"Second" Loop - Sozin's Comet: The Old Masters
- Location
- Australia
Mai and Ty Lee are not invited to your Father's coronation.
So you kneel there alone, in the place of honour, a fiercely youthful contrast to the ash-tipped beards and once-imposing bodies gone to seed of the War Council. Your ceremonial armour is finer even than theirs—rather ironic, since as best as you have ever been able to determine, their entire purpose is to be ceremonial.
But nevertheless, only the Royal Family are permitted to lacquer their armour like yours: in a paint mixed from volcanic ash, crushed obsidian, and most precious of all, ground dragon bone from the catacombs beneath the palace. So the way you gleam, from head to toe a perfect black mirror for the glaring Sun, is a radiance they cannot ever come to match, no matter how much of their war profiteering they pour back into their appearances.
It is those same appearances that stiffen—sucking in their breath the same way you have long since learned to hide—when your Father rises over the last step before the top of the dais. From here, he towers over the sea of bowing soldiers and dignitaries and all those others lucky enough to witness their Fire Lord ascend to an even greater title, in celebration of his impending conquest of the world.
(None of them know this is the last time they will see him with any title at all.
None of them except you.)
At the sight, he smiles, as he always does. You know this smile well. It is the smile that taught you how to smile. It stretches across his mouth in sharp satisfaction, and widens when he must pick, as you do, the palpable air of relief that fills the platform at the sight of their Fire Lord's pleasure.
Your Father's feet fall loudly against the embroidered phoenix that dominates the dais' central rug, and you know, without thought or observation but simply in the hollow of your gut, that he is looking at you. That he is seeing you. Of course he is. Your Father is the only one who ever sees you: for what you are, and for what you can become.
You do not look up.
It is not your place to see him.
"Azula," he says, as light as a father's hand on a child's face, and for a moment you nearly fail to shift the angle of your shoulders and the tilt of your head to signal your complete attention because he—this isn't how this meeting goes. He never tells you not to rise. Why doesn't he want you to rise? What have you done wro— "I have heard you attended a festival in Caldera."
"Yes, Father."
"I—I thought it prudent to—"
"It matters not."
He waves a hand dismissively.
"I am pleased to see you enjoying yourself. Perhaps when I return from the Earth Kingdom, you will grace my triumph with a similar performance."
"I would be honoured, Father."
"It must run in the family."
He pauses. He smiles.
"Your mother did so love fire dancers."
"I had forgotten, Father."
"Rise, Azula."
You obey.
The torches burn low and blue along the walls of your office.
Sitting on the other side of your desk—what little of it can be seen beneath the mounds of scrolls that spill across it, testament to the fact that you have to prepare your own coronation—are Mai and Ty Lee. In deference to the late hour, Mai had been yawning before she even arrived, but Ty Lee is as bright-eyed as ever. You, of course, are perfectly alert. It doesn't matter that you rose with the dawn, or that you have spent the entire day either at your father's coronation or organising your own—you cannot afford to sleep. Not yet.
Not when you have spent so much time on frivolities already.
"I hope you're going to make this quick, Azula," Mai says, punctuating the sentence with two of the daintiest yawns you've ever seen. "Tomorrow's a big day."
"I am aware," you say. "That is why we are here."
"...I should have known this was going to be a strategy meeting." Mai's head thuds against the cushions of her high-backed chair.
"Aaw," says Ty Lee, "I just wanted to know what the coronation was like!"
The coronation.
"It was—illuminating."
"That's boring," Mai says, eyes closed, face still tilted to the ceiling. "Did those blowhards on the War Council make a fuss because the Fire Lord relegated them behind you?"
"No."
"Now that's boring," Ty Lee says, bouncing up out of her seat to lean over your desk, elbows crinkling the layer of parchment that covers it. "They should have. That general with the stupid sideburns like he's shoved clams on his face always looks at me funny. Hearing you kicked his ass would have made my aura all sparkly."
"I would not dare waste Father's time."
Ty Lee looks over at Mai—who is looking over at Ty Lee—and then retreats from your desk to plop back down in her seat. Mai sits up straighter, no longer the very picture of a bored noblewoman in a dark sleeping gown and darker circles under her eyes.
"Okay, Azula," Mai says, gaze passing over the torches that frame either side of your luxurious, silk-and-velvet armchair before settling back on you. "We get the message. What's the plan for tomorrow?"
You breathe out, and the flames flaring in those torches fall back to the same cool blue they should have been simmering at all along.
"Zuko will be arriving tomorrow to challenge me to an Agni Kai," you begin. Mai might already know, but Ty Lee doesn't, and you prefer to explain things once and without interruption. "Likely before I am officially crowned, but the timing is largely irrelevant. While his goal is to prevent me from taking the throne, taking it from me serves his purposes just as well."
Ty Lee opens her mouth to ask a question, then visibly reconsiders, teeth snapping shut over what looked like the first syllable of the sentence how do you know?
"I know because it is the single most stupid thing he could do," you say, "and therefore as predictable as the water peasant tripping over his own boomerang."
"You could stand to insult Zuko less often, Azula," Mai says, though surprisingly without rancour. "He's better than you think he is."
"Trust me," you say, meeting her gaze, eye to eye, gold to gold, "I know exactly what my brother is capable of."
That's a large part of what makes him so irritating these days—he's actually competent enough to get in the way.
Mai raises a stiletto eyebrow, but doesn't speak.
"Okay," Ty Lee says, clapping her hands. "Zuko is coming, he's gonna challenge you to an Agni Kai, and you're… going to accept?"
"Of course," you say. "It's the showdown that was always meant to be."
"Is it?" Mai's voice is as flat as the surface of a blade. "You don't actually have to fight him, Azula. I know you don't want to."
It doesn't matter what you want. The world has been quite clear on that.
No matter what happens, you always, always have to fight Zuko.
But you can't say any of that. Not here. Not now. So instead, you say, "I don't want to kill him."
"Aaw, Azula!" Ty Lee smiles, bright as the Moon. "That's the nicest thing I've ever heard you say about Zuko! You're so sweet!"
Mai looks thoughtful for a moment, and then nods. "You know, I actually think it might be."
"Very funny," you say, dry and entirely without laughter. Not even a twitch of the lip. "If we could return to the problem at hand, girls?"
Mai rolls her eyes, long hair for once entirely unstyled, just a dark, hanging wave falling over her sleeping gown. "If you don't want to kill him, the easiest way is still to just not fight him."
"We've already spoken about this, Mai." Has she forgotten that she's the reason that's not an option? "If you won't tell Zuko to turn back, there is nothing I can do to turn him away."
"Why not?" You were expecting Mai, and so nearly don't register that it's actually Ty Lee, soft and curious, who's speaking. A curl of brown falls across her forehead, and she brushes it away. "You've blown him off for way less than this before!"
"This is not a strategy meeting to discuss how not to deal with Zuko," you say, sharper than you might have preferred. "We will fight an Agni Kai tomorrow. It is inevitable. What I need from both of you is to understand your role in the events of the day. Is that clear?"
A brief shadow of silence falls over the room.
Ty Lee is frowning at you; Mai isn't even looking at you at all, eyes lower, almost like she's studying your hands.
Oh.
You hadn't noticed your nails were starting to tear the scroll they were curled into.
Very carefully, you flatten your fingers, palms to the tabletop, the slight burr of the parchment rasping against your skin.
"Azula," Ty Lee says, each word held by her voice with the same exquisite care as a flower holds dew, "did something happen at the coronation?"
The coronation.
(You don't want to talk about the coronation.)
"No," you say shortly. "Stop trying to distract me."
Ty Lee's frown only grows.
This is going nowhere.
You shove yourself out of your seat, which scrapes hard enough against the rug that you might have left a mark in it. Your boots—the same perfect, imperial black as the rest of your armour, each gilded plate flexing as you move—stamp against the swirls of royal flame embroidered into it. "I need to train. Mai, I expect you to talk to Zuko before he challenges me. Ty Lee, you and the Dai Li will ensure that whoever else he brings along does not interfere once we begin. Fight them if you have to, but don't make a spectacle of it. Goodnight."
You are out the door before Ty Lee can muster more than a startled, "Hey, Azula, wa—!"
Mai must yank her back into her seat, because instead of a pink blur cartwheeling into the hall you hear some frantic whispering, like the hiss of a rocket before it detonates.
Soon enough you hear nothing, the drum of your feet against the stone floor hammering it all away.
It's fine.
You weren't lying.
You have an Agni Kai tomorrow.
You can't afford for your firebending to be distracted with theatrics.
(Not even if you enjoy them.)
You kneel atop the dais, surrounded by the Fire Sages.
High above, Sozin's Comet has set the sky alight—in the plaza below, a hundred firebenders answer, their hands cupped before their bodies as they hold the ceremonial flame before them. They genuflect as one, offering their fire to you; there a general, there a governor, there a war hero, there a minister. The greatest and most noble of all the nation, pressing their noses to the ground and their lips to the dust.
