Chapter Text
She never intended for it to happen, but once again, it had been several months since the last time she saw either Mai or Ty Lee, and even longer since the three of them had been together. Ty Lee joining the circus had been a surprise, though Azula was loathe to admit that the sweet, bubbly girl had surprised her. And then Mai’s family moved to Omashu, soon to be renamed New Ozai, per request of the Fire Lord himself. And then Azula was left in the Caldera. She had been busy, with the war revving up for its big finish, and she found herself forgetting that her companions weren’t a mere palanquin ride away, most of the time.
With her ship, it was easy enough to zip around and pick up her friends, even with Ty Lee’s initial reservations. Actual, Ty Lee’s attempt at individuality had been a joy to thwart. Letting the wild animals roam the tent and scaring them with the flaming net had been an especially nice touch.
Mai rarely put up a struggle against Azula, so it was no surprise when she practically lunged at the opportunity to join her. Plus, as Mai said, politics were boring. Azula couldn’t agree, she found the roundabout, strategic, methodical games of politics rather gripping, but if Mai needed to get away from her parents and their politics, then Azula had the perfect outlet.
~ ~ ~
“So, we’re gonna sit in a metal box for a week?” Mai drawled.
“Yay! Bonding time!” Ty Lee squealed, contorted like a pretzel at Mai’s feet.
The “metal box,” or tank, in question lurched into motion and Mai stumbled, tripping over Ty Lee and landing on her butt, blushing scarlet. She quickly pulled her feet off the contortionists’ back, mumbling an apology while Ty Lee chuckled good naturedly.
“Yes,” Azula replied, raising at eyebrow at their antics. She had been able to remain standing. “But we’re hot on the Avatar’s trail, so hopefully it’ll be less than a week.” She turned to her maps and scrolls of data. “As we discussed earlier, clearly he passed through Gaoling about four days ago, and now they’re flying over the Earth Kingdom. I haven’t been able to figure out where they’re going, exactly, or if they’re just flying aimlessly, which is likely. They’re just a bunch of kids, after all.”
“We’re kids, too.” Ty Lee pointed out.
“Hardly,” Azula replied, without looking up. “We may be fourteen, but we’re already elite warriors. As you surely could tell in Omashu, they’re barely masters.”
“I’m fifteen,” Mai corrected.
Azula finally turned, glaring at Mai for purposely missing the point, and found that her elite warriors were sitting cross-legged on the floor, knees touching, Ty Lee giggling while Mai awkwardly picked at her pant cuff.
“Girls,” Azula huffed, “Are you even listening?”
They both suddenly met her eyes, as if they had to be reminded where they were, and who they were with.
Ty Lee sprung to her feet. “Of course. We’re far more prepared than they are, obviously.”
Mai stood up next to her. “I have to ask, Princess, why are we even chasing the Avatar? I thought your mission was just to bring your brother and uncle back home.”
“True,” Azula conceded, mildly surprised that Mai would dare question her, but allowing it because it was an opportunity to explain her thought process. “But a good strategist takes advantage of an opportunity like this. It’s important to turn in the Avatar to my father; not because he might actually defeat the Fire Nation, but because he gives people hope, and it’s our job to snuff that out. Besides, Zuko has been chasing the Avatar for three years now, so I’m sure he’s close by.”
Apparently he was even closer than Azula guessed. Behind Mai’s shoulder, she first caught sight of a grotesquely bloody scar, then the rest of the boy came into focus around it.
Ty Lee nodded appreciatively, “Oh, that’s smart! It’s a good thing you were sent on this mission, you’ve really got this tracking thing down pat.”
Mai hummed in agreement.
Then Zuko spoke, right in front of Mai and Ty Lee. “Is that really why, Azula? Or is there another reason you’ve suddenly decided you need to hunt the Avatar?” Although his words were a thinly veiled accusation, there was no malice in his tone. It sounded like he was trying to coax a scared animal out of the shadows.
“What are you insinuating?” Azula snapped, the blood rushing to her head.
Mai and Ty Lee exchanged a worried glance. “Nothing,” Ty Lee answered. “I think it’s a great idea, Your Highness.”
Azula suddenly realized she was panting lightly.
“I didn’t mean to question you, Princess,” Mai clarified, brown eyes darting between Azula and Ty Lee.
Zuko was still there. Unwaveringly, solidly there, right in front of her. Yet Mai and Ty Lee didn’t seem to have heard him. True, no one ever saw him, but he never spoke in front of others. And now she knew that it didn’t matter, because no one else could hear him. It was as though he only existed for her.
