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Chapter Text

Azula had drowned once before.

Back before everything, on her mother‘s favorite beach in Ember Island, Azula had been foolish and arrogant as all six-year-olds were. And when you’re a little god of your little world, you think you can conquer anything. Even the tides and all her capriciousness. So, of course, being the godly little thing that Azula was, she turned her back on the ocean. One moment spent plucking sea glass from tide pools in a cove and the next swallowed by a rogue wave sinking straight down under a rush of white water.

She doesn’t quite remember how she got back to shore, she doesn’t even remember what happened after that. But the cold? The pouring of the void without heat, without sunlight or the breath that was oxygen into her lungs-

That is something she remembers even now.

And this time, like the last, she isn’t quite sure how she had gotten back to dry land.

When Azula comes to, she realizes her hands are tied down below her to a sewer grate. Deliriously, she recalls yanking at the chains, hard enough that her wrists bruised and her knees, bled and cut on the metal below her. Dripping wet in her ceremonial clothes, it takes a stretch of time she can’t read all that well anymore to regain her bearings. The comet, Father in the Earth Kingdom, her coronation- the Agni Kai.

Across the courtyard, Azula finds where she had shot lightning and the Water Tribe girl, Katara, she vaguely recalls hovering over her foolish, stupid brother that couldn’t stay in his place. She watches the girl panic and shake over him and despite her own hysteria, can’t help but hiss at her. “Oh, please, I barely used any lightning at all—“

Azula doesn’t expect the scream the girl lashes at her. “Shut up! How could- he was your brother! If anyone, if Sokka-“

Katara chokes on her next words, and in a distant, removed way, Azula finds it all hilarious. Imagine that- a Water Tribe girl. Choking and drowning on dry land.

The hum of the glowing water wreathed around her hands starts to fade, and suddenly it’s just regular water, sinking into the folds of Zuko’s shirt, a large damp spot where his heart should be. The girl’s hands travel from his torso up to his head, and it takes a moment for Azula to realize all she is doing is brushing the hair from his forehead, like something she’d imagined her mother or maybe even Zuko himself had done for her so long ago.

Something dreadful roots in her lungs. “What are you doing- why aren’t you healing him?”

All Katara does is brush his hair, adjust the collars of his red tunic dampened with water- that’s water, right?

There are a few moments before she speaks. “There- there’s nothing to heal.”

A chill seeps back into her bones. A scoff escapes her raw throat, a bark of laughter she didn’t quite believe in. “He’s not. He’s isnt- I didn’t even hit him that hard.”

The girl, Katara, some whisper at the back of her mind says, stares at her with those cold, ocean eyes that made her feel the same way drowning did. “He’s gone, Azula. He’s dead.”

Dead? She thinks of Grandfather’s funeral rites, of Mother’s letter from Uncle about Lu Ten, a burning turtleduck pond when Zuko tested Father a little too much. That was dead. Dead was meant for things like them, not him, not-

If Azula was a little god, Zuko was the annoying little priest at the foot of her altar. With his big, wanting eyes and reverent, clumsy footwork. Always following her wildfire with sparks that would never measure up. Tiring, persistent Zuko and all his stupid worldly worries of Avatars and honor and their dear old father’s attention. Crybaby Zuko who sobbed when Mother left and Father boiled away the pond in her mother’s favorite garden. Zuko who watched her katas with stars in his eyes and trailed like a lost turtleduck behind her? The shadow to her blaze? That Zuko?

Dead?

“No, you’re wrong. You’re lying-“

Katara’s voice cuts coolly and Azula shivers despite the scorching comet above them. “Aren’t you the one who always lies?”

Azula bares her teeth. “Zuko doesn’t die. The idiot never knows when to give up. Everyone has tried. Father did, Grandfather and the Council-“

Katara hisses right back. “Well then congratulations, Princess Azula. You’ve done what no other firebender has done before. Are you happy now? Are you-“

An earth shaking crack splits the air above the courtyard and the sky above them blisters everything below it. The comet’s heat blinds even Agni in the sky, overtaking his rays, a dying blaze of light-

are they all dying? where’s the sun? why is it so cold-

A burst of orange and blue ripple through the sky, splitting it apart, but Azula barely acknowledges the world falling apart, her understanding of it had already been shattered the moment her lightning had struck her brother.

Azula looks back to Katara and her brother across the grounds, watching the way her fingers run over his eyelids, closing them. He's asleep, he’s just sleeping, she murmurs into the ground. As the earth becomes dried and the heat becomes unbearably hot, Azula tries to imagine Zuko jolting awake, yelling at her- she can almost imagine herself cackling and screaming back. She wants to stand so that she can walk over to him, so that she can get the image in her head right, but the chains at her wrists stop her. Instead she just imagines.

Azula remembers looming over him hours after his very first Agni Kai. He couldn’t open his freshly burnt eye and the other was a milky, pink color she'd seen on benders who’d looked at flames a little too bright, a little too close. The temporary, embarrassing kind of blindness that she’d never be caught dead in. In his sleep, she remembers Zuko calling out to their parents in his delirium and for the few moments Azula had been there, woken up. When he’d tried to open his unseeing eyes, the terror, the desperation of his nightmares were nowhere to be seen. Mother or Father had not been uttered by him.

Azula, Azula, Azula.

He’d murmured her name then. Almost like prayer. Like reverence. Something unfamiliar. Azula never quite understood what it had been that day.

She could have killed him then. Azula had held her palms hot and glowing near his face then, just watching him squirm at heat he could feel but could not see. She had reveled in the power of it. She could have killed him.

Her father was a cruel man, he always had been and always would be. Killing Zuko would be real mercy. She could give it to him. A benevolent little god and her pathetic priest. But Zuko had just stared up at her, back then, his single unburnt eye wide and uncomprehending and unseeing but still said her name without an ounce of fear.

Azula. Azula. Azula.

She wonders why she couldn’t strike him then, but somehow, could now.

This is what she wants right? The star child, the only child. The only object her Father orbits around.

She looks around her where the courtyard lay in ruin, the palace in flames, her brother- what good was it to rule ashes, a little god without devotees? As she kneels in the ruin of the burning empire Father had tossed to her like a scrap to a dog, Azula realizes she’s been played for a fool.

The earth below them starts to split apart, the magma rising from below reminding her just what their ancestors had decided to build this city on. She looks up, Zuko is still motionless and Katara's panicked shouting is lost among the rumbling noise in her ears. Whether it is the sound of the boiling waters below the palace sewer grates, the laugh she can barely recognize crackling from her mouth like a flame, the splitting of the world falling apart around her- Azula can’t bring herself to care.

Her eyes are only looking at Zuko.

Azula finds that she can’t imagine him ever staring back up at her, murmuring her name like he used to. So she just laughs and laughs and sobs and screams at it all- because what about all of this was mercy?

Her father’s cruel orange light burns blisteringly bright around them as the world goes utterly dark.

Chapter Text

Azula wakes on her feet.

It’s a divinely planned sort of humor that when she looks down, it's the eyes of her dead brother that she looks into. She wonders if Zuko had been too slow on their journey into the spirit world and somehow got mixed up with Koh. It would be just his luck. And with the way she can feel her own face contorting in horror, it’s about to become her luck as well.

It’s only when she flinches back instinctively from him that she realizes her hands are the only thing that keeps her brother’s face near hers. Dangling over the edge of some precipice, Azula, for reasons she doesn’t know, has her hand tangled the fronts of Zuko’s shirt. His eyes are wide, both of them, and although she hadn’t seen Zuko without his scar in so long, it’s not hard to picture an older version of him, his eyes wide and unblinking. Katara brushing hair out of them. Her fingers gently closing them.

Azula’s hand spasms and she realizes that means her palms are open, no longer holding Zuko safe from over the edge and it all happens in slow motion again.

The world falling apart.

Drowning.

Zuko’s eyes are wide and confused and Azula will yet again have killed her brother-

Almost toppling over the edge herself, she scrambles undignified to the edge- of a roof, its a roof they’re on– to look down at Zuko.

He shifts looking up at her, his eyes unfocused and he mumbles something straight out of an old memory.

“Azula.”

Azula, Azula, Azula.

It’s all too familiar.

Vaguely, she acknowledges her own body scrambling gracelessly down an awning, stumbling lightly onto the grass- her mother’s favorite garden, this is her mother’s favorite-

Child. Azula looks down and realizes the Zuko she sees is a child. He sniffles into the dirt wimpishly and Azula looks closer at his unscarred face to find baby fat and the long silk hair her mother always fawned over pulled into a messy phoenix tail. She freezes mere moments away from his crumpled, tiny, too tiny form and realizes there is only sun above her. The fury of a comet no longer blisters her cheeks and if she looks close enough, there are turtleducks in the pond. Alive.

She looks down to Zuko and his wide, blinking eyes.

Alive.

Her impending breakdown is halted by another ghost that strides past her to shelter Zuko in wide sleeves and flowing skirts. A woman with long ocean smelling hair. A woman who shares her face.

“You’ve just broken your brother’s wrist, Azula.” Her mother turns to look at her, focusing on her, looking at her, finally, in this act of violence. But her mother looks nothing  like the one she had pictured in her mirror on her coronation day and Azula can’t help but stumble back at the cold way her name sounds.

Azula, Azula, Azula.

It didn’t sound the way Zuko says it, she starts to remember. It never did.

“Are you happy now?”

Her mother’s words ring in her ears and all she can see is Zuko’s too still body and the too blue eyes of a girl who can’t make him move ever again.

Are you happy now? Are you happy now? Are you-

Azula runs and doesn’t look back once.

Azula finds herself in her rooms again staring into a mirror she had shattered an hour ago. Only, it stands before her now, completely whole and reflecting Azula’s face, her mother’s face, back at her. Her hair isn’t marred in a jagged cut, but is silky and long braided down her back, in some semblance of honor.

There's something living, almost raging in her chest as everything starts to dawn on her.

This mirror wasn’t supposed to be whole. It was supposed to be-

Impulsively, Azula fixes the issue at the cost of a bloodied fist this time and not a thrown hairbrush. Her hand is coated in flame, melting the jagged glass into something molten and soft. The rage is reckless and out of control, something that she never is, never should be- but spirits, nothing about this was in her control. She wasn’t fourteen and about to be crowned Fire Lord, this wasn’t a dream. She bent flame at the mirror which meant this wasn’t the spirit world. Her hand bled and it hurt which meant she was alive, and Zuko was-

“Azula! Agni, your hand!”

Whipping around, Zuko barges in with all the grace of a komodo-rhino. It's unsettling that Azula hadn’t even heard him coming in.

“Wait! I’ll get mom to bandage you too-“

“No.”

She imagines Mother running her hands over the bandages tied around Zuko’s wrist. Azula ghosts her own hands over her own wounds and wonders why despite having her mother’s every feature, it doesn’t feel the way she thinks it would have if her mother had done it. No matter, she wasn’t a crybaby like Zuko who needed such things.

“I’m fine. I’ll do it myself.”

Azula rummages around her desk in spite, knowing she's getting blood all over the pristine calligraphy assignments from her tutors until she finds a roll of gauze from training. She brandishes it like a weapon to her brother and pointedly wraps her bloody palm, hissing.

“See? Perfect.” She lifts her perfectly wrapped hand primly.

Zuko blinks slowly. Looks purposefully at her work like it’s offended him. Rude.

Zuko somehow rewraps her hands because of course he knows how, hes a walking unlucky charm, if one could exist- theres no way he didn’t know how to tend to wounds. In her past life, they were already beyond the point where Azula would push him out of her rooms for interrupting her mental breakdown via her window. After a day of being promised the crown of Fire Lord, killing her brother, dying, she assumes, and then being uncrowned as Fire Lord by traveling into a past where her grandfather was still alive- Azula is tired. Surprisingly willing to put up with her brother’s lame play at being a healer.

Zuko interrupts her thoughts. “I know you didn’t do it on purpose.”

Azula pokes maliciously at the new pretty knot of gauze tied off at her wrist. “What?”

“On the roof. You… I saw your face.”

Azula doesn’t remember moving but she can feel the way Zuko trembles when she yanks his elbow.

“How I looked?” She smiles in mockery. “You should’ve seen the way you looked! Crying to mother oh so scared- isn’t falling down all the time supposed to make you, like, an expert at it, crybaby?”

Zuko yanks his bandaged arm back, stubbornly holding back wobbly tears. He tightens the gauze around her hand in turn and Azula stumbles back herself. He stares pointedly at her hands. “I don’t know, Azula, looks like you’re the scared one to me.”

Azula doesn’t let herself freeze at the words until she’s shoved Zuko out of her rooms and shutting the doors to her room hard enough to rattle. She sinks to the ground, her back to the door trying to steady her breathing and calm her shaking hands. A dim candle light on her desk behind her flickers and shudders- with her breaths or Zuko’s, she can’t tell anymore. She waits silently, feeling her hands shake against her will, for Zuko to give up and move away from her door. It takes a while but she can feel when he stubbornly shuffles away down the hall to his own room after an eternity standing behind her. The chirp of the nightingale floorboards beneath his feet as he walks away, after making him leave, it shouldn't feel like abandonment- but sitting in her room alone it starts to sink in how lonely it is.

Azula looks in the shard remains of her mirror to find her mother’s face staring back. Afraid.

Azula has a plan, of course. That plan being evaluating her options now that she knows Father’s victory means her death, means Zuko’s death, means the Earth Kingdom cremated to a crisp, means the perfectly good palace her twenty times over great ancestors stuck on this volcano would crumble- who even thought that was a slightly intelligent idea anyway? Hadn’t they read the records- just how many of her foolish idiotic ancestors had died via exploding mountains? A lot more than you’d think, surprisingly. Not enough to learn from it, obviously.

No, Azula had read the records, had recited battle stratagems in her sleep, memorized hundreds of tactics by candlelight. If Uncle had tea and failure, Mother her plays and court politics, Father and power- Azula had war. And war meant having a place to rule and write their history books about you once you won. Just what did Father think he could do with ashes?

Azula glared into the distance. Wait for an opportunity to arise? Make it? Maybe if-

“Azula? Are you okay?”

Hearing her name, she blinks away her thoughts to stare at the voice who said it.

Ty Lee, still too pink and bubbly, stands nearby as they both watch Mai throw knives at a tree.

“What.” Azula commands.

Ty Lee fidgets at her tone and hums. “Nothing. Your aura just feels… a lot more turbulent. Angry. It’s not as cold anymore though. I mean, not that I think you’re-”

Azula knows at this point in time the two of them are as loyal as dogs.

“I’ve no need for either of your companionship any longer. Begone.”

Azula would be the only one to remember being left limp and discarded by them. Better to get rid of them before they decide to get stupid.

“Azula?” Mai blinks in front of her like she doesn’t know what she’s done. Will do. Azula shakes her head and plucks a few knives from where Mai has left them embedded in a tree. She tucks them into her sleeves with no intention of giving them back.  

“Didn’t you hear me? I no longer require your services. Don’t bother coming back tomorrow.”

The two of them look at her strangely so Azula takes command of the situation and leaves. It’s easy to lose their confused voices following her in the palace walls. She’d only grown up here.

The only ally she had was herself and her vision of the future. And Azula had her opponents and allies' plans jotted down to the tiniest sand grain. Like she’d walk around entertaining those two, fully aware the both of them were capable of gutting her when her back was turned. As if.

“Focus.” Azula shook her head and planned. Create Father’s favor earlier, solidify her role as heir in such a way Zuko wouldn’t even be perceived as a threat. She knew where the Avatar had been hiding for the last century, Earth strongholds, Water tribe movements, how the Kyoshi warriors wore their paints.

Zuko could deal with stupid things like honor and tea ceremonies and entertaining ambassadors and quartermasters and the maids' quarterly pay. If Azula could just drill the concept of keeping one’s mouth shut into his thick head. No need for Father to send him on an embarrassment of a duck goose chase that she knows he can’t complete.

But no matter, Azula was the best at making things go her way no matter what.

She looks up at the high noon sun and vaguely remembers still taking lessons with the royal tutors at this age. She scowled at the thought of being instructed by someone beneath her level of capability. Pausing, Azula turned around to where she knew the head royal tutor would be at this time.

…This change seemed like a good place to start.

When she strolls into Zuko’s quarters lazily, she’s expecting to find him red faced over a book. He had never been much of a fan for it if it wasn’t a play or one of Mother’s poem books. She had been looking forward to making faces at him while he attempted to study.

What she finds is Zuko with his blades drawn as a figure towers over him with a blade. Zuko’s eyes find her, wide and golden and about to be slashed out by the opening Azul has given him.

There is pure cold rage in the back of her throat rising to rip the man’s throat out with her teeth. She feels the barest of lightning sparks sting the tips of her fingernails before the figure is being blown through the walls of Zuko’s room, smoking. Hissing at the wild display of lightning the man twitches from the ground and Azula curses out her weak constitution.