They are only the beginning.
Walls of bodies ring the plaza, so tight among the stands and the buildings that all they have room to do is press their fists into their palms and bow their heads, whether schoolchildren or venerable grandmothers. If you cared to look, you would see they stretch from one end of the Fire Nation to the other—some are even colony-born.
In the air, a dozen airships circle in stately passage; every soldier in the resplendent red and five-pronged helmets of the Imperial Firebenders, a precise match for the guards who stand like spears sprung from the earth at equidistant points around the plaza.
The sound of it is incredible, because there is no sound at all. Not a soul dares to speak; to whisper; to cough; to sigh. Nobody shifts in place, rustling fabric over fabric or scraping steel over steel. They are perfectly silent and perfectly still.
Even Ty Lee—a riotous splash of pink and sparkles in an ocean of red—is as quiet as a flutter-bat.
This is the whole of the world, and it is bent to you.
Its heartbeat hammers in your bones, your gut, your lungs, your throat.
So you close your eyes and fall into the flames—
—and one by one, they begin to burn blue.
First the dignitaries. Then the guards. Finally the crowd. Anyone who holds fire in their hands, who offers it to you, feels your touch. Feels their spirit ignite. Feels the once-in-a-century miracle that is your flame.
Not one among them will ever know it again.
That is why you offer it.
Not as a gift.
As a reminder.
(You hardly use your epithet even in official documentation. You don't brag about it to your enemies. The Head Sage will not speak it when he lists the titles you will lose in exchange for the one you will gain.
But when the first cobalt flicker crept into your fist, that old windbag of a Head Archivist dug into the vault of scrolls he wasn't supposed to have, and pulled two words from a mouldering list that had not been relevant since before Sozin took the throne.
Some days you wish he didn't. It's a very stupid name, frankly. At least Zuko gets to add Spirit to his.
But there's still some comfort in knowing that no matter how many times you fail to become the Fire Lord, you will always remain Azula the Blue, she who bears the sky-stained flame.)
Only the Comet permits you control like this: the Comet, and the endless cycles of your life that have seared your fire to your soul until you cannot tell where the flame ends and the girl begins. And even with the Comet, it is almost too much—your skin sizzles with evaporating sweat, your pupils swallow your irises, and your tendons are like taut wires beneath the thick mantles and cloaks of the Fire Lord.
But you hold it for six counts of six breaths, until your mastery is undeniable.
And then you let it go.
A wind blows through the plaza and the stands; the exhaled breath of every firebender present, as their fire slips back to orange. Some stare down at their hands as if grieving the loss. Others are openly weeping.
Behind you, the High Sage—the gleaming, golden headpiece of the Fire Lord held tight within his gnarled fingers—opens his mouth to speak. You can hear it in the way he inhales, an echo that resounds across so very many, many cycles.
You hold up a hand.
"Not yet," you say. "One guest remains."
In the sky, a swooping smudge of white, with two dark silhouettes huddled on its back.
"My brother, you see." Your tone is light. Conversational. "It would hardly be a coronation without family, would it?"
(And yet, your Father is never here.)
Your hand becomes a fist thrust to the sky, releasing a soaring jet of flame. The airships abandon their delicate formation, splitting into two straight lines above the stands, a formal escort to the centre of the plaza.
The Avatar's bison stalls, a little hesitant, and you lower your fist to spread both arms wide in invitation.
"Come on, Zuko," you call, high and bright, "it's poor manners to keep your sister waiting."
There's a space before the stone stairs that lead from the plaza to your dais—you'd told the Sages it was to ensure the dignitaries understood the distance between the throne and the earth, but conveniently it also happens to be large enough for the flying beast to land.
And land it does, thick tail thumping against the ground and three-toed feet flattening beneath its weight. From its back springs Zuko, as you expected, and after hi—
"—you."
A sliver of lightning crawls into your clenched fingers.
The Dragon of the West, straightening up from his crouch, considers it with cold, unsmiling focus.
"Ba Sing Se is free, Azula," he says gravely. "Now it is the Fire Nation's turn."
"It's over." Zuko watches you like he might a naked blade. "You're not going to be Fire Lord today."
"And how, exactly," you say, soft as smoke, "do you propose to stop me?"
"You know how," Zuko says.
"Do I?" You descend the steps one at a time, the long crimson cloak of the Fire Lord dragging against the carved rock. The initial clamour at the unexpected arrivals has faded now. Only a funeral hush remains. "Do you see where you are, Zuko? Do you see the nation gathered in my name? You landed because I let you. You landed because I knew you were coming."
When your feet press into the floor of the plaza, no more than a body-length fills the space between you and Zuko.
"So tell me, brother: are you sure, in your heart of hearts," you say, tapping the fabric above your own in glacial mockery, "that it will truly be so simple?"
Despite everything—despite the fact he must know that you are toying with him—he still hesitates. A flicker of doubt scowls across his face, until it is chased away by Iroh's thick hand on his shoulder.
"She is playing you, Zuko," he says. "Remember your heritage. Remember your destiny. Ozai has taken many things from you, but he cannot take this. And neither can she."
Inside the hollow void of your skull, the cold fire seethes like steel scraped against glass.
"You're pathetic." Out of the corner of your eye, you see Ty Lee leaping from the stands, twirling through the air, and hitting the plaza at a dead run. Mai is already halfway to your side, a knife cutting slits in her ceremonial robes to maximise her range of motion. "You won't fight Father, but you want Zuko to fight me. Are you truly so colossal a coward, or do you just hate me that much?"
"I do not hate you, Azula," Iroh says heavily. For a moment, the weathered creases of his face turn soft. "I feel sorry for you, and the evil Ozai has taught you."
You scoff. "Hypocrite."
"Uncle is wiser than you'll ever understand!" Of course Zuko chooses that, of all things, to defend. "Stop wasting time, Azula. Or are you afraid to fight me?"
"If I'm afraid of anything, Zuko," you say, and do not look at his scar, "it's how irritating Mai will be if I kick you into the dirt before she's had her turn."
A tall black shadow stalks past you.
"Mai? What did you do to her? Is she sa—"
"Zuko," comes Mai's voice, low and urgent, "we need to talk."
"Mai! You're—"
"Annoyed? Yes." Her eyes are a little wider than normal, and despite the vast crowd who are all intensely fixated on the three of you—the four, when Ty Lee skids to a stop on your other side—she actually reaches out to grab his wrist. "Zuko, we need to talk."
The harsh lines of his stance slip slightly, but he doesn't move. "I have to stop Azula from becoming Fire Lord."
"By all means," you say, smiling, "go ahead. With the Comet as my witness, I promise I won't make a single move until you're finished."
"Your promises are rarely what they appear," Iroh says, but he's looking back from Zuko to Mai with something approaching fondness.
"She means this one." If Mai notices Iroh's attention, she doesn't show it, still staring intently at Zuko. "Please, Zuko."
You think it might be the shock of Mai actually saying please and meaning it that finally convinces Zuko to go with her. He rubs a hand against his temple, frowning, but eventually sighs and turns entirely to face her. "Okay. I trust you, Mai."
"How sweet," you drawl.
"You're so right, Azula!" Ty Lee says, clapping her hands and entirely ignoring your sarcasm. "Aren't they cute?"
You can feel Mai's eyeroll, even though she's not looking your and Ty Lee's way at all.
"Whatever," she says. "Come on."
Impressively, despite the fact she's released her grip on his wrist, Mai still manages to make it seem as if Zuko is being dragged away as he hurries to catch up with her brisk walk across the plaza. She chooses a space halfway between you and the walls of one of the stands and pulls to a halt, shooting you a careful glance before turning back to Zuko. This far, you can't hear what they're saying—you can only observe that sometimes Mai will point at you, or gesture sharply, and that Zuko looks progressively more and more baffled as the conversation continues. Business as usual, then.
"Ty Lee," you say, "tell the Sages that we will be postponing the coronation for the moment, will you? Just until the lovebirds have finished their little chat."
Her grey eyes dart between you and Iroh. "Are you sure, Azula?"
"I would hardly be fulfilling my promise if I wasn't." Your gaze cuts to the Dragon of the West. "Don't worry. I'm feeling quite straightforward today."
Ty Lee dithers for a second or two longer, swaying on the balls of her feet, before eventually deciding obedience is the better part of valour and slipping away to leap up the stairs.
As she leaves, you consider your Father's brother.
Gone is the affable, corpulent fool—this version of Iroh is swollen with strength instead of tea, the barrel of his chest straining at the blue-and-white of his robes. His beard is cut sharp, grey spikes stabbing out from his cheeks, and his topknot protrudes from the back of his skull like the hilt of a sword. But most dangerous of all is this: his breath swells to the same inexorable rhythm as your own.