She forced herself to focus on the two girls who were both looking at her with their own brands of concern. Mai’s was more aloofly suspicious, countering Ty Lee’s open worry.
“Don’t challenge me again,” Azula ordered, flicking her eyes to the side to glare at Zuko before returning to Mai’s face, “And I’ll forget this ever happened.”
~ ~ ~
Zuko didn’t heed her warning.
It was a few days later, and Azula was sitting in her personal quadrant of the cramped tank, poring over the information she had collected about the Avatar, hoping to stumble upon the solution.
Zuko was sitting across the table from her, elbow resting on his knee, chin resting on his hand. His gaze wasn’t focused on the scrolls that littered the metallic surface, however; he was watching her face. She was doing her best to ignore him, keeping her nose buried in papers, but her patience was wearing thin.
For a long time, he just sat with her. She didn’t know what he was waiting for, but she could feel the anticipation-induced anxiety making her nerves jump, and she certainly wasn’t absorbing anything on the pages in front of her.
She almost asked him what he wanted, just to get whatever it was over with, but she refused to stoop so low as to ask Zuko for something.
Finally, he said, “I have charts like this, too. For tracking the Avatar.”
Azula pursed her lips and did not deign to respond.
Undeterred, he soldiered on, “Maps. Lists of sightings cross-referenced to figure out what the truth is. History about the Avatar’s past lives. Did you know that Avatar Szeto once challenged all six Fire Sages to fight him at once when they tried to impose extra agricultural taxes? They didn’t end up dueling, but I think he would have won.”
Azula sniffed, “Yes, I knew that. I don’t think he could have beaten all six of them, even the Avatar isn’t that good.”
“But, it wasn’t an Agni Kai, so he could use all the elements, and he was a lava bender,” Zuko pressed.
Azula rolled her eyes, “The Avatar isn’t some limitlessly powerful being, Zuko. He’s human, he has weaknesses, he can be taken down just like everybody else, even if you weren’t able to do it.”
He didn’t appear to be hurt by her words, but he allowed the silence to sit for a moment. Azula turned back to the scroll in her hand.
“Do you think you can take him down?”
Azula bristled, “I don’t think I can, I know it.”
“Why do you even want to? Father didn’t even ask you to capture that Avatar, that’s my burden.”
“Well, Zuko,” Azula threw down her scroll. “You haven’t exactly been successful, have you? You’ve been screwing this up, like you screw everything up, and I’m here to fix your mistakes, alright?”
“You don’t have to do that, Azula,” Zuko leaned over the low table. “They’re my mistakes.
“Yes I do! Whenever you fail at something, I have to get in there and do it for you!” She jabbed a finger at him, her nail filed to a point.
“Why?”
Her hands were not quite steaming, but they felt too hot when she bunched them into fists. “Father needs someone to do it! And I can! And Father needs to know that I can!”
“Why?” He asked again, still aggravatingly calm.
Azula jumped to her feet and leaned down to sneer, “Because I am better than you, Zuko, and it’s important that Father knows that.” She straightened, and smoothed her hair back carefully, looking away from Zuko. When she glanced back, he was gone.
Well, good.
~ ~ ~
It was dusk when she saw it.
They were sleeping under the stars tonight. Ty Lee and Mai were getting restless after sleeping in the tank for so many nights, and Azula could admit that fresh air would be pleasant. It might at least help her think more clearly.
Ty Lee was putting up the tents. Mai was supposed to be helping, and she had tried, but it turned out Mai was lousy at putting up tents, and she had done more harm than good. Laughing, Ty Lee had shooed her away and insisted she could do it on her own, after all, she did this regularly on a much larger scale when she was part of the circus.
Azula was not helping with the tent, obviously. Instead, she was looking at the sky, waiting for the stars to peak out of the darkening canvas above.
She didn’t see the stars, but she something drift down, carried by the wind. The small, white something fell almost right at Azula’s feet, catching on the grass so the wind couldn’t blow it away.
She squatted to inspect it. It appeared to be some kind of animal fur, but she wasn’t sure from what. It was almost entirely unfamiliar, if it weren’t for a quiet, suspicions nagging of recognition in the back of her mind. She ran her fingers over it; it was ridiculously soft fur. She squinted it at, hoping her mind would make the connection if it just had a little more time.
