Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Azula was running.

Stinging feet beating against the ground, breaths coming in short gasps, hair flying wildly across her face. Her chest ached, but she kept running, stumbling through the underbrush, her silks tearing against bushes and tree bark. She could hear the shouts of the asylum guards behind her. She veered to the left and vaulted over a fallen tree. Her slippers scrambled for purchase against muddy ground, but she managed to stay on her feet as she sprinted through sharp bushes. Her hands were streaked with blood from thorns piercing her skin. Her foot hit a rock and she fell face-first into a ditch, her hands exploding in pain when they failed to break her fall. Azula groaned as she tried to get up, bruised skin rubbing uncomfortably against her asylum uniform.

“She went this way!” Azula’s head snapped up at the call. Adrenaline surging through her again, she leapt up, muscles screaming in protest, and took off running again. She was going to get out of that damn prison if she died trying. She was at a massive disadvantage, she knew it–– Azula had no idea where the asylum was in the Fire Nation and where she would come out if she made it through the surrounding forest. Her body was weak from months of malnutrition and her hands stung. But Azula had faced insurmountable odds before. She wasn’t about to give up just because things looked bad.

Azula heard the rustling of mongoose lizards moving quickly through the undergrowth and the calls of guards as they shouted at each other. Way closer than she’d thought they were. She looked wildly around and her eyes zeroed in on a stream nearby. Without thinking, she dived for it, plunging herself into the water.

Cold. It was so cold. Her skin was being pierced with a thousand invisible needles. Distantly, she heard the party of guards pass the stream, their shouts so close, but Azula couldn’t focus on them. She… she couldn’t focus on anything as the cold reached deep into her bones and the air leaked from her lungs, and she thought she heard the clanking of chains? The roar of fire and the whistle of ice as it froze against her skin. Phantom touches grazed her arms, the sound of the nurses’ sharp voices as they held her underwater–– No. No.

She wasn’t there anymore, wasn’t sobbingscreamingcrying in the courtyard as the red of Sozin’s comet painted the sky bloody, wasn’t gasping for breath as the nurses plunged her into the ice bath. No, she was here, so close to freedom. She grabbed onto something, a root, maybe, and fought every instinct she had to rise to the surface. She had to stay under. She had to. Even though panic like she’d never felt before built in her chest and her lungs felt unimaginably tight. Azula waited until she was sure the guards were gone, off to search some other part of the forest. Then, like a bird to flight, she let go of the root and rose, heaving huge breaths of clean, wonderful air as she pulled herself out and doubled over onto the muddy bank.

Then she started to laugh. Loud, probably too loud, but she didn’t care. She laughed and laughed and laughed, chest aching, and then she was crying, and she sobbed into her wet silk shirt. She was free. She was free and now what? Azula felt at once jubilant and sick. Nearly three months of torment in what was so kindly called an asylum, and now she was free.

But it came at a cost. She had no idea where to go from here. The circumstances of her escape had been hilarious, truthfully, and quite unlike her. Azula supposed she wasn’t even sure what was like or unlike her anymore, but she was certain that she typically liked to have a plan, and literally jumping out of a window in a blur of opportunity was the furthest from a plan one could get.

Her feelings began to cool to an unpleasant nothingness. What does she do now? She could free her father. Fear–– pure, unadulterated fear–– ran through her at the thought and it pulled her up short. Why should she be scared? Because you failed and Zuko is Fire Lord and you lost to a stupid water peasant and you couldn’t even escape the asylum without ending up covered in mud and crying your damn eyes out. You know what Father does to failures.

She shook her head. But he wouldn’t do that to her. Right? She… didn’t know. She tried to dispel the thought. It didn’t make any sense to free her father now. He had no political power, and Azula knew a lost cause when she saw one. She knew there was no going back to the way things used to be. She’d learned that in the asylum. But no one in the world would take her in now, a full-blooded Fire National; There was no guarantee any Fire Nation citizen wouldn’t recognize her, and she couldn’t imagine any other nation accepting a person who looked as Fire Nation as she does, peacetime or not. Azula was glad she’d gotten out of the asylum, but it really was out of the frying pan and into the fire, as it were, and she was starting to doubt why she’d even escaped in the first place.

She’d laugh if she didn’t feel so sick. She’d regained control of her mind, escaped the asylum, and now she was completely lost, with no allies or places to go. It was so hilariously ironic that it felt like the universe was slapping her in the face. Again, after months where she’d been forced to hear about Zuko and all the others living happy, fulfilling lives while she wasted away in a straitjacket. This was almost worse. Azula buried her face in her hands.

She didn’t know how long she lay there on the bank of the stream. A couple of hours, maybe. The sun had nearly disappeared behind the hills and her stomach was growling, but she ignored it. She felt like lying here for however long it took for the forest to claim her, but some invisible, cursed purpose begged her to get up. So she did, brushing off her silks, the pain in her hands now faded to a manageable ache.

She walked west as the world turned to dusk, trying to get her bearings but recognizing nothing in the thick forest. Soon, it became too dark to see, and she lifted a hand to call fire, and that was when the other shoe dropped.

Because, when she snapped her fingers, she made nothing but a tiny wisp of flame. Blue, then orange, then gone into the night. She tried again. It was smaller now, barely a spark. Her shoulders and back ached, and she felt like she’d expended all her energy just trying to call that pitiful flame. Chi-blocking, she realized, but she wasn’t chi-blocked now. It must have some kind of permanent effect, or else they’d given her some kind of drug that took away her bending? She hadn’t let the Avatar near her, so she’s certain it wasn’t that…

Her thoughts were chaotic and uncoordinated as Azula snapped her fingers again and again, even though she already knew it wouldn’t work. Her knees hit the ground as she cradled her hands to her chest. She couldn’t bend. She couldn’t bend. This was the final straw. She had lived through Zuko and Mai and Ty Lee leaving her. Coped with her mother’s invasion of her mind. She’d survived the isolation wards at the asylum, the humiliation of being watched at all times.

But now she had lost a part of herself. A part that she had always thought immovable, permanent; wherever she went, she would always have the light of Agni inside of her, bold and glowing. Even when she was chi-blocked, she had known that her bending would come back.

Or at least, she thought she had.

Stupid, worthless, weak. The words thundered through her mind. She felt tears drip from the tip of her nose and fall onto her knees among the bushes. Her sobs were loud and pulsed through her entire body.

“Oh, Azula,” a familiar voice sounded from above her. She lifted her head to see her mother standing a few feet from her, clothed in the royal red and gold. “I’m so sorry it had to be this way. Maybe it’s better like this.”

Azula snarled. Red-hot anger exploded inside of her. “You did this to me! You made me this way!” She screamed. She stood and rushed at her mother, tripping when Ursa turned to shadow in her hands. Azula choked in surprise, staring at her trembling palms. Her vision was tunneling, her gaze sliding in and out of focus. A voice growled in her ear, and it sounded like her father. Azula… I had such high hopes for you. You were everything I had made you to be. She dove away from the source of the voice, but it followed her. But look at you. You can’t pull yourself together. You can’t bend. You’re a failure, worse than your pathetic brother! At least he’s learned how to control himself.

“Stop! Stop! Please stop!” Azula cried, pushing her hands over her ears. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t see. “I’m not like Zuko! I’m better than him! I’ll do better, I promise!”

I don’t care. I never did. Who could ever care about you? Her father’s words were relentless. They mixed with her mother’s soft cadence, a rhythmic pulse of unintelligible sounds; with Zuko’s screams as their father burned him; with the cold hiss of Mai’s traitorous voice. Over and over. Azula stumbled forward, trying to get away, and her foot hooked on what could’ve been a root, or a rock, but she pitched forward before she could stop herself and now she was falling, rolling over and over down a hill. She dug her hands into the mud in a desperate attempt to stop herself but earned nothing but a muddy face as she continued to fall. Her right foot smacked against a rock and exploded in pain. Reeling from the shock, she rolled to a stop at the bottom of the slope, panting. Her foot throbbed and tears leaked from her eyes. She clutched the ground, pressing her face to the earth as the voices of her former friends and family invaded her mind.

Princess Azula cried herself to sleep.

. . .

“Zuzu! Zuzu!” Azula was skipping, laughing. Her body was alive with electric excitement. She pushed past a group of servants, sprinted through the courtyard, and launched herself on top of her brother, who was sitting idly by the turtleduck pond. Zuko narrowly avoided falling into the water and stumbled back, laughing, as Azula rolled off of him and hopped to her tiny, four-year-old feet.

“Look, Zuzu,” She breathed, and opened her palm. A tiny flame grew there, flickering, lighting Zuko’s surprised face a warm orange.

“Lala! You’re a firebender!” He said, awed.

“Let’s show Mother!” Azula grabbed her brother’s hand and pulled him through the halls of the Fire Nation Royal Palace until they reached their mother and father’s bedroom. Azula could barely reach the doorknob but before she could open the door, none other than the Fire Lord himself stormed out. Azula and Zuko both stumbled back. Their father’s gaze raked over them.

“What is this about, children?” Ozai inquired.

Zuko piped up. “Azula made flame,” he said.

Ozai’s gaze turned to Azula, eyes sparking with interest. “Is that so?”

Azula nodded and lifted her chubby hands to show him, but nothing came out when she tried to bend fire again. She exhaled into the flame but she could only make tiny wisps of smoke. This isn’t right, she thought to herself. This isn’t how it happened. She glanced back up at her father, whose face was contorted in unexplainable rage. Panicking, she looked to Zuko for help, but he was gone, and in his place were the huge pillars of the Agni Kai chamber, with thousands of pairs of eyes watching as Azula staggered away from her father.

When Ozai spoke, it was Ursa’s voice. “Why do you have to be so cruel?”

Azula choked on any words she tried to speak. Her father advanced, his face shadowed. He opened his mouth again, but it was Zuko this time. “You’re crazy! Why did I even think you could ever care about any of us?!”

Fire began to overtake the room, unbearably hot as it climbed up Azula’s skin.

“Listen, Azula,” And now it was Ty Lee’s voice, her usually bubbly tone uncharacteristically flat. “You had your chance to be a good friend. But I’m not falling for your games anymore.”

I tried to protect you! If I hadn’t put you in prison, my father would’ve killed you! Azula screamed but it was lost in the roar of fire. Don’t you understand?! Don’t any of you understand?! He would’ve killed me! He would’ve killed all of us! No one seemed to hear her. You betrayed me! Why?! Why did all of you betray me?

Azula keeled forward, and now she was looking up at her mother’s face, and Ursa cupped her chin, and the woman’s golden eyes were cold as she whispered, “Don’t you understand? You pushed us all away. Why did you even try? We all know you’re a monster.”

Azula woke in darkness, the words of her mother tracing her lips.

The pitch-black was so disconcerting that for a second Azula thought she must have been dead; dead or in some kind of dreamscape she couldn’t get out of. But she gripped the grass under her hands and slowly but surely managed to convince herself that she was in the world of the living. The pain of her injured foot only intensified as she sat up, but it only served to push her further awake, and for that she was grateful.

She wasn’t used to waking up in the dark. She rose with the sun, like all firebenders. Or… she had. A hollow kind of despair sat uncomfortably inside of her chest. Could she even call herself a firebender anymore? She had no idea if she’d ever bend again.

She raised her head to the sky and found it to be a soft indigo; sunrise was nearing. She could feel the power of the sun pulling at her, still; and maybe it should’ve given her hope, but she felt like an empty shell. The night before was a blur, but the emotions had stayed. Worthless. Weak. Everything she’d sworn never to be, she was now. No political power, no leverage, no bending.

Azula rose in a daze, ignoring the pain of her foot. She felt very, very far away from her own body as she marched through the undergrowth in a strange, unconscious push to keep walking. Her thoughts felt numbed, but dimly she wondered if Zuko had sent out a search party for her. She doubted it, but Zuko was unpredictable. Who cares? A little voice said in her mind. Who knows how long you’ll be around anyway? There’s nothing tying you here anymore. The thoughts swirled in her head, painful but somewhat comforting in their truth.

Pangs of hunger assaulted her stomach, but Azula ignored them. She kept walking, even as her foot throbbed and began to swell. She had no idea how long she walked for; time seemed to blur and the world around her seemed muted, but the sun was high in the sky by the time she stopped to rest. She hadn’t been running, but she was panting like she’d just finished a long workout. When she felt her foot, it was swollen and red. Not broken, she didn’t think, but a bad sprain; she shouldn’t be walking on it, but Azula just didn’t care. She felt sick with hunger and her throat was parched, the summer humidity sticking to her skin.

Azula’s mind wandered as she got up again to keep walking, muscles straining, heart thumping. She wanted to get out of the forest, find a village–– but she also didn’t really see the point. Every train of thought led her to a place she was scared to go. Her body screamed at her to find food, find water, but even after walking for the entire day she had yet to see anything she recognized as edible. Not that Azula knew the first thing about surviving in the wilderness.

She was okay with it, she thought. Maybe she’d just keep walking until…

Well, until.

Sunset had spread its crimson fingers across the horizon when she could finally walk no more. She had never eaten much in the asylum, but now she wished she had; even two days without food and her head buzzed as she fought against unconsciousness. She had sweat out any water she’d had left in her body, and was now just a dry, bony shell of herself, wasting away into the air without even her inner fire to help her. Panting, Azula fell to her knees, eyes closed as she trembled with exertion; then she fell sideways into soft grass. She drifted along a sea of hollow hunger and wondered why she’d even escaped the asylum in the first place. She should’ve known she was always going to end up here.

But this is an okay place to die, Azula thought. She could smell the thick perfume of summer flowers around her, and looking around she saw she had fallen in a patch of familiar red blossoms. Her fingers drifted through the fronds. Fire lilies. They only bloomed a few weeks a year in midsummer, and back in the days of Azula’s very early childhood, her mother used to plant them in the gardens so they’d bloom around Azula’s birthday.

Oh. Azula did a quick calculation and huffed a laugh as she realized.

It’s my fifteenth birthday.

She closed her eyes. It’s quite a feat to die on your birthday. What a fitting end.

She wondered if she’d be found.

If she was, where would they cast her ashes?

It’s not like I have a home anymore.

A soft black tide filled her head, lapping against unfamiliar shores.

Azula felt a cool touch against her arms. She didn’t have the energy to wonder what it was. She didn’t protest as she was lifted up into the sky, the pain shooting through her foot a faraway thing.

Is this what it feels like to die?

The last thing she heard before she let herself succumb to the dark was the whistle of wind, and a smooth, lilting voice that sounded like home.

Chapter Text

Azula awoke in the sun.

For a moment, she lay with her eyes half-open, feeling the light stroke her arms with warm fingers, and the breath of morning wind graze her cheek. Her head felt pleasantly fuzzy. She gazed mutedly around, not yet fully conscious. She was in some kind of cottage, small and warm and wood-paneled; a peasant’s house, and the air smelled of something spiced. Vegetables and dried meats hung from the ceiling, a washbasin was partially hidden by a shoji screen, a sink was stacked with unwashed dishes. It was unmistakably a home. Her eyes drifted over a rocking chair next to her bed, then her gaze snapped back when she realized the chair was occupied. A peasant woman, wrapped in a knit blanket, was sleeping in the chair. Her hair was silver, maybe once black by the dark hairs still growing from her scalp, and her skin was light brown and lined with age.

Azula quickly sat up and immediately regretted it, letting out an embarrassing cry of pain as her foot throbbed. Everything hurt all at once–– her muscles ached, the buzz in her head had become painfully heavy, and her stomach burned with hunger . The woman’s eyes snapped open, and they immediately colored with care.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” the woman said, and stood up. Her accent reminded Azula of the soldiers in the army, a peasant’s speech. “Lie back down, you’re making the pain worse.” With that, she stepped around Azula’s bed and went about making tea on a stove. Azula stared at her. The woman hummed to herself, and Azula watched as she sent out a quick stream of flame from her fingertips to light the stove. Azula bit her lip and tried to take inventory of the situation.

Her skin was clean and freshly bandaged, and running a hand through her loose hair Azula realized it had been washed. She flushed in embarrassment, followed by anger that a peasant dared touch her hair without her permission. She was passed out, but still.

Gingerly, she felt under her blankets and found that her right foot was tightly bandaged and elevated on a pillow. So the woman had bandaged her wounds and cleaned her hair–– but none of that answered the question of how Azula had gotten here in the first place. The woman didn’t look like she would’ve been able to carry Azula. With a growing sense of displacement, Azula watched the woman peruse a stash of various teas.

“Is there any particular tea you enjoy?” The woman said without looking over, and it took a second for Azula to realize she was speaking to her. 

“No,” Azula said. Tea had never really been her thing.

“Well then, I suppose we’ll go with my favorite,” The woman replied, depositing tea leaves into two mugs and pouring the hot water over them. She walked back to her chair and set both of them on a bedside table.

“Please lean back,” The woman said. “Your foot is badly sprained, and moving it will prolong the healing process. This is sweet green tea,” she passed a mug to Azula, who took it. 

“Now,” the woman continued. “What should I call you?”

Azula stared at her. She had never been asked that before. Everyone knew she was Princess Azula. But… Azula guessed she was pretty far from the capital. Propaganda posters were probably spread thin out here. The woman waited patiently as Azula caught herself spacing out and realized she should respond. 

“Setsuna,” Azula said. Agni, she hadn’t even known she still remembered that name, but it had been the first thing she thought of. Setsuna had been the name of the girl Lu Ten had had a crush on. Azula had teased him about it mercilessly. 

“Setsuna,” The woman echoed, smiling. “It’s lovely to meet you. My name is Ishiyo.” She sipped her tea. “I’m the one who wrapped your wounds and made you the tea you’re not drinking.”

Azula glared at the mug in her hands, not taking the bait. 

The woman–– Ishiyo–– continued. “You’re in the north end of Amaimizu Valley in the eastern Fire Nation. About two chō away is the village of Tayouka, for which I am the local healer.”

Tayouka. She recognized the name of the small village. So, I’m about a week’s travel from the capital city. “How did I get here?” Azula asked.

“Oh, isn’t that everybody’s question,” The peasant woman–– Ishiyo–– laughed lightly. “The Lily Spirit brought you to me. She brings me many of my patients this time of year.”

Azula had absolutely nothing to say to that. As if a spirit brought her to this peasant’s house in the middle of nowhere. She cursed her luck. She was under the care of a crazy peasant with a sprained ankle hindering any sort of escape.

“I won’t press, but I would like to know if you have a place to stay once you’re safe to move.” Ishiyo said. “Is there someone I can contact?”

“No,” Azula replied and didn’t elaborate. “When will I be healed enough to move?” She wanted to get on the road as soon as possible. She didn’t belong here, and this woman was making her nervous. 

“I would put your recovery at about a week until you can begin to walk and seven weeks in total.” Ishiyo replied. “Unfortunately, it’s a severe sprain. Your ligaments have been torn in three places.”

Azula had stopped listening after hearing seven weeks. Seven weeks?! She was supposed to stay under the care of some dirty peasant for almost two months, relying on her for food and water and shelter, living in a place a person like Azula should never have even stepped foot in, without her bending or her influence or her identity? It was a nightmare. And this woman was looking at her with a face that seemed so pitying and pathetic Azula wanted to burn her face off. But she couldn’t because she couldn’t bend. It was such a terrible situation that Azula would’ve laughed at the irony of it all if she hadn’t felt so awful.

“And I suppose you think you’re going to take care of me for all that time?” Azula jeered.

“Well, I’m a healer. It’s my job,” Ishiyo responded mildly. 

Azula scoffed. “What do you want from me? Go find another charity case.”

Ishiyo raised an eyebrow. “I only want you to recover as well as possible.”

Azula was starting to get the picture. Ishiyo was probably the type of person who helped people to feel better about themselves; there’s surely some insecurity deep down there that could be exploited. As of now, well, the peasant woman was freely giving resources and time to Azula, but undoubtedly that wouldn’t last. Azula created a file in her mind for more observations of Ishiyo’s pressure points. Until the woman gave away something telling, well, Azula could at least pretend to be the perfect patient.

“Well,” She lowered her voice to what she hoped was a convincingly awkward murmur. “Thank you.”

Ishiyo eyed her for a moment, and for a second Azula thought she’d seen through her show. But then the peasant woman smiled and said, “It’s my pleasure. Now, let’s get some food in you. Agni knows you need it.”