You remember the first time you fought; when he stole your lightning and tossed you into the sea. He could have killed you then. There are cycles where he has—when Zuko's blood spills from your lips at the Western Air Temple and it is Iroh alone who faces you beneath the Comet.
Uncle Iroh is a disgrace to his name and nation. But the man who faces you now is someone else: someone remembers he was once the Dragon of the West, whose heroism you and Zuko briefly grew up on before the tragedy of Lu Ten.
And yet, he's still content to hide behind your brother and the Avatar and all the other feckless children who believe they can save the world.
He really is pathetic.
"It's funny, you know," you muse, sweet as rot. "When I returned Zuko to his home, after three years under your tutelage, he was hardly a better firebender than when he left. But a bare month or two with the Avatar, and he's almost progressed to competence. I wonder—were you deliberately sabotaging him all along, or are you just that great a failure as a teacher?"
"There is more to life than firebending," he says, so stern, so judgemental. "A forest has never sprouted from kindling."
"My first patented Uncle proverb!" Your sarcasm falls as heavily as a hammer. "Truly, it's no wonder Zuko is so good at rushing off without thinking—I would be too, if it would let me get away from listening to this, day-in, day-out."
"You underestimate your brother, Azula. There is no failing in allowing a good heart to drive you." He looks at you, and then at the sea of silent souls in the stands, in the plaza, on the roofs, all watching the drama unfold. "It is the finest quality a ruler can have."
"Oh, so now he's my brother." You grind down the sparks that threaten to spit from your hands. "Was I his sister when you told him the only way to restore honour to the Fire Nation was to strike me down?"
"It is Zuko's destiny to guide our country to a future of peace and order." Iroh shakes his head slowly, the white of his mantle stained red by the Comet-torn sky. "We have lived astray too long."
He's not—
He's not even listening to you.
"You're so lost in your myopic self-righteousness you can't even comprehend what I'm saying, can you?" Your lips threaten to curl into a snarl—so you let them, baring your teeth so each word comes more bitten than said. "Nothing more than a hollow hypocrite, who ran from Lu Ten, who ran from Father, who ran and ran and ran and ran until he finally found enough children to hide behind. All you do is preach about peace and temperance and forgiveness and tea and hope someone else does the dirty work because it's easier than confronting the fact you failed your son, you failed your throne, you failed to stop Father burning Zuko, and after all that you even failed to stop me from taking him back home anyway."
Without wholly realising when it happened, you find yourself nose-to-nose with Iroh, glaring into his golden eyes—the only thing the two of you have ever shared.
"Why are you even here?" Each syllable shatters out like glass. "Too scared to let Zuko face me alone, too scared to fight me instead! What is the point of you, Dragon of the West? I'd almost think you were clever for managing to swan in at the very end, waiting in the wings because if Zuko wins he's young enough to need a regent and then the throne is yours and you've never even needed to lift a finger. But you're not, because I know what you are."
You dig your fingers into your cloak—the thick, heavy trappings of the Fire Lord.
"You're terrified. Of this. Of the Dragon Throne. Of the responsibility. Because deep down you're the same tired old fool who left Lu Ten to die under a ton of rubble and didn't even love him enough to burn Ba Sing Se to the ground for it and you think you're just going to do it again if you ever have to run anything more serious than your stupid little tea shop."
A smile splits your lips like a razor.
"So lie to yourself about destiny all you want, Uncle Iroh. Maybe if you say it enough times, you might even believe it."
In the silence that follows, you're not panting for breath at all.
Iroh's expression is—there's fury, and there's grief, and there's bewilderment, and there's a dozen other things you can't place at all. The air around him smokes and shimmers, but not a lick of flame curls from his mouth or hands.
"You make it easy to forget how young you are, Azula," he says eventually, quiet the way the battlefield is, once only corpses remain. "That is my error, to have believed the same lie you show the rest of the world. It does not forgive the words you have spoken, or the wounds you have tried to shove your fingers in so you can see how deep I bleed. But it does lend your approach a surprising… familiarity."
He sighs, and the Dragon of the West falls away like so many unwashed clothes to reveal the tired man beneath.
"And beyond that still: nothing you have said to me is something I have not said to myself. But where you think that is weakness, I have come to learn that it is strength." Before you can quite react, he reaches out a large hand and presses you back, firm but without violence. You slap his arm away almost immediately in the aftermath. "I am an old man, with an old man's regrets, and an old man's mistakes. Every day, I wake to them."
He smiles, small and worn and strong, like a stone ground clean by the weight of a river.
"That is not such a bad thing. It is how life reminds me that there are always more lessons to be found." Iroh folds his fingers over his stomach. "No single step paves the road, but it is only when you stop to look back that you may see how far you have come. I hope that when you stop, Azula, you look back and feel as proud as I have learned to be."
Your time, you think with an inadvertent glance at the position of the Sun, usually comes around about twelve hours from now.
"I'm sure you do," you say dismissively, shifting away to face Zuko and Mai, who have finally returned.
Mai looks a peculiar mix of frustrated and satisfied, arms crossed and fingers drumming against her sleeves; Zuko is glancing warily between you and Iroh, with an odd weight to his gaze whenever it falls on you in particular. Somewhere behind you comes the raindrop rhythm of Ty Lee's feet on the stairs, which you suspect has far less to do with how long it took her to talk to the Sages and far more with a desire not to get close enough to interrupt you shouting at Iroh.
"Azula," Zuko asks, rocking back on his feet, shaggy hair falling as messily over his face as his worn red tunic falls over his torso, "are you really not planning to kill me?"
You level a glare at Mai, who shrugs.
Fine.
Your… discussion with Iroh has already aired enough Royal Family drama before the entire nation. What does it matter if they—the souls who still surround you in the plaza, and the stands, and the temple, watching with rapt attention what might be the greatest spectacle of their entire lives—hear a little more?
"Keep that gormless look on your face and you'll convince me to change my mind," you say.
"Why don't you?" Zuko says, and then stumbles over his tongue trying to make his meaning clear. "Want to kill me, that is. Not why don't you change your mind. That was not a dare, Azula."
You snort a laugh, and then seamlessly disguise it as a cough. "Do you want to kill me, Zuko?"
"Of course not!" Like most things in his life, your brother doesn't even seem to think about it. He just glances at Mai, then Ty Lee, then Iroh, and then finally you. "You're… You're annoying, and awful, and arrogant, and you make me want to kick your ass just so you'll stop being like this," he gestures at you, dragging a hand from your head to your toes, "for like five seconds, but I don't want to kill you."
Then he smiles, and it seems—it seems so strange, to see him smile. To see him smile at you. Like at some point you'd forgotten how it sat on his face, and only now can you catalogue how his scar-side lip is stiffer than the other and it quirks his smile accordingly, how only one eye widens but how both irises soften.
"Well, I guess I did want to kill you for a bit when you stole the last of my fire flakes on Ember Island even though you're meant to be fourteen, Azula, not four. But apart from that, I don't."
You… haven't been fourteen in a little while, now.
But Zuko doesn't know that.
Zuko doesn't know any of that, and he still doesn't want to kill you at all.
That's—
"—can't believe they're having a moment, Mai, isn't it great?" comes the end of whatever nonsense Ty Lee had been babbling.
"We are not," you snap out at exactly the same time as Zuko.
Even your grimaces are simultaneous.
How hateful.
"I'm still going to fight you, though," Zuko says bluntly, into the quiet that comes after. "You shouldn't be the Fire Lord. Not when burning the Earth Kingdom down to the ground was your idea."
"You'll lose," you say. "I can beat you without killing you, Zuko, no matter how hard you try to make it sometimes. There was a time not so long ago when I beat you without even needing the flame. Can you say the same?"
He scowls. You'd say it sits on his face like a scar but… no. It doesn't really compare.
"I don't know, and I don't care. The Fire Nation is wrong. You're wrong. If nobody else in our country can see that, then it's my duty to show them. Even if I… don't die trying." His scowl deepens. "That sounded better in my head."
"Your courage becomes you, my nephew," says Iroh, who's been suspiciously silent until now, thumbing through the spikes of his iron-dark beard. What is he plotting?
"You have no right to speak to anyone about courage." You stab a finger in his direction. "Stay out of this."
"Uncle's as much my family as you are, Azula." Zuko's back to glaring at you. How original. "More, actually."
"And aren't you lucky for that," you say, spinning on him, cut-blood nails jabbing at his chest. "But he's as much my family as mother was, so frankly I don't care."
"Don't talk about her like that," Zuko hisses, embers curling from his breath. "She loved us. Just because you hate her doesn't mean you can pretend she never existed."
"Of course you would say that," you hiss right back. The storm rages inside the glass bottle of your skull. "She loved you. So much that she killed Grandfather just to keep you safe. The only thing she ever did for me was give birth, and she probably hated every minute of it. Good. I hope it hurt."
