Work Text:
Light.
Ba-dum.
Noise.
Ba-dum.
A moment of hushed quiet,
Ba-dum.
of bated breath,
Ba-dum.
waiting,
Ba-dum.
waiting,
Ba-dum.
waiting—
Ba-dum.
A hand cupping his cheek.
Ba-dum.
Hope.
Ba-dum.
“You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher.”
Ba-dum.
Fire.
Zuko’s consciousness is pulled slowly back into the world as he drowns in those words, in his father’s condemnation, in the space between his heartbeats where time and space and life mean nothing and he is everyone and no one, everything and nothing, a speck of insignificance in a universe so unimaginably bigger than he is.
And then he surfaces from the ocean he was drowning in, an ocean of wishes and soft edges where fire froze and ice burned.
It takes a moment to even become aware of his existence, of the stone-cold reality of the world he is in, of the bed beneath him and the blankets on top. He breathes in, out, once, twice, and regains his mind as bits and pieces come back.
Still hesitant to move, he instead scrounges around in his head for a remembrance, a clue to the where and the why and the how, but his memories are as intangible and ethereal as Agni’s beams, as sticky and gossamer-thin as cobwebs, and they tangle around his grasping thoughts like bear-traps. His memories fly away from him like a carefree child, laughing and taunting. His endeavors are as fruitless as trying to grasp at fog and hold back the tides of the ocean.
He opens his eyes.
Instantly, the burn of light stabs into his right cornea like a spear, even as his left eye does not move, cannot move, and an involuntary whimper leaves him as he presses his eye shut again, curling on his side instinctively to protect himself. He tries to bring a clumsy, half-responding hand to check on his left eye, feeling the uncomfortable weight of some sort of patch covering it.
That is when the pain hits.
He whimpers again, pitiful and agonized, as the side of his face burns, tears he cannot feel running down his cheeks. Snippets come back to him then, fragments of an event he cannot quite remember, hazy pieces of a puzzle he cannot see.
It burns—
His face is burning—
“Nephew, are you awake?”
Through the sea of pain, through the veil of imaginary flames that dance against his skin, Zuko feels some of his desperation fade. He would recognize that voice anywhere, always, and it brings soothing relief to his burning cheek, like the soft caress of blue waves, lapping against his face.
“Uncle?” he rasps, and his voice catches in his throat like burrs in a cat’s pelt, like fleas in a turtleduck’s feathers, like fire on his skin. Uncle shushes him gently, soft and a little scared, but also so incredibly relieved that Zuko can feel it pouring out of him in a river, filling the room like an ocean.
“Don’t talk, Nephew; you have barely woken up. Here, drink this.” He moves to pick up a cup on the side table.
“Is it,” Zuko murmurs, consciousness already fading slowly, the infinite dark of dreamless oblivion pulling at his mind, “tea?”
Uncle lets out a strangled laugh, a strange, twisted mixture of joy and grief that vaguely reminds Zuko of the months after Lu Ten’s death. “No, Nephew mine, it is not. Do not worry—I will serve you jasmine tea, your favorite, just as soon as you are back on your feet.”
Zuko mumbles something incoherent, opening his mouth and trusting Uncle to feed him the not-tea; his body was no longer obeying him, and he was barely conscious of a warm cup touching his lips before he lost his grip on reality completely.
It starts like this:
Azula is 11, and she kills her first man.
No, that’s not quite right. It starts before that.
It starts when Azula is small, so small she does not know her age, or her name, or the world around her. It starts before she learns of her inner fire, of her burning legacy, of her gentle mother and her cruel father.
It starts when Azula is a child, for her first and last time.
It starts when she is cradled in Zuko’s arms, gently and lovingly, and she reaches up a grasping hand to grip and toy with his dangling hair as he bends his head over hers.
Her first word is “Zuzu,” because the rest of his name is too hard for her, and she has no one else’s name to learn.
It starts when Zuko is only two years older than her and is already a better father to her than her own.
It starts when Zuko, two years older than her, still a child, falls madly and irrefutably in love with the little bundle that is his sister, and when Azula finds herself similarly completely and maddeningly besotted.
It starts when Azula loves Zuko.
That’s how it ends.
It starts like this:
Azula is reading a book, legs dangling over the side of the bed as Zuko crouches behind her, braiding her hair. She had begun learning, now, of the world and her fate, has begun learning of the heat and destruction of fire. She is a fast learner.
But none of her lessons, not yet, can teach her not to come to Zuko for comfort, and none of Zuko’s lessons will prevent him from helping his sister, from reaching out a hand to her.
