Chapter Text
Rippling roars, the crowd. Booming laughter, her farther. Quiet sobs, her uncle. Ear-splitting screams, Zuko. Deafening silence, Zuko. Silence. Zuko is silent.
Azula feels, she feels something break through the impassive selfishness and spiking rage she has adopted to protect herself from her fathers wrath.
She feels her armour cracking. Azula has to do something. She has to.
Zuko might be dead. Her brother Zuko. Kind Zuko. Patient Zuko. Everything she had hidden to protect herself is what Zuko embodies.
Zuko is good.
He doesn’t deserve this.
First Azula feels, then she thinks.
…
Azula has always had a different kind of brain to her brother, while the anger is marginally a defence mechanism the anger she had sheltered tears through her. She looks at ozai - not her farther, not anymore - as he walks of casually leaving the crumpled tarnished body of her brother to be dragged of by a medical team. She doesn’t follow her brother like she knows Zuko would follow her, no thats not how she thinks. Azula follows ozai.
…
She is clever, cunning. She has been analysing Ozai for years to defend herself, this is practically no different. She is defending Zuko. While doing something for someone else usually makes her skin crawl, she has a set blinding path ravished for vengeance. She will not fail.
She stalks. She plans.
She does not know if Zuko will live to see the sunrise.
She knows Ozai will be dead before sunrise.
…
It’s midnight, Azula has spent the last 5 hours scrawling away in a secluded passage way that she is certain only she is aware of. She may only be 12 but her mind is far beyond her years - yes a mind that is also corrupted, one her mother couldn’t understand but loved regardless, at the back of her mind a quiet voice whispers that she would understand this. That she would finally get it. - She continues planning . There is no other option for her than success.
She drafts maps of escape routes, chandeliers that could coindentally crush him, gaurd rotations and worst case scenario plots. Yet despite covering the endless ideas to make it look like a fatal coincidence, she cannot bring herself to.
She knows what she has to do. She is not kind like Zuko.
The gold consuming light that embodies his soul is the contrast to her scathing vengeful red. She has no forgiveness passionately colouring her blue blood. Azula thinks Zuko would bleed blue. Blue for calm, blue for sorrow, blue for royalty. She knows she would bleed red. Red for what she is about to do.
Ozai will burn for what he has done. Suffering will be his teacher.
…
Stalking through the winding paths dug miles below the palace, Azula navigates by the light of her intense yet chaste blue flame. She breathes shallowly trying to avoid coughing on the layers of built up dust the line the passage. Shes almost there. She is not scared as she ascendeds the stairs, the heat rising, rising, rising, she is almost at the back of Ozais thrown room.
She gently pries open the stone doors, parting the walls of flame encasing Ozais throne. An intimidation tactic, is what he had called them, the whole throne room was built to cause fear. The flames would aid her in his demise, they provide good coverage . He will die by what he lived for. Causing fear.
She slips through the flames stelthaly shielding herself from their harsh flickering with her own more controlled flames until she stands behind Ozais throne. She can just see the top of his head from hear behind the walls of fire. She can see where Zuko would have sat when he tried to protect the new soldier. Where his punishment was declared. She feels.
Azula feels her anger consume her.
Blue. Blue will be the last thing he sees. Blue for Zuko. Blue for Mother. Blue for blood.
Drawing fire from around her she intensifies her allready malicious towering flame, making sure to control the temperature in the room enough that Ozai can’t tell the difference. She coats her hands in the intense scorching element setting her own skin alight. She feels it burning. She ignores it. The flames she wields get hotter.
Just before it’s hot enough for Ozai to notice, just before the roar of her flames catches his attention she arches forward, reaching over the back of the throne.
She wraps her flame doused hands around his neck.
In an instant she increases the temperature to an unimaginable degree.
Incineration.
She was always able to produce hotter flames than him. Than anyone.
A “prodigy” they called her.
This is the first time she truly feels she is achieving something with her prodigal skills.
She feels how the smooth muscle of his vocal cords reverberate under her unyielding hands, the skin cracks further around them as he screams.
He does not have a chance to defend himself.
She never gave him one.
She feels no guilt. She feels no regret. Yet she still mourns. It was not something she knew she was capable of doing. She does not mourn for him though. She mourns for Zuko, Mother, the fire nation. Herself.
As she sees the last remnants of life being to flicker in his eyes she pulls herself over the throne to look directly into his eyes.
“You will burn in every life you live for what you have done. If I have to live every life with you to make sure it happens, then so be it. You did not deserve Zuko. You did deserve me though I suppose”
She sees shock and recognition course through him.
“I will teach you suffering”
And with that she retightens her hold around what remains of his withered neck and she reduces it to nothing but ash. Her flames so so hot that not even blood remained, just… ash.
Her final fleeting thought as his head rolls is that she was merciful in a way.
She hopes in his next life he receives a lesser mercy than death.