Zuko's good eye widens, and he stumbles back a step—though whether from your vitriol or the revelation, you're not entirely sure. Mai and Ty Lee are both looking between the two of you with shock and sympathy painted across their faces in the paling of their cheeks and the parting of their lips; Iroh studies you and Zuko in turn with pity (or is it, also, sympathy?), but without surprise.
"You're lying," Zuko says, though he doesn't sound like he believes it. "Mother would never kill anybody."
"A mother's love is a great and terrible thing," Iroh says with a soothing rumble, "and Ursa loved you very, very much, Prince Zuko."
He jerks towards Iroh, a wild flurry of too-worn clothes and too-short hair. "You're agreeing with her?"
"I never thought I'd see the day." There's no satisfaction in your smile. Just dark amusement. "I'm almost impressed you never put it together, Zuzu. Your ability to repress obvious truths about the world just because they're inconvenient to your worldview is truly admirable."
You carefully ignore Mai's raised eyebrow.
"Why did no-one ever tell me?" Zuko pleads, arms flung wide. You have to sway back to avoid being struck in the face—just like Mai, who's stepped closer to rest her fingers softly on the side of his waist in a fleeting touch. "Why was it Father who was the first person to even imply it? That she left because of me? That we lost our mother because of me?"
Because your Father never uses a weapon until it gives him an advantage.
(Because your Father never uses a weapon until he's sure how best to make it hurt.)
"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Zuzu," you say, waving a hand. "It's really not that big of a deal."
"Shut up, Azula." He's yelling. The rippling haze in the air around him, lit by the furnace of his breath, makes it hard to see his expression.
Iroh inhales, and the heat saps from the air enough that Mai and Ty Lee stop sweating. His exhale shunts it behind the five of you, rippling over those luminaries foolish enough to remain genuflecting in the plaza instead of fleeing for the relative safety of the stands.
You're not sure if Zuko even notices.
"No, I don't think I will," you say. There's a cracking noise inside your head. The cold fire spits from your fingertips, grounding itself in the stone below. "Sorry to shatter your little pedestal, Zuko, but our mother was a regicide who murdered the sitting Fire Lord for her son and didn't even say goodbye to her daughter—a refreshing change of pace, since she usually alternated between lecturing me for being a monster or foisting me off at the Academy while you got to swan around with her inside the palace."
Your smile spreads across your face like a wound.
"I can admire the ruthlessness in finally making it clear exactly how much she would have preferred I didn't exist," you add, "but like I said: it still hurt."
Ty Lee's fingers are icy even through the thick fabric of your sleeves.
"Azula…"
It's strangely hard to focus on telling her to leave you alone; strangely hard to glare at Iroh, who is considering you, and Zuko, with a kind of dawning sorrow that fills the ridges and valleys of his cheeks like spilled blood; strangely hard to wonder what Mai is whispering desperately into Zuko's ear.
"So there you have it, Zuzu," you say. Your voice is a wretched thing, your pitch entirely crooked and your intonation like the aftermath of an earthquake. "Are you going to change your mind and try to kill me now, just so you can follow mother dearest's footsteps one last time?"
"No! I mean. I'm—"
a footstep like the slap of a war drum
a mountain of white and blue
sunfire eyes
"—Iroh, uncle of Zuko, uncle of Azula, son of Azulon, brother of Ozai, and I challenge you, Princess Azula, to an Agni Kai."
Zuko's shocked gasp. "Uncle?"
Mai's face is white.
Ty Lee yells, "No!"
"I knew this would happen," you say, and you can't stop laughing, jagged and shrill and sharp, the sound of steel when it splinters, "I knew you hated me!"
The Dragon of the West is crying. Fat, wet tears spill salt down his face even as he shifts his feet back the same way Zuko does before he bends.
"I am beginning to understand," he says, heavy and slow, like each word is being cut out of his heart, "that I will wake tomorrow to a far greater history of mistakes than I thought I had carried here today. I do not hate you, Azula. My niece. I was arrogant to say I felt sorry for you. I hardly think I even know who you are."
Iroh shakes his head, ponderous with disgust, but not—not aimed at you?
"All I know is that if I allow you to fight Zuko, and Zuko to fight you, I will be making the same mistake I have been making since before I lost Lu Ten." He breathes in, and you can feel the scrape of his flame against your own, like flint sparking across flint. "If this family must see one more day of violence, let it not be a brother against a sister, a sister against a brother. Let it be instead an uncle who is finally willing to trade pointers with his niece."
His smile is shallow, and watery, and undeniably, hatefully there.
"Come, Princess Azula. Let us see if this failure of a teacher has anything you might, one day, feel interested enough to learn."
"I will never," you snarl, "want to learn anything from you."
Lightning crawls through your veins and plunges out of your skin.
"That, too," he says with palpable grief, "is my error."
You cannot bear to look at him any longer.
"Clear the plaza!" you howl, brushing past Mai and Ty Lee and even the hesitant hand Zuko reaches toward your sparking arm.
How dare Iroh pretend, after all these years, that he's finally willing to see you?
How dare he pretend that he regrets only ever choosing Zuko?
How dare he pretend that he actually cares?
How dare he?
"If you wanted me to listen to a word you've said, Uncle," you say, hurling the Fire Lord's cloak to the side as easily as your Father hurled it to you, "then maybe—"
(—he shouldn't have been so late.)
END OF "SECOND" LOOP.
YOU HAVE FAILED.
THE BOILING ROCK AWAITS.
You, Princess Azula, have experienced a Revelation, which has Broken one of your Truths.
The modified Truth can be found in the spoiler box below. Changes in bold indicate new text; changes instrikethrough indicate replaced or removed text.
The world is no longer as simple as it once was.
Your days are filled with truths you would have once sworn to understand and yet are now strangers to your thoughts.
Your nights are spent sleepless with secrets you cannot admit even to yourself.
Life slides past like you are following it through a window stained with the frantic fog of your breath—you know the shape of it, the colour, the style, but every time you try to describe it you get the details wrong. And wrong. And wrong.
There is something you are lacking. Something you don't have. Something… that reminds you of your lessons in strategy, where your tutors would sometimes leave a crucial fact out of the scenario and then spring it on you only after you'd just signed the last proud flourish in your solution. Sometimes they wouldn't spring it at all: they'd just describe the result, and force you to figure out what you didn't know in reverse. You'd hated them for it—for the embarrassment, for the cruelty, for the failure. You think you still do.
But it taught you the value of good information. It taught you the value of contingency plans.
And above all, it taught you the value of perspective.
If you are so wrong, so often, about the life you have lived over and over and over, then it must be because you are not seeing the right problem. You are fighting a scenario you do not properly understand.
(What a fascinating way to describe your family.)
There is only one path forward. One way to truly step outside the box.
You are going to have to ask a question.
It is shameful. It is demeaning. It is admitting that you are not good enough to find the answer entirely on your own merits.
(It is almost like accepting that you are going to fail alone.)
But it must be done.
There are things that have stopped making sense to you. There are things that fester under your skin like rust on a knife. And there are things that are both.
You need to see them through someone else's eyes.
You need a different perspective: on your friends, on your family, on your life.
You need… Lo and Li.
Azulon's sisters. Your tutors. And the only two people who have never, once, left—not unless you ordered them to.
(Not even your Father can say the same, can he?)
Only they might have the answers you're looking for.
But before you get an answer, Princess Azula, you need a question.
So: what are you going to ask Lo and Li about?
[ ] Your mother. Zuko is obsessed with her. He won't hear a word against her—won't even think that she's capable of doing wrong. Especially not when you're the one saying it. But Lo and Li have been around since before Zuko was born. They've seen it all. They know it all. They can give you the evidence you need to finally drive home to Zuko only he was ever loved—and prove you right that you were not.
[ ] Your Father. He is the embodiment of the Fire Nation—the greatest firebender there is. Grandfather was a fool not to see it from the start. But even your Father must have stumbled, once, like you have been. Even your Father must have made mistakes. How did he deal with them? What did he do to keep going?
You are not a traitor, to look for evidence of the Fire Lord's weakness. You are loyal, and he is strong.
[ ] Iroh. Coward. General. Prince. Once, he was the favoured heir, a legendary firebender, the greatest hero the Fire Nation had known since Sozin—now he's a pathetic, doddering fool who thinks he can make everything right with tears and tea. How did he fall so far? How can he possibly think he's still able to rise?
[ ]Azulon. He was the one who favoured Iroh. He was the one who sentenced Zuko to death. He is the reason your mother is gone and your Father holds the throne. But why? What sort of man was he, in the decades before he was your Grandfather? When did he finally slip and start to lose control?
There are more important things to ask about than a dusty old man whose best gift to you was dying.
[ ] Sozin. The visionary. The genius. The conqueror. Every living person in the world must know his name—and for the last hundred years, most of the dead as well. What led him there? What made him decide to burn the world down, a century before you ever thought the same? And at the end… what did he think of it all?
But there's something you're forgetting. Lo and Li are not at the Boiling Rock. You need to leave it first—and that means you need to come up with an answer for Mai and Ty Lee. Last time, you saved them because it would be interesting. And it was.