They have lost their childhood, but not their hearts. Not yet.
It starts with their quiet jokes and murmured laughter, with them on the bed together, spread out and regaling the other with stories, with mock pillow fights and a willingness to help the other with anything, ever.
It starts with Azula walking Zuko through the katas she learned yesterday that he has been trying to master for two weeks, without punishing him when he makes a mistake. It starts with Zuko explaining all of the things that make Father angry, that he has already learned the hard way, so his sister will never do the same.
It starts with evenings by the turtleduck pond, with little snatches of peace in a household of war.
It starts with Zuko and Azula, together, willing to do anything for each other.
That is how it ends.
The next time Zuko wakes up, there is someone else there. A young but unmistakably strong someone, with a presence that fills and fills and fills a room until you are choking on air with imagined water in your lungs.
He would recognize Azula’s presence anywhere, anytime, at the end of the world and the start of another, in the abyss of eternity and summit of the transient.
He is incapable of movement, but he manages to flop a hand, just to acknowledge that she is there. The agony of his face is less intense but no less brutal, and his breath leaves him in soft pants as he tries and fails to reach for his sister.
He doesn’t need to. For the first time in years, she comes to him, instead.
She reaches down and grips his hand, firm but gentle, as always a contradiction of puzzles and secrets and promises and lies.
“It’s alright, Zuzu,” she murmurs, and Zuko’s heart aches at the familiar nickname said so soft for the first time since forever, like tracing a finger over the grooves of the pattern of a well-loved book, intimate and cared for. “Everything will be alright now.”
Zuko turns the words over in his mind, examining them from every side, spinning them around like marbles, trying to understand them, see how they make sense. In the end, he gives up, because his mind is tired, and he slips away, back into nothingness.
A single thought flickers in his mind for a second longer, like a dying candle’s last moments.
Azula always lies.
It starts like this:
Azula is a fast learner. She is 6, and smarter than a good portion of the palace. She has mastered katas in days that take others years to learn in any capacity, has memorized maps and codes that most people have never heard of, and can hide or fake any emotion so well no one in the entirety of the Fire Nation can tell what she truly thinks.
No one other than Zuko, who knows his sister better than he knows himself, who understands her in a way that burns through her walls as if they were made of paper, who sees through her masks like they’re veils.
Zuko, who takes weeks to learn the same katas she has been doing naturally for months, whose brain lets maps and charts slip through the cracks like a sieve, who wears his heart of his sleeve for the world to see.
It starts when Azula realizes that Zuko will always be soft, and she will have to be cold and cruel for the both of them.
It starts when Azula mistakes softness for weakness.
It starts when Azula understands that she needs to protect Zuko from the world.
It starts when she sees a red handprint on Zuko’s face, and knows she needs to protect Zuko from their father, too.
That’s how it ends.
It starts like this:
Azula makes friends.
She doesn’t know if they are truly her friends, or if they crave her power. She doesn’t not know if they respect her or fear her. All she knows is that they do what they’re told, and that is enough.
Ty Lee is exuberant, and so unbelievably kind that Azula wonders if she would be better off friends with Zuko, instead. But then they spar and Ty Lee flips and spins like the wind, like the ocean currents themselves, flighty and fleet-footed, and Azula changes her mind.
Mai is the opposite; cold, hard and unmoved by anything, even at the age of 8. She expresses no excitement, no joy, no grief. A blank slate almost as perfected as Azula’s own. And then she hits bullseye on a fluttering leaf with a knife, sharp and poised, and her lips twitch in a victorious grin, and Azula smiles.
It starts with a group of three friends who are kind and cold and ruthless, who are kids but not children, kids without a childhood, who would follow each other into the depths of hell and back, who would stop by and say hello to the devil.
It starts with Zuko, watching from the side as his sister ignores his presence in favour of others.
It starts with a boy, unloved and alone, watching his one true friend float away across the ocean.
It starts with loss.
That’s how it ends.
Zuko is pulled from the comfort of emptiness by muttered voices outside the door, agitated and upset, even as he tries to fall back asleep and avoid the pain he knows will race through him as soon as he awakens.
But then the whisperings cease, and Uncle walks back into the room and sits by his side, and Zuko knows that something, somewhere, is wrong.
He has long since memorized the footsteps of each person in the castle, even the servants; he has long since learned how to tell if someone is angry, annoyed, disappointed. He can tell by the creases in their brows, the tightness of their shoulders, the curtness of their words. He can tell by their steps, quick and short, and their breaths, slow and deliberate.
Uncle is furious.