Azula wanted to feel some satisfaction at her convincing impression, but she just felt hollow. Annoyed that instead of passing peacefully in a patch of fire lilies, she was stuck here, with no place to go and no goal in mind. Just to survive.

But hadn’t that been Azula’s goal her entire life? Survive her mother by taunting Zuko and pretending not to care. Survive her father by being perfect and ruthless, all the time. Survive the war by leading it. Survive the perils of social interaction by lording her status over everyone else so they couldn’t reject her, survive the asylum by isolating herself, survive, survive, survive. It was all she really knew how to do, at the end of the day. 

So she would survive this too.

Ichiyo bustled around in the kitchen and soon enough, Azula was glowering at a bowl of steaming food. 

“I know, I know okayu’s probably not your favorite,” Ishiyo said as she dug into her bowl in the chair next to Azula’s bed. “Is it anyone’s? But we should take it slow for now. Your body’s been through a lot recently.” Her tone was calm but Azula could see that her eyes were sharp with curiosity. 

Azula broke the old woman’s gaze and stirred at the rice pudding with her chopsticks. Her hunger won over eventually, and she took a bite of the soft food. It tasted amazing, actually, and her bowl was scraped clean before she even realized what had happened. Ishiyo chatted the entire meal and Azula tuned her out.

“Well, you certainly finished that fast!” Ishiyo exclaimed, whisking away the bowl. “I’m glad you’re eating, Setsuna. You weren’t in the best shape when the Spirit brought you to me. I won’t pry, but I do want you to know that you’re safe now.”

More spirit nonsense, plus a completely untrue statement that had Azula scoffing internally. Safe. Sure. Safe and stuck in a peasant’s house, stubbornly alive and with nowhere to go. 

On the outside, Azula smiled a little in what she hoped was a convincing shyness. “Thank you,” She whispered again. The words felt foreign in her mouth. 

Ishiyo smiled, and it was so warm that Azula felt her facade falter. She couldn’t say exactly what was so startling about that smile, but it made Azula feel… well, feel.

“All right then,” Ishiyo stood up with a sharp breath. “Duty calls. I’m still the town healer, and a job like that requires constant vigilance! You rest, and I’ll be in the other room if you need anything.” She pointed at a sliding paper door which split the tiny cabin into two rooms. Azula gave a nod and suddenly realized how tired she was. She didn’t have to fake a yawn as she leaned back against her pillows.

She might not be happy to be there, but Azula wasn’t stupid enough to pass up free resources. Sighing, she settled into a more comfortable position and allowed herself to drift off to sleep.

. . . 

It was evening when Azula woke again. She exhaled, eyes half-closed as she let cool summer air blow through an open window against her face. She heard the thrum of voices, well, a voice not too far away from her, and kept her eyes closed as she listened closer.

“But she’s been hurting, and I think for a long time,” it was Ishiyo’s voice. Sad, but comforting at the same time.

“So we’re going to have to give her lots of attention and love, okay?” The woman continued. Whoever she was talking to didn’t seem to be responding. 

“I know you’re not going to have a problem with that,” Ishiyo laughed. “But you gotta keep me on my best behavior, okay? Okay,” There was a low, purring chirp and Ishiyo’s next words had a smile in them. “Aw. What would I do without you?”

Great. Now the woman was talking to an owlcat. But that wasn’t the thought at the forefront of Azula’s mind. Instead, she stewed in confusion. Attention and love? She’d done nothing for this woman. She understood, at least a little, the food, the care–– it was part of the woman’s job. But the suggestion of… of any kind of care beyond that made no sense to Azula.

Maybe it was staged. That made the most sense. Maybe Ishiyo knew Azula was awake and was staging the conversation with the owlcat to get Azula to trust her. Joke’s on her, because the last time Azula had trusted someone, she had ended up lying helpless on the concrete of the Boiling Rock. Two can play at this game, Azula thought. So they’d both fake good feelings towards the other. Then, as soon as Azula could run, she’d get out of this stupid cottage and never look back.

The care in the old woman’s voice must have been faked. Azula knew this, and she knew what it felt like to have people pretend to care about her. She knew what it felt like to pretend to care about other people.

So it shouldn’t hurt this much. 

. . . 

The peasant woman was already up when Azula woke the next morning. 

It was very early, judging by the pale white sunlight illuminating the cottage. Azula didn’t feel at all like sitting up–– in fact, even though she’d just slept nearly 24 hours, her limbs felt heavy. She was jolted quickly awake, though, by the intense pain that shot through her foot when she so much as moved. She tried to smother her cry of pain, but Ishiyo heard it anyway, and turned from where she had been bustling around in the kitchen.

“Setsuna! Good morning! How’s your foot?” Ishiyo was holding a plate of steamed buns in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. 

“Fine,” Azula responded out of habit, unable to hold back a wince as she moved a little more. Her stomach growled traitorously, though, and Ishiyo’s smile grew wider.

“All right! Let’s get some food in you and then we’ll take a look at your foot.” She turned around and Azula leaned her own head back against the wall, cursing her life. What exactly was so abhorrent about this situation Azula couldn’t really put her finger on, but she hated it. She was so far from where she belonged. She’d always known she wasn’t meant to be Firelord, per se–– her position in the Royal Family meant she’d grow into a high-ranking advisor or general at the very most, a baby machine at the least, and she’d never been blind to that fact. But. But. This was not a place where someone of her stature should be. Everything was left of where it should’ve been, and it had been ever since… well, Azula couldn’t pinpoint when the breakdown of everything she had ever understood had started, but it had definitely happened, and now she was here, with a badly injured foot and an overly happy peasant serving her steamed buns. 

The steamed buns smelled good, though, and Azula tried her hardest not to stuff her face with them once they’d been set in front of her, just like she had with the okayu the day before. Now that it had access to food that wasn’t asylum goop, Azula’s stomach had decided it wanted to eat after all, and Ishiyo actually had to place a hand on Azula’s plate to remind her to eat slower.

If Azula hadn’t been watched 24/7 for four months straight, that would’ve been the most humiliating moment of her entire life, actually. 

“All right then,” Ishiyo said, oblivious to Azula’s embarrassment. “Let’s take a look at that foot of yours.”

Finally. Azula’s foot was the worst pain she’d had for a while, probably ever since she was very young and didn’t know how not to burn herself with her own flames. That had been a wake up call, and her fingers still bore little scars. Barely visible. Azula was pretty sure Ty Lee was the only one who’d ever noticed them. 

Azula shifted, pulling back the covers and wincing when she saw her right foot. It was wrapped, but it had swelled what felt like twice its size. She looked at the peasant woman in expectation. At least she knew how to do this, sit regal as some useless peasant wrapped any wounds she happened to pick up on the Avatar’s trail.

First Ty Lee, now the Avatar. Get out of my head.

“I’m going to remove the bandage, is that okay?” Ishiyo interrupted Azula’s thoughts, a welcome interruption. 

“What? Yes, of course it’s fine,” Azula snapped, then immediately regretted it. Stupid! She couldn’t even keep up the easiest of appearances. 

Luckily, Ishiyo didn’t seem fazed, and just unwrapped the bandages. Azula winced, even the slightest touch to her sensitive skin hurting.

“I’m sorry, Setsuna. Does it hurt a lot?” Ishiyo asked, looking up at Azula.

“It’s fine ,” Azula said through gritted teeth. To the surprise of no one, Ishiyo saw right through that. The old woman settled deeper in her chair.

“I have a pain-relieving technique that uses firebending to suppress nerve firings, among other things,” Ishiyo dropped that bomb so quickly that it left Azula wondering if she’d heard correctly. 

“You use firebending? To suppress pain?” Azula paraphrased, feeling stupid but hardly caring because she had to know what the old woman was talking about. 

“That’s right–– we call it fire-healing. Though it’s not a permanent solution, the pain relief usually lasts several hours.” 

How?! Azula thought, but didn’t say. Her brain immediately begin sorting through all the ways one could firebend this way, but Azula had hardly any experience in medicine, and she’d always been more of a history person than any other intellectual field. Nerve firings–– that was electricity , wasn’t it? This woman was a lightning bender, too? A nerve-lightning-bender. Azula’s head spun. Something inside of her screamed to ask how do you do it and please teach me , because there wasn’t a firebending technique on Earth that Princess Azula hadn’t mastered. 

Except, now there was, and Azula couldn’t even learn it because she couldn’t bend anymore, because the world seemed intent on taking everything from her. In addition to that, Ishiyo didn’t know Azula had ever been a firebender at all, and Azula felt that revealing that pushed her a little too close to the edge of suspicious, seeing as upwards of ninety percent of all firebenders aged 14 to ancient had been drafted for the war, and Azula’s part in the war was about as far as you can get from a foot soldier. On top of that, there was the whole issue that Ishiyo was a peasant and was utterly unqualified to teach Azula anything at all. Azula didn’t have official status, sure, but she still had standards, and Ishiyo definitely did not meet them.

But Agni damn it, Azula was going to see what fire-healing at least looked like.

“Setsuna? What do you think?” Ishiyo asked.

Azula nodded. “Yes, go ahead,” as if she wasn’t burning to see, to feel what fire-healing really was, and also to get relief from the throbbing pain of her foot, which had only gotten worse.

Ishiyo placed one hand over Azula’s foot and the other near her head, closed her eyes, and inhaled in a way that Azula recognized as the breath of a firebender. Ishiyo’s hands were flat, her fingers spread, reminiscent of a waterbender, of all things. 

Ishiyo exhaled, and a spark of pain shot through Azula’s entire body. She bit back a cry, surprised, but then––

Then there was nothing.

The pain in her foot dulled. A headache she didn’t know she’d been nursing buzzed away. Ishiyo flexed her fingers like a puppeteer wielding strings, and it was amazing how effective it was. Did the old woman invent this? Azula had never heard of it. The idea of using firebending to heal felt extremely foreign in Azula’s mind, but the intense control it must take to manipulate nerves was fascinating. 

“Is that better?” Ishiyo asked, opening her golden-brown eyes. She rubbed her fingers together, clenching her fists then shaking them out, and Azula had done that countless times, to get out the lingering feeling of static electricity after bending lightning. The sight of such a familiarity hurt, for some reason. Azula may never bend lightning again, if she regained her bending at all.

“It’s better,” Azula experimentally flexed her foot, and found that even without Ishiyo’s control, the pain was dulled significantly. 

“I’m glad,” Ishiyo said warmly, but her eyes were trained on Azula in a way that felt uncomfortable somehow. Probing. But the look was gone so quickly that Azula thought she may have imagined it, and Ishiyo stood, flipping a lock of silver hair behind her shoulder. “Just because it feels better doesn’t mean you’re cleared to walk. I’m going to rewrap it and get you some cold rags, and then if you’d like I can get you something to do while you’re in bed. Can you read?”

Azula probably lost a good ten years of her life trying not to scream at that .

Chapter Text

Ishiyo was a tough nut to crack. She whirled through her own life with a kind of energetic contentment that had to be faked, chatting to Azula about whatever seemed to be on her mind; her patients in the village, her co-conspiratoring owlcat (whose name, Azula learned, was Kaki), even the weather. The peasant woman was so smiley all the time, but her words had an undercurrent of clever sarcasm that Azula was aching to uncover. Not just because she was a fire-healer, a concept Azula still didn’t fully understand, and not just because she wanted to get at least some kind of dirt on the woman before she inevitably decided Azula was more trouble than she was worth and left her, but also because Azula was bored. Hopelessly, maddeningly bored. 

It had been two weeks since her “rescue,” and after several days of doing nothing but reading old poetry (not Azula’s favorite form of literature) and sleeping, Azula was finally able to hobble around the cottage, but she was aching to do something other than chores for Ishiyo. Azula had never been one to sit idly but now she couldn’t really do much other than simple chores for the old woman. Ishiyo was taking advantage of Azula’s ability to walk with gusto. Setsuna, sort the medicines! Setsuna, boil some water. Setsuna, wash the dishes! 

The first time a request like this had been posed Azula had stared at Ishiyo for an embarrassingly long time. She had never washed dishes in her life. She had hardly even stepped inside a kitchen. It was quite possibly the strangest order she had ever gotten. The old Azula wouldn’t be caught dead washing dishes. 

“Well, spirits, Setsuna,” Ishiyo had laughed as if it was no big deal. “You’d think I’d asked you to go run naked through the streets.”

Azula had held back a snap and just pushed past Ishiyo to the water tub. She’d fumbled through washing the dishes doing her best impression of knowing what she was doing, hating every second of it. She wasn’t sure Ishiyo had bought it, but at least the old woman hadn’t said anything.

Despite the chores, Azula was still bored. She felt way too energized, in a kind of uncomfortable way that she couldn’t really put her finger on. It felt like she was balancing a glass of water on her head like how Ty Lee used to when they were kids–– as if Azula was going to move wrong, and the glass would fall to the ground and shatter. What was wrong with her? She wasn’t even doing anything. But whenever Ishiyo smiled at her, or asked her to help with a task, Azula felt the glass wobble. Like she was just waiting for it to break. 

And she couldn’t stop thinking about fire-healing. Every day Azula bickered with herself in her head, thinking that maybe she could tell Ishiyo that she was a bender, or had been at one point, on the off-chance that Ishiyo would say something like, “Oh! Of course, losing one’s bending completely from a cause still not entirely determined, very normal problem, which I can solve,” or at least tell her more about the history of fire-healing and anything else that Azula should have learned on her exploits to the library as a child but didn’t because apparently controlling the electricity inside of a person didn’t make it into the history books. But then every single instinct Azula had screamed back that there were abundant reasons why Azula shouldn’t reveal her bending, or lack thereof, or express a desire to learn fire-healing, and the issue of Ishiyo being a peasant wasn’t even the most crucial one. Mostly, trying to explain that she lost her bending without giving any details away would be near impossible, even for Azula. There just wasn’t a story Azula could come up with that she thought Ishiyo would buy. 

So Azula was not learning fire-healing, and that was that.

Regarding Ishiyo, the woman was still extremely boring but painfully transparent. Clearly, the old peasant woman decided that having a fifteen-year-old injured girl around to wash her dishes and listen to her babble was absolutely worth the trouble of feeding said girl, and had taken the predictable route of taking every single moment to smile at or talk to Azula to try to butter her up. It didn’t work, and anyone halfway versed in manipulation tactics would know that. You couldn’t lay it on too thick, in the beginning. Azula had made that mistake before, with her mother. She’d tried her best to act as nice and smiley as possible because she thought Ursa was stupid enough to buy it, and then her mother wouldn’t be so angry when she found Azula burning shapes into the grass in the courtyard, or something else that was fun to Azula’s six-year-old mind. But it turns out her mother wasn’t stupid–– something Azula had learned in full later, after Azulon was found dead next to a half-drunk teacup–– and she’d just told Azula to stop being so manipulative and go find something else to do.

Ah. So it was one of those days, Azula thought now, as she scrubbed the bottom of a stubborn, greasy pan. One of those days where everywhere she turned there were memories. She made sure the last bits of oil and crumbs were scrubbed off the metal pan–– she might have lost all dignity when she allowed Ishiyo to order her to wash dishes, but she wasn’t going to do it badly if she was going to do it at all–– and reached for the next dish, a handmade bowl.

Most of the dishes they ate on were handmade, Ishiyo had told her a few days ago, and one of the old woman’s favorite pastimes was sitting down at the big wooden table in the center of the room and making whatever she wanted out of clay. It was, Azula had to admit, relaxing to watch Ishiyo form the cups and plates with her hands. The woman hummed to herself as she did it, her face the very picture of tranquility. Right now, she was sitting at the table, crushing bits of roots into a clean paste with a–– what was that called again? Oh, right, mortar and pestle. If Azula had learned anything from this stint in the house of a peasant woman, it was the names of useless things that no one but a peasant would ever feel the need to have.

Remember your place, my daughter. Out there you may see things that are unsavory, inappropriate for a princess such as yourself. You owe the filth nothing, and–– 

It was one of those days. Azula shook her head as if that would somehow clear the sound of her father’s voice out. It wasn’t actually her father’s voice–– her episodes didn’t just appear like that–– but it was a strong memory all the same. 

His words didn’t make sense anymore, and it felt traitorous to think. Ishiyo’s cabin was small, sure, and nowhere near what Azula had been accustomed to most of her life. 

But it was better than the asylum. Much better, and Azula couldn’t bring herself to call Ishiyo filthy even if the woman was clearly beneath her. 

Nothing made sense anymore.

Azula was still holding the handmade bowl, and she set it down in the sink to wash it. Or she tried, but her annoyance was evidently leaking into her hands, because the bowl broke into several pieces with a loud clunk. 

Azula froze. That decided it, she was actually the most useless person ever. She couldn’t even do the simplest task that even peasants could do without breaking things. She couldn’t even control her own mind. 

“Oh!” Ishiyo’s voice came from behind her, and Azula flinched. Would she be mad? What would the woman do, if she was mad? Azula had no blueprint for Ishiyo’s anger. Would she––

“Hey, don’t worry about that, Setsuna! Happens to all of us!” Ishiyo pushed past Azula and collected the pieces with careful hands. The old woman deposited them onto the big table, and removed a tiny bottle of a gold substance from her cabinet. 

“Here we go. Mica powder.” Ishiyo said, settling down at the table. Azula tried to tamp down her nervousness. She’d forgotten, Ishiyo was playing good samaritan, of course she’d control her anger for stupid mistakes. Ishiyo continued, tapping some of the powder out into a little bowl. “We use it for kintsugi. ” 

“Gold repair?” Azula translated, then immediately regretted showing that she understood the old speech. Most peasants wouldn’t have. 

“That’s right,” Ishiyo replied, not missing a beat. Did anything shake this woman? Azula had her work cut out for her. “I make the mica powder into a glue, and repair the bowl with it. You can look in the cabinet for an example, I think Kaki has broken most of our dishes at least once.” She gestured to the cabinet above the sink and when Azula turned to open it, she saw that several of the dishes were repaired in a similar way, with gold hairline fractures running through them like rivers. Azula truthfully hadn’t noticed them before, but most of them were like that. Stupid owlcat. 

“When we repair with gold, we highlight the breaks inside of hiding them.” Ishiyo explained. “The cracks will always be there, so why shouldn’t we celebrate them? That’s what kintsugi is about. Imperfection isn’t just essential, it’s beautiful.”

Azula raised an eyebrow. “Is that some kind of metaphor?”

“You do listen,” Ishiyo smiled. “Here,” she patted the seat beside her. “Do you want to learn?”

Azula didn’t, at all. “All right.” Just act interested. She clearly wants you to do this with her. 

Despite Azula’s reluctance, the kintsugi was actually fairly relaxing. Something about carefully painting the adhesive on each piece of pottery took a care and focus that Azula had been missing without her bending, and for some reason, she was hit with no unwelcome memories as she worked. After, when she held the repaired bowl in her hands, it felt satisfying in a way Azula hadn’t expected. Like when she mastered a firebending kata, or created a new one, all her own.

“You did quite well,” Ishiyo praised, tracing the gold lines of the bowl. “I think you’ve got a magic touch, Setsuna.” 

Azula fought not to roll her eyes. “It’s not particularly difficult.”

“It is difficult, but you have steady hands. Have you ever done any sort of art before?” Ishiyo asked.

“No,” Azula lied. She had, but only things like calligraphy as was expected of royal children, and bending if you count that.

“Well,” the old woman had a dangerous twinkle in her eye. “What about healing?”

. . . 

And thus began a new routine that, thank Agni, didn’t involve very much talking on Azula’s part. For the next week, she spent her days shelving her emotions, making medicines, and shadowing Ishiyo as the old woman treated patients from Tayouka.

There was the young mother of a small boy who had been ill for a week–– the kid smelled like sickness, and barely spoke a word to Ishiyo, and definitely not Azula. Ishiyo prescribed a handful of medicines and spent ten minutes telling the mother what to do and what not to do, because she couldn’t seem to stand to let the pair out of her sight. When they left, the old woman stood in front of the closed door for a little longer than made sense, and Azula didn’t miss her reddened eyes.

There was the old man who came in frequently for his stiff joints, whose appearance Azula absolutely dreaded not because there was anything particularly off-putting about the man, but because Ishiyo literally flirted with him whenever he came by. Which Azula could really live without, thanks.