But why are you going to save them this time, Princess Azula?
(What excuse will you use to pretend?)
[ ] Because they can help.
No.
[ ] Because it's how you win.
No.
[ ] Because Zuko wouldn't expect it.
No.
What a stupid question.
You don't need reasons like that.
You're just going to save them because, after everything, they're still your friends.
So you kneel there alone, in the place of honour, a fiercely youthful contrast to the ash-tipped beards and once-imposing bodies gone to seed of the War Council. Your ceremonial armour is finer even than theirs—rather ironic, since as best as you have ever been able to determine, their entire purpose is to be ceremonial.
But nevertheless, only the Royal Family are permitted to lacquer their armour like yours: in a paint mixed from volcanic ash, crushed obsidian, and most precious of all, ground dragon bone from the catacombs beneath the palace. So the way you gleam, from head to toe a perfect black mirror for the glaring Sun, is a radiance they cannot ever come to match, no matter how much of their war profiteering they pour back into their appearances.
It is those same appearances that stiffen—sucking in their breath the same way you have long since learned to hide—when your Father rises over the last step before the top of the dais. From here, he towers over the sea of bowing soldiers and dignitaries and all those others lucky enough to witness their Fire Lord ascend to an even greater title, in celebration of his impending conquest of the world.
(None of them know this is the last time they will see him with any title at all.
None of them except you.)
At the sight, he smiles, as he always does. You know this smile well. It is the smile that taught you how to smile. It stretches across his mouth in sharp satisfaction, and widens when he must pick, as you do, the palpable air of relief that fills the platform at the sight of their Fire Lord's pleasure.
Your Father's feet fall loudly against the embroidered phoenix that dominates the dais' central rug, and you know, without thought or observation but simply in the hollow of your gut, that he is looking at you. That he is seeing you. Of course he is. Your Father is the only one who ever sees you: for what you are, and for what you can become.
You do not look up.
It is not your place to see him.
"Azula," he says, as light as a father's hand on a child's face, and for a moment you nearly fail to shift the angle of your shoulders and the tilt of your head to signal your complete attention because he—this isn't how this meeting goes. He never tells you not to rise. Why doesn't he want you to rise? What have you done wro— "I have heard you attended a festival in Caldera."
"Yes, Father."
A flush of sweat. A lump in a throat.
"I—I thought it prudent to—"
"It matters not."
He waves a hand dismissively.
A shadow cast across a face. Two eyes blown wide.
"I am pleased to see you enjoying yourself. Perhaps when I return from the Earth Kingdom, you will grace my triumph with a similar performance."
A bow. A forehead on the floor.
"I would be honoured, Father."
"It must run in the family."
He pauses. He smiles.
"Your mother did so love fire dancers."
A full-body flinch.
"I had forgotten, Father."
A lesson learned.
"Rise, Azula."
You obey.
The torches burn low and blue along the walls of your office.
Sitting on the other side of your desk—what little of it can be seen beneath the mounds of scrolls that spill across it, testament to the fact that you have to prepare your own coronation—are Mai and Ty Lee. In deference to the late hour, Mai had been yawning before she even arrived, but Ty Lee is as bright-eyed as ever. You, of course, are perfectly alert. It doesn't matter that you rose with the dawn, or that you have spent the entire day either at your father's coronation or organising your own—you cannot afford to sleep. Not yet.
Not when you have spent so much time on frivolities already.
"I hope you're going to make this quick, Azula," Mai says, punctuating the sentence with two of the daintiest yawns you've ever seen. "Tomorrow's a big day."
"I am aware," you say. "That is why we are here."
"...I should have known this was going to be a strategy meeting." Mai's head thuds against the cushions of her high-backed chair.
"Aaw," says Ty Lee, "I just wanted to know what the coronation was like!"
The coronation.
"It was—illuminating."
"That's boring," Mai says, eyes closed, face still tilted to the ceiling. "Did those blowhards on the War Council make a fuss because the Fire Lord relegated them behind you?"
"No."
"Now that's boring," Ty Lee says, bouncing up out of her seat to lean over your desk, elbows crinkling the layer of parchment that covers it. "They should have. That general with the stupid sideburns like he's shoved clams on his face always looks at me funny. Hearing you kicked his ass would have made my aura all sparkly."
"I would not dare waste Father's time."
Ty Lee looks over at Mai—who is looking over at Ty Lee—and then retreats from your desk to plop back down in her seat. Mai sits up straighter, no longer the very picture of a bored noblewoman in a dark sleeping gown and darker circles under her eyes.
"Okay, Azula," Mai says, gaze passing over the torches that frame either side of your luxurious, silk-and-velvet armchair before settling back on you. "We get the message. What's the plan for tomorrow?"
You breathe out, and the flames flaring in those torches fall back to the same cool blue they should have been simmering at all along.
"Zuko will be arriving tomorrow to challenge me to an Agni Kai," you begin. Mai might already know, but Ty Lee doesn't, and you prefer to explain things once and without interruption. "Likely before I am officially crowned, but the timing is largely irrelevant. While his goal is to prevent me from taking the throne, taking it from me serves his purposes just as well."
Ty Lee opens her mouth to ask a question, then visibly reconsiders, teeth snapping shut over what looked like the first syllable of the sentence how do you know?
"I know because it is the single most stupid thing he could do," you say, "and therefore as predictable as the water peasant tripping over his own boomerang."
"You could stand to insult Zuko less often, Azula," Mai says, though surprisingly without rancour. "He's better than you think he is."
"Trust me," you say, meeting her gaze, eye to eye, gold to gold, "I know exactly what my brother is capable of."
That's a large part of what makes him so irritating these days—he's actually competent enough to get in the way.
Mai raises a stiletto eyebrow, but doesn't speak.
"Okay," Ty Lee says, clapping her hands. "Zuko is coming, he's gonna challenge you to an Agni Kai, and you're… going to accept?"
"Of course," you say. "It's the showdown that was always meant to be."
"Is it?" Mai's voice is as flat as the surface of a blade. "You don't actually have to fight him, Azula. I know you don't want to."
It doesn't matter what you want. The world has been quite clear on that.
No matter what happens, you always, always have to fight Zuko.
But you can't say any of that. Not here. Not now. So instead, you say, "I don't want to kill him."
"Aaw, Azula!" Ty Lee smiles, bright as the Moon. "That's the nicest thing I've ever heard you say about Zuko! You're so sweet!"
Mai looks thoughtful for a moment, and then nods. "You know, I actually think it might be."
"Very funny," you say, dry and entirely without laughter. Not even a twitch of the lip. "If we could return to the problem at hand, girls?"
Mai rolls her eyes, long hair for once entirely unstyled, just a dark, hanging wave falling over her sleeping gown. "If you don't want to kill him, the easiest way is still to just not fight him."
"We've already spoken about this, Mai." Has she forgotten that she's the reason that's not an option? "If you won't tell Zuko to turn back, there is nothing I can do to turn him away."
"Why not?" You were expecting Mai, and so nearly don't register that it's actually Ty Lee, soft and curious, who's speaking. A curl of brown falls across her forehead, and she brushes it away. "You've blown him off for way less than this before!"
"This is not a strategy meeting to discuss how not to deal with Zuko," you say, sharper than you might have preferred. "We will fight an Agni Kai tomorrow. It is inevitable. What I need from both of you is to understand your role in the events of the day. Is that clear?"
A brief shadow of silence falls over the room.
Ty Lee is frowning at you; Mai isn't even looking at you at all, eyes lower, almost like she's studying your hands.
Oh.
You hadn't noticed your nails were starting to tear the scroll they were curled into.
Very carefully, you flatten your fingers, palms to the tabletop, the slight burr of the parchment rasping against your skin.
"Azula," Ty Lee says, each word held by her voice with the same exquisite care as a flower holds dew, "did something happen at the coronation?"
The coronation.
(You don't want to talk about the coronation.)
"No," you say shortly. "Stop trying to distract me."
Ty Lee's frown only grows.
This is going nowhere.
You shove yourself out of your seat, which scrapes hard enough against the rug that you might have left a mark in it. Your boots—the same perfect, imperial black as the rest of your armour, each gilded plate flexing as you move—stamp against the swirls of royal flame embroidered into it. "I need to train. Mai, I expect you to talk to Zuko before he challenges me. Ty Lee, you and the Dai Li will ensure that whoever else he brings along does not interfere once we begin. Fight them if you have to, but don't make a spectacle of it. Goodnight."
You are out the door before Ty Lee can muster more than a startled, "Hey, Azula, wa—!"
Mai must yank her back into her seat, because instead of a pink blur cartwheeling into the hall you hear some frantic whispering, like the hiss of a rocket before it detonates.
Soon enough you hear nothing, the drum of your feet against the stone floor hammering it all away.
It's fine.
You weren't lying.