But Uncle says nothing, and Zuko realizes it is because he doesn’t know that Zuko is awake, so he forces himself to pry his mouth open and slurs, “Wha’s wrong,”, tongue not obeying his command as he fights to remain conscious. He feels pathetic, not even able to speak properly, slurring like a child, and thoughts buzz around his head like a hive of bees, calling him weak, useless, fallible—
Uncle shakes his head, even though Zuko’s eyes are not open to see it, and whispers, “Later, Nephew.”
“Now,” Zuko murmurs in protest, even as he remembers what happened the last time he disagreed with a master firebender, sheer stubbornness fueling him as he reaches out blindly, and Uncle clasps his hand. His hands are familiar, strong and calloused, and they anchor Zuko’s floating mind to the world like a mountain in an ocean, like the ground under his feet when the undertow threatens to sweep him away.
Uncle sighs audibly, whispers “Please, you need to sleep—”, but Zuko tightens to the best of his ability his hand on Uncle’s, and he gives in.
“Ozai has given his command. You are banished from the Fire Nation, once you heal, and can only return and restore your honor by capturing the Avatar,” Uncle tells him, all in one breath, a rush of words as damning as a hundred meter wave, stretching out before them, like the cold glint of the sun on the metal of a guillotine, poised to separate his head from his neck for the rest of eternity.
The buzzing of the bees in his head get louder.
He feels his mind losing its weak grip on reality, but remains submerged in Uncle’s words, in his father’s proclamation, as they ping around in his head, around and around and around again, and fill his brain with their poison.
He thinks, then, of many things. He cannot control his mind anymore, lost in its vicious currents, watching as his thoughts run by and ahead of him like Azula does.
He thinks, I am dishonorable, I am weak, Father doesn’t want me.
He thinks, there is still a way, with the Avatar I can come home, Father must not truly want me gone forever.
He thinks, where is the Avatar, do they even exist, how can I find them?
He thinks of never doing enough, being enough, succeeding enough, he thinks of raised voices and raised hands…
He thinks.
And then he decides he doesn’t like thinking, doesn’t like his thoughts, doesn’t like their pain, and he sinks back into oblivion where there are no thoughts or pain or fathers wreathed in fire.
It starts like this:
Azula is 8 and stronger than anyone she knows, bar her father and her uncle. She is faster, better, more cunning than her peers, her elders and even most of her teachers. She is a perfect prodigy of a girl, and she is told that every day.
She is taught how incredible she is, how excellent, how flawless.
She is 8. She knows only what she is taught.
She learns what she is praised for, and what she is not. She learns to avoid emotion, feelings, wants and needs. They tell her it is discipline, to not care for others. They tell her to have empathy is to be weak, and to be weak is to die.
And so she learns.
And thus, she is 8 when she practices aiming her fire bursts and chars five turtleducks alive. And she is 8 when she sees what she wrought and turns away with a triumphant smile, even as the smell of burned flesh and the desperate, fearful cries of the animals in the pond flood the world around her, threaten to submerge her in their desolation.
It starts when Azula forgets that others’ lives have meaning.
It starts when she understands that she cannot afford to care.
It starts when she learns to relish her destruction and the pain she causes.
It starts when she learns that her great acts will only ever be cruel, and that she is better at causing pain than at healing it.
It starts when Azula commits an atrocity and continues to smile.
That’s how it ends.
It starts like this:
Azula is 9, and plans how to kill her first man.
She does not do it, in the end. Her mother takes care of it, trades his life for her son’s, but nonetheless, the seed of that plan remains rooted in Azula’s mind, growing and sprouting, roots reaching around her brain and leaves stretching up towards the sun.
It starts with whispers, after dark, in the corners of the palace. Azula is well-versed in the subtleties of such matters, and listens, and hears.
And understands.
And remembers, in the cold, dead depths of her cold, dead heart the look on her mother’s face when she asked herself, “what is wrong with that child?”, when her mother thought her a monster, when her mother loved her sibling more than her and left her to burn.
She never thought to wonder if that was how Zuko felt about Ozai. She was simply not used to thinking about others at all.
It starts with a mother who never loved her daughter, but was willing to trade a man’s life for her son.
It starts with Ursa, giving Ozai a poison to kill his father in exchange for a life of exile and Zuko, alive.
It starts with Zuko lying in bed, tears on his face as he watches his mother leaves, the cold sting of betrayal pierced through his heart like a lance.
It starts with pain from an adult who was supposed to care for you, finding yourself left behind and pushed away and cast out.
That’s how it ends.
It starts like this:
Azula is only 9, and mastering techniques that make her instructors salivate.