Her mind flicks through a series of dates. After Uncle left, before Lu Ten died- an assassination attempt. It slipped her mind, Azula vaguely recalling Zuko had fought him off last time. She distinctly remembers Father being almost disappointed when he did. She had thought at the time it was due to Zuko fighting him off with the dao instead of his flames but she knows better now. This was a plot and Zuko hadn’t ruined it, which would have been disappointing but acceptable. No, Azula had saved Zuko, used lightning to do it- what about all of this wasn’t some convoluted disadvantage-?

A sharp blur came from her side and the man stopped getting back up. Zuko stood over him with the pommel of his blade and he slumped over unconscious.

“Hey, ‘Zula, it’s fine. He’s knocked out.” Zuko’s hands pulled her out of the daze she seemed to be in too much nowadays. Sloppy, she scowled at herself. If Zuko wanted to he could have gut her now if he wanted, he’d gotten close enough to do it without her even realizing.

It wasn’t even bad. There had been so many assassination attempts, so many leering eyes and wandering hands, poison, sabotage, blackmail, and more. Azula had always come out crushing the hand of those below her with her feet. Azula had burned the mouth of every tongue speaking out of turn. It was easy.

And still Zuko was here.

His hands were warm. Not quite burnt or too thick with sword calluses just yet but rough enough to remind her of how little time they had left.

She reached a hand out of her own sleeves to cover the hand on her shoulder.

“I didn’t even know you could do lightning-”

Azula caught the moment Zuko’s eyes softened, sparked with wonder, the imbecile, and she gripped his wrist hard. He barely had time to look confused before her hands found the edge of one of Mai’s nondescript kunai in her sleeve. She could hear Zuko yelping as she turned away to deal with the filthy worm he had played knight for.

“What was that for!”

Zuko’s blood dripped steadily onto the stone floor beneath them and Azula ignored her brother’s inane, distracting squeaking from behind her as she placed the bloody knife in the palm of the unconscious man. Picking up the assassin's mamgled, lightning bent blade she tossed it straight into Zuko's room and kicked it under the bed. She peered back into the hall. With her lightning being weak, barely scarred the man, but it was enough to be visible. She could probably burn the evidence away but…

Azula eyed her hands and debated the probability that Zuko could help her cover this up. She looked up to where he was still teary over his paper cut. Yeah, not happening.

Azula took a torch from the wall and set a curtain alight with orange flame. She then pressed the fire close enough to the assassin’s shirt where the lightning had struck true to catch. She patted it out as the man started stirring.

“Azula, what are you doing!”

Couldn’t he see that she was in the middle of cleaning up this mess? He had never had to deal with matters like these before. Mother had always made sure of that. Azula had been deadly enough so young that she didn’t need mommy’s protection like stupid little Zuzu. He was incompetent enough that the first assassination attempt Zuko faced after she had left had left him mauled half to death and sent on a wild monkey-goose chase across the four seas.

Turning back to her nosy, troublemaking brother, she quickly zeroed in on the body part she had cut him.  

Hm. Left hand. How lucky. It seemed too kind for someone so stupid.

“-trying to help you!”

“Is that so?”

“Normal people say ‘thanks’! They don't stab people!”

Azula rolled her eyes at his dramatics, it was just a little blood. He’d had training accidents that were bigger than this papercut. Even more so, who in the line to the Dragon Throne was “normal”?  

Azula looked up and down the hall for her little scene to play out. The guards would probably take less than a minute to arrive after all of his screaming. She looked at the body behind them and at Zuko's tiny cut on his arm. Hm. Not bloody enough.

“Well, thank you very much dear brother. You were quite the brave warrior, weren’t you.”

Zuko’s furious, scrunched little hog-monkey face lost its redness. He blinked a couple times dazed and confused. Spirits, it was a miracle he’d lived this long with his inability to read situations.

“Oh. Well, I mean, it wasn’t a big deal or anything-“

His shoulders relaxed again. Classic, gullible Zuko. You’d think he’d learn after the first hundred times she’d done this little scheme.

“Stay still, for a moment.”

She doesn’t even think he realizes he’s listening to her when he goes stiff as a board. Agni, he doesn’t even flinch when she crowds his space once again.

With little fanfare, she brandishes another one of Mai’s signature kunai to widen the hold in the sleeve of his tunic even more. She then dug her fingers into the cut on his hand and dragged the blood from the wound upwards to smear across his entire arm and sleeve rather than just the tiny nick.

“Stop stabbing me!”

Well, fool him once, fool him a thousand times. Really, who was to blame here?

Ah, the dastardly assassin and the weak little heir. Her reputation as an untouchable, ruthless dragoness wouldn’t be jeopardized today, no thanks to her meddling older brother. Honestly, he ought to have been excited, this plot was something straight out of his playbooks.

An assassin fought of by the prince. The princess on the sidelines not interfering with her Father’s assassin plots or spontaneously gaining any new abilities. All is well.

She nudged the body with her food with glee. Zuko’s way would’ve been no good.

“You took out this assassin.” Azula asserts.

Zuko blinks. “What?”

“You’re suffering from blood loss. Basically delusional. I have never used lightning in my life.”

“Um, no? I literally just saw-”

She shakes her head, smoothing her skirts as the royal guard comes running into the hallway sloppy and late. “I happened upon the Prince defeating this assassin. You should probably get him checked for blood loss, and a head wound. He’s absolutely hysterical.”

Azula walks off with her head high and leaves Zuko to clean up the rest of his mess with the guard standing uselessly nearby. If there was one thing she knew never changed it was Zuko and his penchant for messes.

Her father comes to watch her forms the next morning.

It is the most normal thing she’s done since she’d been dropped back into her childhood.

Logically, she knows her body of this time can’t sustain the movements she will later beat so thoroughly into her marrow so she settles for a set she knows she hadn’t mastered yet at this period of her life. The knowledge sits fat and happy in her gut like a coiled dragon and she knows

In the middle of her kata, weaving the dragon through the sea cave, her father speaks through her set.

“I hear there was an assassin today during tutoring.” Father paces the outskirts of the training grounds observing her intently.

Azula flicks her wrist and the dragon flares before diving once again. “Yes, father. The assassin was arrogant, testing our family’s rule. But a tutor is nothing compared to royalty. Even if they are Zuko.”

“Ah, but I hear you took care of this little problem. Not Zuko.”

Her blood runs cold. It’s pure will that steadies her breath during the next move, her flames still weaving in tight spirals. The serpentine body slinks beneath her feet and Azula calmly breathes through it. She shouldn’t deny it then. Damn. “A chance to test my skills. Father.”

Her father tilts his head and watches the way her ocean blue dragon rips through a training dummy at its throat. “The assassin was expertly incapacitated. I suppose I should congratulate you then.”

The agreement should settle her but Azula knows better. Knows her father and his disarming words too well. Her father never agrees with someone unless it's his own words you’re repeating back to him. Azula knows not to be taken off guard and turns away to start the next move. With her back to her father she closes her eyes. It feels foolish. Like turning away from the tide on the cusp of a rogue wave back at Ember Island but Azula knows if she looked her father in the eyes right now, she would waver.

Calm. Cold. A beach on Ember Island. Flowing, in control until the time came to dash some poor fool across the rocks. The motions, although in a smaller body, are easy in her foggy coldness. It’s like watching her own body through the film of some milky sea glass she’d rummaged from a tidal pool.

“I suppose he was lucky you were in a merciful mood to help him then.”

For the barest moment, she feels her breath stutter and out of the corner of her eye something flickers in her flames.

Zuko and his empty eyes.

Azula and her mercy. 

“But how is it that you knew to be there to save him in the first place, Azula?”

It’s only by pure force of will and her years of training her emotions that the stark blade of fear she feels doesn’t spread through the entirety of her flames. To the side of the training yard she can feel the way her father peers a little closer at the shift in her stance. She makes the impulsive mood to shift the kata into something she had begun at this age but hadn’t mastered until years after.

Her blue fire calmed, condensed, turned molten and began to spark. She wove her fingers into the ozone in the air, tiny fire catching on the oxygen. With a steady breath, a bolt of energy is sent soaring into the yard around them. Weak, but sure.

Lightning.

Azula hadn’t figured it out so early in her childhood but she knew with this, her father’s knowing eyes would be halted. His dragonous greed would be coiled and satisfied. She finished the kata off with a flourish and bowed her head to her father before looking up.

Father’s too gold eyes blaze in approval, no, greed. Want.

Azula feels as though she had just walked herself into a snare.

“Lightning.” Father breathes, the air around his mouth warped by the heat. His smile is sharp and white and predatory. “Is this what you’ve been hiding from me, my daughter?”

It’s stupid to latch onto the obvious offered pride in his tone before acknowledging the content of his words. Of course he could tell Azula was hiding something. Father always knew.

“Yes, Father. I have recently found my tutors to be… less than satisfactory. I’ve taken to training myself alone. I stumbled upon the knowledge in my independent studies.”

“The blue flame and lightning. You really have surpassed my expectations, Azula.”

“I was meaning to ask Zuko’s tutor, being the senior historian on duty, for recommendations on better teachers when I caught him in the act. He wasn’t expecting me to be there, I suppose.”

“Hm. Perhaps some time on Ember Island with Li and Lo would do some good.”

He nods once before turning away to walk out of the training yard. He doesn’t look back once.

Azula stays there, bowed at the waist, commanding each breath purposefully. She breathes and shakes until the sun inches her shadow further than was proper. When she rises slowly enough to not make herself sick, she stumbles from the training yard into an alcove to hold her shaking hands to her chest.

He didn’t see.

Azula slumped against a pillar.

Did he see?

She vaguely remembers this year as the start to her signature flames and forced herself to relax. It wouldn’t do good to fall apart in such a public place, even if she knew for certain the guards never patrolled more than twice a day in this area, you never knew what eyes her father had trained on her at any moment.

She had only started using blue flames just months ago. He would have noticed… wouldn’t have seen… she made to open her palms to ignite a flame again when a grating voice echoes behind her.  

Zuko’s eyes are like molten sunlight through a clear piece of sea glass, burning and directed. “You’re acting weird. There’s something wrong.”

Azula knows her bubbling hysteria isn’t as controlled as she’d like it to be but Zuko has been bolder and more testing and mouthy lately which is unacceptable. Fire Lord Azula would have gutted him for it. The lightning witch, the blue flame, would have burned him for it.

"Did training go wrong with, Father? You know-" 

“The only thing that’s wrong and weird is how abysmal your beginner forms are compared to a girl younger than you.”

Her words lack the sharp undercurrent they’ve always had and she knows it. Zuko doesn’t waver and steps closer. He knows it too.

“Azula-“

Azula, Azula, Azula.

Azula seethes. “Why don’t you run? What's wrong with you? Why do you keep coming back for more? Are you a stray dog? Leave! He doesn’t love you so why do you keep trying?”

Zuko's eyes are wide but there’s none of the emotion she wants. The emotion that she needs him to feel. 

“It's pathetic! Watching you scramble to please him like everything you do isn’t wrong.”

Zuko never flinches once, she had never been capable of doing that, even before. Only Father, because it always came back to him.

“He doesn’t want you, Zuko. He never has. He wants me.”

Oh spirits, her father wants her. Azula was slipping and Father was waiting at the bottom of the cliff she had just thrown herself off of. She just handed him lightning, because of what? A perception of fear? Knowing? She knew better than that, all these years in the Dragon’s Den taught her better. Azula begins to realize all that plotting fell short when it came to Father. It always was with him.

Father was that big bright wishing star the both of them had been chasing since they’ve been born. The tiniest nod. The smallest of smiles. A too hot pat on the shoulder that you could pretend didn’t hurt because it was Father doing it. She had it in her hands finally, finally- so why did she feel sick to her stomach? Better to be perfect and always too hot than unwanted and burning. There’s a disgusting sort of weakness in Zuko’s shoulders as he looked down at her feet. But no fear. Why is he never afraid? Why show her that her words have hurt him?

“I know. That’s why I’m trying to be like you, so I can stop being embarrassing. So he can love both of us together-“

She needs him to be afraid. She needs him to start resenting this place, it needs to happen soon because the 41st have just been deployed and That Day is so close but Zuko is still not afraid enough. He still chases that stupid wishing star, not knowing what it was to be wanted, not knowing that pretty, wishing stars couldn’t do anything but burn.

“He doesn’t love anything, Zuko.”

His eyes are sad. Why is he always everything but afraid? Doesn’t he get it? Doesn’t he hear the whispers in the palace? Doesn’t he understand the precipice they both stand on? Doesn’t he see their father is expecting one of them to push the other off?

“But you said he loved you-“

No. Because Zuko has always been willfully blind, even before their father took his eyes. Always too trusting, too soft and pathetic and weak. She needs him to fly away when she pushes him off the roof, not come back to her feet with those sad, hurt eyes expecting something more from her.

“He wants me. I’m useful. You’re nothing to him. Nothing.”

Zuko sniffs wetly and tries to smother it with a cough. Sloppy. No wonder the Council was able to oust him.

“…You’re really mean, you know that, Azula?”

“I don’t care. Go pet your stupid turtle ducks and read your stupid plays. Stop getting in his way.”

“…No.”

“No?”

“Piandao said I’m really good at the blade and I’ve been looking through all of Lu Ten’s old notes. I’ve been training, I’ll be good enough for him one day and then he’ll love me. And then I’ll be good enough for you too. And maybe…”

Zuko looks straight into her. Never give up without a fight.

“Maybe you’ll love me then, too.”

Her brother is stupid. Her brother is ash in the making.

Azula laughs, a high, bitter thing. “You- I hate you. I hate you so much.”

Zuko slumps and his lips thin like he expected her to say that. “T- that’s okay, I’ll do better.”

And Azula just can’t take it anymore.

She doesn’t remember much after the first punch. Or the second. Had there been a third? Who knows? What she does know is that it was less a duel, certainly no Agni Kai and more of a brawl, a petty squabbling in the mud and dirt. The scramble in the yard just outside the alcove she’d hid in and Azula distantly tastes blood on her canines and wonders if she bit him. Probably. She doesn’t think she even used her fire.

Azula can’t help but wonder why. Zuko has never made sense to her. Why want it so much? Why, why, why? She knows of course, because she’s spent her whole life wanting it too- but she had never known what it was like to want and be burned by it and still want to be wanted by it after.

“What in Agni’s name are you doing to your brother!”

Mother’s hands are hard and unrelenting as she’s pulled from off her brother. Even though she hadn’t pulled hard enough to leave marks, Azula still feels as if some divot is left beneath her flesh. In a foggy daze, she heaves, her tired breath out of control from training and her tantrum on Zuko like a child. Somewhere in front of her Zuko sniffs bruised and bloody but still utterly unafraid and uncowed. Azula hisses and weak, pale blue flames lick the air in her frustration.

“Well, young lady? What do you have to say for yourself?”

Zuko gets up, favoring his right leg and Mother glares as he pulls on her sleeves. “Mom, it’s really not that bad-“

Her mother’s hand divides the air between them, her long sleeves fluttering. “No, Zuko, I’ve had enough of your sister’s bad behavior-“

Ah, so it wasn’t even Azula or ‘my daughter’ anymore? She probably would’ve rolled her eyes and walked off with a smirk in her last life after something as tame as insinuating that the only way her mother could claim her daughter was as was ‘Zuko’s sister’ but right now Azula had twigs in her hair, a set of bite marks across her forearm, and her brother’s blood in between her teeth.

“But Mom, Azula’s bleeding too-!”

She thinks she burns something as she leaves.

Azula ignores Zuko’s fearless shouting at her back and stalks through the palace back to her rooms. The waiting staff in the halls scatter around her like prey. There is so much rage in her that she shakes, so much terror that she shakes and shakes and shakes. Everything around her is so angry at her and afraid of her but all Azula feels is hunted. She passes by the main gates on the way back to her rooms and can’t shake the image of just walking through them and never coming back. She thinks about it relentlessly even as her bedroom doors slam behind her.

It’s easy to imagine Zuko as the son of some backwater Earth Kingdom farmer. He’s easy to imagine in any world- still so stupid and easy to rile up. Always surrounded by someone or something that loved him and still so blind to it even as it shouted in his face. He was a fisherman and a healer and a stableboy and a merchant- she could imagine him settling anywhere and still managing to be happy.

Whenever Azula tried to imagine herself all she could come up with was the daughter of a woman who would never love her child and a father who had never tried in the first place. Of who she could be if she just kept walking out the palace gates, onto a boat into the world, never looking back. Any world could have Zuko the farmer, Zuko the healer, Zuko as he was.

For Azula, there was no world in which she was never born into a dragon’s den.