You have an Agni Kai tomorrow.
You can't afford for your firebending to be distracted with theatrics.
(Not even if you enjoy them.)
You kneel atop the dais, surrounded by the Fire Sages.
High above, Sozin's Comet has set the sky alight—in the plaza below, a hundred firebenders answer, their hands cupped before their bodies as they hold the ceremonial flame before them. They genuflect as one, offering their fire to you; there a general, there a governor, there a war hero, there a minister. The greatest and most noble of all the nation, pressing their noses to the ground and their lips to the dust.
They are only the beginning.
Walls of bodies ring the plaza, so tight among the stands and the buildings that all they have room to do is press their fists into their palms and bow their heads, whether schoolchildren or venerable grandmothers. If you cared to look, you would see they stretch from one end of the Fire Nation to the other—some are even colony-born.
In the air, a dozen airships circle in stately passage; every soldier in the resplendent red and five-pronged helmets of the Imperial Firebenders, a precise match for the guards who stand like spears sprung from the earth at equidistant points around the plaza.
The sound of it is incredible, because there is no sound at all. Not a soul dares to speak; to whisper; to cough; to sigh. Nobody shifts in place, rustling fabric over fabric or scraping steel over steel. They are perfectly silent and perfectly still.
Even Ty Lee—a riotous splash of pink and sparkles in an ocean of red—is as quiet as a flutter-bat.
This is the whole of the world, and it is bent to you.
Its heartbeat hammers in your bones, your gut, your lungs, your throat.
So you close your eyes and fall into the flames—
—and one by one, they begin to burn blue.
First the dignitaries. Then the guards. Finally the crowd. Anyone who holds fire in their hands, who offers it to you, feels your touch. Feels their spirit ignite. Feels the once-in-a-century miracle that is your flame.
Not one among them will ever know it again.
That is why you offer it.
Not as a gift.
As a reminder.
(You hardly use your epithet even in official documentation. You don't brag about it to your enemies. The Head Sage will not speak it when he lists the titles you will lose in exchange for the one you will gain.
But when the first cobalt flicker crept into your fist, that old windbag of a Head Archivist dug into the vault of scrolls he wasn't supposed to have, and pulled two words from a mouldering list that had not been relevant since before Sozin took the throne.
Some days you wish he didn't. It's a very stupid name, frankly. At least Zuko gets to add Spirit to his.
But there's still some comfort in knowing that no matter how many times you fail to become the Fire Lord, you will always remain Azula the Blue, she who bears the sky-stained flame.)
Only the Comet permits you control like this: the Comet, and the endless cycles of your life that have seared your fire to your soul until you cannot tell where the flame ends and the girl begins. And even with the Comet, it is almost too much—your skin sizzles with evaporating sweat, your pupils swallow your irises, and your tendons are like taut wires beneath the thick mantles and cloaks of the Fire Lord.
But you hold it for six counts of six breaths, until your mastery is undeniable.
And then you let it go.
A wind blows through the plaza and the stands; the exhaled breath of every firebender present, as their fire slips back to orange. Some stare down at their hands as if grieving the loss. Others are openly weeping.
Behind you, the High Sage—the gleaming, golden headpiece of the Fire Lord held tight within his gnarled fingers—opens his mouth to speak. You can hear it in the way he inhales, an echo that resounds across so very many, many cycles.
You hold up a hand.
"Not yet," you say. "One guest remains."
In the sky, a swooping smudge of white, with two dark silhouettes huddled on its back.
"My brother, you see." Your tone is light. Conversational. "It would hardly be a coronation without family, would it?"
(And yet, your Father is never here.)
Your hand becomes a fist thrust to the sky, releasing a soaring jet of flame. The airships abandon their delicate formation, splitting into two straight lines above the stands, a formal escort to the centre of the plaza.
The Avatar's bison stalls, a little hesitant, and you lower your fist to spread both arms wide in invitation.
"Come on, Zuko," you call, high and bright, "it's poor manners to keep your sister waiting."
There's a space before the stone stairs that lead from the plaza to your dais—you'd told the Sages it was to ensure the dignitaries understood the distance between the throne and the earth, but conveniently it also happens to be large enough for the flying beast to land.
And land it does, thick tail thumping against the ground and three-toed feet flattening beneath its weight. From its back springs Zuko, as you expected, and after hi—
"—you."
A sliver of lightning crawls into your clenched fingers.
The Dragon of the West, straightening up from his crouch, considers it with cold, unsmiling focus.
"Ba Sing Se is free, Azula," he says gravely. "Now it is the Fire Nation's turn."
"It's over." Zuko watches you like he might a naked blade. "You're not going to be Fire Lord today."
"And how, exactly," you say, soft as smoke, "do you propose to stop me?"
"You know how," Zuko says.
"Do I?" You descend the steps one at a time, the long crimson cloak of the Fire Lord dragging against the carved rock. The initial clamour at the unexpected arrivals has faded now. Only a funeral hush remains. "Do you see where you are, Zuko? Do you see the nation gathered in my name? You landed because I let you. You landed because I knew you were coming."
When your feet press into the floor of the plaza, no more than a body-length fills the space between you and Zuko.
"So tell me, brother: are you sure, in your heart of hearts," you say, tapping the fabric above your own in glacial mockery, "that it will truly be so simple?"
Despite everything—despite the fact he must know that you are toying with him—he still hesitates. A flicker of doubt scowls across his face, until it is chased away by Iroh's thick hand on his shoulder.
"She is playing you, Zuko," he says. "Remember your heritage. Remember your destiny. Ozai has taken many things from you, but he cannot take this. And neither can she."
Inside the hollow void of your skull, the cold fire seethes like steel scraped against glass.
"You're pathetic." Out of the corner of your eye, you see Ty Lee leaping from the stands, twirling through the air, and hitting the plaza at a dead run. Mai is already halfway to your side, a knife cutting slits in her ceremonial robes to maximise her range of motion. "You won't fight Father, but you want Zuko to fight me. Are you truly so colossal a coward, or do you just hate me that much?"
"I do not hate you, Azula," Iroh says heavily. For a moment, the weathered creases of his face turn soft. "I feel sorry for you, and the evil Ozai has taught you."
You scoff. "Hypocrite."
"Uncle is wiser than you'll ever understand!" Of course Zuko chooses that, of all things, to defend. "Stop wasting time, Azula. Or are you afraid to fight me?"
"If I'm afraid of anything, Zuko," you say, and do not look at his scar, "it's how irritating Mai will be if I kick you into the dirt before she's had her turn."
A tall black shadow stalks past you.
"Mai? What did you do to her? Is she sa—"
"Zuko," comes Mai's voice, low and urgent, "we need to talk."
"Mai! You're—"
"Annoyed? Yes." Her eyes are a little wider than normal, and despite the vast crowd who are all intensely fixated on the three of you—the four, when Ty Lee skids to a stop on your other side—she actually reaches out to grab his wrist. "Zuko, we need to talk."
The harsh lines of his stance slip slightly, but he doesn't move. "I have to stop Azula from becoming Fire Lord."
"By all means," you say, smiling, "go ahead. With the Comet as my witness, I promise I won't make a single move until you're finished."
"Your promises are rarely what they appear," Iroh says, but he's looking back from Zuko to Mai with something approaching fondness.
"She means this one." If Mai notices Iroh's attention, she doesn't show it, still staring intently at Zuko. "Please, Zuko."
You think it might be the shock of Mai actually saying please and meaning it that finally convinces Zuko to go with her. He rubs a hand against his temple, frowning, but eventually sighs and turns entirely to face her. "Okay. I trust you, Mai."
"How sweet," you drawl.
"You're so right, Azula!" Ty Lee says, clapping her hands and entirely ignoring your sarcasm. "Aren't they cute?"
You can feel Mai's eyeroll, even though she's not looking your and Ty Lee's way at all.
"Whatever," she says. "Come on."
Impressively, despite the fact she's released her grip on his wrist, Mai still manages to make it seem as if Zuko is being dragged away as he hurries to catch up with her brisk walk across the plaza. She chooses a space halfway between you and the walls of one of the stands and pulls to a halt, shooting you a careful glance before turning back to Zuko. This far, you can't hear what they're saying—you can only observe that sometimes Mai will point at you, or gesture sharply, and that Zuko looks progressively more and more baffled as the conversation continues. Business as usual, then.
"Ty Lee," you say, "tell the Sages that we will be postponing the coronation for the moment, will you? Just until the lovebirds have finished their little chat."
Her grey eyes dart between you and Iroh. "Are you sure, Azula?"
"I would hardly be fulfilling my promise if I wasn't." Your gaze cuts to the Dragon of the West. "Don't worry. I'm feeling quite straightforward today."
Ty Lee dithers for a second or two longer, swaying on the balls of her feet, before eventually deciding obedience is the better part of valour and slipping away to leap up the stairs.
As she leaves, you consider your Father's brother.