She conducts the lightning as if it were an orchestra under her perfect command, all grand gestures and controlled motions and sweeping moves. Her grin lights up her face, and her lightning lights up the sky.
She relishes the electric burn of the current through her body, enjoys the fear and awe on her instructors’ faces, laughs out loud as she releases the wild beast she has caged.
It starts when she mistakes power for freedom, competence for control, strength for worth.
It starts when she breaks the limits of the possible and laughs.
It starts when Azula proves capable of anything, everything, proves that no one and nothing can stop her.
That’s how it ends.
Zuko’s next awakening is gentle and subtle, and he doesn’t even realize he is awake until he feels Uncle’s warm hands grasping his.
There is unmistakable sorrow in Uncle’s form, his head bent over Zuko and if weighed down by the weight of the world. It is a tangible thing, like a physical force, enveloping the room and pushing down on Zuko until he struggles to breathe past the weight of grief Uncle is emanating.
And then Uncle speaks, and his voice is broken, cracked, severed down the middle, horribly lost and wrecked.
“Not you too, Zuko, please, not you too…” a trembling breath, shaky and shuddering, “I already lost Lu Ten, surely the world would not make me bury another child… I cannot…”
Zuko understands then, that this what not a moment he is meant to be privy to, and he is tired anyways, so he lets his mind wander back into the lands of the abyss once more, the pressure of Uncle’s grief weighing on his soul.
It starts like this:
Azula is 11, and she kills her first man.
Maybe that’s not how it starts. Maybe that’s how it ends. Or maybe that’s the start of something and the end of something else, or the start of the end, or the end of the start, or maybe it is somewhere in the middle, lost and wandering, one of the many puzzle pieces of a broken whole.
Or maybe everything came down to this, all those moments, all her life. Maybe this is neither the start nor the end, but a continuation, an inevitable situation, one more event on the rocky road of Azula’s existence.
Maybe for her it is simply a decision to be made, a choice to be had, a problem to be resolved.
Maybe for someone else, it is everything.
Maybe for someone else, that’s how it ends.
Azula has a hole, deep in her soul.
It is not quite a hole, but it is not quite anything else either. Sometimes, when she cannot help but remember its existence, she likens it to a box, or a chest.
Truthfully, it is closer to a coffin.
It is where beautiful things go to die.
She has spent her whole life storing things in that space, filling it with all her emotions and her feelings and her treasonous thoughts and has locked every part of her that she does not like thinking about in a tomb, far away in the depths of herself.
It is not quite a box, or a chest, or a coffin.
It is a dying star.
Azula carries a dying star in her chest, and sometimes it pulsates, and burns, and screams in agony, and every time she ignores it and wonders when the day will come when it will become a black hole and swallow her whole.
She quenches that star and all of its beauty, douses it and stifles it and strangles it, until she is the master of her cold, starless body, all skin and bones and ice even as her inner fire burns through her veins.
But even she cannot keep such a thing dead forever.
Every once in a while, she will feel it, coiling and shifting under her skin like a serpent, untamable and unstoppable. She felt it when she watched her father beat a servant for not bowing low enough, felt it the day she saw the disgust in her mother’s eyes aimed at her like a throwing knife, felt it the first time she saw her father strike Zuko.
And then she remembers what awaits her if she says a word, if she protests, if she disagrees with her father, and she pushes the star back down, under her skin and her bones and her blood, burning with her silence.
The simple truth, the one she cannot see, the one that eludes her day after day after day, is that she does not understand her star. She only understands what she already knows, she only knows what she has learnt, and she only learns what she is taught. She is never taught about emotions and feeling and stars; only power and cruelty and comets.
And so it slumbers, deep in the pit of her heart, unheeded and unnoticed, but it is not weak. It gathers, like the boiling magma of a volcano, burning and vicious, until it cannot be bottled up anymore.
Azula is sitting in the stands, with front-row seats and padded cushioning, and watches her father burn her brother’s face off.
Deep in her soul, a star erupts.
Azula steps into her brother’s sick bay and feels the tension in the room spike until it is a live wire, rippling across her skin, tangible and honed and whetted.
The guardsman exchange a look of foreboding and concern, dropping their gazes down the floor and bowing to her. She lets them languish in that position for a moment longer than is comfortable, and then commands them to rise.
She takes two more steps towards Zuko’s bed. Stops. Raises a hand.
“Leave us.”
There is a moment of hesitation, of pause, and she grits her teeth—internally, of course, as she would never be caught dead outwardly displaying such an obvious tell—at the insubordination. She marks it down in her mind, trusting her memory to keep it safe and to remind her to deal with it later, but she has no time nor will do deal with such things now.