Chapter Text

Azula spends the early dawning hours to the late waning rays of dusk on Ember Island going over lightning kata. Over and over again until her hands shake barely with the leftover shock. Li and Lo had been more ecstatic to meet her than she remembers the first time around and would curse it if it didn’t mean it left no time for firebending practice. She hasn’t touched her flames once since the day Father came to watch her that day and she’s not willing to admit that she might know what she’ll see if she does.

The grueling sets are nothing new to her, most of her life, especially the years after Zuko was banished were spent from sunrise to sunset doing such. It was almost calming, as calming as holding millions of volts in the palm of one’s hand could be. It wouldn’t bother her if it were another summer spent with Li and Lo and their stupid mocktails and house parties and smelly herby incense if it meant Mother and Zuko weren’t here. Their summers here as a family were more distant to her than the summers she came here alone for training. It was foolish to think it’d be like any other time.

Father wasn’t here, sure. Mother probably wishes she wasn’t either, seeing her only when Zuko came to ‘sneak’ a peek at her training looking shifting and distant. Azula wonders why Father bothered to send either of them, though he probably wanted to deal with them less than she did. But she was certainly getting there, especially since Zuko, even after their squabble, was ever so persistent.

“-they said to come back later because they were getting ready for the fireworks so we went to get mochi from Old Man Hidan on the street off north shore-”

Azula rolls her eyes as she runs through the set again, cold. In her mind, she follows the way she’d done it in her last life, but her younger body rebelled. Her arm strikes without flame and her hair gets in her face. She huffs to repeat it again and Zuko keeps babbling from the engawa of their family’s beach house. She sinks her feet into the sand and strikes once more, straightening her stance.

“-and then I said, ‘Well, that’s not how much sparklers were last summer-‘ and then she chased me out of her store but I swear I wasn’t lying-“

This time, Azula flows through her kata with the barest amount of static sparking around her fingers. Zuko’s voice nearby makes it feel like a bad memory and she restarts the kata cold again before she throws up. She wouldn’t be doing that anytime soon.

“-but Mom want to get those gross herby smelling incense that Li and Lo like even though I said their probably too old to even tell the difference and should just get fire lily like literally everyone else-“

Azula actually nods in agreement at that before scowling. She knows if Father were here he’d tell him to not disturb her… Azula just dives into the next set as Zuko starts ranting about the jellyfish that almost stung him yesterday. Father wasn’t here. She knows that Zuko’s presence makes the sparks in her hands fizzle out through pure instinct, she knows she should tell him to get lost and focus on her independent studies before Li and Lo run her ragged in the morning-

But obviously it wouldn’t do any good, she tells herself. Because Zuko is a dog and Azula kicks and kicks and kicks and all he does is bite right back. Ignore him and he talks at her for days on end. Kick him to the riptide and he pulls her in after. For as many conversations they held, there were just as many fights as well.

“Mom!”

Mother stands in the doorway watching them silently. Stepping onto the engawa she gives a sort of half smile. “I hear the Ember Island Players are putting on Love Amongst the Dragons-“

Azula rolls her eyes and tunes their chattering out. She was too old and too busy to go to such things.

“No, thanks.”

She trudges onto the engawa herself sliding open one of the doors to go inside when her mother’s voice rings out.

“Young lady, I know you’re not walking all that sand in the house.”

Zuko sticks his tongue out at her and Azula backs away from the door to sit at the edge of the engawa shaking her legs off. If she shakes that sand off into Zuko’s face, well, who’s to tell her it wasn’t an accident? She was just doing what she was told, of course.

Mother sighs as Zuko spits out sand and Azula retreats into the house triumphant.

Azula ambles over to the kitchen table spreading out the various readings Li and Lo had piled onto her at the beginning of the trip. She squints at one she has been reading for the last couple of days. Ugh. Battle Tactics of Chin the Conqueror.

She sits there reading long enough for Zuko to appear in finer clothes. He stares at her before pulling that dumb Dark Water Spirit mask over his face. He slings two wooden dual dao over his shoulder before sitting at the table as well to wait for Mother. He looks so distinctly like his wanted posters in the Earth Kingdom that she laughs.

Zuko takes this at her laughing at him, and he’s right. Azula still giggles as he tries to kick her shin. He can barely see through the damn thing and falls off his chair. Azula laughs harder at that.

When Mother comes out of her room in fine robes, a Dragon Emperor mask slung at her hip, Azula goes back to her scroll on Chin the Conqueror. She’d rather fall off a cliff as well than be caught and dragged to their thousandth viewing of Love Amongst the Dragons. Even with the epic battle at the end of the play wouldn’t be able to drag her there this time.

“You sure you don’t wanna come, ‘Zula? Mom has your Dragon Emperor mask!”

Azula doesn’t know what her mother is thinking as she stands by the doorway looking over shoulders at her. She makes the easy decision for both of them and scoffs.

“Watch your plays, dumdum. I’m busy doing useful things.”

Zuko scowls and huffs to walk out the door. Mother doesn’t hesitate and follows him out, smoothing back his hair.

She doesn’t know why it makes her feel other. Like looking at an old portrait frozen in a happier moment. Separate, distant. Something she didn’t belong in anymore. If she had to hear Mother and Zuko and their ignorant talks about mochi and plays and how great the weather is- Azula was going to burn something. She flipped through her calendar, running her fingers over the date of Zuko’s first Agni Kai.

So much to do. This trip couldn’t end sooner.

Azula is woken in the middle of the night by their unsubtle giggles. She mindlessly stumbles from her desk where she’d fallen asleep to the bottom of the stairs, half caught in a sleep dazed annoyance. When she turns her head around the doorway, she finds them at the kitchen counter, covered in spiced sugar and applepear peels. Their play masks are strewed across the wood as Mother stands over a corner carefully cutting away at the fruit skins until they resemble little kangaroo rabbits. For every one made, Zuko shoves another in his mouth grossly. Azula rolls her eyes and makes to walk back up the stairs and try to fall asleep.

Mother uses the sleeves of her favorite dress to wipe the corners of his sugared mouth. Azula chooses this moment to look away.

Azula tucks herself under the thin summer sheets and listens to Mother and Zuko’s footsteps patter up the stairs into their respective rooms. The house settles into a quiet and Azula curls up in her room for barely half an hour before she decides she can’t sleep. She’s hungry of course.

Marching down to the kitchen, lighting the fixtures with a well placed spark, she rummages around until she finds a half full basket of applepears.

Holding a kitchen knife aloft, she eyes the edge and pokes the applepear. It rolled around menacingly. Azula huffed and straightened the blade, holding it still. Well, how hard could it be to-

“Damn it-” Azula nicks the knuckle of her pointer finger on one of her passes through cutting the applepears.

A noise from behind her has Azula half leaping from her own skin, almost cutting off the rest of her finger. When she turns around, bloody knife in hand she can see the way Zuko, the nosy bastard, stands petrified at the foot of the stairs.

Azula debates murder for a humorous second before lifting up her bloodied finger and the mangled form of one applepear like a sacrifice she had just bloodied across some altar. Riveting stuff, surely out of one of Zuko’s plays. She thinks about laughing because it is sort funny in a way but then she might be end up having to explain to her Mother why her brother passed out cold at the bottom of the stairs while she holds a bloody knife. Implying fratricide isn’t something she wants to confess- not that she ever would.

When Zuko stops taking an astoundingly long time putting the scene together (knife, hand, fruit- how hard is that really), he holds his hand to his chest like a maiden and leans on the wall. See, this is why Azula was staunchly against plays. She was sure Zuko wasn’t so dramatic before that whole obsession.

“Um, are you okay? Do you need help bandaging-”

Azula shoves her finger in her mouth petulantly and ties the nearest kitchen cloth around it once the blood is gone.

It makes Zuko do this weird twitching thing with his face and Azula smiles pleasantly at his attempts not to combust. After a moment he just sighs look at the fruit massacre in front of him.

Azula looks back to see the Dark Water Spirit mask on the table as well and assumes its why Zuko came back down here to witness her murder. Instead Zuko point blank half whispers and half shouts.

“Uhhh, I actually came down to grab more fruit! I’m feeling really hungry right now! So um, the knife?”

Still can’t lie for shit. Lucky him, Azula will take advantage his chronic helping people condition. She really wants a fruit dragon. How cool would a fruit dragon be?

Azula drapes over the table watching Zuko deftly slice the fruit skin off in coiled springs very unimpressed. Very. She shoves a bunch of red koala-sheep in her mouth unimpressed as well.

"I can't believe this is where all your blade skills go. How do you even figure dumb stuff like this out?"

“Mom cuts ‘em up all the time, duh.” Zuko shrugs.

For you, maybe.

“Well, I’m doing perfectly fine by myself.” Azula makes to take the knife back and Zuko clutches onto it for dear life. Agni, it wasn’t like she was going stab him. Again.

“You can stop pretending to be a stuck up for an hour, Lala. I’m hungry and you’re wasting all the fruits.”

It would be convincing excuse if he didn’t look like a shaking turtleduck in the sights of a dragon. “Fine.”

Zuko drones on and on about blade technique as he cuts away the skin of the applepear. As he starts to relax, more assured she won’t spontaneously murder him and divest him of his fruit animals (obviously, she wouldn’t kill her supplier, tactics 101), he starts to babble about Love Amongst the Dragons like they both haven’t seen it a billion times. Azula slowly eats her way through his animal kingdom when he’s not looking. Applepear kangaroo-rabbits were surprisingly better than the rest.

“Look! You can even make them look like dragons. See? It’s us!”

He holds up a perfectly cut red and blue fruit dragon sprinkled with spice and sugar. It’s actually sort of cool.

Azula uses her left hand to unsubtly reach for the other fruit animals and Zuko turns towards the movement. When he’s distracted, her other hand shoves the fruit dragons in her mouth. Idiot.

“‘Zula! I made that for both of us!”

“Then just make more, dummy.”

When Zuko decides these are grounds for Azula to get spiced sugar in her eyes she can’t help but think this is revenge for all the sand she’s thrown at Zuko during this trip as he laughs. She’ll reach for the knife when she regains her vision. We’ll see who’s laughing then.

It’s almost enough to forget she started cutting fruit alone in the first place.

It all comes to a head when Mother finally decides that she has two children instead of one.

It’s really only due to the rare clouds over Ember Island that she agrees to board the Fire Lily. Out in the glaring sun of the open sea offers more focus to the more forbidden lightning sets and Azula doesn’t know if she’s willing to risk conducting much with all that coverage above her. So her mother’s favorite ship it was.

While Zuko pretends to play pirates with that stupid blue play mask and his wooden dual dao, Azula perches on the deck meditating in the sun. In her lap, she reads snippets from scrolls in between her meditation. Today, Li and Lo had some business on a neighboring island and Mother took it as a chance to shove Azula and her brother on a wooden ship in the middle of nowhere. Probably hoping it would force them to get along. It was kind of a stupid decision: two firebenders who hated each other, a wooden boat, and a single witness.

Mother hovers nearby, eyeing out her breathing exercises like she wants to say something but Azula doesn't rise to the bait. As much as she hated the salty sea air drying out her hair, being out in the open like this offered a lot more room to breathe. Even if she was confined to this wooden plank. Azula unraveled another paper as her feet dangled off the edge of the ship.

“What are you reading?”

Azula ruminates on ignoring her but the way the sun is high in the sky, the fact that she’s almost completed the last sets for the lightning blade- she’s in an ambivalent mood.

“Tactics reports from the Southern Raiders.”

“As in… the siege in the South Pole?”

Azula shrugs. She basically had her last sets down to an art form. Done cold that is. A few days in pure sunlight would do good for the chi needed for something so potentially explosive. It was moments like this that she missed being in her old body. Then she would remember that body was dead. Annoying boat day with Mother and Zuko it was. Little mercies.

“Father will want me on the front one day, Mother. You can only hope Zuzu doesn’t slip on ice before he even comes face to face with a waterbender. I don’t take chances.”

Her mother frowns but doesn’t say anything to that. Instead Mother looks down to Azula’s hands where she fiddles as she reads.

“You’ve always loved those.”

Azula looks to her hands where she runs her thumb over a smooth piece of sea glass as she reads. She always had a mindless habit of finding them whenever they went to the beach. She never took any home and always left them in piles for the tide to take back when they left. Azula doesn’t really know why, but it always felt wrong to take any with her. She never could really remember the reason.

Azula barely looks at her. “I guess.”

Mother wants to talk. Azula doesn't. Her tolerance for idle chit chat with her Mother was starting to weigh on her. She was going to have to try harder than that.

Mother turns to Zuko at the bow. “Dear, why don’t you turn us in to the cove. We can watch the fireworks from the beach.”

Zuko beams and turns to walk away and fiddle with the sails. As they start to turn towards the island once more, no clouds in sight. Mother sits next to her and dangles her own feet off the ledge of the boat, watching the way the ship cuts through the glass like water.

“Azula.” Closing her text, she sighs, waiting for the lecture. “I know that things must be difficult, right now.”

Azula finds her mother’s face, eyes wide. Her words refuse to cut.

“And I know you have so many great big things you want to do. There’s this blaze you carry, this marvelous thing you have that shines like sea glass.”

Mother reaches out to tuck a stray hair from her face and Azula freezes. She hadn’t really thought about how sea glass shines the way the eyes she shared with her mother did. Like amber gold. Like the way the sun was being swallowed by the sea at this moment, a dusk sort of gold.

Azula actually leans closer to listen.

“…But this ambition isn't an excuse to sharpen those edges to harm others.”

Oh.

“You only have one brother, Azula. He can be your greatest ally if you stop scaring him-“

Her mother’s soft tone fails to hide what she wants from her. Azula has never felt smaller, stupid than she does at this moment.

Didn’t she know the game Azula played everyday? Things like living were hard in the Dragon’s Den. Living was something you did on purpose. Azula knew her Mother knew- she would have never come to Caldera willingly if she didn’t know living and fighting would become synonymous.

Azula loved power. Adored fire and its destruction- it was molded in her being from the moment Father witnessed her first sparks. She had never needed to comprehend not being his heir because she had never not been his. Mother thought wanted meant safe. Wanted meant alive, wanted meant molded, wanted meant power and security. Azula had never been safe.

You made me want this, Azula anguishes. You made me need this.

Because the truth is this: Father can burn the world to the ground with her in it and Azula would still want. She could sit here in the sand and train and read and waste as a weapon and she would still look at the ocean and her mother’s pretty boats and Zuko’s stupids plays she never understood and want and want. Could itch and loathe in the Throne Room and its meetings and the men and their idiotic battle plans and still want and want because Father was on the dais. And the whole room went quiet to hear him breath and he walked like he had never been struck down. Because he never needed things like Mothers and Zukos and she wanted that. She needed to want that. Because what else was there? Drawing light from someone else other than herself?

Father had no use for a daughter, he needed an heir. And Azula could want all she could- but heir was going to be the only thing she allowed herself.

Azula shoots to her feet as the first firework of the summer bursts in the sky like a wishing star. Nighttime starts to press deep as it burns and burns until there’s nothing left to burn. Azula reels on her mother, something raw and bloody in her teeth.

“Zuko’s not afraid of me. You are.”

Azula pointedly ignores the way her mother’s face crumples and her jaw snaps shut. They finally pull into dock on the shore and she heads towards the gangplank Zuko has just let down. Mother is at her heels following her and she feels the way some string between them burns and burns until-

Zuko walks from the bank to where the Fire Lily is docked. Azula walks down the plank towards him as she and her Mother burn in the light of the comet-bright sparks in the sky. “‘Zula! The fireworks are starting-“

Azula kicks up sand into his eyes and stalks away from his shouting at her back. Azula didn’t even need to look back to know Mother stayed behind to check on Zuko. It was just the way it was. Azula didn’t exist until Zuko was around. Then she was a sister. She was her Father’s true heir until Mother needed something from her. Then she was just her daughter.

Azula walks all the way back up the hill to the beach house before standing at the precipice of the cliff it teeters on. Raising her hand, she takes a moment to stare at the sea glass in her hands before petulantly throwing it as far as she can. Another firework explodes in reds and blues in front of her. If she squints, she can pretend as though it's shattering glass. Azula closes her eyes as the sea glass hovers in the sky for a moment next to wishing stars. She doesn’t watch as it falls and is swallowed by the white water below.

Azula sits on the cliff face shivering. Each crack of light in the sky splits the sky apart and sounds like the world ending. Time seeps by like blood through a shirt. Azula sits frozen, drowning- and no one comes to find her.

The first thing Azula does when she arrives back in Caldera is to conduct enough lightning into the skies above the capital for the palace to shake. Through it all, Father watches her every move intently and smiles in a way she can almost pretend is love.

He burns like a wishing star at the end of the world.

Chapter Text

As her grandfather rages from the dais, Azula blankly watches the way this life follows her last one so close. To a certain point.

This time, as she hides in the curtains with Zuko at her side, she waits for him to run away like last time but he stands rooted behind her as Grandfather speaks his damning words to their father. She’s barely lucky enough to drag Zuko out quietly by his shirt before they say anything she can’t lie away.