Then there was the soldier–– his name was Sunan–– who had come three times in the week since Azula had begun to shadow Ishiyo. His shoulder had been shattered by an earthbender’s projectile during the war, and by the powerful drugs Ishiyo was having Azula make, was in a lot of pain that fire-healing either didn’t last long enough or simply wasn’t powerful enough for. 

Still, the potency of fire-healing couldn’t be understated, and that was why Sunan came in so frequently. He would lie down on the table in the middle of the second room with practiced ease to let Ishiyo float her hands over his shoulder, dulling the nerves and soothing any inflammation. Ishiyo talked to him easily, asking questions from his pain levels to how his family was, and he matched her personality with a warm smile and frequent jokes. 

Azula didn’t like Sunan very much, and as interesting as it was to watch Ishiyo’s fire-healing, she wished he didn’t come in so often.

It wasn’t his fault. He just reminded her of Lu Ten. 

Azula may have agreed to help Ishiyo with her healing practice, even learn a little bit, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say that she was actively some kind of apprentice. She felt that Ishiyo was, in terms of peasants, a fine one; but Azula’s tolerance did not extend to the other residents of Tayouka. She still had a long way to go before she threw herself into a service role for a bunch of villagers. Every other structure in her life had fallen apart, but Azula still was confident of that much. 

If she had been learning fire-healing, she may–– may –– have allowed herself to have a more hands-on role. But when Ishiyo had said healing, she meant making putrid-smelling medicines and writing down reminders, not learning the world’s most obscure and difficult type of bending. Not that Azula could.

She had tried to produce flames once since waking up in Ishiyo’s cottage, when the other woman had been on an outing. Smoke had risen from Azula’s palm, and tiny orange flames had licked her fingers. Nothing Azula could do would make the fire bigger, let alone blue. It had been a relief that she could at least do that much, but not much of one, and she’d felt like crying. Like a weakling.

For whatever reason, Ishiyo hadn’t asked Azula if she was a bender or not. In fact, Ishiyo’s lack of curiosity perplexed Azula. The woman seemed content to allow Azula to just… exist. Do chores, yes, but Ishiyo always made sure Azula sat down and stretched her foot. Got enough rest and food. And so Azula did . She kept her appearance at all times: the perfect, grateful patient. She controlled her urges to run, to yell, to snark back. As the days passed and Ishiyo’s behavior never changed, Azula knew she had succeeded in her show. She was, after all, a prodigy. 

She put most of her focus into getting her foot better, which unfortunately was not happening very quickly. Ishiyo had told her, days ago, “I can help with the pain and recovery, but I can’t guarantee it will be as good as new,” and Azula had dropped the mask without meaning to and snapped, “So what good are you to me, then?” 

Surprise had colored Ishiyo’s eyes, just a little, and shame had filled Azula. Now you’ve done it. You messed up and now she’ll see what a monster you really are, and now you won’t be able to keep her in line because she’ll leave you like everybody else did ––

But Ishiyo had breathed, and her eyes had softened. “Well, I think I make pretty good katsudon,” She had joked, like there had been no harm done. The joke hadn’t done anything to calm Azula’s nerves, but at least they could both go back to faking care for one another in peace. 

Today, Azula ate breakfast outside on the deck of Ishiyo’s cottage. The midmorning fog hung heavy in the air, and Azula could feel a storm in the wind. Ever since she was little, Azula had been able to tell when lightning storms were coming, and she’d loved them her whole life. The electric breeze was infectious, and as a kid she’d always felt happiest in a storm. That was probably poetic or something, but Azula didn’t care to explore the thought. She worked through a bowl of rice and eggs–– which was actually good, who knew peasant food could taste so good?–– and tried to ignore how empty her whole body felt, even with the promise of a storm.

She felt mostly empty these days.

“Setsuna!” Ishiyo called from inside. “Come give me a hand!” 

Azula rolled her eyes at her bowl of food, but didn’t hesitate to limp inside. She had to keep up this facade, because, well, it had worked so far. She couldn’t lose her only source of food and medical treatment. She wasn’t that stupid.

She almost tripped over Kaki the owlcat, who chirped at her as he leapt onto the kitchen counter. She snarled at the animal, who looked balefully back at her with yellow eyes, as if to say, if you didn’t want to trip over me you shouldn’t have walked where I was. Azula resisted the urge to scream at him. 

She looked around the cottage and didn’t see Ishiyo anywhere, so the woman must be in her workspace behind the screen that separated the cottage. Azula slid it open and was surprised to see that Ishiyo was not alone. She mentally kicked herself. Of course Ishiyo had patients right now, it was well into the morning. Azula was just a little thrown off. And angry. Agni knew why.

Ishiyo’s patient was a teenage girl, probably around Azula’s age, actually. She seemed surprised to see Azula but smiled when their eyes met. Azula quickly averted her eyes and looked at Ishiyo in expectation.

“Thanks, Setsuna,” She said cheerily. “Would you mind putting together a bag for Fumiko here? She’ll want a snakeroot extract, garlic tonic, and would you smash up some gingko leaves into a paste?”

Azula nodded, still a little shaken. She limped over to the cabinet where Setsuna kept her medicines and started putting the requested bottles into a small canvas bag. She crushed some gingko in a mortar and pestle, keeping an idle ear on the voices of Ishiyo and the girl–– Fumiko.

“And how are the babies?” Ishiyo asked warmly.

“Just fine,” Fumiko had a smile in her voice. Her accent was very strange, and had an odd lilt that had Azula struggling to understand what she was saying. “Koji took his first steps just a few days ago. Mother’s been riding that high all week.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Ishiyo said. “You must bring him up here to meet Setsuna and I. Bring the whole family one of these days, we’ll whip up a feast.”

Azula did not like the sound of that but kept quiet.

“Okay, you’re all done,” Ishiyo said. “Everything seems to be running smoothly in that heart of yours. But remember, no strenuous activity, snakeroot and garlic in the mornings, gingko––”

“––In the evenings. I know, I know, Ishiyo,” Fumiko said. Azula finished smashing the gingko and scraped the paste into a bottle. 

“I know you do,” Ishiyo laughed. “It’s a healer’s job to nag! Can’t have you collapsing on all of us again.”

“I won’t,” Fumiko promised. Azula turned around, avoiding Fumiko’s gaze, and held out the bag to Ishiyo instead.

“Thanks, Setsuna,” Ishiyo didn’t change her warm tone. “You know what? Why don’t you walk Fumiko here down to the village. It’ll be good for you to get out.”

Azula opened her mouth to protest but was interrupted by Ishiyo aggressively pushing the bag of medicine into Azula’s chest and spinning her towards the door. “Fumiko, you tell your mother she’s welcome anytime. There’s a storm in the wind so stay safe! Keep those babies healthy! Don’t walk too fast and take breaks!” Ishiyo called as she slammed the door behind them. Azula glared at the sliding paper door and hated everything.

“Agni, she can’t turn it off, can she?” Fumiko laughed. Azula cast an appraising eye over the peasant girl. She was shorter than Azula by several inches and had a lithe build; her black hair came down to the tops of her shoulders and her gold-brown eyes were sharp with mirth. Fumiko easily adapted to Azula’s limping speed as they stepped down a dusty path towards the village, hills and forest rising all around them.

There was a beat of silence before Fumiko said, “So. Setsuna, right? I’m Fumiko, but I think you already heard that. I haven’t seen you around! Are you helping Ishiyo with her healing practice?” Azula had really only ever spoken to people with the accent of the Fire Nation elite, which was decidedly not what Fumiko was, and that made the other girl’s accent difficult to parse out, but Azula managed.

Azula clutched the bag of medicines tightly and nodded. “I have been, yes.” She replied, not even trying to hide the irritation in her voice. There was no reason to keep up her facade here. 

“Cool!” The peasant girl said. “Where are you from?”

Azula winced internally. But the best lies were half-truths, so she said, “I was born in Caldera City.”

“The capital! Wow!” Fumiko exclaimed. Her loud tone was hurting Azula’s ears. “Bet you went to some fancy school, huh? I heard they all do over there.”

“Yes.” Azula said and didn’t elaborate.

Beat. The girl seemed uncomfortable with the quiet and said, “Sorry if I’m being a little loud. There aren’t a ton of people our age in the village, ‘cause of the war. I got out of the draft on account of my bad heart. Guess it’s good for something.” She laughed a little. “What’s your excuse? Your foot?”

Azula looked down at her splinted right foot. “...Yes, that’s right.” She hated this. All she wanted to do was go back to the cottage and, well, “mope” as Ishiyo would’ve put it.

Silence reigned yet again and Azula felt exactly zero guilt for not keeping up her side of the conversation. She wasn’t here to help anybody. She wasn’t here to talk with peasants or even go so low as to become friends with them. Fumiko was not a person that Azula saw any use in being friends with. But she got the distinct feeling that Ishiyo would kill her if she came home too soon. And, well, it was nice to get out of the cottage. The land that surrounded Ishiyo’s home were cut into terraces growing sun-gold grain, bordered by bold green as the farmland wore away to a town nestled in the hills. Mist painted the hills in grey fingers, blue sky peeking between fluffy clouds. The midmorning sun turned Fumiko’s hair a warm brown, and undoubtedly Azula’s as well. Azula felt the pull of the sun, even still, and her sprained foot felt strong, and it sparked enough hope in her to let out a sigh she felt she had been holding in for months. 

Fumiko looked at her quizzically, and Azula flushed a little. She’d almost forgotten the peasant girl was there. Azula broke her gaze and her irritation returned in full.

“So…” Fumiko drew out the word. “What’s your favorite… animal?”

Azula didn’t hold in her snort. “Is that the best conversation topic you can come up with?” She said scathingly.

Fumiko seemed to think she was being sarcastic. “Well, you’re not exactly pulling the conversation along, so I have to do all the work!” She was teasing now, but Azula did not find it funny to be criticized by a person like her. 

“We’re under no obligation to have a conversation,” Azula retorted. “I have no intention of being your friend, so leave me alone.” She made sure to make her inflection clear. She was not joking around. 

Fumiko blinked and turned her head slightly away. So she did know when to shut up. Azula’s annoyance didn’t go away, and now it had just lost an outlet. Whatever. She gritted her teeth and kept limping along the dusty road.

The rest of the walk to Fumiko’s cottage was blissfully silent. When they arrived, a young girl, probably no older than twelve, with a baby on her hip opened the door with her foot. Her face lit up when she saw Fumiko. “‘Fumi! Ma’s on the warpath,” the girl rolled her eyes, idly bouncing the baby. “The twins won’t give her a break. You gotta come in an’ help her with dinner or she’ll sure explode.”

What a strange way of speaking. Azula held out the bag of medicines to Fumiko, who took it with an unreadable glance. 

“Thanks for walking me, Setsuna,” Fumiko said. “I’ll see you around.” Azula averted her eyes and said nothing.

The girl’s eyes flitted to Azula and then back to Fumiko, questioning, as the two peasants turned inside. The door slid shut behind them, pushing out a whoosh of warm air thick with spices and the smell of wet wood. Ishiyo’s cottage smelled similarly, and Azula found it to be comforting despite the fact she would never tell anyone that. She turned around sharply and walked as fast as she could back up the hill to Ishiyo’s. The storm continued to approach, and Azula almost felt as if her own anger was building with it.

She didn’t know why she was mad. She just was, and she couldn’t do anything about it. Azula thought maybe she had always been this way, angry at nothing and nobody and at the same time everything that crossed her path, barely controlled under a smooth surface.

Azula made her way up across a countryside tainted with graying skies, and tried not to cry. She’d overcome worse than this. Her father had taught her never to accept a loss; even sparring with him, he’d never allowed her to claim defeat. Even when the odds seemed insurmountable, he would say, the noble blood of the Fire Nation that ran through Azula’s veins would secure absolute victory in the end.

Azula was fairly sure the end had come, and gone, with no victory in sight.

She just had a crippled foot, hands that didn’t make fire, and a storm.

Chapter Text

Azula made it back to the cottage in a couple of minutes, probably walking too fast for her healing foot but not finding it in herself to care. The storm was almost palpable by the time she got there, the air smelling metallic and thick. Azula flung open the door of the cottage and slammed it behind her without really meaning to. Ishiyo looked up and said, “Hello, Setsuna. How was your walk? It’s going to storm so let’s–– is something wrong?”

“Nothing,” Azula gritted out, and shoved through the cottage.

Ishiyo, damn her, got up and followed. 

“I’m not going to force you, but you should know you can talk to me,” Ishiyo said as she followed Azula into the next room. 

“Leave me alone, ” Azula hissed through gritted teeth, rounding on Ishiyo. 

“I won’t,” Ishiyo said quietly. “I’m not going to shut you out, Setsuna.”

“Ugh! ” Azula couldn’t stop a frustrated grunt from escaping her mouth. She hated that name. She hated Ishiyo. She hated how kind the woman was. She hated, hated, hated. “I don’t need you! I don’t need your help! I don’t need friends ! Just leave me alone! ” She yelled for the third time that day. Thunder rumbled in the distance but Azula couldn’t hear it over the roaring in her ears. 

Ishiyo raised her hands, probably to placate Azula, but Azula flinched, hard, and backed away without really meaning to; the only hands she’d felt in months were ones trying to pin her down, so her entire body screamed threat . The sky thundered again, closer now, and Azula felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and in a pocket of silence where Azula trembled and tried not to cry. If she cried now it was all over. Ishiyo would abandon her like everybody else. The silence ended as the sky opened and rain poured down upon the roof, loud and unforgiving. The world outside the cottage darkened as the valley was plunged into a storm.  

Ishiyo cast a worried look up and then ducked to the windows to look up the hills. Her face twisted. She turned back to Azula and said, “Setsuna, we’re going to have to put this conversation on hold. Have you ever experienced a flash flood before?” Ishiyo grabbed a sack and started throwing various things–– rags, food–– into it. Kaki was hissing in alarm, feathers and fur on end as he curled against the wall.

Azula shook her head in response to Ishiyo’s question, her head thrumming with anger and anxiety and confusion. She didn’t know what to do. She hated not knowing. She hated herself for losing control, especially now when even the sound of splashing water was making her nervous. 

“Okay, so here’s how it works,” Ishiyo pushed the sack into Azula’s chest. “The rain builds up the rivers until the water spills over, and we’re pretty high up but with this kind of rain, I wouldn’t bet on us going untouched. We’re gonna grab a bag each, then get the fuck out of here and we’re gonna climb up the mountain, and if we don’t go really fast we’re gonna be washed away to hell knows where, and I don’t feel like drowning today, so let’s go.” 

Azula stared, clutching the bag. She’d never heard Ishiyo swear before. She couldn’t make sense of it, and fear rose in her as the last part registered. Drowning. 

Ice around her, cold seeping into her bones, can’t breathe, can’t breathe––

“Setsuna,” Ishiyo was in her space, face concerned but twisted with urgency. “I meant what I said. I’m not going to leave you, got it? Now let’s get out of here.” 

“Why?!” Azula pushed herself away from Ishiyo. Her vision was tunneling. Her hands were trembling, but she glared daggers at Ishiyo. “Why?! I’ve never done anything for you! No one wastes time and resources on anything as useless as a fifteen-year-old girl with no connections and no bending! I know you’re trying to use me, you’re painfully transparent, but why?! Tell me! ”

Water began to pool around their feet. Cold, biting. Azula knew this wasn’t the time to be having an outburst. She knew. But her anger was too much. And the freezing water rising over her ankles did nothing to help her fear.

“I don’t care what you can give me.” Ishiyo said as she stuffed supplies into another bag. “You have to understand that. I care about you.”

Tears were streaming down Azula’s cheeks now. Didn’t the stupid peasant woman understand? “You don’t even know me! I’m not who you think I am,” she choked out, and why’d she say that? Now everything was all over. Who knew what Ishiyo would do––

The water rose quickly, and Ishiyo cursed under her breath. “Azula, we have to get out of here, right now. Please come with me.” She didn’t grab Azula’s arm, but began to jog to the door as the cottage filled with water.

The feeling of the cold rainwater was making Azula’s heart beat wildly against her rib cage. She was so preoccupied trying not to fall into a panic attack that it took her a second to notice, and when she did her head flew up. 

“What did you call me?” She asked faintly. 

Ishiyo didn’t miss a beat. “I called you Azula, because that’s your name. Come on, we have to go.”

Azula stood, feeling very far away. She stumbled towards Ishiyo.

“But–– but I––” She choked. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I knew. But it makes no difference to me.” The woman opened the door, and that’s when all hell broke loose.

Because the water rose past both of their chests quicker than either of them could process. Azula only heard Ishiyo’s cry of “Shit!” before the water ripped through the wood and canvas of the cottage walls, and then Azula was submerged, and her brain was screaming coldfreezingchainscan’tbreathe, her lungs tightening as panic took over and the current took her far away. She splashed around wildly, trying to find the surface. She did, but she’d hardly taken a breath before she was plunged under again. Her bad foot connected with something, some wood or a rock or something, and the jolt of pain was enough to drag her out of her head, a little.

She knew how to swim. She’d learned at Ember Island, all those years ago when her family hadn’t felt so suffocating. Her mother, of all people, had taught her to swim, just as she’d taught her to read and even to control her bending a little bit before Azula’s father had taken over almost every aspect of Azula’s training. But her mother had once cared enough to make sure Azula didn’t drown.

She threw out her arms, realizing that the water was actually quite shallow but failing to stand up even as she realized that. She couldn’t do anything–– she couldn’t do anything. It was just like every other time she’d been plunged into water–– the Water Tribe peasant’s ice, and then the baths she’d been forced to take at the asylum. There was absolutely nothing she could do except try to take the biggest breath possible before she was thrown under again. It was so cold.

“She still won’t come out?”

So cold, so cold, Azula didn’t want to be taken back, but she couldn’t stop it––

Azula was trying her best to burn through her straightjacket with her fingertips, but it was impossible with how her palms were awkwardly twisted to press on her stomach. She stopped once her skin started to burn, and cursed her inability to just take it, so that maybe she could get out of here. Sitting on her bed in the dark, in a room so barren it could hardly be called a bedroom, there was nothing else to do except listen to the nurses speaking outside, the door ajar so Azula was never too far out of their sight.

“She needs to be given a bath, she’ll develop bed sores from lying there all day.”

Azula did want a bath, she felt disgusting. And her body was starting to cramp from being in the straitjacket all day. If she wasn’t insane before, she was now with her itching skin she could do nothing to assuage. And maybe they’d finally give her a moment’s rest without someone watching her.

The door was pushed open a little and light filtered into the dark room, making a silhouette of the two nurses. Azula didn’t have to fake her look of complete contempt.

One of the nurses smiled a big, saccharine smile. “Princess Azula, would you like to take a bath?” The other one only grimaced as she forcefully pulled Azula up to standing, easily revealing that the first nurse’s suggestion of choice had been an illusion.

“Oh, you’re going to finally start treating me like a human being instead of an animal in the zoo? That’s lovely, although I’d appreciate it if you got your filthy hands off me,” Azula hissed to the nurse who was still holding her arm.

The first nurse’s look turned disapproving. “Please try to find another way to express yourself other than lashing out, Princess.”

“Oh, Princess this, your highness that, so you haven’t forgotten my stature after all!” Azula let out a humorless laugh. She leaned in closer to the nurse, snarling, feeling her inner fire grow with her anger. “Why aren’t you scared of me? What did my brother tell you? That I’m some kind of maniac who can’t handle the pressure of being Firelord? I won that Agni Kai, and if that stupid water peasant hadn’t––”

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. Azula sagged into the arms of the nurse holding her. Her shoulders stung from being sharply struck. She hadn’t noticed the guard come in, but now she saw her, a “Kyoshi Warrior” as that little Avatar fan club liked to call themselves. Azula screamed when she saw her, seeing only Ty Lee in the chi-blocking technique despite knowing that this wasn’t her traitorous old friend. The two nurses roughly took the wraps of Azula’s straitjacket and half-carried her out of her room and down the hall, to a bathroom. Azula screamed at them until her voice went hoarse.

“Calm yourself, or we’ll resort to chemical means of restraint.” One of the nurses snapped at Azula as the other filled a large tub with water. Azula was sat down on a chair and her straitjacket was unwrapped. It felt amazing, but her arms and legs still hung mostly useless. She lifted her head, feeling heavy. “And how exactly am I supposed to bathe while chi-blocked?”

“We don’t trust you to bathe yourself yet,” The nurse said. “You haven’t shown us you’re ready for that.”