Gone is the affable, corpulent fool—this version of Iroh is swollen with strength instead of tea, the barrel of his chest straining at the blue-and-white of his robes. His beard is cut sharp, grey spikes stabbing out from his cheeks, and his topknot protrudes from the back of his skull like the hilt of a sword. But most dangerous of all is this: his breath swells to the same inexorable rhythm as your own.
You remember the first time you fought; when he stole your lightning and tossed you into the sea. He could have killed you then. There are cycles where he has—when Zuko's blood spills from your lips at the Western Air Temple and it is Iroh alone who faces you beneath the Comet.
Uncle Iroh is a disgrace to his name and nation. But the man who faces you now is someone else: someone remembers he was once the Dragon of the West, whose heroism you and Zuko briefly grew up on before the tragedy of Lu Ten.
And yet, he's still content to hide behind your brother and the Avatar and all the other feckless children who believe they can save the world.
He really is pathetic.
"It's funny, you know," you muse, sweet as rot. "When I returned Zuko to his home, after three years under your tutelage, he was hardly a better firebender than when he left. But a bare month or two with the Avatar, and he's almost progressed to competence. I wonder—were you deliberately sabotaging him all along, or are you just that great a failure as a teacher?"
"There is more to life than firebending," he says, so stern, so judgemental. "A forest has never sprouted from kindling."
"My first patented Uncle proverb!" Your sarcasm falls as heavily as a hammer. "Truly, it's no wonder Zuko is so good at rushing off without thinking—I would be too, if it would let me get away from listening to this, day-in, day-out."
"You underestimate your brother, Azula. There is no failing in allowing a good heart to drive you." He looks at you, and then at the sea of silent souls in the stands, in the plaza, on the roofs, all watching the drama unfold. "It is the finest quality a ruler can have."
"Oh, so now he's my brother." You grind down the sparks that threaten to spit from your hands. "Was I his sister when you told him the only way to restore honour to the Fire Nation was to strike me down?"
"It is Zuko's destiny to guide our country to a future of peace and order." Iroh shakes his head slowly, the white of his mantle stained red by the Comet-torn sky. "We have lived astray too long."
He's not—
He's not even listening to you.
"You're so lost in your myopic self-righteousness you can't even comprehend what I'm saying, can you?" Your lips threaten to curl into a snarl—so you let them, baring your teeth so each word comes more bitten than said. "Nothing more than a hollow hypocrite, who ran from Lu Ten, who ran from Father, who ran and ran and ran and ran until he finally found enough children to hide behind. All you do is preach about peace and temperance and forgiveness and tea and hope someone else does the dirty work because it's easier than confronting the fact you failed your son, you failed your throne, you failed to stop Father burning Zuko, and after all that you even failed to stop me from taking him back home anyway."
Without wholly realising when it happened, you find yourself nose-to-nose with Iroh, glaring into his golden eyes—the only thing the two of you have ever shared.
"Why are you even here?" Each syllable shatters out like glass. "Too scared to let Zuko face me alone, too scared to fight me instead! What is the point of you, Dragon of the West? I'd almost think you were clever for managing to swan in at the very end, waiting in the wings because if Zuko wins he's young enough to need a regent and then the throne is yours and you've never even needed to lift a finger. But you're not, because I know what you are."
You dig your fingers into your cloak—the thick, heavy trappings of the Fire Lord.
"You're terrified. Of this. Of the Dragon Throne. Of the responsibility. Because deep down you're the same tired old fool who left Lu Ten to die under a ton of rubble and didn't even love him enough to burn Ba Sing Se to the ground for it and you think you're just going to do it again if you ever have to run anything more serious than your stupid little tea shop."
A smile splits your lips like a razor.
"So lie to yourself about destiny all you want, Uncle Iroh. Maybe if you say it enough times, you might even believe it."
In the silence that follows, you're not panting for breath at all.
Iroh's expression is—there's fury, and there's grief, and there's bewilderment, and there's a dozen other things you can't place at all. The air around him smokes and shimmers, but not a lick of flame curls from his mouth or hands.
"You make it easy to forget how young you are, Azula," he says eventually, quiet the way the battlefield is, once only corpses remain. "That is my error, to have believed the same lie you show the rest of the world. It does not forgive the words you have spoken, or the wounds you have tried to shove your fingers in so you can see how deep I bleed. But it does lend your approach a surprising… familiarity."
He sighs, and the Dragon of the West falls away like so many unwashed clothes to reveal the tired man beneath.
"And beyond that still: nothing you have said to me is something I have not said to myself. But where you think that is weakness, I have come to learn that it is strength." Before you can quite react, he reaches out a large hand and presses you back, firm but without violence. You slap his arm away almost immediately in the aftermath. "I am an old man, with an old man's regrets, and an old man's mistakes. Every day, I wake to them."
He smiles, small and worn and strong, like a stone ground clean by the weight of a river.
"That is not such a bad thing. It is how life reminds me that there are always more lessons to be found." Iroh folds his fingers over his stomach. "No single step paves the road, but it is only when you stop to look back that you may see how far you have come. I hope that when you stop, Azula, you look back and feel as proud as I have learned to be."
Your time, you think with an inadvertent glance at the position of the Sun, usually comes around about twelve hours from now.
"I'm sure you do," you say dismissively, shifting away to face Zuko and Mai, who have finally returned.
Mai looks a peculiar mix of frustrated and satisfied, arms crossed and fingers drumming against her sleeves; Zuko is glancing warily between you and Iroh, with an odd weight to his gaze whenever it falls on you in particular. Somewhere behind you comes the raindrop rhythm of Ty Lee's feet on the stairs, which you suspect has far less to do with how long it took her to talk to the Sages and far more with a desire not to get close enough to interrupt you shouting at Iroh.
"Azula," Zuko asks, rocking back on his feet, shaggy hair falling as messily over his face as his worn red tunic falls over his torso, "are you really not planning to kill me?"
You level a glare at Mai, who shrugs.
Fine.
Your… discussion with Iroh has already aired enough Royal Family drama before the entire nation. What does it matter if they—the souls who still surround you in the plaza, and the stands, and the temple, watching with rapt attention what might be the greatest spectacle of their entire lives—hear a little more?
"Keep that gormless look on your face and you'll convince me to change my mind," you say.
"Why don't you?" Zuko says, and then stumbles over his tongue trying to make his meaning clear. "Want to kill me, that is. Not why don't you change your mind. That was not a dare, Azula."
You snort a laugh, and then seamlessly disguise it as a cough. "Do you want to kill me, Zuko?"
"Of course not!" Like most things in his life, your brother doesn't even seem to think about it. He just glances at Mai, then Ty Lee, then Iroh, and then finally you. "You're… You're annoying, and awful, and arrogant, and you make me want to kick your ass just so you'll stop being like this," he gestures at you, dragging a hand from your head to your toes, "for like five seconds, but I don't want to kill you."
Then he smiles, and it seems—it seems so strange, to see him smile. To see him smile at you. Like at some point you'd forgotten how it sat on his face, and only now can you catalogue how his scar-side lip is stiffer than the other and it quirks his smile accordingly, how only one eye widens but how both irises soften.
"Well, I guess I did want to kill you for a bit when you stole the last of my fire flakes on Ember Island even though you're meant to be fourteen, Azula, not four. But apart from that, I don't."
You… haven't been fourteen in a little while, now.
But Zuko doesn't know that.
Zuko doesn't know any of that, and he still doesn't want to kill you at all.
That's—
"—can't believe they're having a moment, Mai, isn't it great?" comes the end of whatever nonsense Ty Lee had been babbling.
"We are not," you snap out at exactly the same time as Zuko.
Even your grimaces are simultaneous.
How hateful.
"I'm still going to fight you, though," Zuko says bluntly, into the quiet that comes after. "You shouldn't be the Fire Lord. Not when burning the Earth Kingdom down to the ground was your idea."
"You'll lose," you say. "I can beat you without killing you, Zuko, no matter how hard you try to make it sometimes. There was a time not so long ago when I beat you without even needing the flame. Can you say the same?"
He scowls. You'd say it sits on his face like a scar but… no. It doesn't really compare.
"I don't know, and I don't care. The Fire Nation is wrong. You're wrong. If nobody else in our country can see that, then it's my duty to show them. Even if I… don't die trying." His scowl deepens. "That sounded better in my head."
"Your courage becomes you, my nephew," says Iroh, who's been suspiciously silent until now, thumbing through the spikes of his iron-dark beard. What is he plotting?
"You have no right to speak to anyone about courage." You stab a finger in his direction. "Stay out of this."
"Uncle's as much my family as you are, Azula." Zuko's back to glaring at you. How original. "More, actually."
"And aren't you lucky for that," you say, spinning on him, cut-blood nails jabbing at his chest. "But he's as much my family as mother was, so frankly I don't care."
"Don't talk about her like that," Zuko hisses, embers curling from his breath. "She loved us. Just because you hate her doesn't mean you can pretend she never existed."