“Go to your rooms, Zuko.”

“But Grandfather-”

“Mom will sort everything out, trust me.”

Azula digs her fingers into his side pushing him down the hall. Rolls her eyes for effect. “Go. You’re so dramatic, he wasn’t serious. Or are you really going to accuse Father of something dumb like this?”

Zuko narrows his eyes but slowly makes his way down the hall as Azula pretends to look casually check her nails. When he turns the corner, Azula is already halfway to her mother’s doors. Azula knocks, barely taking the time to think if this is something she should repeat. She isn't given the liberty to change her mind when the door slides open.

“Azula.” Her mother’s politic face is on. The one she never wore around Zuko. It makes Azula feel small and she wants nothing more but to turn back and leave Zuko to the flame just to spite her.

“Azula, what’s wrong?”

Azula pushes her way into the room sliding the door behind her. It startles both her and her mother but she doesn’t have the luxury to take her time about this anymore. Azula stares at the burning embers in her Mother’s fireplace, focusing on the shadows cast by the setting sun from the window.

…She’s stalling isn't she? Either she lies or- well, Azula didn’t have much of a plan after that. She had debated what to do when this night came around but… why change it when she knew Mother could take care of it all in the first place? Zuko probably wanted her to stay, but boohoo, he trusted her to have his best interests in mind when she sent him away.

“You need to tell me what’s going on right now. What have you-”

Azula weighs the words in her mouth. “Father spoke with the Grandfather. How he plans to get the throne… if he gives up his heir.”

“Gives up?”

“Permanently.”

“A disownment-” Mother cuts herself off at how foolish it sounds out loud. When had Father ever kept something he didn’t have use for anymore? What were useless things were for? For what were braziers and hearths and all things that caught fire made for? Kindling.

“Azula, go back to your room.”

“Mother-” She turns to her.

“Azula.” Mother looks different in the light of a flame. In darkness. Azula almost doesn't recognize her. “Forget you told me this. Walk calmly back to your rooms. Smile. Do you understand?”

Azula blinks slowly wondering when her mother’s face had begun to look like that.

“Azula!”

She shakes away the unsettling feeling and nods prettily. “Yes, Mother.”

When Azula leaves she smiles with her teeth to the guards outside the door, noticing the way they stand so differently from her father’s own guard. She does the same to a maid passing by and she narrows her eye at her rather than scramble around her like a frightened rabbit like the rest of them usually did. She walks far enough for her to lose the palace eyes and duck into an abandoned hall. In the dim night, she takes extra care to slowly slide open a window and inch her way over a ledge to where her mother’s window rests. She digs her fingers into the tiled roof and presses her face carefully to where the candlelight flickers Mother’s shadow. There are two voices coming from the room.

Azula peeks over the windowsill far enough to see Mother and who she recognizes as her attendant speaking in raised tones. The woman watches her Mother as she sweeps through her room in a hurry.

“-we were sent here to bide our time. To be the blade in a sleeve that would strike the throne at its weakest.”

Mother runs her hand along a loose panel beneath her bed before something clicks. From below the floorboards she retrieves a bag. From where Azula can see, there are enough supplies tucked away in it for a trip. A long trip. “They are children, Hanami. Children of Byakko-“

The woman, Hanami, pleads with her mother as she paces throughout the room packing items and burning papers at the heart in the corner of the room. Azula wonders if there are more than play lines in all those loose leaf papers. “They are dragon spawn! They-“

Azula can feel when Mother’s patience expires when she turns to Hanami throwing down whatever she had just had in her hands on her bed. “Were we not betting on that?”

Hanami grasps Mother’s now empty hands tight enough that she can see where they pale from lack of blood flow. “To make it easier when the time came to strike, My Lady. A mercy. Not for you to fawn over when-”

Hanami shook her head. Steeled her gaze. ”You’ve told us you were capable. You told us with Azula it would be easy-“

Mother flinches back, as if struck. Azula hears the implication and feels sick to her stomach. Out of both of her parents she barely thought her father capable of something like that. Maybe with Zuko, but never herself. She grips the awnings of the roof, the pads of her fingers scraped raw. She knows if she lets go, she’d run back to her rooms and pretend she never heard what Mother had planned-

Is planning? Azula wonders if she needs to pull up her own floorboards to hide supplies as well, wonders if Zuko is not the only royal in the palace who needs to run. But she needs to hear this, she can’t plot with a half drawn battle plan. Her fingers push into the tiling harder.

Mother looks away. “I was wrong.”

Azula barely believes her. Hanami seems to think the same when she scoffs. “She is plainly of Sozin. We all see it, you see it.”

Mother goes back to packing and burning things and running away like a coward like she hasn’t just been accused with what still has Azula reeling. Her face is stone but her words sear- Azula wonders what part of her is real.

“If we liberate this nation with violence, what will become of us? Should we start a new age with the same suffering the last one did? Zuko is as much my son as he is Ozai’s. It is Ozai’s strength that he carries as much as he wields mine. We have sent so many of our own to the Caldera to die- what we need is a dragon. Dragons like Ozai who bow to no one. Dragons like my- my daughter.”

The worlds fail to comfort Azula . Hanami laughs bitterly. “Spirits! For all your ruthlessness, it is your pitying kindness that has always been your greatest weakness.”

“Kind does not mean weak. You of all people must know that. Where would this coalition be, if not for the kindness of strangers? Where would your clan have buried itself if not for mine offering you shelter? Our numbers were born of kindness, they always have been.”

“It will come to a challenge if you do this. If you choose this, it can only end with the two of them vying for the throne. No more plots, no more surprise advantage. Your place in the palace, our places in this palace, will be forfeit. All over faith in hatchlings, barely grown.”

“Isn’t that just faith? Hope? Aren’t things that catch fire brightest in the dark?”

“You are a fool, Ursa of Byakko. This child has dulled your edge-“

Mother weaves a hair stick inlaid with sea glass and mother of pearl into her hair. Its sharp point pokes out from the other side of her bun. “No, they have sharpened it, they reminded me why I wield it.”

Hanami settles on her knees. “And what of me, My Lady? Where shall my loyalty rest if it goes with you? Ask anything of me but this.”

Despite her pleading, Mother remains unphased. “This is all I will beg from you my dear Hanami. We are loyal to the future we hope to create- and I am not our cause.”

Hanami chokes. “Then I mourn you, Ursa. I mourn you.”

“If we live as we die, do we really disappear? Do not mourn me, for as long as I breathe as myself, I still live.”

Hanami looks away, tears racing down her cheeks. Mother bends down to brush a few away. “Get the ship ready. Both of them.”

Hanami nods, silent. Mother seems to expect this and continues to speak. “I will take the Fire Lily from the east port. The smaller, the one in the backhills… I beg you to take it for yourself if this all crumbles.”

Hanami just bows low, as though her mother is already inscribed into a shrine. Mother doesn’t look back once as she leaves.

Azula finds her mother when she walks into Zuko’s room hours later. Azula wouldn’t call herself paranoid, keeping watch near Zuko’s bedroom ever since she last spoke with Mother. It would have pissed her off for Zuko to be assassinated after all the social labor she put herself through. She wonders if she came to say goodbye to Zuko the last time too. Probably. She had just planned to follow her mother out of the palace purely to model her own contingency plans after, but the sight of her mother there in the moonlight, possibly the last time she’ll ever see her, moonlight or not pushes Azula from the shadows. She speaks as Mother shuts Zuko's door behind her.

“Would you have really killed me?” Azula should feel vindicated that she was right about her but standing here before her Azula just feels small and nauseous.

Mother has a half drawn blade glittering in her sleeve. Moonlight catches on it before it disappears. If she looked away, maybe they both could pretend it was just sea glass.

“You heard-” Mother pales, looking as ill as Azula feels. “I have to go, Azula, but… thank you. Thank you for telling me about this. I know it must’ve been hard, I know you idolize your father, but I know you don’t hate your brother as much as you say you do. You did such good tonight, my dear-”

Good? When has Mother ever thought of her as good? Even her closest attendants didn’t believe half the drivel Mother spoke about her. And honestly, Azula isn’t even sure she did do this for Zuko. Azula doesn't know why she didn’t try harder to stop Father from speaking with the Fire Lord, she could have thought of something. Why go to Mother this time? Why ask for her help? She can’t help but laugh.

“Liar. You think I’m a monster.”

Azula should scorn her. Taunt her as she goes. She should wave threats she doesn’t mean around her little Zuko’s throat while he sleeps. She would have if she caught her leaving in her last life. She would’ve called her a coward and said to drown out at sea.

What falls from her mouth is something possessed and necromantic. Like something she killed with her teeth and buried inside her so long ago that it had just now begun to root and break through the surface again.

Azula stumbles forward, and Azula never stumbles. Azula pulls at her mothers skirts as she turns away, and Azula never does that. She never did.

“Do you like me?”

Mother freezes. “What?”

The words burn on their way up her throat. It feels like falling, unbidden, like fire she can’t control and she’s always been able to control it-

“I know you don’t love me, and you know I’m talented. Everyone does. But did you ever like me?”

Her mother stands before her frozen and afraid. It makes her want to scream at her, to give her something to be afraid of- but Azula just whispers loud enough that only she, her mother, and the night can hear them.

Azula’s words catch fire, sparking out of control. “They all say I’m like Father and know how. I get why they say that. I know what I am. Thing is- I don’t even look like him. I won’t ever be that tall. I don’t have his chin or his voice-”

She laughs, thinking back to the end of the world. “I won’t even be Fire Lord, you know.”

Mother is still motionless, her hand raised to her mouth, eyes barely raised to her. Azula wonders if she’s disgusted.

“Mother, look at me. Look at me. Mother, don’t I look like you? Why? Why is the only thing you’ve ever given me your face, I don’t even look like him so why do you hate me-“

Mother is suddenly in her space, taking her face in her hands, hard, and looking over Azula as if she’s just suddenly become alive. Same eyes, horizon on the beach, molten and fleeting bore back at her. Shaking fingers trace her brow, furrowed, afraid, afraid, afraid. The chin that wasn’t her father’s. Soft, cruel hands tangle in hair she loved so much. Her mother brings Azula so close to her, closer than she can ever remember being and it’s so warm and sickening and she smells like the ocean and she wants to stay there forever- and her mother sobs into Azula’s hair like she’s just seen her for the first time.

“Azula, my Azula. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, I wish there was more time, I wish I-“

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Those aren’t the words she wants to hear.

“I’m sorry. I did this. I did this to you, oh spirits, I did this, I-“

Those aren’t the words she wants to hear.

Her mother backs away even as Azula claws at the careful embroidery at her skirts. All the resentment she’d been stoking over the years was fizzling out and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that her mother didn’t flinch when Azula went to pull at her hair, even though Azula knew it hurt, because of course it hurt, she was Azula and a monster- but maybe her mother wasn’t. Maybe she wasn’t as cold and distant as she remembered. Maybe she was just stupid. The unflinching look at pain Zuko wore all the time had to come from somewhere.

But it wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair that her mother was just a foolish, stupid woman who didn’t know what to do with her and Azula only knew this as she was leaving.

Azula dug her fingernails into her mother’s arms. Soft fingers came to unlatch them without anger once again. She pulled at the wide sheltering sleeves, burrowed into her billowing sea cave skirts, hiding. Mother came to unearth her and push her away.

There was a sudden burst of movement that shot from her neck down her back and Azula could only gasp as she went limp her mother’s arms.

“I’m sorry, Azula. I’m so sorry.”

She hated the guilt on her mother's face. She didn’t want it. But she would take it, she would take it if meant-

“Mom.” Azula choked out, her chi still tangled and clotted at her throat. “Don’t go, Mom.”

Stay, stay, stay. The chi blocked near her head loosened her body and sent tears trailing down her neck. I’ll be better. I’ll pretend to be good.

All her mother did was gather Azula up into her arms and began walking to the doors of her brother’s room. Azula wanted to throw herself from her embrace, to reach down over her back to burn the flesh there, but every muscle she had was soft and pliant. She couldn’t even muster up strength to yell at her. Every step felt like a lullaby, like she was once again a child being herded onto her mother’s favorite ship for the first time. Mother felt like rocking waves, a benediction just moments away from dashing her across the rocks. Azula felt like a girl who’d spent the day in the sun and was sleepy enough to be carried home like a child. Every memory she wished would’ve happened a lifetime ago was happening now. Was happening for the first and last time.

Mom, Mom, Mom.

Azula sobbed into her mother’s callous, tender shoulders as she rocked her steady onto the bed beside Zuko. Her body twitched to throw herself at her leaving figure, to do something that would make her regret. But mother didn’t say a word as she stood in the doorway staring at Azula pathetically sobbing into the sheets below her. Just the same unveiled horror and shame has she clutched her hands to her mouth. Mother stumbled backwards out of the door, lost in the waves of the curtains that swayed in the hallway. Gone.

“Come back, come back, come back. Don’t go. You coward, I hate you-”

The warm body next to her nestled into her side. “Mm? ‘Zula? Wha- what’s goin’ on?”

Zuko nudged his head to the side, sluggish and limp in a familiar way. The evidence of her mother’s presence made Azula wonder what she had said to him. She wondered if it was words she wanted to hear herself. She couldn’t muster the strength to push her wet face away from his. She couldn’t stand the way his unfocused eyes zoned in on her features in the dark. Azula closed her eyes and pretended he couldn’t see her, pretended like she hadn’t just been unraveled so thoroughly just moments ago.

“Go back to sleep, Zuko.” Azula choked out.

“Lala, what’s wrong?”

The nickname tore her throat out, bloody and she begged. “Go. To. Sleep.”

In the dark, Azula can feel the way hot tears soak the pillow beneath them and she knows he can feel it too. Zuko doesn’t say anything for a while and she wonders if he listened to her and fell back asleep when she told him to.

Only the barest turtle duck feather lightness that brushes the hair across her forehead says otherwise. She wonders why he’s pretending like everything about this is normal, like Azula is the kind of sister that crawls into his bed curled like a child. Like Zuko is the kind of brother who understands and can make everything better. Like their world isn’t burning to the ground just outside these doors during the dark and quiet night.

But Zuko just silently pulls her bangs back in a way that wipes away her tear tracks on the way down. He’s so fucking unsubtle and soft and stupid about it in a way that can only be Zuko.

Spirits, she hates him. She hates him so much it hurts.

I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, she chants in her head loud enough for him to hear. She can’t comprehend him not hearing her in such quiet dark.

But he just keeps brushing her hair like it means nothing when it’s everything.

Azula doesn’t know what being loved by her mother feels like. But in the way Zuko brushes her hair and wipes away her tears, she thinks this might be the closest she’ll get.

Neither of them say a word as the night draws slowly away. Zuko never stops holding her. And if she laid there for long enough, Azula might admit that she doesn’t stop either.

There’s no father or mother here to kill each other over- in this breath of a moment, there is only Zuko and Azula. Maybe before the sun rises she’ll admit, maybe after Zuko falls asleep again and she sneaks from the room like a dream she’ll admit-

It’s almost like being loved.

Chapter Text

Haburame, the cook, dies first. Fire they said. In the heart of the Fire Nation, a chef of the royal family, someone who commanded the hearth of the dragon line- burned to death. Fire they said.

Azula knows otherwise. It starts like that- little deaths wrought by a little god.

Riko, the maid, slipped down some stairs cleaning out the now unused room in the west wing. Hakari, the groundskeeper who tended to the turtleduck garden, hit his head and drowned there. Even Haburame had a habit of slipping in Byakko dishes in the menu.

Mother’s chef, Mother’s maid, Mother’s groundskeeper.

It didn’t happen the first time around. The only thing different this life was Azula herself. She, knew the little deaths meant less allies, knew what all of this meant. Zuko, on the other hand…

Everything begins to fall apart when she’s summoned to the Throne Room to find Zuko kneeling in front of their father and a large fire.

Zuko looks over her shoulder and Azula knows if she doesn’t play this moment perfectly something in this room will burn. Her eyes look to the fire he kneels in front of and almost stumbles forward herself when she catches sight of a mother of pearl hair stick, a wooden turtle duck, play books, mountains of billowing robes the color of the sea-

Azula looks away from the pyre of her mother’s most beloved things.

“They’re just objects, dummy.”

She clocks immediately that it was the wrong thing to say- both to Zuko and around her Father. Before, Azula probably would have joined Father in gleefully burning everything in her path, maybe taunted Zuko about missing ‘Mommy’. Biting the inside of her cheek she hears how her words might have fooled Zuko, thinking it a cruel and callous gibe while her Father saw it for the comfort it was. Just objects, she said, not Mom, she implied.