Azula barely had time to formulate a response when she was roughly grabbed by both nurses again, and before she knew it she was being plunged into freezing water. Hands on her arms, pushing her under, hands on her hair, pulling too tight, the water was cold, so cold, was she back at the courtyard? She tasted salt on her tongue. Was she crying? It was so cold.

It was so cold.

And then it wasn’t. 

Azula’s body flooded with warmth. She blinked slowly, her brain in half a state of panic but the heat was shocking enough to drag her out of it in record time. She almost felt it was her inner fire returning, but that wasn’t it. There was a thin hand, gripping hers tightly. The water flooding down the hill didn’t stop, but Azula did, and before she could think, another hand dipped under her legs and then she was floating, flying through the air like the Avatar did. Her eyes opened into slits and then flew wide, a scream growing and dying in her throat.

It was a woman carrying her–– well, sort of. At second glance, this was not a woman at all. Her skin was death-pale, her eyes pure black, and her hair red like cold flame. She glowed with warmth, almost too hot. And she was holding Azula in her arms, and they were flying .

Azula was absolutely, one hundred percent sure this was another hallucination. She was dead, or knocked out and soon to be. This was her brain’s last-ditch effort to keep her alive, or else some kind of post-death vision. 

It wasn’t so bad, though. The warmth was nice. Azula barely remembered what she’d been so afraid of.

They landed in a dry patch of grass, and the–– woman? Spirit? –– set Azula down. Azula’s foot exploded in pain as soon as it touched the ground, and Agni, if her hallucinations could invent pain like that, she must really be getting worse. At least it pulled her sharply out of her residual panic. She staggered to her feet, shivering, and stared up at the spirit, or whatever it was that had rescued her. 

The spirit tilted its–– her?–– head at Azula, then looked away and raised her–– its?–– arm along the edge of the grassy hill they had landed on, as if to point. Azula couldn’t bring herself to speak, or do anything as the spirit glanced back at her, and lifted an arm to stroke Azula’s cheek with a warm hand. It was hard not to lean into the touch. Azula was so cold without it.

After just a fraction of a second, the spirit flickered like a flame, then simply disappeared. It left Azula blinking at the sudden change. She was alone, now–– or maybe had been alone the whole time. She shook her head, knowing it was just a hallucination, even if it was the weirdest one she’d had. 

 As she slowly regained her focus, everything came rushing back. Yelling at Ishiyo, crying, then Ishiyo calling her by her name as if the old woman had known the entire time and had just been toying with Azula. The freezing water, then the spirit–– Agni, nothing made sense anymore. What made even less sense was that Azula felt an odd obligation to go back. To find Ishiyo, somehow. She surely wasn’t very far, at least not from Tayouka. The spirit had even pointed in the direction Azula was pretty sure Tayouka was. It was still raining, and Azula was shivering violently, her foot throbbing. If she didn’t get shelter soon, she’d just waste away out here.

Odd that she didn’t want that to happen.

So, not for the first time, Azula steeled her resolve and starting walking on her stupid foot that kept getting injured. The ground was muddy and slippery, and it reminded Azula of traveling through the Earth Kingdom, tracking the Avatar. That felt like a lifetime ago, back when Azula was just so excited to finally be given a mission by her father. She had been one of the youngest generals in Fire Nation history, prodigal in her strategy and bending, and it had been so easy to bend everyone to her will. The fights with the Avatar’s friends were hardly difficult, and back then she’d just known that Zuko would eventually come home, choose the right side. 

Or she thought she had, but it turns out there’s just something about Azula that makes people leave her behind. 

Which only reminded her of Ishiyo calling her by her name. For all Azula knew, that was all it took for someone to hate her, and Azula had absolutely nothing to blackmail Ishiyo with. What if she turns me in? Is there a bounty on my head? What if she kicks me out? What if––

Azula shook her head, trying to rid herself of those thoughts before she spiraled. She couldn’t lose control now. She just had to get to Tayouka, she had to get warm, treat her foot a little, and then Ishiyo could do whatever the old woman wanted, Azula wouldn’t care.

She wouldn’t.

The rain still beat heavy on her back after several minutes of walking, and Azula’s foot hurt more than it ever had. Hitting it again had probably thrown Azula back weeks in terms of recovery, and what that meant was that Azula was likely going to be doing a lot of walking on a bad foot for the foreseeable future, seeing as there’s no way Ishiyo will take her back after Azula lied to her for a month about her identity.

Azula was still freezing. She hated the cold. Maybe she wasn’t as far out of her panic attack as she’d thought–– her heart was still beating wildly, and every raindrop felt like a knife on her skin. 

After just another minute or two of walking, thankfully, Azula saw the road that led to Tayouka, and within seconds of seeing that, caught sight of a bobbing light in the distance. A lantern. The figure holding it was barely a silhouette in the dark.

Azula stopped, frozen to the spot. Was it Ishiyo? She tried to look closer, but her head was swimming from the pain and the cold. The figure started running, and called out, “Azula,” the cry nearly lost to the rain. It was Ishiyo.

Azula. Her name, her real name. It was so strangely refreshing to hear, to hear it come from Ishiyo’s mouth instead of the curt voices of the nurses or Zuko’s anger painted in forced niceties. But it meant nothing, because Ishiyo would at best kick her out and at worst turn her in now that she knew Azula wasn’t just a peasant girl she could take advantage of, but the Firelord’s failure of a daughter no doubt being searched for across the Fire Nation. It was all over. Emotion welled up inside her, and she fought it with all she had. She wasn’t going to be a crying failure on top of just a failure. 

Azula stood rooted to the spot as Ishiyo neared, and now she could see the lantern light dancing off Ishiyo’s face and sopping wet hair. The old woman’s face was wildly worried, but morphed into relief when she got close enough to see Azula’s face, a surprising enough change that Azula stumbled forward.

She didn’t mean to fall. She just did, so exhausted from her panic and the cold that her feet simply couldn’t carry her anymore. But instead of hitting the muddy ground, she was caught by strong, warm arms that pulled her close into a soaked shirt. Azula crumpled, barely thinking, and now she was crying, and Ishiyo’s hand was stroking her hair like her mother used to when she was little. 

“Oh, Azula,” Ishiyo’s voice was so soft. “I was so worried.”

“Why?!” Azula sobbed, her voice choked. “I–– I don’t understand you! You don’t make any sense!”

“I’m sorry,” Ishiyo said. “I know I’ve been confusing––”

“Shut up!” Azula cried. She felt like pulling away, but she was terrified that if she did, Ishiyo would leave, and that would be the end. She was walking on a knife’s edge now.

“Okay,” Ishiyo whispered. There was a pause, then, “I’m not going to leave you. You don’t have to lose this.”

And Azula wanted so badly for that to be true that, for a moment, she let herself believe. Maybe she could stay here in the valley, in Ishiyo’s cottage, and just make medicine and pottery for the rest of her life. Maybe that could be enough.

“Let’s get you inside,” Ishiyo said gently, and Azula nodded. She stood to walk, but nearly fell forward when pain shot through her foot. 

“Don’t walk,” Ishiyo said. “Here. Lean on me.” 

Azula was so tired that she didn’t protest when Ishiyo looped her arm under her shoulder and helped her to move. It was slow going, and Azula felt like she was going to fall asleep with every limping step, but eventually, the road curved into the streets of Tayouka. Azula had questions swirling through her brain; How long have you known I was Azula? How did you find out? Why don’t you care? But her mind was too blurred to focus on any of them. Ishiyo led the way to a cottage Azula recognized as that girl’s–– Fumiko’s. 

“Our house got damaged in the flood,” Ishiyo said as they walked to the door. “It’s nothing we can’t rebuild in time, but we’re going to stay here with Fumiko’s family for a little while.”

Azula was distantly sure that she was going to hate that, but at the moment she absolutely did not care where she was sleeping as long as she was sleeping. She was so lucky that Ishiyo had at least helped her back, was giving her a place to stay–– even if it was going to be insufferable–– that she decided her concerns about whether it would last were tomorrow-Azula’s problem. Ishiyo knocked on the door and it was slid open by a middle-aged woman with a face full of freckles, who whispered, “Thank Agni,” and she stepped back to let Azula and Ishiyo in. It was a homely space, the smell of dust and spices overwhelming. A fire blazed in the irori off to one side, and its warmth bathed Azula’s skin. Next to it was curled Kaki the owlcat, because of course the owlcat continued to survive out of spite. Azula spotted two young children, a boy and a girl, peeking over a washbasin, whispering to each other.

“Apologies for tracking in mud, Xiuying,” Ishiyo said to the freckled woman. “I can’t express my appreciation enough for you letting us stay here.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Xiuying said. Her voice was strong and serious, and accented like Fumiko’s. “You’ve saved Fumiko’s life enough that we’re in your debt.”

“No debts,” Ishiyo said simply. “But thank you.”

Feeling was beginning to return to Azula’s body, and with it a familiar humiliation. She was sopping wet, half-standing, in a peasant’s house, after having a panic attack over rain and hallucinating some kind of spirit helping her out of it. Just like when she first woke up in Ishiyo’s cottage, she couldn’t formulate a logical explanation for what that had been. She was too tired to think about that now, though. Ishiyo had her sit down and made quick work of bandaging and splinting her foot, not saying anything but nothing in her face read that she had changed her mind about letting Azula stay. Azula was handed a towel and a change of clothes, a little too big, probably Xiuying’s. Ishiyo busied herself with cleaning up the mud she and Azula had tracked in, and Xiuying said Azula could change in the next room. 

She slid the door open to find a bedroom, the floor covered almost entirely by mats, and Fumiko sitting holding a candle. The girl leapt up when she saw Azula, almost dropping the candle. 

“Setsuna! You’re okay! You look terrible,” Fumiko whisper-shouted. “I’ve made up a bed for you an’ Ishiyo!” Her eyes zeroed in on Azula’s bundle of clothes. “Oh, you can go ahead and change behind the curtain there. Be quiet though, baby’s sleeping.”

Azula glared at the other girl and cursed her luck, but at least she was inside, and warm.

And she could believe, just for tonight, that Ishiyo wanted her to stay.

Chapter Text

Azula woke up far too late, judging by the bright white sunlight that shone through a small window high up on the wall. For a moment, she panicked, not recognizing the small, homely room she’d woken up in, but her memory of the previous night came rushing back when she felt the wet pillow under her hair. She got up quickly, ignoring the twinge of pain in her foot, and limped to the door. 

She may have been too tired to do anything but fall asleep last night, but now she felt rested and, consequently, full of determination. She was starving, but food could wait. Answers couldn’t. She needed to find Ishiyo and make her talk. 

Ishiyo was not difficult to find, seeing as she was sitting on the floor just outside of the door in the central room of Fumiko’s family’s cottage. No one else was around, and Ishiyo paused from petting Kaki the owlcat to turn when she heard Azula slide open the door. The owlcat opened its golden eyes and nuzzled Ishiyo’s hand, irritated at the disturbance.

“Good morning,” Ishiyo said as she stood, and before Azula could do anything more than open her mouth, the old woman said, “Let’s talk.”

Straight to the point. Azula appreciated that about Ishiyo. She hoped that, if the old woman had changed her mind about Azula overnight, she at least wouldn’t hop around the topic. And with any luck, she also wouldn’t dodge the question of how in Agni’s name she knew who Azula really was.

Azula followed Ishiyo outside into a small, muddy yard that gave way into thick forest. Still, none of Fumiko’s family was anywhere to be seen, meaning the two of them could talk freely. Ishiyo had hardly sat down when Azula rounded on her, determined to figure this out. She didn’t understand anything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, and she hated not understanding.

“How did you know my name?” Azula hissed. “How long have you known? What’s your endgame?!” She dropped the facade of the perfect patient completely, now that everything seemed to be all out in the open. She needed to be herself for this. Strong. Uncompromising. 

Ishiyo met Azula’s gaze. “I have no ulterior motive for helping you, Azula. I need you to know that. As for how I knew, it was more of a guess. A young girl, around the age of the Princess, whose appearance matched your average city propaganda poster to a T, with the accent of the Fire Nation nobility? It wasn’t hard to put together,” The old woman finished quietly.

Azula seethed. She felt humiliated. She had really been stupid enough to actually think she’d fool anyone trying to be a peasant? Did everyone else know? It was so simple when Ishiyo laid it all out like that, so easy to connect the dots. She was so mad–– at herself, at Ishiyo. She wanted to burn up the entire backyard with both of them in it. One thing stuck out to her, though, in the midst of her fury.

“How do you know what the court accent sounds like?” She demanded.

Ishiyo nodded, like she’d foreseen the question. “Because I grew up there,” She said mildly.

This woman had a talent for stopping Azula’s train of thought in its tracks. Whatever Azula had expected, it wasn’t that. This woman–– this clearly peasant woman–– grew up in nobility? It had to be a lie–– right? But why would she lie? To get Azula to trust her? There were easier ways of doing that. To convince Azula to leave, fearful of being exposed? That was far too contrived. Azula distantly knew she looked stupid, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. “Explain,” She finally managed to grit out.

“I will,” Ishiyo said. The old woman was still looking Azula straight in the eye, and it was making her uncomfortable. Azula averted her gaze, sitting down on a nearby crate with her nails digging into the wood.

“I was born in the Fire Nation colonies to a waterbender mother,” Ishiyo said evenly. “When I was nine, my father, a Fire Nation noble of the Saowon clan, came to our village in search of me, his only heir. My mother was compensated, and I was taken to the Archipelago to be raised among the court.”

Azula felt like she was reading one of those fiction novels she’d find buried in the court library. Being suddenly found by a rich relative and taken into the lap of luxury certainly sounded like a children’s tale, but the solemn way Ishiyo told it conveyed a different sort of message. A kidnapping. The enigma that was Ishiyo only ever deepened in its complexity, it seemed. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Azula asked. Maybe it was unfair that she was angry with Ishiyo for not telling her about her past, seeing as she herself had been anything but forthcoming as well, but Azula still felt betrayed. And annoyed with herself, for never giving Ishiyo much of a second glance. She should’ve noticed.

“Most of the villagers don’t know,” Ishiyo said simply. “It’s easier this way. Besides, I haven’t been in court for a very long time.” 

“Clearly,” Azula scoffed. It was meant to be a jab, but it fell flat, Ishiyo’s gaze never wavering. “What’s your problem?” Azula snapped at her, unable to hold back her anger. She may have been initially wrong about Ishiyo’s motivations–– Azula had yet to find a true self-serving reason for Ishiyo’s healing practice–– but the woman had been manipulating her all the same. If what Ishiyo said was true, if she really had been raised in court, who’s to say she wouldn’t try to use Azula to get her position back? It wouldn’t work, of course. But Ishiyo still had so much more blackmail material on Azula than she’d thought she did, and that made Azula nervous even if she knew, rationally, that Ishiyo probably wasn’t the blackmail type. Probably .

“I’m very sorry I didn’t tell you I knew, Azula. Springing that on you was a bad decision on my part, and I can’t imagine how confusing that must have been for you. I wanted to wait until you were ready to tell me yourself, but I made the wrong call. I hope you can forgive me.” Ishiyo’s voice was steady, and Azula could detect no lies in it. The words were so disgustingly genuine that Azula almost wished the old woman would just lie. Tell her that she was just your average peasant who’d lived in Tayouka her whole life, but nothing was ever as it seemed with Ishiyo, apparently. And Azula was still so mad. 

But, it did feel nice to get a real apology. Frankly, Azula was surprised at it. Ishiyo didn’t have to be yelled at or intimidated in order to explain herself. She just did. Things like that–– kindness, generosity–– seemed so easy to this woman. Azula didn’t understand it, how someone could just do something for no visible reward, not even a long-term one. It made no sense to her. Kindness had never served Princess Azula.

“Oh, there’s one other thing as well, Azula,” Ishiyo paused, then added, “Would you like me to call you Azula or Setsuna?”

Azula blinked. “My name is Azula,” she said, sounding like an idiot but unsure how else to respond. 

“That it is,” Ishiyo smiled. “Well, Azula, I wanted to ask you about your bending. If that’s too sensitive a topic, we can––”

“It’s gone,” Azula said, feeling oddly empty as she did. 

“On the contrary, I think it is very much there.” Ishiyo said. She spread her hands, mimicking the smooth movements of fire-healing. “Part of fire-healing is feeling the patient’s chi paths. Chi paths, even in non-benders, can tell a healer much about the state of the patient’s body and mind. Your chi, Azula, may be the most powerful I’ve ever encountered. Your bending is there, it’s only blocked.”

“I’m aware of that,” Azula said through gritted teeth, not having been aware of that at all. “However, I don’t imagine you have a miraculous cure for a loss of bending ability.”

“Unfortunately, no,” Ishiyo conceded. “But I can help. Have you ever heard of spiritual meditation?”

Again with the spirits. Ishiyo was almost as bad as Iroh . Luckily, that bizarre line of questioning was interrupted by an only barely more welcome Fumiko, who burst out through the door. She straightened up.

“Oh, were you gals talking? My bad,” She panted, walking to a metal bucket sitting among the long grass of the backyard. “I’m doing laundry and I forgot the bucket! Oh, Setsuna, when I’m done, do you want to go over and check out your house? We’re rebuilding it!”

“Yes!” Ishiyo replied, just as Azula said, “No,” and glared at the old woman.

“We’ll just whip up a quick breakfast, and then you can rest for a little while until Fumiko is done! How does that sound?” Ishiyo said, standing and holding out a hand to help Azula up. Azula ignored it as she got to her feet, barely holding back a roll of her eyes. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go see the house, and she wasn’t even completely opposed to existing near Fumiko. It was just that she felt like she wanted to sit down and think for the next ten years. About Ishiyo, about her bending, about her new life.

But two extroverted thorns in her side were looking at her, waiting for a response, and Azula muttered, “Fine.” Just to get them to stop.

“Excellent,” Ishiyo clapped her hands together and bustled inside. Azula limped after her, suddenly realizing how hungry she was. Ishiyo made herself at home in Fumiko’s family’s kitchen, and before long, Azula had a steaming plate of grilled fish, her foot propped up on a pillow.

Kaki the owlcat flew down to perch on Azula’s knees, staring intensely at her food with round yellow eyes. She was certain that owlcats were the devil incarnate. But Azula had always been a monster, so maybe they were evenly matched. She glared back at the animal, pointedly eating her grilled fish.

“Kaki, you stop bothering her,” Ishiyo scolded as she came over with her own plate. The owlcat flapped to her, choosing a new victim for his staring contest. Azula was staring at Ishiyo too, trying to reconcile this old, strange woman with the image of a noble’s daughter. A half-waterbender noble’s daughter. Ishiyo looked Fire Nation enough, though now that Azula knew, she could see Water Tribe in the color of the woman’s skin and the curve of her jaw. There were so many things she hadn’t given a second thought to. 

“Fire-healing,” Azula said, surprising even herself. Ishiyo looked up, listening. “Did you invent it?”

Ishiyo looked taken aback for a second, but then nodded. “I did. My mother was a waterbending healer. She couldn’t practice in the colonies, but she taught me the theory all the same. When I got older, I began applying that theory to firebending as well.”

“Why isn’t it in any books?” 

“Well, I,” Ishiyo paused. “I never told anyone about my creation. I was afraid it would… jeopardize my ability to leave.”

That was confusing. Fire-healing was an incredible invention. Wouldn’t she want to be valuable? Unless she really did want to get left for nothing. Ishiyo made no sense. Every question Azula asked spawned five new ones.

“Speaking of fire-healing, would you like me to look at your foot?” Ishiyo inquired, and Azula nodded, grateful for the subject change. She didn’t really want to talk right now, especially if she was going to be forced to spend time with Fumiko later. Questions and difficult conversations could wait. For now, Azula just wanted to think.

. . .

Forty minutes later found Azula outside, wobbling on a crutch Ishiyo had quickly fashioned out of spare wood, accompanied by an excited Fumiko. The other girl was carrying a large basket of clothes and various sewing implements, and talking to Azula as they walked through the cobblestone roads of Tayouka. She was talking about her siblings, or something, but Azula wasn’t listening. Instead, she was soaking the town in, never having really spent very long down here. There were about two thousand people in Tayouka, and it seemed like all of them were outside today, sweating with the summer heat. Xiuying was chatting with several women by a well while a group of children tossed a ball around on the dusty street in front of them. A man with a carrying pole over his shoulders paused to pet an enthusiastic dog tied up outside the smithy. Snippets of song drifted from inside the laundry house. There was so much life, and Azula might have appreciated it if she wasn’t trying so hard not to faint from the heat. It was stifling, the trees of the neighboring forest stagnant in the sultry air, and Azula was beginning to feel like maybe she could stand an ice bath if it would serve as any reprieve from this. 

