Chapter Text
Azula was better than her brother. This was just common knowledge. She knew it. Their father, the Fire Lord, knew it. Even Zuzu, dum-dum he may be, knew it. The only person who seemed unaware of it was their mother.
Not that it mattered what she thought, because she left as soon as Father got what he wanted and became Fire Lord.
Anyway, compared to her, Zuko may as well be nothing. Sure, he was crown prince and therefore next in line for the throne, but that was a problem that could be easily fixed. If the crown was delivered based on merit instead of age, then they both knew which of them would rise victorious from that particular battle.
As superior as she was to him, though, she would admit he had some strengths. He was a lousy liar, sure, but he was an okay actor when he tried. As soon as he made the connection that acting could be used to actually lie, maybe he would be decent at it. He wasn’t a terrible swordsman, either, but he only picked up the blade to make up for his lackluster firebending. Zuko only had one skill that Azula would ever admit he was the best at.
Zuko could find anything.
They’d discovered that fact while playing hide-and-seek when they were kids. Back in the day when they used to willingly play together, before she had to pretty much force Zuko to spend time with her. Not that she would ever admit that was something she wanted. It wasn’t.
At first, she thought Zuko had to be cheating. No matter how well she hid when they played, he always found her in the span of five minutes. She was well aware that the only reason it even took him that long to find her was because it took that long to actually get to the places she hid.
Once when they were playing, she got annoyed at always being found so easily, like it took no effort whatsoever! Even though she always was able to find Zuko, too, it took her a lot more time and energy than it ever seemed to take him. The worst part of it was, he wouldn’t tell her how he did it.
So, when it was his turn to find her, she blindfolded him and locked him in a closet. Then she went to go hide in one of the hardest places she could think of. She’d been scouting the palace for places she didn’t think he would ever think of looking for her in.
Somehow, even hidden in a shadowy corner in the highest rafters in the throne room, he found her like it was nothing. He stormed into the room, his stomping boots echoing loudly in the silence of the huge room. He looked really small from where she crouched in the ceiling.
Zuko threw the blindfold onto the ground and stomped on it. When he was done taking his anger out on the fabric, he glared up at where she was tucked, invisibly, in the shade. The place she was hiding where he couldn’t possibly see her.
Somehow, though, their eyes met.
“I’m not playing with you anymore, Azula!”
With that dramatic declaration, he turned around and stomped back out of the room. Azula knew that Zuzu wasn’t a liar, but sometimes when he was mad his dramatics flared up. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that this was one of those times, and he’d be over the incident by next week at the latest.
It was the first time in her life that Azula read someone wrong.
They never played hide-and-seek again.
Even though they didn’t play the same anymore, Azula still had the chance to observe her brother’s weird talent. On Ember Island in the summer, she, Zuzu, and occasionally Lu Ten when he felt like it, would play a game where they would bury things in the sand for the others to find. It was always just little things, like some coins or some shells or little trinkets from the beach house no one would miss. The winner was whoever found the most hidden stuff.
Most times, Azula was not a gracious loser. She could admit that. She was competitive and hated the very thought of someone being better than her at something. In the case of a game where the object was to find stuff, though? She knew better than to even entertain the chance of winning if Zuko was playing. In those instances she knew just to sit back, relax, and watch him work.
The three of them sat together on the sand as Lu Ten counted out their stacks and announced, as he did every single time they played, that Zuko was the winner. The first few times they’d played this game, he’d seemed confused about how Zuko kept winning so easily. After awhile, though, he seemed to catch on to the fact that this was just how Zuko was, and he stopped being surprised. The real question always ended up being who took second place.
“Hey, Zuzu,” Azula drawled as she plucked one of the objects out of his pile. Whatever it was it was old and metal and shiny, she held it up to the sun and made the light glint in his eyes, “do you ever wonder if you were a blood gecko hound in a past life?”
He tried to glare at her, but it looked stupid with the way he was squinting at the light shining in his eyes. “Shut up, Azula.”
She stuck her tongue out at him, and he instantly launched himself at her to try to get at the thing in her hand. She pushed him off easily, and the two of them scrambled around in the sand for a good few minutes before Lu Ten finally broke up the fight.
“That was fun.” He said, sandwiching himself between the two of them and holding them both as far away from each other as he could. “Rematch next year?”
“Next year?” Zuko frowned.
“He’s going to Ba Sing Se with Uncle Iroh, dum-dum.” Azula replied, rolling her eyes. “We knew that already.”
“Oh. Yeah, I knew that.” Zuko nodded, but he was still frowning. “You’ll be back by next summer, though?”
“I don’t see why not.” Lu Ten shrugged. “It’s just a city behind some big walls, how long could it take to break them?”
It took six hundred days to break through the first wall.
It took six hundred and one days for Uncle Iroh to call off the siege.
Lu Ten never came back for that rematch.
Over the years, Azula continued her little games with Zuko. It was hard not to when he had this inexplicable gift for finding stuff. If he really honed the skill, she wondered if he’d be able to use it to help track down enemy camps or possible deserters. If he could ever gain the stomach to butcher anything besides a monologue from a theater scroll, maybe he would make a useful assassin or something. One of these days, she told herself every time she stuck a book into the bough of a fruit heavy tree or buried one of his knives beneath the palace’s catacombs, one of these days she would bring that thought up to him. One of these days she would admit to her stupid, dum-dum brother that he could be good for something.
She never got the chance to, because somehow her stupid, dum-dum brother said something he wasn’t supposed to and was challenged to an Agni Kai that he for some reason accepted. Azula watched, at least expecting him to fight their father but instead watched him cower on his knees and beg forgiveness. She sighed in disappointment, honestly, she wasn’t sure what she was expecting out of him, but it certainly wasn’t that.
What she expected even less was the way his face burned.
Uncle Iroh, coward that he was, turned his face away at the sight. Azula, though, she was strong. She watched, taking everything in. Zuzu screamed, and she clenched her jaw and her fists tight in an effort to keep herself in check. Father might be focused on her brother right now, but if he even caught a hint of her reaction being off, it would be bad.
She thought he was going to kill him. Right there in front of everyone. Azula thought, not for the first time, that she was going to be an only child.
Then Father let go of Zuko, and he fell to the ground with a painful sounding thump. On the good, unburned side of his face, thankfully. There was a second where she really thought he was dead, but when he finally wheezed a breath in through his mouth, she let out a breath of her own she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
Then Father proclaimed that Zuko was banished, and Azula’s heart stopped again. She looked at her brother, clearly unconscious but somehow still weeping, and thought he may as well be dead.
“I will lift your banishment,” Father said, all but sneering down at him, “if you find the avatar and bring him to me in chains.”
All around her, the murmuring crowd hushed as if in mourning. Soon, all of the Fire Nation would hear the terms for the banishment, and they would react just the same. Azula smirked. She knew something they all didn’t know.
Find the avatar, Father had said. For anyone else, that was a death sentence.
For Zuzu, though? Well, that was doable.