Zuko darts forward, willingly plunging into the flames and Azula has to bite her cheek harder, blood filling her mouth, just to stop herself from pulling him back. Father takes care of it and drags him back by the scruff of his shirt and Azula can see where Zuko’s hands turned pink from the heat. He’s shaken furiously once and he drops what he holds from his hands, saved for a moment from the flames-

A charred Dark Water Spirit Mask falls onto the stone of the Throne Room floor with a clatter. Father drops Zuko’s shirt collar and her brother grunts as he meets the floor. Azula wonders if she has ruined history so far that she will have to watch him burn again. She doesn’t know if she has it within herself to smile at the scene this time anyway. When she looks at Father now, hovering over Zuko, she can’t quite find the power in it anymore. Just fear.

“Go ahead.”

“What?”

“You were so eager to retrieve this from my flames. You must have wanted to burn it yourself.”

“Father-“

“Do you need to hide behind this child’s play? Do what I say, Prince Zuko.”

Zuko kneels on the ground, not moving an inch as Father towers. Silence reigns in the Throne Room for a suffocating eternity.

“This is a lesson, Zuko. Refuse to learn and the next time there will be harsher consequences.”

You will learn your lesson-

“Azula, it seems your brother needs a demonstration on what exactly fire does.”

Suffering will be your teacher.

Azula feels her body walk forward to where Father stands when he gestures to her.

“Burn it.”

“Azula, wait, no!”

A sharp crack fills the room when her sparks connect. The static of her lightning fizzles out before she realizes what she done.

Father strides to the doors of the Throne Room, leaving the smoldering pile of her Mother’s most precious things smoking on the ground. Azula’s feet meet his steps, like orbiting around a too hot sun, a wishing star around the Earth, through pure instinct, uncowed by the fear that sits burning in her gut. She knows better than Zuko and follows quietly.

When they arrive on the ground of her mother's favorite pond garden, she knows. Father’s eyes blaze, comet-bright.

“Show me your flames, Azula.”

Zuko stumbles onto the grass to follow them, his eyes wide-

Azula looks away. Stares down into the water in all its pushing and pulling. Finding little beady eyes of soft feathered faces looking up at her. Always expecting more. Something more than violence.

A tug at her sleeve. “Azula. Don’t do it.”

She pushes him off, opening her hands, palm up ready to ignite- she clenches her fists and turns away. “Father, maybe-“

A sudden, sharp movement goes across her vision and she flinches hard enough to bite into her tongue.

Time moves like sunlight shadows on the wall- slow, reaching, waning. Azula is already pulling at Zuko’s own sleeves when Father’s fire fills the air. And for the second time in her lives, Mother’s pond garden burns. Azula realizes that trying to talk her way out of this had been the worst possible thing she could done for herself.

Zuko continues, unaware of everything Azula had burnt just away. What use to a Lord was a blade that refused to obey? She doesn't know, she doesn’t know-

“Father, please. I understand, I’ll be better-“

“Zuko.” Azula hisses to hide her pleading. “Shut up. Watch.”

Zuko does not watch. He ignores her harsh tone as warning and rather an extension of their father’s actions. Azula is burning everything and cannot begin to fathom how to salvage their two opposing favors. Zuko instead turns to cry at Father who barely looks at him.

Father’s eyes glance over her, calculating. “I expected such disappointment from your brother, Azula.”

Not from you.

Azula bows at the waist, pushing Zuko’s head down with her as Father leaves. She can feel Zuko trembling under hand as they both stand there in silence. Azula doesn’t know why she submits when she knows she’s already lost.  

When Father’s figure disappears in the distance, Zuko pushes her off.

“You just watched. You burnt Mom’s mask. Why?”

His eyes are empty, confused and wide- Azula turns away, walking to where their Father exited. “You know why. Stop crying. It doesn’t change anything.”

Zuko hisses at her back accusingly. “You’re the strongest person I know.”

She twists around, tired and angry. “What more do you want from me, Zuko? If you cared so much about your stupid turtleducks, you would’ve shut your mouth. You would’ve tried harder, done better, been a better son. You need to learn not to step out of line or-”

You’ll burn for it.

Father wasn’t just watching Zuko anymore. Azula was slipping and he saw it. No amount of burnt masks or Mother’s things would salvage things. Not when she stumbled so obviously afterward. Azula wanted to shake Zuko silly, tell him how to survive because he was always so testing and never understood subtle warnings. Azula scrambled for something to say when Zuko cut in. The look in his eye tells him what she already knows.

“You know what, Azula? I think Mom was right. You really are a monster.”

And he steps forward grabbing her hand before leaving. She looks down to find a mildly burnt piece of sun colored sea glass saved from the blaze in the palm of her hand.

Oh.

It's the perfect shade of her Mother's eyes. She doesn't know how exactly she knew Mother had kept this because of her but she does. 

Azula feels herself stray further and further from her body that she barely acknowledges when Zuko leaves the gardens. When she stands alone, she finds herself walking in the charred aftermath. At the edge of a now dry pond she almost stumbles as something moves in front of her.

The mother turtleduck. It's beady, wanting eyes look at her before looking away. Accepting. Her feathers are charred and her chest stutters as she breathes. Azula doesn’t quite know what comes over her to reach out. She feels like her mother, reaching across her neck in kind motions, finding soft sinew and in the next moment, killing something weak and leaving it to fester.

Azula leaves the mother duck with her wide, empty eyes, too familiar, too like another pair of eyes she knew. Her hands shake through the violence like they haven’t before. Mercy, she chants in her head. This is a mercy.

Azula continues to walk above the empty eyes of a dozen tiny, pathetic beings in the garden and has never felt further from a little god in this wide, wide world than she does now. She tries to imagine herself walking in a tide pool on Ember Beach. Like she is just collecting little things to put in her pail.

It doesn’t work. Azula looks away.

When she starts to leave after finding nothing she almost doesn’t notice the nest tucked away under a fire lily bush at the exit.

There is a pair of eggs.

They both have thin, wiry cracks traveling up them but Azula still reaches down to carefully deposit them in the folds of her sleeves. She billows down hallways, curtains twisting like it might have around her mother on another empty, windy day and leaves the pair of them in her rooms, bundled quietly on her bed in the dark.

Azula wonders if giving them their chance is a little mercy or cruelty.

Azula doesn’t leave her wing of the palace for months after that. It’s implied that she shouldn't with the way the guard crowds when she gets to any other part of the palace.

On quieter days, she asks guards and trainers if her Father has called for her but most of them avoid her eyes altogether and leave as soon as lessons are over.

On bolder days, she whispers to maids and servants after Zuko. When they pretend they don’t hear her, and walk away, sometimes they whisper louder and longer about the ongoings of the palace. She takes what she can get.

In between days, she pokes at the turtleduck eggs and curses her impulsivity. With the servants being so stingy with proper food she wonders if she should try her hand at cooking.

Sometimes though she spends her time burrowed away in Mother's rooms when she can get away with it. Being in the west wing of the palace means the personal quarters of the royal family. Not the Fire Lord though. Those quarters were in the east wing. Some dusty old book she found said some contrived reason for the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. The whole book was a poetic sort of useless and presumptuous but she had nothing else to do but study, train, and be obviously monitored by the guard and serving staff noting down every twitch and breath before scurrying back to Father.

Which is why it sends her reeling when there is a knock at her doors and she opens them to find Ty Lee and Mai. They all stare at each other for a long moment before Ty Lee pipes up, probably sick with the weird aura or whatever she calls it.

“Your father called for… better company? I think that’s how he put it.”

Azula is halfway through slamming her door when a stray thought slams into her.

“You can come in. If you do me a favor.”

Mai scowls. “Favor? Like you're not the one who sent us away. Favor, this is is our favor to you-”

Ty Lee beams and cuts in. “Of course!”

Azula smiles genuinely for the first time in weeks. “Do any of you know how to find a maid named Hanami?”

The honey amber of the sea glass glints almost like gold in the scattered light. Tiny pockets where the glass is flawed and laid with minuscule fissures sends starlight scattered across the walls and her face. She doesn’t know why the sea glass makes her feel infinitely sad. Doesn’t know why it sits so tiny and familiar in her hand.

“Azula, we've been looking for you everywhere!”  

She wonders how Ty Lee knew to find her here and she rises from her mother’s vanity to stand. It feels a little foolish and reactive standing in front of the empty, dusty room like it’s something to hide. It’s not like Azula is ashamed to be here.

It’s just… empty here. Quiet.

Ty Lee’s face softens and Azula hates the way her eyes feel on her.

“Sorry. I know you don’t want anyone knowing that you come here.” Azula doesn’t miss what that insinuates, it probably shows on her face and Ty Lee shrinks again.

“I followed you one time.”

Azula steps forward.

Ty Lee steps back. “Or two.”

“Get to the point, Ty Lee.”

Ty Lee goes quiet, pale. Azula doesn’t like how it makes her feel sick too.

“Your uncle is back and your father called a war meeting. Zuko, he-“

It’s all Azula needs to hear before she heads towards the door.

“Why did you go?”

“It wasn’t right, Azula, they’re going to sacrifice all those people! Not that you would understand that.”

Damn the people, damn the entire world, she thinks. Look out for yourself, you fool, you’re the only thing that matters-

And Azula doesn’t know where that comes from and she’s not about to address it when her idiot brother is about to become a funeral pyre. There’s an impulsive, desperate plan forming in her head and logically she knows they’re in public, logically she knows she could find a hundred other ways to stop him from entering those halls- but Azula thinks there’s something thrumming in her chest that’s alive. Something telling her to move and damn the consequences.

"Go away, Azula, I have to get ready for my Agni Kai."

A cold, clinical sort of calm washes over her, the sort that lightning needs, and a quiet, sparkling crackle echoes in the hallways.

Avoid the brain. Avoid the heart. Not too light, not too heavy. Not static, not enough to kill-

Azula knows that electricity, even fire, needed to kill required less control. The less fatal methods were more fickle. But Azula had always been able to control her flames. Always. Her hands tremble. Always, right?

Zuko is walking in front of her, Zuko is walking away, Zuko is still, too still, on the ground-

Azula’s mind quiets and her heartbeat slows, she can feel the tiny irrigation channels of energy through her body and Zuko’s own. She calms, trying to find the proof that these hands could do more than kill, trying to find the lightning they all held frozen in them, just there beneath her fingertips- she rose a hand, sparking, about to strike-

A shadow is cast over the both of them.

The quiet calm she’d sunk too deeply into shatters and Azula realizes a too hot presence curls around her wrist. She instinctively pulls from the grip, sending the built up shock shattering into a tapestry, the threads catching sparks. Azula can’t help but watch in a hazy sort of fog the way the flames lick up the woven arras of poplar trees where a red dragon sits curled with a songbird in its jaw. Her father’s hands feel like teeth on the neck of some sort of prey and Azula instinctively goes limp.

“Well, that’s not very becoming for any child of mine, is it, Azula?”

Fuck.

The War Room is empty. Quiet, almost. She’d imagine being her as a General so many times but all it promises now isn’t violence for others but for herself. The walls are high and from entrance to back are covered in mirrors. Usually the crimson curtains were draped during meetings for the waiting staff to be out of sight during meetings but oddly enough they are now pulled up high and away from blocking the reflective glass behind it. A place to hide and listen was quite a foolish thing to have in War Room- but Azula had later read that it had only been used for war in the recent century. The Fire Nation didn’t have much need for things like balls or ambassadorial parties when violence got results faster than chit chatting and playing nice with other nations.

Azula looks at her father’s reflection immediately. Being here again even not hidden in one of the curtains should feel familiar. Azula has never been more distinctly aware of how out of place she really is. “Forgive me for my insolence, Father, I had only thought to-”

Father’s voice doesn’t cut as much as it burns. His hands guide her deeper into the empty room by her shoulders. “I had excused your pathetic, sentimental behavior in lieu of your newfound talent, Azula, but for that disgrace to be the reason for your recent shortcomings is unacceptable.”

Oh.

He knows.

The hands on her back grow warmer, hotter, almost unbearable in a way that she can feel the sweat from her neck dribbling from the back of her head down to her collar where it evaporates under her father’s touch.

“Father, I-“

“Show me your flames, Azula.”

He knows, he knows, he knows-

“Azula, show me your flames.”

Azula closes her eyes, breathes, once, twice. Nothing breathes in this room except for her and her father. She takes the fluttering, pulsing thing in her chest that she’s beginning to realize might be her heart and swallows it until it’s buried somewhere that doesn’t feel anymore. She tries to remember her father’s daughter. Cold Azula, Azula the prodigy, Azula the lightning witch-

Her father’s hands are so hot they feel cold.

Azula of the Blue Flame.

She raises her palm upwards, feeling the heat come alive in it. Azula imagines looking to the mirror, her face a stony and still thing and her father’s hands loosening from her shoulder blades to begrudgingly sneer at a blue flame she burns bright.

When Azula finally looks up, all she sees when she looks is her mother’s face on her own, unsuccessfully masking something that she’s beginning to understand may be terror, unfamiliar on her features.

A dim orange flame bathes the room in ghostly light.

Her father’s face a nightmarish shadow over her shoulder. His hands a pale imitation of an embrace, a mockery of pride and love. She looks in the mirror and can’t find the face her mother gave her. In the dim orange light all she sees is every way she is her father’s daughter.

“Did you think you were clever, hiding in the curtains that day?”

She looks away. Anywhere, nowhere near his eyes. Nowhere near the face that looks like hers.

“Ah, yes. I knew. I know everything, Azula.”

Of course he does. He always does.

“The same way I know you’d tell your Mother, that you thwarted the assassin that you knew was meant for your foolish brother, the way you cling to lightning sparks because they are the only blue fire you can create anymore-“

Azula yanks and pulls but her father’s hands drag her by the shoulders. With the way his words cut away at her perceived safety, she wonders if his hands draw blood.

“There is no room for weaknesses in my empire, Azula. As my true heir, you’d do well to remember who you are.”

Azula has chilling words of her last life echoing in her ear- suffering will be your teacher.

She pulls forward but her father’s hands on the back of her neck and arms are dragon clawed. Azula chokes, drowns in the smoke that has begun to fizzle from the fabric of her shirt back.

“Dad.”

It’s all the weakness that it takes for the beginning of the end. Her father’s cruel orange light burns blisteringly bright in the room before the world goes utterly dark.

Azula knows nothing but pain.

When Azula wakes, she is certain she is still on fire. Medicinal herbs, and the sick of her own flesh wafts around her as she tries to stop breathing more than she needs. Her back, her back-

Azula gasps harshly, a scream like stuck glass in her throat. He burned her, he burned her, he burned her, he burned her-

Is this was it was to be loved by him? Azula wondered deliriously. Maybe to be loved is to be changed.

She can barely tilt her head before the slight move sends a daggered spasm of pain down her spine.

There is a rustling above her and without moving her more than she needed she looked up to find her uncle standing above her horrified. Barely lucid, her eyes trail to the window desperately trying to convince herself the sun hasn’t moved too far from when she was awake, even if the internal clock all firebenders had said otherwise. The sky outside was a ghostly orange. The color the sky makes when the world ends. The honeyed horizon on the sea just before dusk. Her mother’s eyes.

“Is he dead? Is Zuko-“ Azula’s voice chokes- drowning, drowning, drowning-

She waits in a torturous, long delirium for the answer but no voice answers her question. Azula wonders if Uncle has left, or worse, if his face gives the answer she’s looking for. She forces her head to tilt up, knowing it will pull the muscles at her neck and therefore the ones that connect to her trapezius, the tendons in her back- 

Azula breathes ragged and harsh. Fevered, she wonders how her tears haven’t evaporated by now. Her uncle is looking at her like he’s never seen her before.

Azula feels hysterical at this point, not caring that her screaming, her just talking felt like her father had just set her back aflame once more. “Uncle, is he dead!”

Her uncle jolts from his vapid, unhelpful staring.

“No.” He breathes shakily. “By Agni’s will alone, he lives.”

Little mercies. Azula wonders how despite having all the knowledge in the world, she’d still managed to fuck things up so grandly.

“You- you have to go.” Azula gets out. “He can’t stay here.“

“Princess Azula, you must calm down, your wounds from the accident are still-“

“Accident?” If she could laugh she would. Instead she presses onward, the details of her plan spilling from her lips. Ty Lee and Mai would just need to forgive her if uncle turned out to be like his brother. “There’s a bag. Under the bed of my mother’s room. In the floorboards. There’s medicine and food and water for a fortnight, traveling passes and papers, Mai and Ty Lee can tell you where-“

Uncle’s face is starting to put everything together. Azula can see it. She just needs him to know everything before she passes out again. “Azula, your father has decreed that your brother be banished. He’s given him leniency a chance if he captures the Avatar-“

Azula’s voice splits the air. “He’s a liar. Uncle, he-“

Tricked me. Saw me. Wants me. Burned me, burned me, burned me-

“What do you mean, niece?”

In her hysteria even she realizes what her uncle is asking her and she hopes this lie enshrouded with truth is hidden by her pain.