“I don’t know if Ishiyo already told you, she may have, but your house got sorta messed up from the storm,” Fumiko was saying as the two of them turned onto the path towards Ishiyo’s cottage. “The floor and the roof got damaged, mostly. And a lot of stuff got swept away. But it’ll be just fine ‘cause we got a lot of people looking at it, they’ll build it back real quick. So you two will probably only be staying with us for a few days!”

“I see,” Azula replied. She didn’t want to say something like, “Oh, good,” because… well, she just didn’t want to. Even if it would make Fumiko stop talking to her, the other girl… didn’t deserve that. She was insufferably annoying, but Azula didn’t hate her company. She didn’t like it, but at least Fumiko filled the silence, right? They weren’t friends. 

“Yep,” Fumiko said in response, fingers toying with the edge of her basket. The brief stretch of silence was quickly ended when she turned to Azula, eyes sparkling. “So, tell me about Caldera City. What’s school like? I think it sounds boring. I never went, but I do know how to read, you know, even if I’ve hardly got any books. It’s actually Ishiyo who taught me, when I was small! It’s so neat how you’re living with her now. But why’d you leave? I bet it’s a good story!”

Azula was getting dizzy with the way this girl jumped from conversation topic to conversation topic. Fumiko was practically hopping from foot to foot–– even Ty Lee never had this much energy. The girl’s curiosity annoyed Azula, but it wasn’t unpredictable, and Azula knew it would be far too suspicious if she dodged every question entirely. 

“School was often boring,” Azula said, trying not to sound stiff. She hated this, hated that it was so hard for her to talk to people when she’d made her life out of being a good manipulator. It was easier to see people as pai sho boards–– lots of parts working together, each piece with its own purpose, and each piece waiting to be tweaked enough to change the game. Azula had always done that, ever since she was little. She’d thought she’d understood everyone so well, but she was betrayed, time and time again, by the knowledge that she never got anyone right. Not Ty Lee, not Mai, not Ishiyo. It didn’t make sense, and she hated it. It’s not that Fumiko was a particularly confusing person, but she talked so easily. Azula couldn’t seem to keep up. “But… I enjoyed some parts. Like history.” She finished.

“History!” Fumiko echoed. “Hmm, okay… what’s the most interesting history fact you ever learned?”

Azula was taken aback at the question, but it was one she could answer. Was eager to, even. Military history was the one subject that had never bored Azula, and as a child she would bury herself in scrolls and books telling stories of ancient battles. Her father had loved her interest in it, so it stayed. 

“Well. History’s shortest war was between the Northern Water Tribe and the Haijiang province of the Earth Kingdom in 67 BG. It lasted twenty-nine minutes. It was also one of the most one-sided battles of all time, the Water Tribe suffering extreme casualties while the Earth Kingdom walked away mostly unscathed due to a brutal ambush.” Azula cringed, realizing that maybe talking about a massacre was maybe not the best conversation topic, and on top of that she’d just lost control of her mouth, not a good thing when she had so many secrets to keep. 

Fumiko took it in stride, though. “Wow!” She exclaimed. “Wouldn’t that be a battle, though? Not a war?” She shifted the basket of clothes she was holding to look at Azula. “‘Cause it was so short?”

“Strategy,” Azula responded. “The difference is military strategy versus operational mobility.”

“If you say so!” Fumiko said cheerily. Agni, she was annoying. Azula’s mind was starting to wander back to Ishiyo, and everything the old woman had revealed. Ishiyo being raised in nobility made sense, seeing as she was much more educated and civilized than any of the other peasants, and she spoke normally instead of using all these strange made-up words. But it significantly changed Azula’s idea of Ishiyo, and she didn’t know what to do with it. Nothing was different, but at the same time, everything was. Why had Ishiyo left? Had Azula ever heard of her, but thought nothing of it at the time? The Saowon clan was basically extinct these days. Could that have been Ishiyo’s doing?

“Hey, girls!”

Azula was snapped sharply out of her thoughts by a loud call. A short, balding man in a sweat-soaked shirt and a kid who couldn’t be older than ten were waving from their positions on the roof of Ishiyo’s cottage, about fifty paces away now. There were more people clustered around the base of the house, and as she and Fumiko neared Azula saw that they were using shovels and sticks to dislodge the thick mud blocking the door. The house itself wasn’t as bad as Azula feared, but the roof was half-caved in, and when she got closer she could see through the windows that the floor had been ripped up as well. 

“Hey, Haoyu, Bohai,” Fumiko greeted the pair on the roof. “This is Setsuna!” She gestured with her head at Azula. 

“I’ve heard about you!” The young boy called, waving a hammer wildly. “You’re helping Ishiyo with healing, right?” 

Azula nodded, not feeling inclined to talk to these people. 

“Are you gonna learn fire-healing?” The boy said excitedly. “Ishiyo’s the only fire-healer in the whole world! I’m a bender, see?” He punched the air, and a little orange fire sizzled in and out of existence. “So she’s gonna teach me when I’m older!” 

“I’m... still learning the basics of ordinary healing,” Azula responded. Maybe she should’ve said something else, because there was a moment of quiet before the balding man said, “Well, we’ll sure be glad to have another healer anyhow. Setsuna, you tell Ishiyo that your house will be right as rain by the new moon. Actually, let’s hope for a little less rain!” He added, then chortled at his own joke. Fumiko rolled her eyes at Azula behind her basket of clothes.

“Alright, then, I’m sure Ishiyo would want us to sit down a little. Resident invalids and all,” Fumiko huffed. Azula did not appreciate being lumped in with this girl, and she was not an invalid. Just because her foot was injured didn’t mean she was useless. She would admit though, that even with the crutch, her foot was aching. She and Fumiko walked to the back steps of Ishiyo’s house, which were mostly unscathed, if still a little wet. Fumiko set down the basket and flopped onto the stairs, breathing hard. 

“Might’ve overdid it a little,” She sighed, fingers straying to her neck to feel her pulse. Azula didn’t know what to do, so she just sat down next to the girl, saying nothing. What did Fumiko expect? Sympathy? It wasn’t Azula’s fault that Fumiko was too energetic for her own weak body. 

Fumiko exhaled, then her energy was back as she turned to her basket of clothes and sewing tools. “These are all our clothes that need to be repaired, and I think if we split it between us we’ll have it done in no time! How’s your sewing?”

Azula stared at her, processing. “What?”

“Yeah, I figured we’d do some chores while we’re resting! That’s why I brought all this,” Fumiko nodded at the basket.

“You want me to sew clothes?” Azula tried, really tried, to keep the incredulity out of her voice. She knew that, if she was posing as a peasant, she was supposed to know how to do all these stupid tasks. But did Fumiko actually expect Azula to waste her time sewing ? It was offensive. Fumiko just raised an eyebrow, though, and said, “Yeah…? If you don’t know how, I can help you…”

“I know how,” Azula retorted. She did, in theory. She had done embroidery lessons as a child. “But you’re not clever for trying to trick me into doing your tasks. I’m only here because I have nothing else to do when my foot is like this.”

Fumiko’s eyebrows deepened a little at that, into what was almost a scowl. “There’s plenty of stuff you can do while sitting down. Trust me, I know,” She said, in the first instance of an emotion other than enthusiasm Azula had seen from her. It was interesting, to see the other girl’s darker side, to know there was more to her than being a one-note nonsense-spewing peasant.

There was a beat of silence, in which Fumiko seemed to expect a response and Azula did not give her one. Fumiko was playing with the frayed ends of a tunic sleeve, looking from her hands to Azula and back again. Her annoyance was palpable, and Azula snapped, “If you have something to say, then say it.”

Fumiko looked up at her, her face betrayed, of all things. Then, as if she was working up the courage to speak, she huffed out, “Listen, I don’t know what it’s like in Caldera City, but here everyone helps out.” She gestured behind them, where the other villagers working on the house could be heard talking to each other. “I get that this isn’t what you’re used to, it’s pretty obvious, but you’re being a bitch about it. So… I’m not gonna force you to do my chores, but you could be a little nice.”

Azula was left speechless. No one, especially not a peasant, had ever spoken to her like that about something so pointless. Why should she do Fumiko’s work? She helped Ishiyo, sure, but that was because she had to. Azula just didn’t understand why Fumiko was so mad, and that made her mad. She had never wanted more to reveal her identity, just to see Fumiko realize who she was speaking to. But, of course, she didn’t. She glanced at Fumiko, whose eyes were fearful but determined, her incessant picking at the tunic sleeve betraying her nervousness. 

Silence reigned, in which Azula really did try to tamp down her temper. If Fumiko told Ishiyo, Azula would be put in a difficult spot; she couldn’t make Ishiyo mad, especially now that the old woman knew so many of Azula’s secrets. 

“Fine.” Azula said quietly. 

“What?” Fumiko perked up.

“Fine, I’ll help you,” Azula growled. “Just… pull yourself together.”

Fumiko’s face transformed, the corners of her mouth tipping up into a small smile. “Thanks, Setsuna!” She said, and reached to the basket for clothes and sewing supplies that she dumped in Azula’s arms. Azula took the needle, hoping she remembered embroidery enough to at least give a passable attempt. It was fine. She was a prodigy! She could figure out how to do simple peasant tasks. 

As Azula began the first clumsy stitch, an image of Ishiyo as a young noble stumbling through peasant drudgery for the first time flashed in her mind’s eye, and she almost let out a chuckle. She supposed Ishiyo had been in her situation, once, even if it was hard to imagine. 

That made it easier, somehow.

Chapter Text

“And just as the evil Water Tribe warrior is about to get me, woosh! A huge fireball!” Fumiko’s little brother, Feng, imitated the sound of firebending. 

There was a splashing sound as Jia, his twin sister, replied, “But water puts out fire, so I win!” 

A pause. Then, “An even bigger fireball! The biggest one ever!”

More splashing as the twins fell into a scuffle in the shallow riverbed. “I don’t want to be evil anymore!” Jia cried. “Why do I always have to be the bad guy?”

“Hey, Jia, it’s fine,” Fumiko’s voice cut through the argument. “I’ll be the Water Tribe warrior, how ‘bout that?” 

The twins cheered. Azula, lying flat on her back with her eyes closed, basked in the sounds of the river and the children playing, finding solace from the baking heat in the cool, muddy grass.

“Setsuna, are you gonna come in?” Fumiko called out.

Azula gave a noncommittal hum.

“Suit yourself!” Fumiko’s voice pitched down as she launched herself into the water to the giggling of the twins. She mimicked an old man’s voice, throwing on an exaggerated Water Tribe accent. “Me and my comrades of the Water Tribe have come in our huge boats to trap you all in ice and take your harvest candy! You better run!”

“Never, you savage!” Jia screamed as Feng let out a battle cry.

It was nearing the end of summer, the heat beginning to ease from unbearable to vaguely tolerable, but still much hotter than Azula ever experienced in the capital, with its seaside microclimate. Harvest season was fast approaching, the rice paddies thick and bold green. Despite the fact that Fumiko’s family wasn’t a farming family–– Xiuying ran the laundry house in the center of town–– they had still all been helping with the harvest, Azula and Ishiyo included, occasionally. Azula had never known before how labor intensive rice harvesting actually was, but it took weeks just to cut the grass, never mind draining the paddy and drying the grains. Azula was exempt from most of the work due to her still healing foot–– it had improved in the two weeks since the storm, but damaging it further during the flood had not aided in her recovery–– and Fumiko could only really work in short bursts thanks to her feeble heart, so the two of them ended up stuck together a lot while the rest of the town worked in the fields. More often than not, the two of them were on babysitting duty for Fumiko’s siblings and any of the other children in Tayouka; so it was this afternoon. 

“Alright, you guys,” Fumiko panted, and Azula opened her eyes to see the other girl sitting in the river, the water coursing just below her knees, with both of the twins standing triumphantly over her. She flipped her soaked hair out of her eyes and raised her hands as if in surrender. “This Water Tribe warrior’s heart needs a breather.” Her eyes traveled over to Azula, then widened. “Setsuna!” She screeched. “Where’s Koji?!”

Azula sat up, looking around for the baby that she, in theory, was supposed to be watching. She saw the pile of the twins’ discarded clothes and shoes, the lush green undergrowth and the black trees; and no child.

“Agni, Setsuna, how do you lose an entire baby!” Fumiko got up, drying her bare feet against the grass by the side of the river, her head whipping from side to side. 

“He’s a year old, it’s not like he could have gone far,” Azula pointed out.

“We are in the woods!” Fumiko yelled. “Ma is going to murder me if we lose the baby in the woods!” 

“Relax,” Azula said, but got up to help Fumiko look. Ishiyo would probably kill her, too, if she learned that Azula was slacking on babysitting duty. 

“Relax––!” Fumiko’s voice lacked true anger, but her eyes still flashed in anxiety. “He could get bitten by a prickle snake, he could eat something poisonous––”

“Or he could be sitting in the clearing barely twenty paces from the riverside,” Azula said flatly, pointing to where, indeed, the one-year-old Koji was sitting cross-legged, tearing up the grass around him. He looked up when the two entered the clearing, smiling a gap-toothed grin as Fumiko raced to scoop him up. “Koji!”

“All’s well that ends well,” Azula remarked dryly, with a hint of sarcasm. Fumiko, marching past her back to the river as Koji picked at the seams of her red top, scoffed, “You’re the worst babysitter in the history of babysitters.”

“I’m not the one who left the six-year-olds alone by a body of water,” Azula said, even though admittedly, she sort of was . Fumiko looked at her in horror.

“Shit! We’re the worst babysitters in the history of babysitters!” The girl yelped, taking off towards the river. Luckily, when the two of them approached the water, they saw that Feng and Jia had been intently digging a hole in the mud and had not tragically drowned while Azula and Fumiko had been gone.

Fumiko set Koji down and buried her face in her hands. “These kids will all be dead by the end of harvest season,” She groaned. “The two of us can’t be trusted.”

Azula hummed in acknowledgement, unsure what else to say. She had run into this problem a lot recently, with Fumiko and the other villagers. There were intricacies to casual conversation that Azula just didn’t understand. It was easier in court, where there was a clearly set structure and hierarchy. Here, the only hierarchy was that of age, and anything else was murky and unclear.

At least Fumiko filled the silence. “What’re you and Ishiyo bringing to the harvest feast? Ma’s making her pig-chicken noodles, and Setsuna, you haven’t lived ‘till you’ve tried those,” She reached up and expertly pulled half of her hair into a topknot, allowing the rest to brush her shoulders, talking animatedly all the while.

The harvest feast. The feast to celebrate the harvest. That feast. Azula knew it was going to happen–– lanterns were strung all around Tayouka and Ishiyo had been collecting ingredients for their meal for several days now–– but she’d sort of tried to push off thinking about it. She was nervous, if she had to admit it. She hadn’t really met most of the villagers, choosing instead to stay home and do whatever was expected of her there; it was easier. She didn’t want to risk discovery, and being lonely was hardly a new feeling. Being surrounded by new people, who all already knew each other, was not Azula’s idea of a good time.

“Ishiyo’s making bao,” Azula responded to Fumiko. She racked her brains for something else to say, but came up short. Luckily, the silence was broken by a battle cry from Jia as she decided that the hole-digging was too boring and she was going to launch herself into the water instead. Not so luckily, Azula didn’t move quickly enough to avoid the resulting spray of cold water. It splashed over her hair and she cried out in annoyance, the cold making her heart beat faster. It wasn’t enough to pull her into a panic attack, but her head felt strangely fuzzy. She dug her sharp fingernails into her palms and did everything she could to not fade.

“...Setsuna? Are you okay?” Fumiko’s voice was too close, too loud. 

Azula managed a feeble, “Fine.” 

“Oh! Your hands are bleeding!” Fumiko exclaimed, taking Azula’s hands in both of her own. It was true; Azula’s fingernails had formed red crescent-moon cuts in the skin of her palms, blood beading at their centers. 

“I was surprised,” Azula said as she pulled away, a weak excuse but one Fumiko seemed to accept as the other girl turned to tell Jia off for not warning them of her splash. Azula decided that now would be a good time to leave, seeing as the cold water on her arms still felt like it was digging deep into her skin. “I’m going to go home,” She called to Fumiko, and the words felt strange on her tongue. Home. 

“Oh, okay!” Fumiko waved from where she stood at the edge of the river. “See you later! Tell Ishiyo hi!”

Azula assured her she would, and gathered her shoes and clothes. The creek wasn’t far from Tayouka, just a hundred paces into the Amaimizu forest, and soon enough Azula was in the center of the town, heading back to Ishiyo’s cottage. The cottage was entirely rebuilt, now, with new floors and ceilings to replace those that had been lost in the storm. Many of Ishiyo and Azula’s possessions had been washed away with the flood–– much of the pottery, some of Azula’s clothes, and a great deal of medicine. Any free time that Azula and Ishiyo had these past weeks was spent restocking the medicine supply. It was something to do, at least.

Tayouka was lively this afternoon, the red lanterns strung between the buildings letting off a cheerful air that even Azula could pick up on. The lanterns reminded her of the summer solstice festival back in the capital; a tiny piece of familiarity in a sea of newness. She had never been one for festivities: she only ever liked the summer solstice festival because she got to stuff herself full of moon cakes and stay up all night, if she liked. Ty Lee always insisted that she and Azula and Mai and Zuko should all sneak out of the royal celebrations and into the streets of the city, to sample the food and watch the firebending shows. They never did, though, and Ty Lee stopped asking.

Azula wondered now if anything would be different if they’d done it. 

Probably not.

She reached the cottage soon enough, her foot nursing a dull but tolerable ache. Trying unsuccessfully to shake out her dripping hair, Azula pushed open the door. The familiar smell of wood and spices greeted her, and she let out a sigh. After sleeping in Fumiko’s cottage for two weeks, it was nice to be back. Kaki the owlcat mewed from his perch on the medicine shelves, his wings grazing the tops of the glass bottles of remedies.

“If you break any of those I’m going to eviscerate you,” Azula informed the animal.

“Oh, hey, you’re back! Just you?” Ishiyo’s voice came from the other room.

“Just me,” Azula confirmed, sending a last warning glare at Kaki before sliding the door shut behind her. She kicked off her shoes–– a pair of sandals, stolen from Ishiyo–– and slid the door to the second half of the cottage open with her foot.

“Oh, you did swim!” Ishiyo exclaimed when she saw Azula’s wet hair. She was standing at the stove, a pile of bao steaming in a pan in front of her. She slid a lid over the dumplings and waved as Azula entered.

“No,” Azula shook her head. “I just got sprayed with water.”

“Ah, well, I bet that felt good,” Ishiyo hummed, washing off her hands in the washbasin. “I, on the other hand, am sweating out of my skin. Here’s to hoping it’ll cool down by dinnertime,” she sighed and grabbed the towel by the washbasin. “Here,” she said, offering it to Azula. “Dry yourself off and then we’ll hop down to the feast prep. You want me to run a comb through your hair for you?”

Azula froze. Comb her hair? It wasn’t out of line, exactly–– it just felt strange to think about. Not unwelcome, just… unexpected, given how personal hair was in the Fire Nation.

Ishiyo seemed to notice her hesitation and backtracked. “Or you can do it. I know you’re more than capable of doing your own hair! I was just––”

“I’d appreciate it,” Azula blurted. Agni, that sounded stupid. It sounded desperate. It’s not that she needed Ishiyo to brush her hair. But the old woman had offered, and Azula hadn’t grown up brushing her own hair. Servants had done it all her life, then nurses in the asylum. The hair that she’d once prided on being perfect was tangled more often than not these days. That was all it was.

Ishiyo brightened. “Then, sit, sit,” She encouraged, pulling a stool from the table to offer to Azula. Azula sat, and allowed the old woman to draw her damp hair into a uniform line as she began to comb.

“Did you have fun with the kids?” Ishiyo asked.