The guards leave the room, and she remains there with her uncle and her brother.
Iroh has not moved, not twitched, not given any indication that he is aware of her presence, but Azula is certain that he is conscious of it nonetheless; he may be weakened and broken and half the man he once was, but one does not lose instincts like those in a handful of years.
So he is merely not responding, then. Only marginally better.
She remembers how pitiful he had been after Lu Ten’s death, how insufferably pathetic grief had made him, and curls her lip. She had hoped to avoid such a thing again; it would not do for the Dragon of the West to be seen to be brought so low so easily. The strength of the royal family must be seen by the people.
Zuko was publicly humiliated and banished, she thought to herself. Already, rumors will have begun to spread. Our strength may be contested. This will have to be dealt with carefully and decisively.
She bent down and touches Zuko’s forehead: hot, but not fatally so.
“He will live,” she said aloud, to the dry, unmoving air of the room and the hollow husk of a great man that sat beside her.
It is not a question but a statement; she would have been informed, were there cause to believe in Zuko’s potential death.
Iroh answers nonetheless: “That is what they say.”
Azula nodded. “And yet you languish here to torment yourself and glut yourself on suffering.”
He glances at her, and she saw the depths of his pain and guilt reflected in his eyes. He feels guilty for not preventing this, Azula realizes, and nearly scoffs. Regret will get one nowhere. Action is the only option to make a wrong right.
“When he leaves, you will go with him,” she continues. Once more, not quite a question but an understanding, pieces that click together from the look in Iroh’s eyes.
“Indeed,” he acquiesces, ignoring her first comment and pushing himself to his feet.
Her eyes narrow. “Has Father agreed to this?” Then another piece falls into place, and she raises an eyebrow. “Or is this part of his plan to get any potential contenders far from the throne, until it is passed to me?” Iroh’s face hardens, and Azula takes great delight in twisting the blade a little deeper. “And yet you will obey, like a dog, for the sake of a boy. The Avatar is little more than a myth; truly, should I ever even expect you to come home?”
Iroh’s face hardens, swiftly, suddenly; in an instant he is before her, eyes sharp as a guillotine blade. “Take care how you talk to me, Princess Azula. You are favored, it is true; favored the way a prized horse is favored, or a particularly well-sown puppet. Do not mistake your father’s favor for love or respect, for you will be bitterly disappointed.” Iroh’s voice is curt, and she recognizes it for what it is: an outlet, all of his fury and shame pouring out in a torrent.
She opens her mouth, a scathing remark ready, but he is not done.
“And do not mistake my sorrow for weakness. I may be a changed men, but I am still the Dragon of the West.” He takes a step back as Azula sneers, locking her harsh taunts and piercing barbs under her tongue. “I will leave you five minutes with my nephew, no more.”
I don’t need your time or your advice, Azula thinks scathingly, but Iroh has already left. She grits her teeth; twice, today, she has faced insubordination. Perhaps it would be good to have Iroh leave the Fire Nation—his presence was tainting the palace.
She takes the chair he had occupied and moves her mind and eyes to Zuko.
He is pale at the extremities, concerningly so, and she tucks his hands closer to his body; his face is flushed with sweat and a little furrow has formed between his brows. The red, angry mark of the burn stretches across the left of his face, mostly hidden by the think patch covering it. Still, little feelers peek out from under the patch and play with his nose and his cheek.
She has heard the grim diagnostics of the healers: he will live, but will never be able to see or hear properly out of his left eye and ear. He will be scarred forever, and there is nothing that can save him from that.
Zuko—her Zuzu—would never be the same.
She recalls what she said to Iroh, moments before: “is this part of his plan to get any potential contenders far from the throne, until it is passed to me?” She wonders if Father had planned for this, if he had truly felt insulted by what Zuko had done or whether it was a made-up crime, solely to give him cause for punishment. She thinks of all the times Father has put Zuko down, called him weak or pathetic or insufficient. Was there even any way for Zuko to escape unharmed? Or has Father always planned on banishing him, on casting him out, to leave room for Azula, his perfect heir, to take the throne?
She has to admit, to herself, that it is a masterful stroke: to remove an obstacle but keep its loyalty, so if the Avatar were to ever return there would be someone whose life has been dedicated to their capture. Zuko is a pawn, nothing more; easily sacrificed, quickly discarded, ultimately useless.