“Azula… are you saying…” It’s easy to stay quiet and let her silence work for her.

Uncle rises pale from his place at her bedside and Azula forces herself to talk through the pain. “There’s a cove. In the backhills. My mother had a ship…”

Her uncle’s hand hover in the air, unsure whether to touch her or let her be. Azula doesn’t know for certain that she wouldn’t try to bite his hand off if he came near her. In the dim orange candlelight, he looks exactly the same way she and Zuko resemble each other. “Niece… the Fire Lily-“

Azula interrupts. “There’s one Father never knew about. One she had from her hometown. Big enough for around two people.”

Uncle takes the slew of information better than she hoped. It makes sense, with him fresh from war and still technically a General. “We must leave quickly then. Princess Azula, can you stand?”

Pressing back, she bares her teeth at him. “There’s no time. Father he… he doesn’t need Zuko. He wants me. He can’t. But he wants me. He wants me.”

Uncle’s voice is stern but bending as Azula tries to convince herself being wanted is something she welcomes from her father. “I am not leaving you here. I’m sure this ship can wait for you to come.”

Azula closes her eyes, trying to find another lie. She never understood the agony of what burning meant to the other nations until now. Anything would be better than standing right now. “…Uncle, it burns.”

He ducks from out of the room for a moment to drag a healer in by his arm. “Give her something so she can stand.”

The healer sputters. “General, I’m under orders to contain her here. Under any circumstances. Although, I don’t know why the Fire Lord has bothered to declare such a thing with her back and arms-”

Azula growls into fabric. “A mess. I know. I was there.”

The healer stumbles back and Uncle puts a hand on his shoulder with a familiar smile. She wonders if murderous intent is genetic.

Father has made a mistake. By deeming Azula expendable, what did he expect. If Azula couldn't fight the fear with pain or the pain with logic then she would just need to get angry. He was foolish for thinking that fear or some childish idolization would keep her from questioning him. Zuko was the stray dog you kicked and kept coming back for scraps. What did he expect his chosen heir to do- lay down and obey? To turn her face towards the flames? Little gods don't kneel. 

The healer deflates under the gaze of two royals. “...I might have a few tinctures of poppy-”

“Give me them.” Azula says, steam hissing from her throat. “I’m leaving.”

They walk through the halls dodging guards slowly- any faster and Azula would most likely pass out again. She wouldn't admit this out loud- not with Uncle already coddling her, crowding her with Father look alike face anytime her nose twitched wrong. It's completely degrading and she loathes every minute of it.

“I know you regard me barely above my father, Uncle, you can stop pretending like you care.” She mumbles above a breath.

Uncle looks like he expects her wariness and doesn’t rebuke her. Instead he smiles, “You are infinitely more than my brother. He was given two wonderful gifts and squandered it. I think I have as well for this past year.”

Azula’s immediate thought is to call it as a lie. But Zuko had spent most of his banished days relying on him so she lets him speak, even if she doesn’t completely believe his honeyed words. “I think it’s time that I be my own brother's keeper. Agni knows I’ve been playing a lazy, grieved fool for far too long.”

Azula scoffs as they duck behind another corner. “You still are a fool if you think you can stop him.”

Uncle shrugs and looks like he would laugh if they were in guard infested walls. “Oh, I’m well aware. I don’t plan on stopping him, well not permanently.”

“You’d die.”

“That is entirely possible- but don’t put out this old man yet.” Uncle grins and winks. “There’s a reason they call me Dragon.”

Ugh, she forgot how cheesy he was. She doesn’t acknowledge the way the tension in her shoulders loosens. “Hm. If you die I’ll drag your corpse from the spirits myself back to Zuko.”

“You’re quite the protective child aren’t you?”

“I’m not a child.”

“No, I suppose, he took that too." Uncle says sadly. "Azula, after we find a way for you to the backhills, I do not want you to think Zuko is the sole purpose for me coming here for you today. I hope you find what it is to be a child again. I hope you live well. The both of you.”

Azula is starting to get why Zuko liked him so much. Cheesy, uncle was, but dishonest? More like embarrassingly earnest. No one really believed what they said if it sounded like that. Except for maybe Uncle. “Tch. Disgusting. Save this sentimental drivel for when you see Zuko again.”

“Alright. Until we meet again then, Princess Azula.”

Its then that a figure rounds the corner, their hands splayed wide in non violence. Uncle calls flames to him faster than she can comprehend but a candle ignites in Azula’s head when she sees the person's face. “You’re-“

The woman kneeling before her mother the day she left. “My name is Hanami. I used to aid your-

“Mother.” Azula finishes.

Hanami doesn’t seem to like her with the way she eyes her out. Azula doesn’t like her either, making her wonder how Mai and Ty Lee even convinced her to help them in the first place. “Yes. Most of her court ran that night. Some of us, the less known, stayed. The plan was to-“

“Play Kingmaker, right? And if that didn’t work, Kingslayer.” Azula knows now isn’t the time to hash over things but she sneers anyway. “Yeah. I know about that. Too bad we’re not playing you and Mother’s little politic game anymore.”

Before Hanami can reply, Azula cuts to the chase, wondering if Mai and Ty Lee are where they should be. Out of flame’s reach she hopes. “Where’s Zuko? Is he where we planned?”

Hanami stares her down. “By now, he should be.”

A voice echoes in the hall and they all find themselves tucked into a darkened cropping of the wall.

Guards stroll past them whispering and Azula steps on Hanami’s foot to listen closer.

“You have any clue why the Fire Lord’s meeting the Prince again in the middle of the night?” Azula freezes.

“Do you wanna wonder why we’re on the lookout for the Princess too? I feel better not thinking about it. So shut up.”

Springing away from where they stand huddled, Azula eases pass the guards who stare at her comically before making her way down the hall to the Throne Room.

Uncle’s voice, deciding to toss caution to the wind, follows behind her. “Azula! Azula, wait!”

Azula decides she’s tired of waiting.

When Azula stumbles into the Throne Room, feverish delirium and pure spite fueling her, it's only Father’s smile that tell her that she has again delivered herself straight in a trap. She barely acknowledges Hanami and Uncle forced to their feet behind her by the sharp point of the guards' naginata. She’d turn back the way she came if it didn’t mean joining them. Letting her stand means Father is willing to hear her out. Or not idiotic enough to see the way she sways on her feet and unable to go anywhere anyway.

“Zuko’s not here, is he.” Azula knows the answer but it’s only fair that she plays along. The perfect fool for the perfect plan. Azula deserved what was coming.

“You never struck me as a fool, Azula.” She doesn’t know what to say to him anymore and so she doesn’t speak at all. The burn across her back aches and she waits to die by fire once more. “It was almost perfect. Your path beyond my embarrassment of a firstborn, my weak, old father and brother struck from the throne. And your mother.”

Hanami causes a spectacle behind her, Azula is sure, but she doesn’t look away from Father on the throne. You never turn away from the sea, and you never turn from a predator either. Father’s nails are dragon clawed.

“At first I thought the weakness stemmed from that woman. The Blade of Byakko, Ursa of the White Sea-” Father mocks, the words new and meaning little to Azula. “She did her part for a while. I was content to have things move at their own pace, afterall, Zuko was a disappointment, but not enough so that the idea of him never posed a threat to you.”

Azula wonder’s why she fought Zuko so hard after everything. It’s stupid to keep wondering when the reason sits in front of her gloating.

“Then to my surprise, you break all expectations as if possessed. You don’t claw over him to the finish line- you drag him with you. You don’t devour each meal but toss him scraps. Instead of drowning him, you teach him to swim. A regrettable turn of events but nothing that couldn’t be remedied. But it would’ve been nice to get rid of both of them altogether. At least the fire stuck to Ursa.”

Azula’s voice is dragged out of her by force. “What?”

Father smiles pleasantly from where he sits above them all. He gets up slowly to walk down the stairs of the raised throne as Azula pieces everything together in her mind against her will.

“No. She left. She left me. She didn’t, she isn’t-“

Dead. Her mother was dead?

“I had thought of letting her run back to her village. Zuko wouldn’t have known where to look and she would have never returned to this place. But you were distracted. Mere breaths away from greatness and you squandered it. Lightning, blue fire, the first in centuries- all meaningless because of some childish desire?”

Azula barely hears what her Father says, how Hanami wails behind her, the way Uncle breathes steam hot enough to melt naginata steel making the guards shout. Nothing beyond Mother is dead, Mother is dead, Mother is dead and it’s Azula’s fault-

“You killed my mother?”

“Don’t be a child, Azula. She ran away on the ocean she loved so much. The fire on the Fire Lily, however…well, let's say that she virtually killed herself.”

Her father’s guard turned their eyes away from her, shifting. Apathetic, empty, guilty.

“You could be great. Without the distractions, I see legacy and power.”

The pain from Azula’s back didn’t matter anymore. Noise rushed in her head like waves, like the hearth, like the sound the world makes when it splits apart. Something dead in Azula’s chest rooted before blooming again. Something cold and dark and other. In front of her, the flame of the braziers at the dais of her father's feet rose up. Something in her throat burned like a wishing star.

Azula didn’t remember much after that.

you swallow the metal, the blood, the flame. you find warm flesh beneath your fingernails.

but you do not forgive her.

you thrash, you hear the crunch of ribcages under your soles. you walk amongst the field of the dead. you give them her rage. her grief. her regret.

but you do not forgive her.

these men kneel. they pay for their sins. their tongues are swollen with soil and truth. they speak into the earth with platitudes and forgive mes and sorrys.

but you do not forgive her.

you right the wrong for her. it all burns.

but you do not forgive her.

Azula distantly remembers needing to be dragged from the bloodied guards out of the Throne Room screaming her throat raw. She heaves and heaves and orange flames pour from her mouth but begin to fizzle out when her rage starts to feel more like grief.

Her uncle trades blows with her father, the dais in front of them a bright orange blaze. Hanami pulls her out of the blistering heat as the curtains begin to catch and the marble below them dries and cracks. She keeps yanking herself bloody as she’s half dragged through the palace halls from Hanami’s grasp, her back screaming and bleeding from her burn but Azula doesn’t care. Hanami can’t begin to understand.

She hated her mother. Her mother was afraid of her. These were facts.

Her mother died because of her. Her mother was afraid for her. These were truths.

So why did it still hurt?

“Let me go! You moonborn, cold watered bitch-”

“You will live. Damn you, dragonborn, you shall live.” Dragging her across the capital Hanami hisses at her in low tones. It’s barely legible above the chaos unfolding around them as citizens start to poke out of there homes at the sky high flames coming from the Palace in the middle of the night.

“Not because I wish to see you alive. I want nothing more than your death. But My Lady has commanded it, so you live or I will drag you before Agni himself to burn.”

“Burn? Burn?” Azula laughed and hooked a finger over the collar of her charred shirt pulling it sideways. “I’d like to see you try. I’m still alive after the first try after all, peasant.”

Hanami’s eyes flash and she wonders what she truly knew of her mother for her attendant to be so sharp and unlike her.

“I heard you that night. I know what you want to make of Zuko and me.” Azula has never wanted the Throne less in her life. “I’ll make sure he never comes back to this place. I don’t care if Caldera burns.”

“You can surely try, girl.” Azula nearly slips down a rock as they near the coast of the backhill but Hanami pulls her up sharply. The numb, bloody mess on her back is starting to make itself known again and Azula is not tempted to try her hand at sailing as she downs another dose of what the healer gave her. Hanami looks at her pitiless. “All that effort you’ll put into damning the rest of the world won’t work. There’s too much of that blasted kindness in him. In both of them.”

Mother.

If Azula was a better person, she might’ve considered relenting on her viciousness to hold hands and go off into the sunset with Hanami forgetting their differences in lieu of their one connection. But Azula was ‘of Sozin’ as Hanami had so eloquently put it one upon a time so kindness could go shrivel up and rot on a sunless midnight.

Azula grins, a sharp baring of teeth. “Then I’ll snuff it out. Kind means dead. And he won’t die here today, or ever, peasant.”

Hanami almost looks comforted by her ugly sneer. “Good. At least he’ll be alive enough for us when we find him again.”

As if. But Azula doesn’t get to replay when a blur of pink and black envelop her.

“Mai. Ty Lee.” Azula breathes into a mix of brown and black hair. “What are you doing here?”

Hanami’s face goes blank watching them and she stands at the edge of the waters to start undocking the ship moored there.

“Azula, spirits, what did he do to you?” Ty Lee’s hands are a light in a storm and Mai’s shoulder keep her steady and standing. Ty Lee’s hands reach carefully to gather the hair from her neck and tie it with her own pink ribbon. “Agni, you feel so scared.”

Azula stiffens at the word so Ty Lee doesn’t say more than that. They all stand there huddled like they’ve never had before. Azula wishes it didn’t take dying to realize how much she had needed them. 

Mai’s dark eyes zero in on the burn that curls from the base of her neck down to under the thin hospital shirt. Wordlessly, she untucks a roll of her best kunai from her waist and tuck them into Azula’s own waist band. “Don’t worry. The three of us have your plan. It’s gonna be fine.”

Hanami gestures from the ship where Azula spots Zuko perched at its bow like he’s been there this entire time. He stares at her and Azula feels relief for the first time she’s been back in the past. One plan gone right. If she only knew she had all she needed already with her from the beginning. Hindsight and all that.

Hanami shifts and it’s then that she actually see the name of the small ship in front of her engraved in it’s wooden side. The Sea Glass.

“I’m not- not worried.” They all ignore her tears.

If there were more time, she’s sure Ty Lee would have a whole blubbering speech ready and Mai would prepare an arsenal for her to take but there isn’t. Azula had wasted every little bit of her time for what? She refuses to cry anymore in front of them as she’s ushered onboard, reaching for Zuko who reaches back. They slump over each other, burnt and exhausted. Hanami glares at her one last time before pushing them from the dock with her feet.

The ship strays further from the main island that Mai and Ty Lee become so small, almost like they don’t even exist. She clutches the kunai and her belt and memorizes the way the pink ribbon feels dangling at her neck. The sails start to push them further away from as a sharp wind starts to form and Azula sees lightning form over the Palace like an omen. The sparks in the air should feel familiar to her after wielding it for so long- but for the first time, the electricity feels dangerous. Like stepping into the realm of a foreign spirit. It makes the fresh burn stretch across her back uncomfortably as she wonders if this is what it felt like to Zuko- for Agni to turn his back on the both of them in this way.

A bolt reaches from the heavens themselves to weave into the palace for a horrible, still moment. The ozone in the air feels like Father, Father, Father-

A streak of lightning soars out.

The relief she feels is a small mercy compared to Zuko’s pale face lodged in her neck. From where he stands slumped against her, he smells like burnt hair and his wound blisters. Being so close she can see the difference of this scar and the last. Another small mercy- it makes it easy to distinguish her dead brother from her living one next to her. The relief only lasts for seconds when she realizes the burn, although less concentrated around his eye than last time, now stretches across his entire face. Like someone had taken a well of bloody, cinnabar ink and threw it across his face. His ear remains unmangled, the eyelid of his burnt eye no longer a narrowed slit- but the burn spots across the bridge of his nose, to the cheek under his other eye.

All that knowledge and all Azula has managed to do was make things worse. To do nothing more than sit with it and be afraid.

The static in the air starts to fade away and she quietly wonders if her foolish uncle had redirected that bolt successfully. Azula would rather be able to tell her brother that their uncle lived through facing Father. Although she is sure the old fool may be stuck there for the time being, it’s more than she can say about the rest of their family. She wonders how to explain to him how their mother is dead and she is the reason.

Her answer comes when the storm begins to swell larger and when she looks to the sky, the night is dark and unforgiving. Clouds blanket over all the little suns and wishing stars in the sky, leaving only the face of the full moon. She and Zuko pull at each other as the ship beneath them rocks, stumbling and dragging themselves to get off the deck into the cabin. A rogue wave reaches up to meet the rising sliver of light.

The Moon and her Tide take them.

There’s a moment before drowning where your memories linger between everything above the waves and after, when only the cold knows what you were. Before the pouring of the void without heat, without sunlight or the breath that was oxygen into your lungs-

Azula is a little god sitting alone in the tide pools of Ember Island. She knows that things such as alone and the sea don’t go together, but Azula finds a sea glass that shines exactly the way Mama’s eyes do when she smiles. The way dawn looks on the horizon of the sea. She plucks sunlight glass for Mama from the little world below her and a tiny hermit crab the color of sky for her brother, the little priest.

Azula has the faintest memory of Mama telling her things only a girl who lived near the sea would know- of white waters and her jagged rocks, of deep water and their currents, low and high tides and turning backs, coves with their rogue waves. It’s only befitting of Azula, the little god, that she tempts fate. Sitting in the tide pools long enough for the tide to rise, an ill timed rogue wave- of course she's swept away. Somehow though, below the waves, she swears a glittering white light brushes through her hair like the current. All she knows is that she wakes to Mama fishing her out of the cold water and cradling her in her arms, her cries a gutted, wretched thing. Azula had sat there and let her sway her, just like the ocean. A lullaby rocking her to sleep. Like love and violence in all its pushing and pulling away.