“I suppose so,” Azula admitted. It had been nice to lie in the cool grass and listen to the sounds of the river, even if those sounds were punctuated by the excited shrieks of young children and Fumiko’s constant chatter. She thought about the game the kids had been playing–– Fire Nation soldiers versus Water Tribe warriors, a classic, and one the Fire Nation side never seemed to lose. Only now, Azula wondered what Ishiyo thought of it, being half Water Tribe. It was just a children’s game, though–– everybody had played it–– and Azula couldn’t figure out a way to breach the subject.

She did have a few things to say, though, while Ishiyo was here and listening. 

“Ishiyo, your father was Kuo Saowon, wasn’t he?” She asked. 

Ishiyo’s hands paused in their methodical combing, but the woman hardly missed a beat. “He was, how did you know that, Azula?”

Azula shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. Saowon’s numbers have been dwindling for a long time, there are only so many men your father could have been. Besides, Kuo doesn’t have records of children that I know of. You’ve been erased from history, it seems.”

“Ah. Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,” Ishiyo said as she continued to brush, seemingly unperturbed that her existence had been wiped from national memory. Maybe that was what she wanted, Azula reasoned. Anyone who ran from Caldera City to nowhere town Tayouka was someone who wanted to be forgotten. “He was never the most attentive father.” Ishiyo joked.

“I think we have that in common,” Azula murmured, then froze. What did she just say? Did she just insinuate that her father , who had given her everything she had ever wanted, was on par with Kuo Saowon, a man who had essentially bought his child? Azula’s father had been very much in her life, often willing to sit and listen to Azula’s recounts of her lessons, when her mother never wanted to. He… he had left her in the end, and then lost the war for both of them, but… he had taught her everything she knew. It wasn’t fair to insult him, and it felt wrong to do it.

Ishiyo, however, laughed out loud, surprising Azula enough to pull her out of her thoughts. “I don’t think Fire Nation nobles are known for being the most stellar of dads,” She chuckled. “Fire Lords in particular.”

Ishiyo had found Azula’s comment funny. Azula supposed that made sense, given how the old woman had been torn from her life by her father and surely didn’t harbor good feelings towards him. She still felt uncomfortable, though, like she’d played the wrong move in a game of Pai Sho and lost her strategy. Why had she said that? It felt much too revealing. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Ishiyo, per se, but her stay with the woman was temporary, just until her foot healed enough to get on the road to somewhere else. So it seemed like too much, to be sharing details about her personal life. She worried her lip, self-conscious, and hurried to change the subject.

“I assume you were trained in combat firebending,” Azula said, another thing she’d been thinking about. It was unlikely that Ishiyo had been in the military–– women had only been allowed to join for about thirty years, after all–– but every noble child with bending ability was given compulsory lessons, and that had been true for generations. “Which style?” She’d bet Sei’naka or Xiaoquan, given when and where Ishiyo learned.

“Sei’naka,” Ishiyo replied as she drew Azula’s hair together to the top of her head. Well, it was refreshing to know that Azula hadn’t lost all of her life’s knowledge. 

“Of course. I adapted many of my personal katas from that one,” Azula commented. Sei’naka was one of her favorite bending styles, truthfully. Precise, elegant, deadly, and rarely taught these days. Exactly the sort of thing Azula had craved when she was younger.

Ishiyo’s hands paused again, and Azula turned around to see the old woman’s lips quirked in a smile.

“What?” Azula snapped.

“Nothing. Keep asking questions,” Ishiyo said, eyebrows raised in the picture of fake innocence.

“Don’t patronize me!” Azula scowled, turning back around. She picked at her drying clothes, muttering, “...I was just curious.”

Ishiyo hummed, the irritating smile still lingering in her voice as she said, “Well, feel free to ask, Azula. I’m an open book. But for now,” She reached across the table to grab a spotted handheld mirror and offered it to Azula. Azula raised it, examining her hair, and she saw her own eyes widen as she took in the distinctive, familiar topknot.

“A royal topknot? Isn’t that a little… conspicuous?”

“Does it make you uncomfortable?” Ishiyo asked.

Azula stared at the neat bun. “Not exactly. Won’t people recognize it?”

“Out here?” Ishiyo shrugged, walking back to the stove to transfer the cooked bao into a basket. “Unlikely.” She looked back at Azula, face unreadable. “It suits you.”

“Obviously,” Azula rolled her eyes. She reached up and pulled down the hair at her temples, framing her face in two black locks. She’d always done that, as far back as she could remember, unable to stand the tight feeling of the hair at her scalp. 

It was strange. These past few weeks, she’d usually put her hair into a simple low ponytail, but now she looked like herself now, for the first time in months. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to drown in the image or never see her own face again. 

Ishiyo set the dumpling-filled wicker basket on the table and slid on her shoes, pulling her own hair into her usual smart bun. Azula’s clothes were mostly dry by now, and it wasn’t as if she had very much else to wear. Just the burgundy leggings that reached the top of her feet, the red sleeveless tunic and a sash, tied at the side. Simple, peasant clothes. Roughspun, but comfortable compared to the royal armor. She looked strange in the mirror, her hairstyle just as she’d had it all her life, but her clothes plain. It was like she was wearing two skins.

It was nice, though. Seeing herself again felt good.

“Ready?” Ishiyo was waiting by the door.

“Thank you,” Azula blurted, voice barely above a whisper. Her face flushed. That was the first time she’d genuinely said that to Ishiyo, honestly one of the first times she’d genuinely said it in her life. 

“What?” Ishiyo’s face broke into a grin.

“Don’t make me repeat it,” Azula jabbed a finger at the old woman, brushing past her out the door. “Let’s go.”

Ishiyo followed her, carrying the basket of bao. The sun was low in the sky, not yet setting but beginning to spread warm, orange light over the forested hills. The air was warm, with a wisp of cool breeze. As the two of them made their way across the rice fields to the middle of town, the sound of talking and the clatter of chopsticks against bowls came into earshot. The lanterns in the streets of Tayouka were flickering red, casting the dusty streets in a bold glow. At the end of the main street, multiple large planks had been set down, surrounded by straw mats. Several pots were steaming with something that permeated the air with a delicious, savory smell. What seemed like every resident of Tayouka was clustered around the pots, their chatter forming a merry cacophony as Ishiyo and Azula neared.

“ISHIYO!” A young boy’s yell came from the left, where several children were gathered on the steps of the general store. The boy ran towards Ishiyo and Azula, and Azula recognized him as the kid who had been on the roof when she and Fumiko had gone to see the cottage, the one who had proclaimed himself a firebender.

“Hello, Bohai––”

“I mastered the firebending forms you taught me! Look!” The kid straightened, then spun into a fierce kick, which Azula recognized as a basic thrust kick. Fire spurted from his foot, and Azula was surprised–– firebending with feet was much harder and less intuitive than using your hands.

“Wow! Your power is fantastic!” Ishiyo exclaimed. “I can really see how you applied yourself.” 

Really laying it on thick with the praise there, Azula thought. The way she learned firebending forms was essentially just to repeat them over and over until she got a “good,” or “that was better,” from her instructors; but Ishiyo was different. She seemed to think people deserved praise simply for existing. It was odd.

Bohai beamed. “And then this one too!” He lunged forward, punching orange fire into the air. This time, his form was terrible–– he was clearly trying to get the farthest reach, but sacrificed his balance in the process.

“Very good!” Ishiyo cheered. 

Azula just couldn’t let that one slide, though. “Keep yourself centered,” She cut in. “And… your knee should be directly above the top of your foot.”

The boy blinked, then self-corrected, eyebrows clenched in focus as he repeated the form. It was visibly better this time.

“Good,” Azula nodded.

“Thanks, Setsuna,” Ishiyo said, her voice amused. Azula shot her a glare.

“Yeah, thanks, Setsuna!” Bohai cheered. “How do you know firebending forms? Are you a bender?”

Azula bit her lip, but ‘Azula always lies’ wasn’t Zuko’s catchphrase for nothing. “No,” she replied smoothly. “I learned from watching my brother.”

But, like most of her lies, that one was partly true.

“Oh, neat! You should teach me more stuff sometime!” Without waiting for an answer, the boy turned and ran back to the other children, fire trailing from his hands as he did.

“I think you’re his new favorite person,” Ishiyo joked to Azula.

“I barely did anything,” Azula grumbled, but strangely, she didn’t feel mad. 

The two of them walked towards the clusters of people and food, only for Azula to be ambushed by Fumiko.

“Hey, Setsuna, hey Ishiyo!” The other girl said, crunching on what seemed to be rice candy as she did so. Her speech came out garbled, but that didn’t stop her from exclaiming to Azula, “Happy harvest! Wow, I love your hair! It looks so fancy! Here, come over, let’s sit down!” She grabbed Azula by the hand and dragged her over to several tables full of platters of food. Kebabs with gleaming vegetables and dripping meats, fried rice, even some roast wild turtleduck covered in spices. Townspeople, all laughing and talking, were helping themselves to bowls of food and going to sit down on the straw mats. 

Fumiko handed Azula a bowl and a pair of chopsticks. “You should definitely get the roast turtleduck, and my mother’s pork noodles, of course. But steer clear of the gray fish over there,” She added. “It’s Ming’s, but she never cooks it enough, even if it looks crispy on the outside.” She made a face, then turned to Azula and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Also, I was thinking. You know Bohai, that kid you were talking to? His dad brings sake every year and he doesn’t keep it out of reach of children, if you know what I mean.” 

Azula felt a smile creeping onto her face. She had no idea why, but she didn’t fight it. Fumiko’s enthusiasm and the merriment around them was infectious.

All of this was temporary. She knew that. 

But she could enjoy it while it lasted.

Chapter Text

“And breathe in,” Ishiyo instructed Fumiko, moving her wooden stethoscope from the top of Fumiko’s back to the middle. Fumiko inhaled, absentmindedly scratching the soft feathers under Kaki’s neck. The owlcat purred deeply, leaning into her touch.

At the counters below the medicine shelves, Azula was grinding coffee beans and sneezing, the dark brown dust itching at her nose. Ishiyo used coffee for solely medicinal purposes, meaning Fumiko got to drink it but Azula didn’t, and it was very much not fair. Fumiko didn’t even like coffee–– it made her sleepy, which confused all three of them, including Ishiyo. “The brain is a crapshoot,” Ishiyo liked to say. Azula wondered what herbs would untwist the wires in her own brain. If they even existed. If anyone cared enough to find them.

Azula began to strain the coffee into a ceramic cup of boiling water, back turned to Fumiko and Ishiyo as the two chatted back and forth. The steaming water turned a deep, bitter-smelling brown. Delicious.

“Is that coffee ready, Setsuna?” Ishiyo called to Azula, at a break in her and Fumiko’s conversation. Azula nodded, setting a small lid on the cup and setting it next to Fumiko’s other herbs. There was a beat of silence, in which Azula knew she should’ve given a verbal response, but just didn’t feel like it. The tension between her and Ishiyo was palpable, and Fumiko’s eyes slid between them, questioning.

In the recent days after the harvest, days had begun to blur into weeks as Azula’s life settled back, mostly, into its previous routine. Late summer fell into a misty autumn, and Azula had been spending an increasing amount of time outside as her foot healed. She’d picked up the odd habit of going on walks, down to the rice fields, or into the forest, just wandering until her foot began to twinge and she had to go back. Despite being a child of summer, Azula loved the fall, at least the early fall when the sun stretched bold and hazy over long, breezy days. So she found herself, more often than not, sitting on the porch making medicines, or at Fumiko’s house, or walking around the village. Anywhere that… wasn’t Ishiyo’s cottage.

It wasn’t intentional, per se. It was just… hard to be around Ishiyo for too long. After the initial honeymoon period, Azula’s mind seemed to have stubbornly backtracked, and Ishiyo had changed overnight into a living, breathing reminder of Azula’s past. Someone who was probably still a mess of secrets, most the woman would likely want to keep that way. It was an irrevocable fact now that Ishiyo could not be trusted fully. How could she be, when she kept such an important secret from Azula? In the Fire Nation court, secrets are currency. There was no telling what Ishiyo would reveal next. Azula had to be ready.

And then there was the mysterious art of fire-healing, which Azula was itching to look up in a library and make sure the books never spoke of, to make sure that it really was an invention of Ishiyo’s. She wanted to understand fire-healing, to pick it apart and rebuild it like she did with firebending moves. But she didn’t want to be around Ishiyo.

Such was the problem. And Azula couldn’t be sure, but she thought Ishiyo might be tiptoeing around her, too. Usually, the old woman would call her in for meals, or just to chat, but nowadays it was happening less and less often. They were both cowards, Azula figured, for refusing to address the obvious problem of their shared pasts. And what luck, Azula often thought sarcastically to herself, that two people trying their best to escape their past ran right back into it. And she wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence. It had been Ishiyo’s fault that she dropped that on Azula so suddenly. Azula would let the old woman figure it out.

After Fumiko’s checkup, the girl departed with a wave and a bag of fresh medicine. Ishiyo then, predictably, had a list of chores for Azula. Laundry and some pottery repair. Ishiyo sat in the corner at the table, canning and labeling vegetables from the market, humming to herself while Azula folded the laundry and soon came to sit across from her. The tang of canning vinegar hung in the air, mixing uncomfortably with the earthy scent of pottery. Azula focused on the bowl she was shaping and tried to ignore Ishiyo’s irritating humming of some lullaby she couldn’t name. It took about three seconds for the attempt to fail, and Azula snapped, “Can you stop humming.”

Ishiyo raised her eyebrows, eyes twinkling in a playfulness entirely inappropriate for how annoyed Azula felt. “Do you have something against the opening solo of A Yellow Heart?”

“I hate musical theater.”

“Nobody hates A Yellow Heart. I would’ve died for Lan when I was your age.”

“Who’s–– ugh. Never mind,” Azula picked up her bowl and pottery tools. “If you’re going to keep singing, I’m moving to the other room.”

Ishiyo did seem to wilt, just a tiny bit, after Azula said that. It was disconcerting, because usually when Azula snapped at the older woman, she just laughed it off. Maybe she could sense the real vitriol stewing behind Azula’s words.

“Remind me to find you some scripts,” Ishiyo joked after a moment, though the humor wasn’t there. “Anyone who hates musical theater simply hasn’t found the right one yet.”

Azula doubted that. She’d grown up watching theater, courtesy of her mother, and all it had given her was irritatingly sappy love ballads still stuck in her head every so often. She slid open the door to the medicine room with her foot and closed it behind her, then pulled up a stool to sit at the table in the center of the room, usually reserved for patients, but it’s obviously just an ordinary table in a pinch. A pinch like Azula getting inexplicably–– well, somewhat explicably–– angry at Ishiyo for things that Azula knew were out of both of their control. She knew that. Ishiyo couldn’t change the circumstances of either of their births. But it all made Azula mad regardless, because even the middle of nowhere had strings of her past attached.

Eventually, Azula finished the bowl she was working on, and the drowsiness of a sunny morning seeping through the canvas curtains was getting to her, making her eyelids heavy. Early afternoon found her asleep slumped at the table, sharply awoken by a loud rapping on the door.

“Ishiyo? Setsuna?” Came Fumiko’s muffled voice. Azula internally groaned, but rose from the table, rubbing the side of her face that had been squished on the table and huffing in annoyance when her hand came away covered in ceramic dust. She caught sight of a note pinned by the door, reading in Ishiyo’s handwriting, Doing a home visit in town. Don’t forget to fold laundry! Azula rolled her eyes, walked to the door, and slid it open to reveal Fumiko, who waved cheerily.

“Hey, Setsuna,” Fumiko glanced around. “Where’s Ishiyo?”

“She’s making a home visit somewhere,” Azula replied. “Do you need her for something?”

“Oh, no, just wondering!” Fumiko said. “I just wanted to see if you were free! I was thinking we could head down to Zilu’s to get some lunch, ‘cause I can smell his fresh dumplings from my house and I’m starving, and then maybe we could go on one of your walks? Oh, were you sleeping?”

Azula tried her best to rub the rest of the ceramic off her face, realizing her topknot was messy and her bangs, grown now to the length they were before she cut them, were probably sticking to the ceramic on her face. “What gave it away?” She asked dryly.

“Uh, kind of the everything about you,” Fumiko shrugged. “Are you good?”

“Why wouldn’t I be good.” Azula said flatly.

“I don’t know. I was just asking. Cause, you know. Friends!” Fumiko smiled.

“Right,” Azula said.

“Anyway! Do you want to?” Fumiko finished. One of the things Azula appreciated about Fumiko was that if Azula wanted to respond “Right,” and nothing else, Fumiko would just skip right over that and continue talking. If Azula wanted to talk, which she didn’t, she probably wouldn’t be able to get a word in edgewise.

“I suppose I should get outdoors sometime today,” Azula assented, turning to grab her shoes as Fumiko cheered. “How long can you stay out?”

“Oh, I don’t have much to do, so basically the whole afternoon.”

“Hm. Perfect opportunity to waste time.” Azula took out her topknot and gathered her hair in a low ponytail.

“Well, if you don’t want––” Fumiko paused and then laughed lightly. “Oh, that was sarcasm, wasn’t it?”

“No,” Azula said, confused.

“Pretty sure it was.”

“It wasn’t. I’m planning to waste time.”

“Okay.”

It was funny for some reason, and Azula smiled, just a little. At least she could get out of the house before Ishiyo came back. She needed to figure out what to do, and preferably fast. She hated that they were tiptoeing around each other, but she couldn’t imagine just being normal about things after knowing that Ishiyo and her, against all odds, shared a related experience. It was ridiculous, like a twist in one of those Ember Island plays her mother used to love. It made her feel dangerously out of control.

This was a bit better though, she thought as she followed Fumiko across the path from Ishiyo’s cottage. Azula was glad she’d brought a coat–– one of Ishiyo’s winter hanten, knitted from thick cotton and dyed a deep red. The wind had a bite to it. Azula shrugged her shoulders up so that the hanten’s velvet collar, which clasped in the front as a barrier against the cold, brushed the bridge of her nose. Lu Ten used to call her sticking her chin into her collar her ‘turtleduck mode,’ and it was the sort of thing that never seemed to leave her head. Even after Lu Ten was gone, whenever Azula did it–– and it wasn’t often, because she was sure Father would’ve found it unseemly–– she’d hear in her mind her cousin’s voice saying, “Assuming turtleduck mode!”

It was so stupid. Azula wished her memories’ echoes would just die along with everything else. Not that Ishiyo was helping with that. Ugh.

Along the path down to Tayouka, Fumiko walked ahead, her arms spread out. She wore a faded fur-lined shawl over her usual tunic and pants, and the beige fabric of a winter headscarf draped her shoulders. “Fall!” The girl said happily. “I love fall.”

Azula hummed in agreement.

“When I was little, my father used to build huge leaf piles for all us kids to jump in. I liked to hide in them, and he’d pretend not to know I was there so I could jump out and surprise him.” Fumiko smiled. “It was always me and my friend Hao. One time we filled a bunch of rice sacks with leaves and hid in a tree by his house, and then dumped them all on his brother as he walked by. It was hilarious.”

Azula frowned. Fumiko had never mentioned her father before. Azula had figured he’d just been a casualty of war like everyone else’s relatives. And what about this Hao kid? There weren’t any people by that name that Azula knew of in Tayouka, and it wasn’t a large town. Azula couldn’t ponder any more though, before Fumiko continued.

“My da’s MIA, and Hao and his brother were both killed.” The other girl slowed her pace, picking at her sleeves. Then her head shot up. “Woah! That was sudden. Sorry. Sometimes stuff like that creeps up on me, y’know? Huh. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Azula said. “I understand.”

Fumiko looked back at Azula, eyes curious, and Azula ducked her chin into the collar of her hanten. Agni, why’d she say that?

“War’s awful, isn’t it?” Fumiko sighed, looking away. “‘Course it’s all we’ve ever known. All anybody’s ever known, the “new normal,” though that phrase’s been so worn out it’s not got any legs to walk on.” She paused. “Any of your family in the military?”

Azula stiffened, biting her lip, choosing not to answer that. Instead, “Fumiko, did something happen?” She asked. Why was the other girl acting this way? Fumiko didn’t usually just start somberly monologuing right out of the gate. Her monologues were normally much more chipper.

“Not to me, it didn’t,” Fumiko replied.

“Then why––,” Azula cut herself off, suspicious, as Fumiko held her gaze. “Is this about me?”

Fumiko looked like she was holding her breath, head bobbing from side to side in hesitation. Then, finally, she turned fully around to walk backwards and asked, “Come on, Setsuna, what’s going on with you and Ishiyo?”