Azula realizes, in that moment, that Zuko was collateral damage. This scar, this angry burn, the agonized cry he let out when Ozai’s fire touched his face: irrelevant. Unimportant. Zuko would leave with Iroh, off on a wild goose-chase for potentially the rest of his life, desperate to reclaim the honor he believes he has lost as Ozai crowns his daughter proudly, the heir he had always intended.
It is brilliant.
It makes her sick.
She feels a swirling in her stomach, like when she pushes herself to far in training and ends up dry-heaving on the floor of her bathroom later, when no one can see and judge and condemn her for her weakness. The knowledge that Zuko—her Zuzu—did nothing, would have been punished and cast out regardless, was toyed with and tossed away even as he did everything he was told, even as he built his life around his father and his nation and his honor—
Something clicks, there, in that chair, in that room, in that moment. Something fundamental, something radical and intrinsic shifts. A piece of a puzzle she hadn’t even realized she was trying to assemble finally fell into place, and she looks at the finished product and she sees.
A way out, a path forwards, as clear as the unconscious form of the her brother in front of her.
She turns it around in her mind, considering, thinking. Weighs the benefits and the rewards. Understands that logically, this is a stupid idea; logically, it would end in death.
She looks down at Zuko, unmoving, half-burned.
It would end in bloodshed one way or another.
She lets go of the logical, of her plans and her rationality, and burns with her anger and her fury and with the unfairness of it all.
Azula was taught to never hesitate, so she does not. She does not wait, or ponder, or stall. Her emotions writhe under her skin, impossible to ignore, and so she does not. She heeds them, for the first time in a long, long time, and lets them guide her where they will. She is at the mercy of the wind and the skies and the whims of a force she cannot control, a force she has spent her life trying to control.
There is a thrill in the release, in the relinquishing of power and in the taking of the step. It feels like stepping off of a cliff, exhilarating and terrifying and dangerous, and quite possibly ill-fated. It is the rush of lightning, the burn of blue flame, the crackle of fire. It is the point of no return.
It is terrifying. It is electric. It is the start of something and the end of something else.
Azula is never one to be outdone. She does not take the step; she leaps.
Mai and Ty Lee are sparring by the turtleduck pond when she finds them.
They stop as she approaches, stand to attention like good soldiers. But there is a tension in the line of their shoulders, in their postures, in their eyes. They, too, saw the fateful Agni Kai, they, too, watch the horror of Zuko’s agony from comfortable, padded seats by her side.
Azula sees the fear in their eyes and feels the sickening sink of her stomach, a swooping nausea, like stepping forward, thinking there is another stair ahead, and feeling your foot sink right through.
Azula watches them as they stand there, and realizes that they might be ruthless but they are not cruel, not like she is, and she cannot ask them to accompany her in her task.
This is for her alone.
So she looks at them and tells them, “This is how it ends.”
They understand, of course; they always seem to, always seem able to read her eyes almost as well as Zuko once could.
Mai pressed a knife to her palm. Ty Lee presses a kiss to her cheek. She accepts both, feeling a genuine smile push at her lips for the first time in a long, long time.
She lets it form, just for a moment. Mai and Ty Lee answer in kind.
Words lie in the space between them, lie on the freshly-cut grass and wave in the soft breeze blowing through the trees, words like ‘be careful’ and ‘don’t get caught’ and ‘I am with you’.
Never ‘are you sure’. They know her too well for that.
Truly, she could not ask for better friends.
She knows they would lie for her, cheat for her, fight for her. She will not ask them to kill for her, too.
Azula clutches the knife in her hand and smiles.
In the end, the act is pitifully simple.
Azula has been exploring the hidden passages of the house for as long as she can remember. She has lived here, grown up here, carved her name in the walls. There is no secret they can hold that she does not know, no mystery they can disguise that she will not find, no place they can go where she cannot follow. She pads the cold floors with ease and comfort, casting the familiar stone in a blue glow from the fire she holds in her hand. The knife, washed of any fingerprints, is held loosely in a gloved hand by her side.
Every morning, Ozai has a servant bring him his breakfast from a small side door. It is pathetically, deplorably easy to access, and even easier to slip into his room silently: all the servant doors are well-oiled, as Ozai doesn’t like to be reminded of their existence.
Azula stands over her father’s sleeping body, knife in hand, and cannot prevent the maniacal grin from overtaking her features. The thrill and buzz of adrenaline suffuses her, fills her like a balloon until she feels like she is floating.
She half-expects Ozai’s eyes to open, one last time. She almost wants them to, wants him to know who brought about his end, wants him to realize that the daughter that he crafted to be a perfect killing machine, a perfect monster, has finally realized her destiny.