Azula sniffs but raises her hands triumphant, a piece of suntouched glass and a shy hermit crab sit in her fist. She offers the shard, now laden with tiny cracks that send sunlight scattered across their cheeks to Mama, in all its blunt beauty, but she doesn’t even look at her offering and continues to murmur nothings into her ear. That makes Azula cry as well and she doesn’t quite understand it all but she tucks it into Mama’s sleeves to find later. The hermit crab crawls from her sleeve and runs away to the ocean. The embrace of her mother has never felt more unbearable.

And her mother is so beautiful, even when she cries, even when she leaves- and it makes Azula cry even harder because she can’t tell if this was a memory or a dream.

When her world shifts around her, Mama vanishing with it, Azula sits before the tide lapping at her feet. She sits long enough for the sea to swallow the sun and the moon to rise. The sand below her itches but she doesn’t give it any of her attention. Instead, she looks out to the ocean and tries to catch a glimpse of the Fire Lily and her smaller Sea Glass on the waves. She doesn’t, of course, but she still looks.

Azula feels the way her dream bends around the woman who comes from behind her to stand but still she does not turn.

“Are you not going to kneel?” Her voice could freeze flames.

Azula runs her hands over bits of sand and sea glass in her lap. “Why should I?”

“Mm, I’ve always thought you were peculiar. So unafraid. You think yourself a little god, don’t you?”

Standing before the ocean and all her vastness, Azula certainly felt small. But godly?

No Mother, no Mai or Ty Lee, no Zuko. What did you call a god without a devotee? Did such a thing have a name? Azula had no followers or priests. She was alone and immensely aware that she had no one to blame but herself.

Turning to what she assumed was a spirit, Azula spoke tiredly. “Am I dead?”

Or going to be? Azula didn’t really care for the semantics- she’d died once before and wasn’t impressed. Her bending might have been gone by the way the glass in her hand remained cool and unmelted but she was sure that if she through it hard enough she could take out an eye.

The woman laughs heartily and sits beside her. “No, not yet.”

Oh, so she was planning on killing her then. Azula picked up a handful of sand. She couldn’t turn it to melted glass as she liked, but you could definitely hide a rock or glass in it. The woman eyed out her hands and raised an eyebrow.

“You’re welcome to try. I won’t kill you for it, though. Even if my love thinks I should. You barely made it in her waters the first time, I’m surprised you’ve come back for more. Ah, well, you are such a stubborn princess. I do have a weakness for those.”

Azula becomes acutely aware of the sun setting in this dream, of the moon peeking from beneath the horizon.

The woman, the white haired, too blue eyed woman continues on unafraid. “It has been a long time since a sun-touched child has walked along time.”

“You’re…” Azula’s eyes drifted above them, to the night time sky the full face of the silver moon kissing the tide.

“I am she.”

Azula can’t control her mouth. “You die. In the future I come from.”

It vaguely sounds like a threat, even to her ears but the Moon simply buries her bare feet in the wet sand where the tide once caressed. “We all die, little one, even us Great Spirits.”

The ambivalence of it all makes her want to scream. Spirits, time, dying- things like this didn’t happen to Azula. She wants to reach out and take a claw to the Moon but knows it probably wouldn’t do much. She hated that. Hated being pushed and pulled without a clue of where she was going. “Why am I here?”

“My love, the sea. She has grips on you and your brother.”

Azula wished spirits were less fickle than humans- it would be nice to know if she had to claw her way out of here tooth and nail or not.

“Oh, do not fret. I believe she holds great reverence for little Zuko. For some reason, he has always loved the tides. A peculiar thing for a child of the sun.”

Azula hiss, frustrated. “No, I meant-”

“I know what you meant.” That was it. Azula petulant threw her sand hidden rock. A stream of water caught it and Azula took her chance to pelt her piece of sea glass at the Moon. She simply caught it between her fingers, her being shining through the milky film like polished jade, smiling. Oh, so she thought this amusing? “Why are you back here, in your past? I think you are asking questions you already know the answer to.”

Azula thinks of Zuko and Mother. She tries to remember hating them. The only thoughts that surface are the still burning embers of her mother’s favorite ship and Zuko’s wide, unblinking eyes still golden under the light of a wishing star at the end of the world.

“Something happened, something…”

Unforgivable.

“And so? Do you think it’s forgiven after all this, little god?”

Azula didn’t think something like that could be deserved by her. Especially after making this worse, spending so much time hoarding right information that it became wrong. She didn’t need silly things such as redemption like Zuko did. She was content to just get back up and burn things to the ground once again. She’d prove who was wrong.

“What’s there to forgive? I didn't do anything wrong.”

“I did not say you did.”

“Do all spirits speak like kooky tea uncles?”

The Moon smiles and gets up from the ground, sand sticking to her dark skin like flecks of pale moonlight through glass. She walks to the edge of the tide and dips her fingers into the shallow waters. Azula barely blinks before she suddenly finds the woman’s arms full of her brother sleeping and completely dry. Azula is on her feet in an instant, pulling her hands in front of her into fists. The movement pulls at the burn across her back- but she barely feels the pain at all.

“Ah. There is something of my brother in him, isn’t there?” The Moon trails her fingers over Zuko’s face hovering over his fresh burn gingerly. Azula stumbles forward seconds away from biting, kicking, clawing at her- damn it all if she was the Moon, Zuko was her brother, not a spirits pawn.

“I won’t take him, don’t worry. He isn't meant for our dominion. Nor are you. Even if your brother is loved by the sun as much as he is loved by yourself and the waves.” Her hands are wreathed in a bright glow that reminds her distinctly of Katara, although it would be more fitting to say that Katara reminds her of the Moon. When the glow dissipates, Zuko’s burn is the pinkish color of fresh skin. The burn still twists over his face and the scar wasn’t completely healed, but the tension she hadn’t realized wracked his frame loosened. His pained face went lax in his sleep.  

The fury in Azula fizzled out and she stopped mere breaths from the Moon. “I don’t, I don’t love him. I hate him. I don’t understand-“

The Moon envelops her in the same cool light and her arms blanket over her like a sea cave. Azula never knew the Moon could be soft. All she knew of the moon and sea was the cold and drowning. In her arms, she remembers her mother’s fables of the Sister Moon and Brother Sun. She refuses to surrender to her, but her muscles go limp. “I am a sister as well, little god. You cannot fool me.”

The agony down Azula’s back quiets and the same tension in Zuko lessened in her as well. She feels the way the skin on her back weaves itself together again, slow, and not completely, but enough that she can feel anything other that pain. Slumping forward, she nestled into the haven of the Moon. “Swim up, little one. You cannot stay here.”

Azula blinks and the Spirit World shudders. No longer are they stood on the shore of Ember Island but float aimlessly in freezing waters. She looks up to where the surface of the waves refract the barest slivers of the day down. Somewhere above, the Sea Glass groans in the storm. Azula feels infinitely tired.

“It is quite the terrifying thing, to draw your light from someone else.” Her glow brushes through her hair like Mother might have done to her in a dream. Some part of it feels like the sun. “But you must, little one. This path you have followed has left you scarred in more ways that you can see. But draw your flame from yourself no longer, Azula, sister of Zuko. Look not inward, but up. To the sun.”

The Moon places her brother asleep in her arms. “Now swim, little god, these waters are no place for you to die.”

Azula doesn’t drown.

When Azula’s head breaks the surface of the water, Zuko’s nose is ice cold against the skin of her neck but his shallow breaths are warm, warm, warm. If she concentrates hard enough it’s almost like holding the sun in her hands. Latching onto the warmth, her wet clothes pulling harsh and excruciating across the skin of her back, under her elbows and forearms where the flame had traveled downwards. Azula doesn’t so much as drag her brother onto the shore as the tide pushes her along. Where her feet may have sunk into the wet sand as she trudged ashore, the bank pushes back and up. She doesn’t fight the receding tide because it does not drag them back in as she steps out.

Despite it all, when Azula finally reaches where the water no longer touches she heaves out of breath at the labour of it all. She is weak and shaking but-

Azula looks down at Zuko in her arms. Alive. Hovering a hand over her brother, orange flames flickering in her palms, she holds her fire near Zuko’s face once again.

Zuko moves closer, cold, and mumbles in his sleep. “Azula.”

She sighs and sits backwards, her flame dying out. Finding her inner flame she breathes hotly into the air around them, warm. Azula does not kill him.

Maybe to be loved is to be changed.

Azula looks to the ocean and thinks of the Water Tribe girl once again- thinks of Katara and those judging, ocean eyes. The moon and the sea with her fury and forgiveness, her mother and her holding arms and leaving feet.

Azula does not thank the sea and the moon for their little mercy, but she never turns her back on the riptide once as she waits for Zuko to wake.

Chapter Text

Zuko’s hand brushes against her forehead and it’s annoying how familiar the action has become at this point. Apparently, she had passed out waiting for Zuko to wake his lazy behind up and he took that as a go ahead to drag her muddy through half the Earth Kingdom. If Azula hadn’t had most of her muscles atrophied from her father’s greatly appreciated blessing, she would have gotten up herself, left Zuko to the Tide who seemed to like him so much, and walked off somewhere to sleep for a hundred years. All this traitor business was draining and completely beneath her.

“Azula, you’re burning up.”

“Mm, fine. Just the cold water.”

Azula says this knowing Zuko sees it as the blatant lie that it is. She’s not so sure how long they’ve been on the road, but it’s long enough that she can feel the seasalt and mud grime on her flesh like a second skin. While the Moon and Tide were gracious enough not to drown her for the hundredth time, probably bored, and they had washed up on a shore miles away from civilization. It was another reason not to fall over herself and suddenly become a staunch priest for the Moon and her Tides. They were utterly barbaric making them walk through uncharted, wild Earth forests. If Azula truly were a god, she wouldn’t conduct her matters so half assed. They could’ve at least dropped them in a port town instead of the middle of nowhere.

Zuko sets her down to catch his breath and trip around the forest looking for berries that’ll probably make him throw up again. Idiot. Azula sits where he leaves her to poke at rocks on the road below her. If the sun tilted a certain way they’d almost look like sea glass. The sun doesn’t move an inch.

When he comes back, his shirt is bunched up in a makeshift basket full with suspicious looking fruits. He looks rather proud of himself until he looks at Azula. Then his face drops.

Zuko kneels next to her frantic, reaching to peel the hem of her clothes up around her back. Oh.

It’s not like she can fight him in this state so she takes her advantage to commandeer the less suspicious and less bruised fruits he’d dropped. He could learn a lesson or two on not being a dumbass. Zuko cuts his silence with a whisper. “How…?”

Azula cuts back twice as sharp. “Where’d you get yours?”

It doesn’t have the disarming effect she’d hoped, her words revealing more than she’d planned to and a voice wracked with hurt that she wasn’t quite sure was from the burn itself. “Azula.”

“Just go away, Zuko.”

Zuko ignores that because that sentence has never worked in all the lives she’s ever lived with the clueless imbecile. “He burned you too? But you’re…”

Me, Azula thinks. I’m me and not Zuko- therefore being burned is impossible. 

“I didn’t even notice. I thought it was- maybe I was seeing-”

Zuko’s face shudders into something blank and unnatural- it unsettles her so she reaches up to poke him straight in the forehead which makes him start crying instead of scowling at her like he usually would.

Azula sighs. “You big baby. I didn’t even poke you that hard. It’s nowhere near your burn either.“

Zuko starts crying even harder after that and Azula can’t drag up the energy to wonder why. Probably something stupid.

Azula slumps on him hoping to suffocate them in the dirty earth beneath them but Zuko takes it as a challenge and continues to carry her along the river road still silently sobbing to himself. Azula falls asleep again.

When she wakes, Azula is sure she’s drowning again. For moments she thrashes cold and wet but warm hands thick with baby fat and sword callouses hold her steady.

“Sorry, your fevers are getting bad. I had to dump you in here, you were basically boiling.”

Azula quiets and realizes the water she sits in doesn’t even reach her neck. She snorts, a faint steam crinkling the air in waves. Flames flicker out of her mouth- still yellow and orange. Even weaker. Damn.

Azula pinpoints the exact moment Zuko sees the failure when a splash catches her side.

“Azula, your fire-“

“Shut up, Zuko, I swear, I swear, I will burn the rest of your face off.”

He sits mouth gaping like a fish and Azula would try to drown him for it if she wasn’t so tired. “…You’re still the best bender I know-“

And Zuko is still the worst liar she knows. “I’m not a child, brother. You and I both know this could end me.”

He bites his lip, not able to take his eyes, well, eye off her back. She wonders if drowning him is still an option. He finally looks away to something in the forest she can’t see. “I still don’t understand why he…”

Azula dips her hands underneath the water to find river pebbles. Definitely better than road pebbles. “What reason does he need? I got soft. Weak. And I could hide it from everyone except him.”

She laughs bitterly, because how funny is all of this? Azula the best firebender of the century sitting in some dingy Earth Kingdom river burnt and collecting rocks. The pair of them, exiles.

Half of Azula wants to go back in time once more to plant Father’s head on a pike and wave it over the Caldera walls like a trophy as she crowns herself Fire Lord. The other half thinks if she had just done better, then maybe…

Azula hisses out sunset color flames again. She needs to destroy something right now.

She holds a hand out to Zuko. “Your knife. Give it to me.”

Zuko scoots back. “The last time you had knife, you stabbed me-“

Azula has enough energy for a small eye roll. “Please, Zuko, drop the dramatics, it was barely a nick.”

Unsheathing the blade, she pulls Ty Lee’s pink ribbon up her hair and pulls it taut to slice through the tension. Her hands shake, damn it all, but she’s going to do this even if it lobs off a few of her fingers.

Zuko grabs her wrist, eyeing her nervously and she sighs. “My hair, dummy. I’m not going around with this monstrosity on my head.”

Zuko’s hand loosens. He tries to lie miserably again. “It doesn’t look too bad.”

She distinctly remembers Zuko’s stupid phoenix tail phase. A shorn topknot and a shiny bald head. She can’t help but laugh. “Of course you would say that.”

His cheeks turn red not quite picking up on her insult. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Azula bunches the ends of her hair to cut through the base with the blade but her hands shake through the whole thing once more. Reaching back to gather all her hair has her biting through her cheek and filling her mouth with blood. The burns aren’t as excruciating as the were in Caldera but the pulling of muscles twinges something she instinctively knows shouldn’t be used yet. Zuko bats her hands away to hold the charred mat of her hair himself.

“Just- let me.”

Zuko cuts away at the soot blackened mass of what remains of her silky long hair. Each pass of the knife slowly shears through chunks of bloody burnt hair and Azula watches detached as the clumps wash away down the river. She breathed slowly on purpose and instead stared at the pebbles in her hands. It’s not like she had been vain about it anyway. Long hair was supposed to honor your parents, to show how long you never lost a battle in the Fire Nation. Azula had never been into traditions beyond their battle use like Zuko was but she guessed this was fitting.

It’s only when she hears sniffling from behind her that she blinks herself out of her wandering mind.

“Why are you crying, idiot? It’s my hair that’s going, not yours.”

Although, if they were being honest, with the way the burn across Zuko’s face reached up into his hairline, an impromptu haircut was foretold in burning bones as well.

“Mom loved your hair.”

Oh.

When Zuko is done mourning over her hair for her, she lops off Zuko’s own mangled phoenix tail at that and he starts bawling even harder. Azula stares into the river like a mirror and bares her teeth. A bob was definitely better than bald.

Halfway through a forest, Zuko starts to stumble. He’s been stumbling and Azula is still a deadweight. Sure, not a feverish, sick deadweight anymore but still dragging him down. One of them could barely walk. The smart thing to do would be to leave her and not make it two.

“Go away, Zuko.” Azula tries for the hundredth time. Zuko doesn’t reply. They continue to travel.

Somewhere between muddy flatlands and dry fields, Azula is starting to understand what the two of them being here means. She wonders if she’ll never see Caldera again. She wonders what it means that she’s not too torn up about it. The memory of Ember Island weighs heavier. She wonders if they’ll ever be able to go back without remembering the face of her mother. Trying to recall summer days there are like looking at a memory in a mirror. Like an old photo with someone you don’t talk to anymore but still know the way their smile curves in sunlight. Like the way little gods try to tame the tides in all its futility.  

The rhythm of her breaths, the wanting for more in her voice. The way her eyes drifted over hers in a room to find Zuko first or a window to the ocean. The softness in her hands, the steel in her voice. Brushing her hair. Brushing and brushing and brushing.

Azula pulled at the cropped edges of hair at her neck.