Azula blanched. So that’s what this walk was about? Not to go get Zilu’s dumplings, but so that Fumiko could interrogate her? Azula’s irritation rose. “What does that have to do with the war?” She retorted.

“I don’t know, I just noticed something was up during my check-up and I thought maybe we could… talk, you know.” Fumiko shrugged. “I don’t really know anything about you––”

“Well, I hardly know much about you––”

“Exactly!” Fumiko exclaimed. “Shouldn’t we know more about each other? If we’re going to be friends?”

“I don’t know why you’re so preoccupied with being friends,” Azula raised an eyebrow. “Besides, friends don’t interrogate their friends about their personal lives.”

“Yes, they do,” Fumiko argued. “Friends tell each other everything! They share secrets and have sleepovers and––”

“Well, I don’t,” Azula interrupted, marching past Fumiko down the path. “What exactly do you know about being friends, anyway? ‘Sleepovers?’ You sound as if you’re quoting a fiction novel.”

“Ugh, shut up, Setsuna!” Fumiko yelled.

“Watch your––,” Azula choked on her own retort. Don’t mess things up, now. She had to keep a level head. She took a breath. “The dumplings,” she ventured, sounding stupid. “Let’s just get them and go home.” She narrowed her eyes. “There are dumplings, aren’t there?”

“Yeah, I wasn’t lying,” Fumiko pushed past her, breath misting in the air. Azula buried her face in her hanten again and scowled. She wasn’t sure if Fumiko’s emphasis on lying had been intentional, but she hated the way the implication hung in the air nonetheless.

The tension between the two girls had barely even begun to form when Fumiko turned around again. “Look, I’m sorry––”

Azula huffed, still annoyed, but the tiniest bit amused. “You can’t even hold your composure for that long?”

“I–– Ugh. I knew something was up with you and Ishiyo, so I was fixing to ask, and I didn’t mean to ruin our walk. It’s only that, when I have issues with my own ma, I feel like it helps––”

“Ishiyo isn’t my mother.” Azula said. Her voice was shockingly cold, even more scathing than she felt. It was almost satisfying to see Fumiko’s mouth click shut and the other girl look away. Azula ignored how her insides felt like they’d been pierced. Fumiko had gotten the message and shut up, and so quickly too. Maybe even this girl, who obsessed constantly over being ‘friends,’ could find it in her to leave Azula behind. Why wouldn’t she? The only thing keeping Fumiko was her own loneliness, after all. Azula almost wanted to apologize–– it seemed to work with Fumiko–– but what if the other girl took that as an invitation to keep prying? At least now any line of conversation about Ishiyo and mothers was over; Azula didn’t need to be thinking about mothers right now. Azula stayed quiet.

They were entering the town proper now, and they walked down Tayouka’s main dirt road in tandem, past the houses and shops to where Azula could hear the hiss of cooking food. Zilu, a tall man with pale brown skin and long black hair, was indeed presiding over several pans of sizzling dumplings, letting off a cloud of steam that seemed to wobble against the cool air. Fumiko, making idle small talk, purchased a small steamer basket and then glanced back at Azula, still not saying anything to her. Azula, lost in bitterness, didn’t notice it was her turn until Fumiko said, with forced cheer, “Setsuna, don’t you want some dumplings?”

“Oh. Yes. Six pig-chicken shengjian bao, please.” Azula said to Zilu. Suddenly, she remembered something rather important about a transaction like this. Money. She hadn’t brought any. Because she was a moron. Stupid, Azula! How useless can you get? As surreptitiously as possible, Azula rummaged around in the pockets of Ishiyo’s hanten and emerged with… one copper piece. That wasn’t a lot, Azula was pretty sure. But maybe it would be enough? She held it out to Zilu, who took it hesitantly. “Sorry,” the man said, “That’ll be a silver, if you please.”

A silver? Azula had hardly even heard of a silver piece. Fumiko seemed to notice Azula’s confusion and rolled her eyes, pulling a tarnished silver coin out of her own pocket and handing it to Zilu. “Whoops!” She said cheerily. “Thanks, Zilu. Come on, Setsuna!” Azula, fighting the urge to again assume 'turtleduck mode,' followed as Fumiko marched back down the street.

“I… apologize.” Azula muttered to Fumiko’s back.

“That’s alright,” Fumiko sighed. “Y’know, Ishiyo’s saved my life enough that a silver piece isn’t even close to enough to pay her back. So. It’s alright.”

“I didn’t mean…” Oh, forget it, Azula. Fumiko clearly doesn’t want to talk about how you snapped at her.

“Oh,” Fumiko glanced back. “That’s okay, too. I shouldn’t have… well, you coulda been a little nicer. But I shouldn’t have asked you outta the blue like that.”

Oh. Well, that’s that. Azula didn’t feel much better. She still didn’t want to talk, and definitely not about Ishiyo–– it’s not like Fumiko could know anyway. But it was continually surprising how forgiving Fumiko was. A bit like Ty Lee. Until she wasn’t.

Maybe Ty Lee had been right, though. What did Azula have to give that could buy kindness? It was a language Azula couldn’t speak.

“Do you wanna keep walking?” Fumiko asked, slurping soup out of one of her dumplings and testing her own pulse with her free hand. It was something the girl did a lot. “Out into the fields? You feel up for it?”

Azula tested her foot and found it hardly twinging. “Let’s go,” She assented. Fumiko smiled and ran ahead. The tension from their earlier argument wasn’t gone, but Fumiko seemed to want it to be. The mid-afternoon sun catching the long, gray clouds seemed to sap irritation from Azula like steam pouring from a factory. It left Azula feeling empty in its place, but that was how it was always. Fumiko seemed doubly affected by the sun as the two of them marched across the little paths between the rice fields. Fumiko caught sight of a tiny lizard-frog among the fronds of ricegrass and squealed in excitement, crouching down to watch it hop away.

“You’re like a golden panda-dog,” Azula commented, amused.

“What? Why?” Fumiko looked back and her eyebrows knit, her face stuffed with the last of her dumplings.

“You’re so…” Azula searched for the word. “Animated. You could find happiness in an inch of ribbon.” She wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or not, but Fumiko seemed to take it as one.

“Well, you know,” Fumiko smiled. “I was born too early, and my heart’s messed up, and I get sick a lot, and my eyesight’s blurry, and all that. So I try to make the most of every day, as cheesy as that sounds?” Her voice went up at the end like a question, but she didn’t seem unsure. She turned back to follow the lizard-frog. “And everybody always has worked so hard to keep me alive. They gave my Ma the food they could spare, ‘cause I was so skinny as a baby. And I ended up stronger ‘cause everyone knew I’d be small. You know what they say! It takes a village.”

Azula tilted her head, and Fumiko seemed to sense her confusion.

“You’ve never heard that? It’s a proverb. ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ And then there’s the follow-up, ‘a child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” Fumiko raised her hands theatrically.

Azula looked down at her friend, the words sinking in, then around the fields. Tayouka was far away enough now to look like what it really was–– a tiny village nestled in the middle of nowhere. The issue of Ishiyo nosed its way suddenly back into Azula’s mind, kept off before by her argument with Fumiko, and anger broiled again in her gut.

‘A child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth’?

Azula sighed. That sounded about right. Burning things down gave a little warmth, it was true. It usually didn’t last very long— just long enough to make it addictive. Maybe it wouldn’t work in the long run. Maybe Azula would run out of things to burn, and she would end up just like on her birthday, lying in the fire lilies as the life drained from her. That is, until Ishiyo found her and pushed the life back in. For better. Or for worse.

Azula sighed, and turned from the sun.

There was one last thing to burn.

Chapter Text

Azula had a plan.

As much as possible, it left nothing up to chance. She couldn’t call it foolproof, but most plans weren’t. Truthfully, this one was unusually not foolproof, but Azula couldn’t do much about that.

This was a plan to get her out of here. 

She wasn’t going to botch it this time like she had with her last escape. And she wouldn’t let emotions get in the way, because the whole reason why she was going to escape was to get rid of these troublesome feelings surrounding Tayouka, Fumiko, Ishiyo… her whole life right now. It had been okay for a little while. Things had even been getting better, but then Ishiyo turned out to have been keeping Azula’s own secrets from her. And chose to drop it on Azula at the worst time. And then, she just acted like nothing had changed. Why had Azula thought Ishiyo would be anything but a covert liar? Of course she wasn’t different. She wasn’t even a real peasant. The honeymoon was over, and Azula was leaving. As soon as the plan was done.

The idea was to get her firebending back, learn the basics of fire-healing, and then leave as soon as possible. For these things to happen, Azula needed to get down to business and stop waiting around for something to change. She needed a real, concrete way of ensuring that Ishiyo would not only help her get her bending back as she’d suggested after the storm, but would also do most anything Azula requested. The woman had been too much of a loose cannon for too long, and Azula had just let it happen, hoping foolishly that Ishiyo really was a ticket to something better as she seemed to want Azula to think she was. No, she was something far more confusing and dangerous— a foreign agent with her own agenda. Azula always found that the best way to take care of this problem wasn’t to understand the target’s motives. It was to change them. 

Now Azula, seated at the pottery table, stretched forward to rest her head on the table. Her fingers peeked out of the long sleeves of her wool shirt and fidgeted on the dusty surface. It was cold in the cottage, with winter having pounced onto the Amaimizu Valley, spreading its layer of frost over the usually arid Fire Nation countryside. At least whatever remained of the summer humidity was gone. As Azula slumped on the table, Kaki the owlcat flapped up to sit between her arms, worming his head into Azula’s hand. She relented, stroking his soft fur. Maybe he wasn’t so bad. Azula watched the cottage door, and lay in wait. 

After a while, Ishiyo entered with a basket of freshly laundered clothes, and she caught sight of Azula stretched out on the table. It was unusual for Azula to rest like that, in a position that so clearly lacks composure. That’s why Azula had assumed this position, of course. So that Ishiyo would use her cursed empathy for something good, for once, and follow the bait.

She did, setting the clothes down near the kitchen sink and removing her cold-weather haori. “What’s wrong, Azula?”

“Mm?” Azula pretended to have been lost in thought, not having heard Ishiyo.

Ishiyo’s face pinched, worried. “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing’s wrong,” Azula said, turning her head to face away from the old woman. 

“C’mon, Azula, you can talk to me. I want to hear what’s on your mind,” Ishiyo pressed. She walked forward to sit at the table, Kaki chirping to get her attention.

“Oh, you do, do you? Is that what you want?” Azula let a sneer escape into her voice. “You want to help me? Help me get better?”

Ishiyo seemed to chew on words for a moment, clearly perceiving that something was more wrong than she’d initially thought. But Azula didn’t think the old woman had seen through her quite yet.

“I don’t believe it,” Azula said, turning to look Ishiyo in the eye. “If you really wanted to help me, would I be here floundering like this? Tell me, what of substance have you been doing for me all this time? And now you’re all dejected because your little pet project isn’t––”

“Azula!” Ishiyo said, sharply but not unkindly. “You’re not my–– you’re not my pet project. I’m not like them . I promise.”

“Prove it,” Azula let herself shrink somewhat, as if the fight had left her and this was her last plea. “Prove that you’re not using me. Prove that you’re not just… going to hurt me.” She added, and a bit of emotion snuck into her tone, emotion that she, stupidly, didn’t have to fake. 

“I’m sorry,” Ishiyo said. “I wanted to guide you, not tell you what to do, but it seems that has backfired on both you and myself.”

“I don’t care,” Azula grumbled. “Just… help me. I feel so… so missing,” She choked out. This sort of acting came so easily to her, shifting words to fit whatever frame she needed. She worked hard to be able to transform quickly and seamlessly, countless hours in the mirror changing from face to face. It had conquered Ba Sing Se for her. It had been, sometimes, the linchpin to her survival. 

Ishiyo was looking at her, face soft. She sighed and scooted closer to where Azula sat. “You know, when I was your age and dealing with… well, frankly, much of the same things you’re dealing with now, I also had difficulty firebending.” 

There it was. Hook.

“I’ve been thinking, because your foot has been healing, and especially because you’ve now spoken to me about this…”

Line.

“I think we should work together to get your firebending back.”

Sinker.

Phase one had officially gone off without a hitch. Azula made sure to not show any of her triumph on her face. Instead, she asked, “How?” And she was truly wondering. “Don’t make empty promises.” 

“I’ve got a few ideas,” Ishiyo said, scratching Kaki’s head. “I think, in order to unblock your damaged chi, you should try to meditate into the Spirit World.”

Azula scoffed. Spirits again. “Okay, and then what? I just call on the spirits, or the ancestors, or Agni himself to fix me up? As if any of them give a shit about me.”

“They do, actually,” Ishiyo corrected. “Remember, it was the Lily Spirit who brought you to me.” She seemed completely serious.

“No, it wasn’t, Ishiyo,” Azula rolled her eyes. The Lily Spirit didn’t exist. Sure, spirits did–– or at least, they used to. Now, Fire Nation literature said they kept to the Spirit World–– dubiously existent in the first place–– and only the craziest charlatans tried to poke through that wall. Or the craziest fifteen-year-olds with no other options.

“Oh?” Ishiyo challenged, still holding on to her stupid story. “So you believe a nearly seventy-year-old lady found you in the forest where she happened to be wandering and just… carried you all the way to her cottage?” 

“Seventy? You don’t look a day over sixty-two,” Azula muttered. 

“Seventy and proud. Age is a blessing, kid,” Ishiyo said. “People don’t lose their value the instant they can’t work as they used to, at least not anywhere but the Fire Nation.”

“Whatever,” Azula replied. Back on track. “Even if I could get my bending back in the Spirit World, how could I ever manage to get there? It’s an incredibly difficult feat, even if it is possible.” Azula could admit that she was not an expert in spirituality–– her father had preferred more concrete, applied interests–– but even she knew that countless spiritualists over time had tried and failed to meditate onto the other side.

“We’ll want to be in a physical place very connected to the Spirit World, at a time when the two planes are close,” Ishiyo said.

“Says who?” Azula asked. It wasn’t as though Ishiyo was a spiritual expert either. Or at least Azula didn’t think she was. The woman was, of course, totally unpredictable and seemed to delight in being a compendium of useless information.

“This isn’t my first rodeo, Azula,” Ishiyo replied.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“When I was around your age, around the time I ran away from home, I had difficulty bending as well.” Ishiyo said. “Not to the same extent as you. But I had very little power, and I tried to meditate into the Spirit World to fix it. I read every book I could find on the subject, and I finally attempted it on the spring equinox. I didn’t make it in, but I did have an encounter with the Lily Spirit on the physical plane that was enough to help me along.”

Azula bit her lip. “But the spring equinox is almost four months away,” She tried to keep desperation out of her tone. She couldn’t wait that long.

“We can also try on the solstices. Any of the equinoxes or the solstices will do, given that that’s when the Spirit World is closest to our own. I suggest the winter solstice,” Ishiyo said. “Which is in just a little under a week. We did choose an opportune time to talk about this, didn’t we?”

Azula actually did want to thank some sort of omnipotent presence for when she chose to launch the plan, because she hadn’t thought about how the solstices and equinoxes could help her get into the Spirit World, but it made sense–– or at least, it made about as much sense as things could in this line of conversation. She was very glad that she’d brought this up today, just in time for the winter solstice.

“The solstice also happens to be my birthday,” Ishiyo added. 

That tracked. The winter solstice was the unluckiest day to be born on in the Fire Nation; also exactly six months after Azula’s own, yet another uncomfortable similarity between them. A birth on the summer solstice was considered a divine gift; Azula had occasionally wondered, particularly since the war ended and she had more time to ponder, whether her father had done that on purpose. If he’d been building the perfect daughter before she’d even been born.

She’d tried so hard to be worthy of the Day of Agni. But it hadn’t meant anything in the end. She wasn’t blessed–– not, at least, if she didn’t have her bending. I have to get it back. Then I’ll feel whole again. Myself again.

She had to believe that.

Azula stood and said shortly, “We can discuss the rest later. I’m… going to start on my chores.” She needed a moment to think without Ishiyo encroaching on it. Ishiyo nodded assent, and Azula turned, but, feeling the prick of Ishiyo’s eyes on her back, decided to secure her foundation a little more; there could be no room for doubt of whether Ishiyo had fallen for Azula’s manipulation. 

“Ishiyo,” Azula ventured, dampening her voice with hesitation. “If you’re only helping me to use me as some sort of weapon, I will never forgive you. I… cannot do that anymore.” Adding a measure of perceived insecurity for a desired result was often the cherry on top for ensuring the result would come to pass. If Azula seemed too eager, those unskilled in manipulation such as Ishiyo would be suspicious. Conversely, people like Azula’s mother would see through this tactic. Ursa was difficult to trick. After all, Azula had always wondered whether her gift for telling lies came from her mother’s side, not her father’s.

Ishiyo shook her head at Azula’s comment. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I do truly want to help you, Azula. I want you to get your bending back for your sake, not mine.”

Azula nodded, her throat feeling thick. There was this poisonous sort of–– well, not regret exactly, but discomfort–– stewing in her chest. She couldn’t explain it. But her tongue tasted so bitter. Was she–– was this the right thing?

Was this the right thing?

It had to be. And… and even if it wasn’t… it was the necessary thing. Azula would leave before she was left, or tricked again, or coerced into following Ishiyo’s every whim. She would maintain her dignity, and then, once she was fit to travel, she would be herself again. 

Somehow. 

It took two more days for Ishiyo to be ready to go, and then after that, another three of waiting around for the solstice. Azula had been put on somewhat of a ‘meditation practice schedule’ by Ishiyo; she spent a couple hours a day stewing in incense fumes, eyes closed in the lotus position, searching the crevices of her mind for her inner flame. Or more likely just sitting aimlessly so Ishiyo could get rid of her for a bit, but Azula did almost feel like the meditation was helping; by the day of their departure, she could slow her heart rate easily, and even, in a small corner of her psyche, feel the phantom warmth of her fire. Firebending involved a great deal of breathing exercises, and meditation was included in that, but the kind of spirituality that Ishiyo was advising Azula to partake in hadn’t been a staple of Azula’s childhood lessons. “At the base of your chest is the center of your chi,” Ishiyo would say, “The dantian, elixir field.” It was just below the navel, she said, and corresponded loosely with the water and earth ‘chakras,’ above and below it respectively.

“Chakras?” Azula had questioned when Ishiyo had first said the word. It didn’t translate into the old language as far as Azula was aware.

“Eyes closed,” Ishiyo reminded, as Azula had opened one of her eyes in curiosity. She shut it again, and resumed her breathing counts.

“The chakra is a center of spiritual energy in Air Nomad mythology,” Ishiyo had explained quietly. “We won’t follow the practice very much, but simply put, it’s like another way to describe chi; based on the philosophy of a ‘spiritual body’ in which the Air Nomads believe, as well as some of the southwestern Earth Kingdom. The spiritual body is connected in eight places in a line down the body, and each one corresponds to a separate realm of the psyche.”

It wasn’t history, cold facts; or science, concrete evidence; but Azula found herself listening all the same. 

“Where did you learn all this?” Azula had questioned, voice sounding muffled by the smoky air. Where could one find such detailed information on Air Nomad practices? There had been nothing of true substance in all the libraries of the Caldera Palace, all those times when Azula had gone searching in the archives for a new piece of information.

There had been the sound of Ishiyo shifting, blowing out the sticks she was using to light the incense. “Culture has always fascinated me. Especially that which has been lost.”

The words had felt sensitive, untouchable for some reason. Like anything Azula said would intrude on the sudden, quiet sort of sadness that Ishiyo’s voice had tenderly held. She had stayed quiet, and the next time Ishiyo spoke, the sadness seemed to be gone, like a passing cloud. 

Now, it was the big day–– the morning of the solstice. It was the very early morning, the sun just barely peeking above the rice hills, and Azula was shaking dust off her sandals for a last trip to Fumiko’s house. Ishiyo had told the village that a rare mountain herb was flowering this week, and both she and Azula had to go collect it before the first alpine snows. It was believable enough–– there were herbs like that. Ishiyo had told the lie easily to all of her patients, and Azula was impressed–– and nervous–– at how authentic it had seemed. But, even with being a good liar, it was still unlikely that Ishiyo had picked up on Azula’s manipulation. Lie detection was a separate skill. Besides, Ishiyo was still helping her, and Azula still had control over the situation that she would not lose.