Wants him to know that this was his fault, in the end.
She angles the knife, presses it to his throat.
His eyes slide open, confused but unafraid. They focus. Blink, blink. They see her. Widen.
Azula watches them fill with terror, watches horror and fear run unfettered through him. Watches the betrayal flood his eyes and revels in it.
This is what you made me, she thinks, loathing and wrathful and savage, and slides her blade, cold and clinical and precise, across his neck.
She watches, dispassionate and with distaste, as Ozai chokes on his own blood, as he writhes and jerks, and as he eventually falls still and silent as a tomb.
“Say hi to mother from me,” she murmurs, a twisted, vicious cocktail of glee and grief lighting up her veins like lightning.
Then she turns, slips out of the servant’s door and goes to clean herself off, leaving her father’s cooling body on the bed behind her.
This is how it ends:
It ends with pain from an adult who was supposed to care for you, finding yourself left behind and pushed away and cast out.
It ends when she sees a red handprint on Zuko’s face, and knows she needs to protect Zuko from their father.
It ends when Azula proves capable of anything, everything, proves that no one and nothing can stop her.
It ends when Azula commits an atrocity and continues to smile.
It ends with loss.
It ends when Azula loves Zuko more than she fears her father.
It ends when Azula is 11, and she kills her first man.
That’s how something new starts.
She goes to see Zuko that night, after cleaning Ozai’s blood from her knife, melting it down and fashioning herself a metal bracelet, to remind herself forever of this kill.
How ironic, that the clench of metal round her wrist feels so much like the release of handcuffs, like freedom?
She ignores Iroh, sat by Zuko’s side as always, and bent down to pet Zuko’s hair. She remembers mornings and evenings spent together, braiding each other’s hair, brushing it out.
A warm prickling in her eyes makes her blink, and suddenly she is aware of tears, slipping from under her eyelids and tracing winding patterns down her cheeks.
“It’s alright,” she murmurs, gently winding her fingers through his curls, picking apart his tangles. “You’re safe now, Zuzu.” Her tears carve tracks through her skin, and her vision goes blurry. “I took care of it.”
She lets her fingers fall from his skin slowly, drops her hand by her side and blinks until all of her tears are gone.
Only then does she look at Iroh. They have never seen eye to eye on anything, but she thinks this, at least, he understands.
She does not look away until she is sure he sees it, her truth, hard and cold and ruthless as lightning itself, flickering across her eyes.
He does not ask and she does not tell. He will know soon, anyway.
The door creaks as she slips back out of the room.
The palace is abuzz the new day. A servant peeped in, that morning, after Ozai didn’t call him to deliver breakfast, and found his corpse on his luxurious, velvety bedspread, a dark red stain seeping sluggishly from a violent slash in his throat.
The popular belief is that of an outside assassination by another Nation, in a desperate and gory attempt to end the war. The rumor mill is hard at work, churning out theories by the thousands. Many, more hidden, whispers believe that it was an act of karma, by the people, staff of the castle or Agni herself, for that despicable Agni Kai and Zuko’s tragic wound. The story of how that had come about had spread, with Ozai dead and the fear of retribution or punishment less prevalent. Servants whispered about the “brave prince who stood up for the people” and similar garbage, but Azula could see how it would be a welcome viewpoint to cultivate, to aid Zuko when he ascended to the throne.
Iroh would be the new Fire Lord, it was decreed, and would be crowned within the week to prevent discontent or unease. Azula knew his first order of business would be to rescind Zuko’s banishment, and his second would be to root out any of Ozai’s followers (and there were many) from the palace and court. It would be long, hard and painful, but the war was at last coming to an end.
There is a wriggling sense of disappointment that comes with that knowledge, Azula has to admit. The joy and thrill and adrenaline of war and battle, planning and strategizing and putting plans into action… she would have to find another hobby to fill that void.
She also now knows she would not be the next Fire Lord. The dissatisfaction of that knowledge is harder to ignore. Perhaps Zuko would let her be his closest advisor, if nothing else. Knowing his bleeding heart, he would.
Mai and Ty Lee meet her gaze that day, and no words are needed. Azula sees their pride, their protectiveness. If she had asked, she knew they would’ve accompanied her in a heartbeat. She is glad she didn’t ask. Her friends are as dangerous as she is, but far too kind, even in their ruthlessness. Ozai’s murder had been her act and her act alone. For what he did to Ursa, to Zuko, to her.
He had died by the hand he had made. He had burned on his own pyre and drowned in his own sins.
