Chapter Text
Ursa loved the arts.
Theatre, of course, was one passion of hers. Love Amongst the Dragons, she could ramble about for hours. Azula hardly cared for theatre, and Zuko lost focus on the rants halfway through. She came to regret that absentmindedness, but Azula never seemed to.
One play Azula did love was Embers of Our Pyre, a tragic romance between a princess and a random peasant who was drafted into a war. In the end, after the peasant turned soldier deserted in order to see the princess again, the soldier was caught, and the princess was pressured into performing the execution. Then the princess went mad, killed everyone who had watched and guarded, and burned herself alive.
(Later, much later, Zuko would think she should have seen this coming.)
Zuko, on the other hand, loved the play Phoenix Song. It was about an empress who, after an invasion had forced her to abandon her throne and flee her home, lost her voice to some spirits playing tricks. She then met a nomadic lone huntress, and they became allies. They won back the kingdom, side by side, but one final blow was aimed at the huntress. The empress took the blow, being unable to call out a warning, and died. The huntress prayed to Agni to have mercy. The empress turned to ash, rose as a phoenix, and began to sing.
(Later, much later, Zuko would reminisce that the play could have been more subtle.)
Ursa loved the arts.
She loved painting and sketching, and she would sit with her daughters and teach them how to capture a moment on canvas or wood.
Azula stared for ages at the watercolors of a shipwreck, even the light tinted silvery blue in the image. She picked up her pencil, traced lines on her own canvas, mixed paint, gripped her brush. She made a perfect duplicate of the painting and stashed it in the back of her closet, and Ursa told her she did well.
Zuko tilted her head at another painting, this one more vivid. A tree, stretching high in the air, cast a long shadow over the lush ground. A figure lay in the shade, grass nestled around them in a sign of long residence. The branches carried bunches of small, white flowers.
Azula glanced at the painting, scoffed, and said it was boring. Zuko took note of the glint of hazy light from the figure’s eyes, like a reflection fragmented in crystals.
She painted the figure only, adding details compiled from dozens of acquaintances, and she left their eyes open but unseeing. It felt like a prediction, and Azula said nothing.
Ursa told her she did well.
Ursa loved the arts.
She loved singing and instruments, and she would sing them a different lullaby every night.
Zuko, of course, had a favorite.
She wore bell-shaped skirts
And purple shirts,
And her skin was leafy green.
Her voice was sweet,
Her form petite,
And her eyes a blue-black sheen.
She danced in the quarries,
Her movements so merry,
And she was a friend to me.
She kissed me one night,
Her lips sweet and light,
And the woodlands all fell asleep.
Azula, of course, called it sappy and too sweet and said that they were hopeless romantics.
“You catch spider-flies with honey, Azula.” Ursa’s eyes were bright in the flickering candlelight. “Sweet can be deadly, if you know how to wield it.”
Azula scoffed; Zuko listened.
(Later, much later, Zuko would realize that they were defined by this moment.)
Ursa loved the arts.
Azula stopped loving the arts when her firebending training picked up.
Zuko loved the arts.
Ursa taught her how to make a moment last for years, emotions traced in the length of the brushstrokes. Ursa taught her that the bunches of white flowers were paralytic, that the eyes could see and the mind could scramble, and the body would go still until the heart followed suit. Ursa taught her how to speak to the ends of the earth, a high-note carried on the wind. Ursa taught her that deadly nightshade grew in quarries.
Ursa taught her calligraphy and how to wield a dagger, dancing and moving soundlessly, and they fed the turtleducks when Zuko was too tired to practice. Ursa taught her what she could of swords, and then Zuko hunted down scrolls of dual dao forms and taught herself by the light of the stars. Zuko taught herself how to scale walls and blend into the shadows, but the ultimate disappearing act was Ursa’s. Zuko searched every crevice and corner where she knew to hide, and then she took to hiding far more often.
(Later, much later, Zuko would realize that, every time she hid, she was still searching.)
The pyre went up in flames, and Zuko could have sworn she smelled hemlock.
There was no funeral for Ursa.
Years passed, lessons of beautiful plants and sweet poisons replaced by diplomacy and strategy, and when Zuko went into a strategic meeting, she thought she was numb enough that no strategy would shock her.
She was wrong.
Zuko loved the arts, but the arts could not save her from this. There was no poison she could administer before the flames engulfed her face, no dagger she could wield when it wasn’t in her hand, no calligraphy that could make it clear that she hadn’t meant this.
She cried a plea, a high note carried on the wind to the end of the earth, but it could not reach the firelord’s heart.
(Later, much later, she would realise that he never had one.)
She woke up to swaying floors like flickering candlelight, her voice hoarse and her face still burning. She practiced calligraphy until her hands stopped shaking, threw her unengraved daggers until her depth perception got better, danced until her feet ached, and watched the fish that would swim alongside the ship until she could reconcile that she would never see the turtleducks again.
Unless.
Unless she found the avatar, returned him in chains to Caldera. Unless she found someone who may or may not exist. Unless she defeated a force to be reckoned with.
The doll Uncle Iroh had sent her years ago was hidden under her pillow (she had always been desperate for a friend), and the dagger Lu Ten had sent was always sheathed in her boot. Hers read never give up without a fight, and Azula’s read know that you are great, and Zuko could only hope that neither of them would forget her sister.
(Later, much later, she would realize that they both had.)
She stepped out of the shadows, and she searched.