Mother and her foolish, tired eyes. Mother, the hazy thing over her shoulder, immortalized as a warmth, an absence, a myth, a legend.

“Mom is dead.” Azula finally says. “I killed her.”

She can feel the sudden stop beneath her and Zuko finally replies to her. Azula knows Zuko will probably leave her to rot in some ditch somewhere after this but she can’t bring herself to care.

“Azula, what do you mean?” Oh, now he wants to talk?

She ignores him. “The night she ran. I told her about what Grandfather said. She was planning to-“

Azula shook her head. “Father was supposed to banish her. After she killed Grandfather for you.”

She whispers. “I was wrong this time.”

Zuko’s hands tightened on her shins. “Wrong? Azula what do you mean-“

She buries her face into the back of his neck. “Why does he want me so bad, Zuko? It’s not fair.”

“Azula-”

“He made her a lesson. could’ve just left her alone but-” Azula watches the way the sun crawls mocking in the sky. “A blaze on the Fire Lily, Zuko. Father said she burned.”

They both knew what it meant to burn. Zuko started walking again mumbling to himself. “No, Mom left. She’s somewhere out on the ocean or-“

Azula felt wetness dribble down her arm from where they were slung around Zuko’s neck. “Mom’s dead, Zuko.”

“It's a trick- or a test. He's lying! He wouldn’t have-“

“Wouldn’t he?” Azula drives the words into Zuko like a dagger. She tightens her arms so they choke. “You might want to look at your face when you have the chance. Which you will. When you leave me here.”

“...No.”

“No?” Azula yanks at Zuko’s hair. “Shut up, you can barely walk.”

“I’d walk better if you stopped yanking my hair.”

“You’d be better off if you drowned me while I was asleep.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Idiot. I would’ve done it if it were you.”

“I’m not you. So just shut up, Azula. It’s not your fault. It’s not- I’m sorry.”

“Horseshit. You hate me now. And sorry for what? Dragging me through this muddy pigsty of a kingdom? I don’t forgive you.”

Zuko ignores her in Zuko fashion. “I remember saying, I told you that you were a- a monster.”

Azula quiets. Zuko’s voice cracks and he stumbles through some brush as he carries her along. “You’re not.”

“Dad- Father- the Fire Lord.“ He pauses. Whispers like his whole world is falling apart. She knows how that feels. ”He is… he is.”

Azula can’t understand it. If Zuko had done this to her she’d tear his throat out layer by layer with her teeth. But he just keeps on walking. His hold on her never slips once even if his feet do. “Why didn’t you just leave me alone, dummy? Why do you care so much? Why’d you do this to me? It’s all your fault.”

“I know.”

That makes Azula feel like a child. “Stop saying that. Be mad at me.”

Zuko suddenly decides not to be immature anymore. “I won’t. I’m not.”

Azula yanks at his hair and Zuko careens straight into a tree from the pain. Azula’s vision goes white for the few moments her back meets the earth. She’s sure when she comes to Zuko will be long gone but she wakes when Zuko is midway through dragging her onto his back again. His legs tremble and his chin is caked in bloody mud. She petulantly reaches around his head to put her hands on his face. She never gets far because Zuko has the audacity to bite her hand, the feral jackass.

“Fuck! Drop me!”

“Quit it, Azula. I’m not leaving you.”

“Go away!”

“No! You came with me, and you’re staying with me. Tough luck.”

Azula doesn’t give up because Zuko isn’t giving up so Agni forbid she be outdone by him.

They fight all the way to the port town in the distance.

Reaching the port in the middle of the night brings them to the door of an inn. Nearby, a handful of ostrich horses are tied to trees. Each steed bears a saddle embroidered with the Earth Army medallion and Azula immediately goes back to pulling her brother’s ears.

“You dummy, go back to the woods, you don’t need to sleep in an inn so bad-“

“I’ve been walking for days. You’ve been out of it half the time but I’m sleeping in an actual bed tonight.”

Azula readies herself for a truly earth shattering tantrum when a woman steps out of the inn. She’s bleary eyes and clearly has been awakened by their shouting but Azula doesn’t think she’ll stick around to find out if she likes Fire Nation.

It’s then that Zuko obviously reads her mind and does the opposite.

“Excuse me, but can we stay here for the night? I don’t have money but uhm… well…” While the concept of not having money stumps Zuko for the first time, Azula perks up from his back with a sincere grin and big, sad turtleduck eyes.

“He kidnapped me.“

“Azu-“ She raises an eyebrow at the obviously Fire Nation name and he glares back. “It’s not funny. Cut it out.”

Azula continues on, the most fun she’s had after collecting rocks for the past couple of days. “I don’t know him, please help-“

Zuko is near tears now. “She’s my sister. Look she has a fever so she’s not making any sense-“

“Don’t listen to him, we’re not related."

“You literally look like my twin?”

Azula snickers meanly. “Not anymore-“

Zuko shakes her once and she’s sort of proud when it actually hurts. “I'll drop you.”

“Good. Anyway, dumbass, don’t trust these earthworms-“ Zuko actually finds the guts to headbutt her backwards, shutting her up.

“She didn’t mean it, we’re-“

The lady from the inn stares at them with all the patience in the world. “Fire Nation.”

They both pause and Zuko has the genius audacity to say, “Um. No?”

The woman sighs, her green eyes looking at them like feral, dirt covered children. Which they are, but still. Rude.

“You’re one of those 41st kids, aren’t you? Didn’t expect any of you to make it out of that hellhole. Who’d you piss off for the burn?”

The reminder of all of his failure renders Zuko silent. Nice going, lady. Azula takes advantage of his shock to speak directly to the woman in front of them. Pressing her ear to Zuko’s shoulder and peering over his closely cropped, tufts of hair, Azula gets a better look at her.

Azula licks her lips and speaks. “He deserted. I’m not a traitor so you shouldn’t let me in. I’ll tattle. He kidnapped me so I wouldn’t tell.“

Zuko slumps below her, fresh from his reverie. The moment she believes the woman will cast her away, Zuko will drop her dead weight and dip into the inn- he pleads. “Lala, please.”

Never let your enemy know what you’re thinking. She’d die before showing any sign of Zuko getting to her. Azula is quiet for a moment before she grumbles near his ear. “…Don’t trust her.”

Zuko takes her quietness as a sign to go on and her bows lowly to the woman in front of them. Azula tips, a little painfully but averts her eyes as well. Azula should get over herself and stop dragging Zuko down with her even if he’s done the same to her. Father knew Zuko had become a weakness- who’s fault would it be except for the object of weakness?

“Please. We just need somewhere to sleep. We won’t be any trouble, I swear on my honor.”

After that whole spiel? If Azula was an Earth peasant she would’ve called the soldiers at the first drop of ‘honor’.

“Hm. Brats. Hurry up and get it before the guard sees you.”

Stupid. Was everyone in the Earth Kingdom stupid? Zuko would fit right in.

“My name is Luo. Be out before sunrise. I may not like kids getting involved in all this war nonsense but I can’t have guests seeing little ashmakers in my inn.”

Luo eyes the candle she holds suspiciously but still ushers them through the sleepy inn. They arrive at a room furthest away from all the others and Luo stops them in front of it.

“I have greens, they’re a little big but I’ll leave them outside your door for later. Tub is filled but the water is probably cold by now.” Luo narrows her eyes at the two of them and her candle and they’re both under the impression this is a pull a ‘turtleduck face’ moment. Azula knows she isn’t fooled for a second, especially when Zuko nods eagerly. Turtleduck eyes only worked on a cute turtleduck worthy face. Or if you were Mother.

Azula understood though. No fire, or find out who owns those steeds tied outside.

“I’m not running anything this late so you’ll just have to make due. I’d suggest you fix your story too. I’d think you're nobles even without the top knot.”

She grumbles to herself about ‘honor’ and pushes them in before shutting the door behind her.

Azula smacks Zuko’s arm once she’s gone. “On my honor, Zuko? Really?”

Zuko’s flush is lost in his burn. “Shut up, Azula.”

With that, Azula completed her first proper plan since arriving in the past. Success. That is, if success included nearly drowning, walking half the Earth Kingdom, and two ratty green shirts. Not including the whole banished-traitors scarred for life thing. Or everything in between. And after. Also maybe their entire childhood. Little mercies, at least they weren’t dead.

Azula refused to think about if her other plans for the only two people back in Caldera who were worth something fell through. She unwound a pink ribbon from her wrist and tossed stray kunai from her waistband onto the bed haphazardly. Squirming from Zuko’s hold she gingerly stood on her feet.  

Azula eyed out the tub of water in the corner of the room framed by a screen divider embroidered with a mountainscape. It felt out of place from the usual dragon motifs of Caldera and she instead focused on the dried blood and dirt caked on her body. Also she smelled like saltwater which was unacceptable after everything. “I’m first.”

Zuko squawked and stalked forward. “What do you mean ‘first’? I’m the one who got us here in the first place-“

Azula angled a foot outwards and tripped Zuko as she hobbled to the tub first. Her back ached, although less than it did before the whole… moon spirit dream thing. Not that Azula owed anything to Water spirits. As if.

Shivering beneath the night chilled water, Azula breathed bubbles beneath the surface and its tepid waters warmed up again without a flame in sight. What that Earth peasant didn’t know wouldn’t kill her. This technically, probably, didn’t count under funny business.  

She sits longs enough in the warm water for Zuko to huff behind the screen dividing the rest of the room. “Are you done yet? You’ve been in there forever.”

Azula blows more bubbles beneath the water and eyes out an oddly shaped soapstone on a mini table next to the tub with hatred.

“…Azula? You’re not drowning are you?”

She mumbles, half drowning in the water. “Can’t reach.”

“What?”

“I have a massive burn on my back and arms. How am I supposed get this grime off, Zuko? Come here.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Zuko wobbles over tiredly to sit behind her on a stool and starts picking twigs out of her chopped hair meticulously. When she closes her eyes she can almost pretend she's back in Caldera being attended to by the serving staff.

Azula almost falls asleep before she realizes Zuko has stopped.

“What?” Azula gives up in looking backward and instead finds a mirror mounted to the wall in front of her. In it Zuko stares intently at her back.

“Nothing, they just, it looks like…”

“Ugly? Deformed? Undignified?”

“Wings. You look like you have wings.”

Azula hates mirrors with a passion at this point but she can’t help but look over her shoulder enough that her burn doesn’t pull too much at the back wall.

The scar that unfolds across her back is big. Whatever the moon and ocean did had helped the pain for the most part, she wouldn’t be walking, turning, or generally in water if it were still fresh. But it was definitely a scar. Azula trailed the tips of her fingers across her shoulder where the burn reached out from the middle of her back like a wishing star. That thought made her feel sick so she tried to find the wings Zuko had said he’d seen. She looked on silently at the way the scarring draped over the backs of her arms and over her shoulders barely peaking up her neck. Azula found nothing but the handprint of her Father splayed across her back like a mockery of a star. Wanted. Branded. Owned.

Azula has never looked less like Mother in her life. It doesn’t feel as good as she thought it would.

“…You should have me check your eye for infection again. I’m gonna get out now.” Azula knows her voice is ragged and wet.

Zuko stares at his own face in the mirror for a moment and a part of her wants him to go but the girl who has stared at the hand shaped wishing star scar across her back for an eternity says otherwise. Instead, he gets that stupid, fearless look on his face before boldly scooping water over her head, half drowning her in murky water.

Oh, so he thinks he’s funny, taunting her all weak and defenseless-

Her arm shakes as she scoops up her own water from her bath. She comes in from the left in his blind spot before rubbing the murky water firmly into Zuko’s one good eye. Of course she left the burnt one alone, prolonging his whining about it by wounding him again would drive her crazy. Still, it’s only fair.

Zuko shrieks and Azula laughs so hard it makes her shoulders bleed again but Zuko is laughing too as his squinting, probably stinging eye and too large grin pulls the flesh of his burn too tight. They’re bloody and burned and nothing will ever be the same again.

But they’re both alive. Spirits, are they alive.

Luo knocks on their door before dawn. Next to her on the bed, Zuko drools into a pillow and sleeps like a rock, he barely twitches at the noise. He has been taking to the Earth Kingdom too well. She kicks him off the bed for good measure.

Grumbling, Zuko pushes away furniture from the door that she’d bullied him into moving last night. She wasn’t going to survive literal spirits and burning half to death only to be smothered in her sleep by some shady inn owner.

A bowl is shoved into Zuko’s hands before he can say anything and he is physically moved away from the doorway. Azula blinks and looks down to find herself her very own bowl as well and scowls at the woman. Luo pinches her cheek and Azula snaps her teeth. Zuko is already halfway through inhaling his own bowl and mumbling praises in between each bite.

“Thanks. This is very…” Azula huffs and wonders what her mother might’ve said. “...kind of you.”

“Was that so hard?” Luo sighs exasperatedly, mirth glinting in her eyes.  “Now eat your jook and get that dumb brother of yours out of Earth. We both know you two barely pass as colonials.”

They leave before the sun is barely an idea in the sky.

In front of her, Azula stands face to face with a perfectly not shipwrecked Sea Glass. The plan was to walk to the port and find new careers as stowaways but it seemed the spirits had other plans. Zuko barely blinks as he slings himself aboard, doing whatever it is that you do with a ship. If this was an attempt by the Sprits to endear themselves to her, Azula wasn’t falling for it. She was done with all this other worldly nonsense.

“Wow, ‘Zula. Even all your stuff is still here!” He peaks out of the cabin brandishing all the items Mai and Ty Lee at stashed away in it over the past weeks they’d been sneaking around for her. When he brandishes his dual dao with too much glee that the fishermen at the docks start look at them, Azula hobbles onboard to wack him. Zuko takes that as a signal to cast off.

Azula walks around the cabin herself as Zuko draws them further out to sea. She doesn’t have the same reaction to finding her maps or books untouched. She especially doesn’t react when she finds a jar with the sun colored sea glass she thought she’d lost back in Caldera and a warm, cushioned box where two turtleduck eggs sit. Zuko gets a little wet eyed when he comes in and sees it all, probably recognizing the glass from when he jumped into a fire the first time, realizing Azula had saved something’s from the blaze after all. Azula realizes that he probably remembered her sea glass obsession as a child more than she did. The idea doesn’t irk her like she thought it would. Having to bear Zuko looking at her like he’s happy that she’s here does so she walks outside of the cabin leaving him to fawn over the eggs. 

Azula takes the jar to go dangle her feet over the edge of the boat and shakes the golden sea glass out of the jar to deposit the contents of her pockets into it instead. She picked up a lot more stones than she thought she did on their little trip. She uses Ty Lee’s pink ribbon to tied the glass to her wrist instead.

After a while Zuko ambles out with something blue and familiar in his hand. Azula is near passing out, looking at it like a ghost back to haunt her until she realizes the carvings in it are older and more worn than the one she was… familiar with. Looking at the older version of her mother’s Blue Spirit mask makes her head hurt so she looks back to the ocean. “Mom had a bunch of random old stuff on this boat, Ty Lee and Mai didn’t clean it out or anything and she always had old theater stuff lying everywhere so there’s probably a lot of duplicate and replicas around and-”

Zuko sits next to her rattling her new stone-pebble-seaglass jar. He smiles softly. “Thanks, anyway.”

They sit there for a while just drifting along the coast of wherever they are. Azula should probably roll open a map or two but she thinks she might sort through her gem jar first. Zuko breaks the silence. “So, any clue where to go from here?”

“I don’t know.” Azula says impulsively. “Maybe the South Pole? Settle some scores with a waterbender.”

Zuko snorts. “Of course you’d want to start a fight. I was actually talking more ‘maybe somewhere with a market, Zuko’ or ‘away from the weird spirits, probably’ but I mean, it’s definitely a good long term goal?”

Azula frowns. “I can still breathe fire even if it’s not blue, you know.” He backups at that.  

He has a point though. And miraculously, there’s a plan forming in her mind. Something completely crazy and exactly what Zuko would have probably done if he remembered the future she came from.

“So… the South Pole. What the hell is over there that’s so special?”

The Avatar probably lost because Zuko was the imbecile teaching him. Once she kicks this weird losing her fire thing’s ass- or after she figures out exactly what Father’s exile entails, or finding Mai and Ty Lee if, no, when they make it out. Figuring out if she should look for Uncle or who the hell Hanami exactly was or just bunker down and take over Kyoshi Island-

Azula breathes slowly.

They’re alive. They have time.

“Don’t know. Just a feeling.”

And the moon is high in the sky, the waves rising to meet her there. Somewhere in the deep, she knows her mother’s soul rests in her water, yet Azula never reaches back as the tide laps up the Sea Glass to her feet. The sky is clear, save for the moon and early dawning light. No wishing stars ever appear. Azula is beginning to think Zuko might mean it about not leaving.

And so, as she and her brother sit quiet in the early morning, Azula turns towards her brother and finds sun.