The investigation is long and tedious and relentless, but Azula is not worried. She has an alibi, friends who will back her, a title to uphold her and no visible motive. In fact, she has the opposite—Ozai’s death cost her the throne.
So she knows she will not be suspected.
She wonders, idly, if they will find a scapegoat, just to prove to the public that their investigation skills are capable. She doubts Iroh will accept such a move, but it does not matter. She does not mind letting some nobody burn for Ozai’s death. She simply does not care.
The new Fire Lord Iroh puts a stop to the investigation, in a mournful tone that only some believe. Once more the rumor mill gets to work, but no one knows or finds the truth, and Azula finds delight in all the wrong guesses. Rumors of foul play are abundant, of course—when are they not?—but no one dares speak them openly, and they end up laying, forgotten, as everything eventually does.
Zuko wakes up.
He is not immediately sure if he is truly awake, because the pain in his face is gone and his room is empty. He lies there, letting the memories wash over his like waves in the ocean, and tries not to get dragged down by the undertow.
The door creaks open and he jumps to attention, because getting caught in his thoughts is reason enough for his father’s ire, but it is only Uncle, shuffling his way in. Zuko relaxes automatically, because Uncle means safety and comfort.
His mind is still fuzzy, but even he can see that something has changed. He cannot tell if it is good or bad, but Uncle carries himself differently, now. Zuko is very good at reading people’s bodies, seeing their anger or their irritation or even sometimes their joy, but Uncle is a contradiction of relief and sorrow, of reassurance and exhaustion.
Zuko mumbles, as best he can, “Uncle? What’s wrong?”, praying that the news is nothing as bad as last time, praying that his recovery has not somehow made father upset—maybe he took too long to heal? Maybe something happened to Azula? Maybe—
Iroh clearly did not expect him to be awake. He fusses, checks Zuko’s bandages, kisses his forehead. But Zuko insists, through it all, to hear the news, to know for sure what has happened. Without knowledge or certainty, his mind creates phantoms and theories of doom and horror that circle his mind, haunt his brain.
Iroh learned his lesson from last time, and does not try to waylay him, but simply lays his hand over Zuko’s.
“Your father is dead.”
Zuko just… stops. His thoughts freeze like flies in a spider’s web, the words close around his and he can’t breathe, can’t speak, can’t think—
Because that is impossible. Father cannot die any more than Agni can cease existing, than gravity be reversed, than the world can end. Because Father is invincible, unstoppable, strong beyond words or thoughts or measure—
Iroh squeezes his hand, tells him to breathe.
And slowly, with the help of the closest thing he has to a true father, a kind father, a loving father, Zuko starts to heal.
They are sitting together in the park, watching the turtleducks, when Zuko finally is able to summon the courage, from the depths and dregs of his bleeding heart, to ask.
He faces Azula. Looks her in the eyes.
Azula knows what he will ask before he says it, just as she knows what she will answer.
“What happened to Father?”
She traces her eyes over his face, his hair, his handprint scar and damaged eye. She smiles, a little bitterly, and shrugs, purposefully casual.
“No one knows. Ozai was probably killed by another Nation. Maybe Agni felt defiled by what he did to you.”
He stared at her. “You must know. I refuse to believe you haven’t figured it out.”
Ah, her brother. Still so trusting, still so admiring. Still so young and naïve, despite his two year advantage on her.
So Azula does what she does best.
She lies.
“Ozai is gone, Zuzu. He’s out of our lives. Cast him out of your mind, too.” She pauses, then sighs, purposefully loud, as if giving in. “The scene had the hallmarks of a regular murder. I identified a suspect, one of Ozai’s men who he was blackmailing into supporting him. Don’t worry; I pointed him out to Iroh. He took care of the rest.” She knocked her shoulder against his. “The killer is gone, whoever they are. And they left behind something better. Forget about Ozai—he doesn’t deserve space in your thoughts.”
And Zuko, with his blind faith, listens. And Zuko, with his bleeding heart, believes.
She smiles, and it’s a real, genuine smile. She gets up, brushes grass off of her pants. Holds out a hand to Zuko.
“You’re alright now, Zuko. I’ll always be here to take care of it.”
He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. She is far worse than a liar. She is a manipulator and a murder and a father-killer.
All for Zuko. Her Zuzu.
He grasps her hand, and she hauls him up.
“Thank you,” he says, because he does not know.
“Always,” she says, because it is true.
He should have remembered, she thinks wryly, walking back with him towards the palace for his swords lessons with Piando, that Azula always lies.
They walk back together, side by side, a little metal bracelet snug around Azula’s wrist.