
"Shut up!!! We're not playing!!"A tear fell.
"Was I happy and loved… at least when I was your age?"
Izumi could understand the sad face. She pulled herself closer. Those were tears. Her tiny clumsy fingers, still not completely learning how much force should be used for a gentle touch, and in what direction the arm should really go, found her tears and landed on her face.
That touch devastated Azula harder than any lightning ever could hit someone.
Azula's inner upheaval kept her from sensing the sweet milky sweat scent, that her hands were sticky on her skin. That her cool exhales were brushing her ear and she was breathing with her mouth open.
"How come … you … Zuko…Mai… all of you deserve everything but not me?"
“Quack quack quack”
"Shut up! I’ll really get rid of you this time." Azula flamed with both hands, however, more fragile than before. It has never been this fragile.
Izumi was clapping and smiling as the blue shine appeared again, then startled by her voice.
"You're fooling me. You’re FOOLING ME! YOU WILL GROW UP AND SEE THE MONSTER I AM!” She screamed and hit the floor. Crying so hard. She was sobbing, her mind stopped racing and embraced the sorrow over what was long lost.
“I’ll come back to you. I’ll do what I couldn’t do today.”
One can endure the unbearable for a long time, but only when another trigger, however small, is upon that, one surrenders.
Azula surrendered to a baby’s touch on her tears.
Izumi crawled toward her and put her head on her face.
Azula couldn’t feel anything anymore. Her mind drained. She just let a tiny warm thing do whatever it was doing. Was it a family member finally understanding to comfort her? Or was it the brainless child who didn’t know what fire and monsters were able to do?
The terror was paralyzing Mai, but she couldn’t give in now. Everything that could happen, was a result of her decision, or at least she thought so. She knew they were getting closer to her as the fight was getting more serious. She didn’t let her mind fool her to hesitate if her decision to fight was worse.
She was away from Zuko now, he was surrounded by other fighters, outnumbered. The flames were growing wilder and wilder every second. She had just escaped the battle to look up, and her heart skipped a beat when she recognized Izumi’s tiny quacking voice from an open window. Izumi had been making that sound non-stop for a week, it couldn’t be any other one.
She pulled out her daggers in a moment when two guards were getting closer to her.
She entered the room, breathing heavily. Blood stained her sleeves. She was ready with other daggers in her hand, only to see two people on the ground. Izumi had bent and covered Azula’s head with her hands and small body.
Azula raised her head in response to the sound of someone entering, which made Izumi lose her balance and fall, and she saw Mai being ready to fight "no need for that."
Izumi also noticed Mai and ran to her mother wobbly “Mama!”
Mai dropped the daggers. The metal sounded sharp as they hit the ground. She ran quickly, almost stumbled, and took her in her arms without a second thought. Her brain wasn’t functioning well enough to move her hands anymore. With difficulty and uncontrollably trembling fingers, she checked her face, all over her arms, and her neck. She pulled up the legs of her pants. There were no bruises, no burns, no blood on her body. No sign of harm. Her deadly cold fingers touching her made Izumi jolt. But Izumi had been seeking the scent of her mother for so long.
"No need for that." Azula said.
Mai hesitated, she still didn’t have time to understand what was happening. "Thank you." She waited a second and went eye to eye with Azula. Izumi happily bounced in her arms, “quack quack quack!”
“You didn’t hesitate to believe I hurt her.”
“I'd check her anyway after losing her for three days.”
“Funny thing she has lighter eyes. Unlike Zuko, like me. My eyes but not me. Not a monster.”
Mai closed her eyes. “She won’t be a monster… And you weren’t one for her.”
“JUST LEAVE BEFORE I TURN YOU BOTH INTO ASHES!!”
Mai then noticed how her heart was beating painfully fast. She couldn’t spare her mind earlier for that.
Izumi looked at Azula and waved her hands, Mai stepped out.
Only then did Mai finally collapse to her knees, broken, and let herself weep wildly and pull her daughter tightly against her chest.
Only then Azula ponder: At what point did everyone see me as a monster?
The vision of her little confused face, the fire that died when she saw her reflection in her eyes, her hands on her crying skin, it all echoed in her mind.
Three days ago:
Izumi was in the nursery while Mai left for the academy. She had finally resumed her work after a year, and Zuko was in the middle of a council meeting.
One of the maids, secretly affiliated with the former New Ozai Society, had received a command to participate in the kidnapping of the princess. In that case, Zuko could surrender unconditionally, as everyone in the nation knew how important the little princess was to him.
The former New Ozai Society, then changed to The Safe Nation Society to smooth their political image, had been defeated publicly years ago, but as Zuko once acknowledged, “Ozai was not a person to defeat, it is an ideology; Ideologies cannot be defeated overnight.” The society still operated in secret, waiting for the right time to show up again.
And when they finally accepted that Ozai’s reign cannot be resurrected, they believed Azula could still take his place and reproduce the former ideology to benefit the Society.
When they rebounded again, the members aimed to kill Zuko by infiltrating the palace.
Azula came up with the strategy that kidnapping the child would be the easiest way to guarantee the success of the coup in the most covert way. ‘If you want her alive, give up the throne.’ This was the only message left on Izumi’s empty crib.
And when it happened, Zuko seemed haunted. He canceled all his political meetings, dictating that everyone find the betrayer, threatening every maid and guard to death, and was ready to surrender without a second thought. As well as skipping meals and sleep.
Who held him back was Mai, shouting with an even fiercer tone in his face, “You can’t trust them and leave everything behind! You must search for her now that you still have power!”
So she came up with the heart-breaking and soul-crushing idea, which was impossibly agonizing to a mother, to refuse to surrender and track them down secretly instead.
There was progress over three days, and the detectives who interrogated the maids and guards and everyone else in the palace could find traces, which seemed more like a disappointment as each second passed. She was only one year old, after all; After three days, it was not easy to imagine what might have happened to her, what condition she would be in, if she was still alive.
When the Society kept the child alive for three days after concluding that what they planned wasn’t working, and Zuko never publicly announced the missing and was searching privately instead, Azula, who had never seen Izumi until then, raged, “He chose the crown. He will lose his child forever, weakened and vulnerable, he will be defeated cowardly afterwards. He’ll meet the consequences.”
Only later to become clear that the person who had been lost, was herself. She had been so lost all along her life.
She lost herself to the unresolved old wounds that were like the fire smoldering beneath the ashes.