Fumiko’s mother, Xiuying, had offered up a pair of straw boots for Azula to use on the journey, in the event that they encountered snow or frost. Azula was making her way over to Fumiko’s house to collect them, the cold morning fog biting at her nose as she slid the door shut behind her. She gathered her hair into a low, loose ponytail–– it was quite long now, and nearly reached her waist. She would need to cut it for convenience soon. 

Xiuying was sitting outside of her house with the twins, each of them sewing a patch on a different item of clothing. Feng looked very sleepy, threading the needle in a sloppy stitch. Next to him, Jia nudged Xiuying, “Ma, Setsuna’s here,” sounding every bit as tired as her brother.

Xiuying looked up and smiled when she saw Azula, brown eyes bright in her freckled face. “Good seeing you, Setsuna,” She said, and stood to walk to the door. “Just a moment, I’ll get the shoes. Fumi’s still sleeping, unfortunately!”

“Ma’s forced us to get up early and help her with chores,” Feng complained.

“Feng, don’t be complainin’ to a guest!” Jia scolded through a yawn.

“Don’t be yelling!” Feng scolded back, his voice just barely quieter than Jia’s.

“I wasn’t,” Jia mumbled, turning back to her needlework. 

“...Fumiko can’t do it?” Azula asked, idly.

“She’s sleeping!” Feng said.

Jia sniffed. “We think she’s on her moon cycle,” She said, in a voice that seemed to suggest she didn’t think it was that big of a deal. Azula nodded at the ground, then turned awkwardly towards the door. With nothing else to do, she opened it, peeking inside to see where Xiuying was. The cottage was much the same as it had been when she and Ishiyo had stayed there, only with more herbs and dried food tied to the ceiling, and the irori burning to keep the center room warm. Xiuying being nowhere to be seen, Azula began to retreat out, but a flash of movement caught her eye. The door to the bedroom was ajar, and Fumiko could be seen through it, folding a futon towards the far wall. Not exactly a remarkable sight, except Azula couldn’t help but notice that Fumiko’s right foot seemed to be dragging a little, the other girl’s body listing slightly towards that side. 

Azula felt her brow furrow. That was… unusual. Not like Fumiko’s usual brand of fatigue. This was concentrated on one side, and Fumiko seemed to teeter where she stood. It rang a bell in Azula’s brain, a faint memory from one of her medicine lessons with Ishiyo…

“Here they are, Setsuna!” Xiuying emerged from the backyard through the far door holding a pair of thick straw boots. Azula took them and thanked her, casting a quick glance back at Fumiko, unseen by Xiuying. As she backed out of the house, she saw the other girl drop one corner of the futon, apparently randomly as her arm seemed to slacken. Azula’s heart dropped, her mind finally clicking on what this reminded her of.

Apoplexy–– a stroke, it was called. These looked like the preliminary symptoms that Ishiyo had drilled into her back when she first decided to learn to heal with the old woman. Surely Fumiko wasn’t going to have one? Azula knew the other girl had a bad heart, and that she’d passed out before due to heart palpitations. Ishiyo’s fire-healing was highly suited to helping with heart problems, though, and Ishiyo had said Fumiko had been getting better… but this wasn’t something that could be ignored. What if Fumiko had a stroke?

Azula was about twenty steps out from Fumiko’s cottage when she realized what this meant. If she told Ishiyo, then the old woman would be duty-bound to stay and take care of Fumiko. It wouldn’t even be a question. But if they didn’t go, Azula would have to wait until the spring equinox until she could get her bending back. She imagined another four months of tiptoeing around Ishiyo, trying to keep up appearances, and her stomach knotted. She couldn’t do that. Besides, Fumiko might not be going to have a stroke. It was entirely possible, probable even, that Azula was wrong. She wasn’t a healer. She was barely even an apprentice. 

With each step back to Ishiyo’s cottage, she repeated this to herself. Fumiko would be fine. Azula and Ishiyo would only be gone for a few days tops anyway, right? 

She couldn’t wait another four months.

She had made difficult decisions before. She’d always been able to weigh the options to benefit the greater good, find the best outcome. Azula had always easily pushed down any stubborn feelings of guilt or regret. She’d learned to live without regrets, for the sake of her sanity. In the end, that guilt had consumed her. But it wouldn’t this time. 

Azula was overthinking this. That was all.

By the time she made it to the cottage, Ishiyo was out on the front step, canvas backpack strapped to her back. She offered another one out to Azula, who took it and shrugged it on. Ishiyo smiled and asked, “You ready, kid?”

Azula’s words stuck in her throat. I think Fumiko’s getting worse. What if we lose her? What if we lose her and it’s my fault, like it’s always been?

She swallowed the confession. This had to end, and nothing would stop her now. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

“Do you know any working songs?” Ishiyo’s cane slid against the morning frost as she marched up the hill a few paces ahead. She looked back at Azula, lined face red from exertion and cold.

“Why would I know any working songs,” Azula asked Ishiyo, deadpan. 

“You don’t know Sailor’s Lullaby ?” Ishiyo asked. “It’s from… ah, what’s it called? A classic Ember Island musical. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

Unfortunately, Azula had heard of it. “ Follow The Lost, ” She mumbled. 

“What was that?”

“It’s called Follow The Lost. It’s about a sea journey.” Azula said, louder.

Ishiyo snapped her fingers. “That’s the one!”

Azula ran her hands through her sweaty hair and wondered how she’d ended up with two mother-figures who were obsessed with terrible theater.

Then she nearly stopped in her tracks, angry at her mind for having the audacity to suggest Ishiyo was a ‘mother-figure.’ Where had that come from? She sighed. They’d been walking for several hours now; her brain was muddled. Her foot was twinging with the irritating type of discomfort that will drive you crazy after a while. She and Ishiyo had been taking breaks, but the walk to Forgetful Valley was long enough that eventually, breaks did nothing to stop Azula’s foot from throbbing, and they had to make it to the Valley before dark. 

According to Ishiyo, Forgetful Valley was the most ‘spiritual’ spot anywhere nearby. What exactly spiritual meant, Azula couldn’t parse. But she supposed it was just where she had the most chance of poking through to the Spirit World. She’d heard of Forgetful Valley, a little bit, anyway. It was a notoriously spooky forest, the source of many a mysterious disappearance. Azula found herself running through the basics of meditation that she’d learned in these past days–– observing the mind, feeling chi paths, even the calming breath patterns they’d taught her at the asylum. They’d never worked much there–– she’d been too angry to listen–– but she’d found that the methodical breathing helped with meditation. Ishiyo would turn her into an outright monk at this rate. 

“You ever heard the story of Koh the Face Stealer?” Ishiyo turned back again.

“Of course I have,” Azula responded. As a young kid, she used to stand at the mirror and practice an emotionless face, fearful that someday she’d come into contact with Koh. She’d think of the worst things that she could imagine someone saying to her–– “Azula, you’re a terrible firebender,” “Zuko is smarter than you,” –– and try to keep a straight face while thinking them. Of course, this didn’t really work, but to Azula’s young mind, it was preparation. 

“What about the Mother of Faces?” Ishiyo added.

That one, Azula hadn’t heard of. She shook her head. 

“Ah, she’s one of the oldest spirits there is, said to hand-make each of our faces from scratch. And she inhabits Forgetful Valley,” Ishiyo raised her arms, gesturing around them. “Who knows, maybe we’ll see her. She’s a bit of a recluse though, I’ve heard. And legend has it, she’s Koh’s mother.”

Azula could see the similarities. One gives faces, one takes them. 

“They say that Koh was born to the Mother of Faces in the Spirit World thousands of years before the war, with a different name that has since been lost to history,” Ishiyo said, with the air of someone beginning a long story. Azula sighed, but she couldn’t deny that she was curious. She was well aware of her own hunger for useless knowledge, and it had always annoyed her to no end. Curiosity killed the owlcat, after all.

“The Mother of Faces and Koh were very alike. They both shared a love for humans that other spirits scoffed at, and legend says that Koh helped to make the earliest humans along with the Mother of Faces herself,” Ishiyo continued, her voice punctuated by the thwack of her cane against the frozen earth. “But as Koh grew, he and his mother became distanced. He had a spark of… let’s say… justice in him that the Mother didn’t share, and eventually he left her. It’s said that when he left, his feet dug deep into the ground and created the first road, which all children now follow as they grow.”

“How do I know you’re not just making this up?” Azula asked, but truthfully she was somewhat engrossed. 

“Well, if I were, I’d add a resolution,” Ishiyo shrugged. “But there isn’t one. Koh and his mother have never reunited, though the legend says that he misses her so much that he steals faces to replicate her.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Azula muttered. The story rubbed her the wrong way. 

“Maybe not, but that’s the story,” Ishiyo said. “Oh, look. There they are,” The old woman came to the top of a muddy, frosted hill, followed quickly by Azula. From here, Azula could see the tops of the evergreen trees, each gilded in the gold of the rising sun. Following Ishiyo’s gaze, Azula saw what the old woman had been referring to–– two spotless, nearly perfectly circular pools of water nestled in the forest. 

“We’ll try to meditate there,” Ishiyo said, pointing. 

As the two of them descended down the hill towards the pools, Azula thought about the story of Koh and his mother. It annoyed her, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. If Koh missed the Mother of Faces so much, then why not return to her? What purpose did stealing faces serve? This is why Azula’s love of history had never extended to legends. She only liked things that made sense, and legends never did.

Her mind wandered from there, trickling into her favorite historical events, like it was wont to do when she was bored. Pieces of her old textbooks that she’d read so much she’d practically memorized floated around her head: …promoted to Colonel in spring of 66 A.G. after a series of successes on the Earth Kingdom front…advocated for more widespread and scientifically current healthcare. Historians suspect that the death of his son from a heart defect may have…

A heart defect. It hadn’t meant anything when Azula was a kid, committing each sentence to memory. But now… she couldn’t help but think of Fumiko. A heavy guilt weighed on her–– but that wasn’t new. There wasn’t much she wasn’t guilty about. This would just add to the long, long list.

But maybe she and Ishiyo could get back in time to help Fumiko. And maybe Fumiko was fine! There was no cause that Azula could point to for Fumiko’s condition worsening. But, if Azula was somehow right, and it was apoplexy, well, Azula would just have to get her bending back fast. Then she and Ishiyo would return, Ishiyo would fix Fumiko up, Azula would leave Tayouka, and everything would be normal again. 

It had to be.

The path, if slightly flattened leaves and grass could be called that, wound down and around the hill, until it finally gave out right at the shore of the easternmost pool. The water was eerily still and crystal clear–– Azula could see the bottom as she approached the shore. It got very deep. Azula frowned, and turned to Ishiyo.

“Now what?” She asked. 

“Now,” Ishiyo sat down by the shore with a grunt. “You meditate.”

Azula sighed, and walked over to sit next to the old woman.

“You know I’m not optimistic this will work.” Azula told her.

“It’s quite a feat indeed, meditating into the Spirit World,” Ishiyo assented. “But you are touched by the spirits, Azula.” 

She’d been told that type of thing before, in different ways. Gifted, a prodigy, spirit-touched, or even blessed by Agni–– it all meant the same thing. That there was some kind of push guiding her on; a weighted die with her initial. Of course, part of her relished in the attention; always had. But the rest of her felt like an imposter–– clinging desperately to a promise she couldn’t really keep. 

Azula gave a tiny shake of her head. No time to be spiraling. She settled into a simple meditation position, the one she’d practiced, and closed her eyes.

“I’m ready,” She whispered. To Ishiyo? The spirits? Herself? She didn’t know.

Azula breathed in. 

Out.

In.

Out.

No, slower.

In…

Out…

In––

“Ugh!” She opened her eyes.

“Are you focusing too hard on your breathing?” Ishiyo asked. “You’ve been doing that.”

“Comments are not helpful,” Azula muttered. “Just–– let me focus.”

She tried again. In, out… in, out…

Calm your mind, calm your senses, release yourself…

Calm your mind, calm your senses, release yourself…

Calm your mind––

“It won’t work,” Azula said bitterly. “I can’t get anywhere.”

“You have to relax your mind, not just your body, Azula,” Ishiyo said.

“You think I don’t know that!?” Azula snapped, turning to the old woman in anger. “That’s about all you’ve said to me these past few weeks!” 

“All right, I’m sorry,” Ishiyo raised her hands, palms out. Then she seemed to pause, and think to herself. “Here… why don’t you get in the pool.”

“What.” Azula said flatly.

“Meditating half-submerged in the water may call the spirits to you.” Ishiyo said thoughtfully. “After all, the pools belong to them.”

“You made that up,” Azula said, her heart beginning to thud. She couldn’t get in the water! Ishiyo didn’t know how counterintuitive that would be, given Azula’s aversion to cold water. She wouldn’t be able to relax her body at all, let alone her mind!

“I did not. Well, I kind of did. But it’s much the same as choosing to meditate on a solstice or at a certain time.” Ishiyo explained. “You pick a time and place where the spirits are most likely to notice you, and where the veil is thin. The spirits will certainly notice you if you enter their pools.”

Azula really, really did not want to enter the freezing, spirit-infested pool, which would undoubtedly make her panic right in front of Ishiyo, which sounded like something straight out of a nightmare. “No.” She said. “I’ll do it here.”

She turned away, closed her eyes again, and resumed the same position… in, out… in, out…

…Ishiyo’s going to know that I’m afraid of water! She’ll ask why, and it’s already embarrassing enough without the story, and I don’t want to think about that, and I won’t be able to get my bending back, and Fumiko will––

Azula hung her head. Her mind was far too full now. 

“You ought to try the pool, Azula,” Ishiyo said. “You’ll get used to the temperature––”

“ No ,” Azula said, and she barely kept a crack out of her voice. She stared at the frosted grass, fingers clenched together on her knees. 

Ishiyo paused for a moment. “Okay. I can see you’re afraid––”

“I’m not afraid ,” Azula snapped.

“––Trepidatious, then.” Ishiyo amended. “But entering the Spirit World requires letting go of such hesitations. You must be able to open yourself, without fear.”

Azula bit her lip, forcing tears away. I will not be weak. I will not be weak. 

And I need my bending back.

She stood. 

Walked to the pool.

“I’ll be here, Azula,” Ishiyo said. “Watching over.” A pause. Then, “You can do this.”

She wasn’t sure she could, but she had to . 

She removed her boots, then her socks. Her jacket and gloves. Then, without another pause, stepped into the water. 

COLD. It was so cold, freezing enough to knock the breath from her even if she wasn’t already nervous. The water bit at her feet, thousands of sharp teeth digging in, overwhelming her, sending her back––

Another step, Azula. You’ve done harder things.

She walked further in. 

I am NOT trapped in ice.

I am NOT getting one of those–– those baths––

I’m not there, I’m not––

She felt a tear drip down her cheek as she went in up to her shins. I will not be weak. I will not. 

Breathe . Azula reached past everything, into her mind. Extend your breath from your mouth to your lungs to the tips of your fingers. Become a steady flame, inhaling and exhaling in a constant, uninterrupted burn…

These were lessons she knew. She knew them very, very well–– hammered into her since she could walk, and practiced with Ishiyo a thousand times in the past month. Her anxiety didn’t disappear, exactly–– but it stopped growing, becoming steady with her. I’m in control.

It was the first time in so long since she had felt in control.

There was silence, for a moment.

Then, suddenly, the water heaved around her, and she was thrown backwards in a massive splash. She landed on the shore, hands frantically pushing her soaking hair from her face. “What was––!?” Her exclamation dried on her lips.

A huge body covered in tree bark was rising from the water. The bark twisted and turned, forming into two huge arms with long, sharp fingers; and at the top of the body was a massive crown of glowing white faces, leaning down to eyelessly peer at Azula. The Mother of Faces, Azula realized. It had to be. “Who dares disturb our pond?” Several thunderous, echoing voices spoke out at once. 

Azula steeled herself, and stood tall. “Princess Azula, of the Fire Nation.”

“Have your kind not done enough, Princess?” The spirit asked, but its voice sounded less angry this time, more inquisitive.

“What?” What did it mean by that?

“Hmm,” The spirit tilted its head, touching one of its own chins with a long hand. It stared at Azula for several seconds, then mused, “You much resemble a human I once met.”

Leave it to the spirits to be weird and vague. “Listen… I want entry into the Spirit World. Can you help me?”

The spirit paused for a long time again, then said, “You are already in the Spirit World.” She gestured down, and Azula almost shrieked seeing herself, standing knee-deep in the water, hands limp at her sides. Looking over, Ishiyo was knitting, looking up every so often to check on Azula’s… well, Azula’s body. She seemed not to notice the massive spirit in front of her. Azula looked down, and she could see the grass through herself–– she was nothing but a bluish wisp, a vague silhouette. 

Agni be praised. She did it! She actually did it!

She looked back up at the spirit, adrenaline rushing through her veins. “I’m here because I––”

“Silence,” The spirit said, firm but gentle. Azula, embarrassingly, found herself swayed. 

“I am the Mother of Faces,” The spirit said. “Since the first dawn shone upon this world, I have crafted the face of every human being born. Yours, as well.”

Azula opened her mouth to interrupt–– she really didn’t care for spirit monologuing–– but the Mother of Faces leaned down further, until one of its noses was just steps away from Azula’s. 

“I sense great pain in you,” It said. “Some of those who suffer such pain wish to have it… disappeared.”

“I’m fine,” Azula said, stepping back. 

“I will make you an offer,” The spirit said, twirling a hand. A spectral visage appeared floating in its palm; a young woman. “I will craft you a new face.” The visage blinked. “A new name, new memories. You can forget it all.”

What? No. “No, I—” She cut herself off. How many times has she wished for exactly that? A real fresh start, with no lies or guilt, with no cursed mind? A kinder life, one where she doesn’t come out broken? If the spirit could really erase all of that, make her ordinary, simple, healed, how could she possibly refuse? 

And didn’t she deserve to be erased, after everything she’d done? 

Azula looked at the face of the young woman, still cupped in the spirit’s hands. She looked at her body, standing in the pool, head down. Then, at Ishiyo, knitting and humming to herself. Seeing Ishiyo, some kind of strange emotion swelled up within her. She… she couldn’t let herself go. Sure, she’d be better , but… I wouldn’t be me. Looking at Ishiyo, she knew. She didn’t want to be forgotten. 

It was a strange thing to realize. But she knew.

“I refuse,” she said, before she could think more. 

“You… refuse?” The spirit tilted its head. “How curious.” It flicked its hand, and the spectral face disappeared. Part of Azula screamed at her in fury–– how could she forgo such a perfect opportunity?!–– but the other part held steady. Steadier and stronger than she had felt in a long, long time.

“Not many refuse my offers,” The spirit mused. “They are quite generous.” A mite of annoyance seems to lace its words.

“Yes, well, I refuse.” Azula repeated. “I’ll keep my face, thank you.”

“Very well.” The spirit seemed to accept this, and moved away, standing to its full height. “And what do you desire, Fire Nation princess?”

“I want my firebending back.” Azula told it, trying to keep urgency out of her voice. 

“Indeed,” The spirit said thoughtfully. “I cannot help you.”

Of course she couldn’t. Why would Azula expect spirits to be helpful?

“But,” The spirit continued. “I can grant you safety as you try. There is much to fear in this world for an interloper such as yourself.”

Azula regarded the spirit warily. “And what do you want in return?”

“I do not want for very much,” The spirit admitted. “But I shall make one request of you, in exchange for my protection.”

“Name it.” Azula said. 

“Do not forget from whence you come. Nor from whom.” The spirit said simply, and, in a blink of an eye, disappeared. 

Azula stared at where it had been, suddenly alone in an endless, graying copy of Forgetful Valley, the sky swathed in unnatural orange and white. The spirit’s words were useless to her, as always. But she may as well get going; no time to waste. Does time pass in the Spirit World? Azula wracked her brains but came up with nothing. Oh, well. She should hurry anyway.

Pushing the spirit, and its offers, from her mind–– she could stew on that later–– Azula began to walk away from the shore, towards the forest. It was as good a path as any. As she did, she felt the forest warm around her–– as if a flame had been struck, but no light grew. The warmth felt familiar–– similar to that which she’d felt way back during the storm, when she’d hallucinated being carried by that strange woman.

That had to be a good sign, she thought–– as good as she would get, anyway.

Azula stepped forward, into the dark.