“Ugh,” Mai interrupted her thoughts. “What is this? It’s like the trees are shedding.”
Azula looked up. Indeed, more fur was floating down from the sky.
Ty Lee jabbed a pole into the ground. “Don’t trees shed when they lose their leaves? Not in the Fire Nation, but in the colonies, some trees ‘shed’ their leaves when it gets colder.”
“Huh, I never knew that,” Mai was saying.
“Yeah! They turn colors before they fall, too. Red and orange and brown… It’s beautiful. I saw some when I was traveling with my circus.”
What kind of flying animal had fur?
“You’ll have to take me to see some of these color-changing trees someday.”
“Oh, that would be so much fun! Let’s do it.”
Oh, of course.
“Ty Lee! Pack up that tent.” Azula stormed past and ducked into the tank.
“What? But Azula, I thought we were-”
Azula stuck her upper body out of the door, clinging to the frame so she could hang out further. “The Avatar is here. We need to move.”
~ ~ ~
Azula didn’t know how they kept sensing that they were coming. The limited wind was in their favor: blowing the fur towards them to form a trail, and blowing the smoke from their tank back the way they came. True, the tank made a ruckus, but they shouldn’t be able to hear it from so far away.
Perhaps that horrible little bat-monkey could hear the ground rumbling with those comically large ears of his.
Well, someone would have to give up eventually, and it sure wasn’t going to be Azula.
As they drove in their tank, Mai and Ty Lee dozed in their chairs while Azula drove. She didn’t mind; they needed to be well rested so they could properly fight off the Water Tribe teenagers. Adrenaline was keeping Azula going at this point. They were so close. The Avatar was surely getting worn out with all of his stopping and starting. The stars were aligning, clearly. Azula felt giddy enough to be Ty Lee, but she just smiled and steered the hunk of metal.
~ ~ ~
Sure enough, the Avatar and his band of miscreants gave up eventually. Due to the sloping nature of the mountain, Azula and her girls left the tank behind, opting to use their giant basilisk lizards instead. There was a moment of stillness, and the three of them faced the four small figures on the cliff top. Four? In addition to the Avatar and his blue-clad companions, there was an even smaller person dressed in green. The Avatar’s earth bending master. Ah well, nothing they couldn’t handle.
Azula dug her heel into her basilisk lizard’s flank and shot forward.
She wasn’t even halfway up the winding rock path when they were running back to their bison, the green figure forming a wall to stop them. Azula urged her basilisk lizard to continue forward and took her hands off the reins to shoot lightning, the wall exploding with the force of her attack.
By the time the dust settled, they had taken off. Azula watched them fly off, Mai and Ty Lee pulling their basilisk lizards to a stop on either side of her.
“The sun will be rising soon,” Azula said, without taking her eyes off the horizon. “We’ll catch them then,” She turned the lizard around and urged it towards the tank.
Mai and Ty Lee followed.
Back in the tank, Azula manned the controls while Mai and Ty Lee sat behind her. They appeared to have drifted off, Mai leaning on Ty Lee’s shoulder, but she knew they could be ready to go at a moment’s notice.
Once again, there was another person in the tank, but Azula was doing her best to focus her entire being on the Avatar, and keeping her tank moving.
“Azula,” She said, softly.
That was all she ever said. “Azula.” Just her name. As if it mattered to her at all. If she really mattered to her mother, then she wouldn’t have disappeared. There would be no reason for her to go. There would have been no reason for her to get herself killed like that.
“Leave me alone,” Azula snapped, keeping her voice low to avoid disturbing her friends.
“Azula,” Her mother said again. “Why are you doing this?”
“You know, it’s funny,” Azula bit out, toggling a lever. “Zuko asked me the same thing yesterday.”
“Do you know why?”
“Yes,” Azula fiddled with her bangs. She had fixed her hair when they were back in the tank, it had come a bit loose when she blasted through the rock wall. “Father needs me to do this. We need to win the war.”
“Azula," She said gently, "no.”
By now, fury was roiling in her stomach, but she kept it down. She stayed in control of her emotions. “We do. We need to correct the savagery and messiness of the other nations. Father needs my help to do this, and I will do it.”
She didn’t look up at the woman standing at her elbow. She knew what she would find in her face: disappointment and a pitying sadness. When her mother had been alive, she had looked at her like that only once, usually it was concern or a veiled sort of fear. But once, she had looked at her daughter with this deep, visceral sadness, and that expression would forever be burned in Azula’s mind's eye.