"Of course you would say that," you hiss right back. The storm rages inside the glass bottle of your skull. "She loved you. So much that she killed Grandfather just to keep you safe. The only thing she ever did for me was give birth, and she probably hated every minute of it. Good. I hope it hurt."
Zuko's good eye widens, and he stumbles back a step—though whether from your vitriol or the revelation, you're not entirely sure. Mai and Ty Lee are both looking between the two of you with shock and sympathy painted across their faces in the paling of their cheeks and the parting of their lips; Iroh studies you and Zuko in turn with pity (or is it, also, sympathy?), but without surprise.
"You're lying," Zuko says, though he doesn't sound like he believes it. "Mother would never kill anybody."
"A mother's love is a great and terrible thing," Iroh says with a soothing rumble, "and Ursa loved you very, very much, Prince Zuko."
He jerks towards Iroh, a wild flurry of too-worn clothes and too-short hair. "You're agreeing with her?"
"I never thought I'd see the day." There's no satisfaction in your smile. Just dark amusement. "I'm almost impressed you never put it together, Zuzu. Your ability to repress obvious truths about the world just because they're inconvenient to your worldview is truly admirable."
You carefully ignore Mai's raised eyebrow.
"Why did no-one ever tell me?" Zuko pleads, arms flung wide. You have to sway back to avoid being struck in the face—just like Mai, who's stepped closer to rest her fingers softly on the side of his waist in a fleeting touch. "Why was it Father who was the first person to even imply it? That she left because of me? That we lost our mother because of me?"
Because your Father never uses a weapon until it gives him an advantage.
(Because your Father never uses a weapon until he's sure how best to make it hurt.)
"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Zuzu," you say, waving a hand. "It's really not that big of a deal."
"Shut up, Azula." He's yelling. The rippling haze in the air around him, lit by the furnace of his breath, makes it hard to see his expression.
Iroh inhales, and the heat saps from the air enough that Mai and Ty Lee stop sweating. His exhale shunts it behind the five of you, rippling over those luminaries foolish enough to remain genuflecting in the plaza instead of fleeing for the relative safety of the stands.
You're not sure if Zuko even notices.
"No, I don't think I will," you say. There's a cracking noise inside your head. The cold fire spits from your fingertips, grounding itself in the stone below. "Sorry to shatter your little pedestal, Zuko, but our mother was a regicide who murdered the sitting Fire Lord for her son and didn't even say goodbye to her daughter—a refreshing change of pace, since she usually alternated between lecturing me for being a monster or foisting me off at the Academy while you got to swan around with her inside the palace."
Your smile spreads across your face like a wound.
"I can admire the ruthlessness in finally making it clear exactly how much she would have preferred I didn't exist," you add, "but like I said: it still hurt."
Ty Lee's fingers are icy even through the thick fabric of your sleeves.
"Azula…"
It's strangely hard to focus on telling her to leave you alone; strangely hard to glare at Iroh, who is considering you, and Zuko, with a kind of dawning sorrow that fills the ridges and valleys of his cheeks like spilled blood; strangely hard to wonder what Mai is whispering desperately into Zuko's ear.
"So there you have it, Zuzu," you say. Your voice is a wretched thing, your pitch entirely crooked and your intonation like the aftermath of an earthquake. "Are you going to change your mind and try to kill me now, just so you can follow mother dearest's footsteps one last time?"
"No! I mean. I'm—"
a footstep like the slap of a war drum
a mountain of white and blue
sunfire eyes
"—Iroh, uncle of Zuko, uncle of Azula, son of Azulon, brother of Ozai, and I challenge you, Princess Azula, to an Agni Kai."
Zuko's shocked gasp. "Uncle?"
Mai's face is white.
Ty Lee yells, "No!"
"I knew this would happen," you say, and you can't stop laughing, jagged and shrill and sharp, the sound of steel when it splinters, "I knew you hated me!"
The Dragon of the West is crying. Fat, wet tears spill salt down his face even as he shifts his feet back the same way Zuko does before he bends.
"I am beginning to understand," he says, heavy and slow, like each word is being cut out of his heart, "that I will wake tomorrow to a far greater history of mistakes than I thought I had carried here today. I do not hate you, Azula. My niece. I was arrogant to say I felt sorry for you. I hardly think I even know who you are."
Iroh shakes his head, ponderous with disgust, but not—not aimed at you?
"All I know is that if I allow you to fight Zuko, and Zuko to fight you, I will be making the same mistake I have been making since before I lost Lu Ten." He breathes in, and you can feel the scrape of his flame against your own, like flint sparking across flint. "If this family must see one more day of violence, let it not be a brother against a sister, a sister against a brother. Let it be instead an uncle who is finally willing to trade pointers with his niece."
His smile is shallow, and watery, and undeniably, hatefully there.
"Come, Princess Azula. Let us see if this failure of a teacher has anything you might, one day, feel interested enough to learn."
"I will never," you snarl, "want to learn anything from you."
Lightning crawls through your veins and plunges out of your skin.
"That, too," he says with palpable grief, "is my error."
You cannot bear to look at him any longer.
"Clear the plaza!" you howl, brushing past Mai and Ty Lee and even the hesitant hand Zuko reaches toward your sparking arm.
How dare Iroh pretend, after all these years, that he's finally willing to see you?
How dare he pretend that he regrets only ever choosing Zuko?
How dare he pretend that he actually cares?
How dare he?
"If you wanted me to listen to a word you've said, Uncle," you say, hurling the Fire Lord's cloak to the side as easily as your Father hurled it to you, "then maybe—"
(—he shouldn't have been so late.)
END OF "SECOND" LOOP.
YOU HAVE FAILED.
THE BOILING ROCK AWAITS.
You, Princess Azula, have experienced a Revelation, which has Broken one of your Truths.
The modified Truth can be found in the spoiler box below. Changes in bold indicate new text; changes in
(3/4) Born Lucky?
If you had not known the spark, you would still be a once-in-a-generation genius. You are good at almost anything you try, and great at almost anything you enjoy. Your star even rises over Ba Sing Se, unconquerable legend of the Hundred-Year War.Is there anything you could not succeed at, if you truly wanted to? After all—you're not Zuko. In all ways, you are nothing like Zuko, who must stumble, and fail, and try again—Zuko, who is offered so many hands to lift him back up, when you have only ever been able to fill your palms with flame.
If you had not known the spark, you would still be a once-in-a-generation genius. You are good at almost anything you try, and great at almost anything you enjoy. Your star even rises over Ba Sing Se, unconquerable legend of the Hundred-Year War.
The world is no longer as simple as it once was.
Your days are filled with truths you would have once sworn to understand and yet are now strangers to your thoughts.
Your nights are spent sleepless with secrets you cannot admit even to yourself.
Life slides past like you are following it through a window stained with the frantic fog of your breath—you know the shape of it, the colour, the style, but every time you try to describe it you get the details wrong. And wrong. And wrong.
There is something you are lacking. Something you don't have. Something… that reminds you of your lessons in strategy, where your tutors would sometimes leave a crucial fact out of the scenario and then spring it on you only after you'd just signed the last proud flourish in your solution. Sometimes they wouldn't spring it at all: they'd just describe the result, and force you to figure out what you didn't know in reverse. You'd hated them for it—for the embarrassment, for the cruelty, for the failure. You think you still do.
But it taught you the value of good information. It taught you the value of contingency plans.
And above all, it taught you the value of perspective.
If you are so wrong, so often, about the life you have lived over and over and over, then it must be because you are not seeing the right problem. You are fighting a scenario you do not properly understand.
(What a fascinating way to describe your family.)
There is only one path forward. One way to truly step outside the box.
You are going to have to ask a question.
It is shameful. It is demeaning. It is admitting that you are not good enough to find the answer entirely on your own merits.
(It is almost like accepting that you are going to fail alone.)
But it must be done.
There are things that have stopped making sense to you. There are things that fester under your skin like rust on a knife. And there are things that are both.
You need to see them through someone else's eyes.
You need a different perspective: on your friends, on your family, on your life.
You need… Lo and Li.
Azulon's sisters. Your tutors. And the only two people who have never, once, left—not unless you ordered them to.
(Not even your Father can say the same, can he?)
Only they might have the answers you're looking for.
But before you get an answer, Princess Azula, you need a question.
So: what are you going to ask Lo and Li about?
[ ] Your mother. Zuko is obsessed with her. He won't hear a word against her—won't even think that she's capable of doing wrong. Especially not when you're the one saying it. But Lo and Li have been around since before Zuko was born. They've seen it all. They know it all. They can give you the evidence you need to finally drive home to Zuko only he was ever loved—and prove you right that you were not.
You are not a traitor, to look for evidence of the Fire Lord's weakness. You are loyal, and he is strong.
[ ] Iroh. Coward. General. Prince. Once, he was the favoured heir, a legendary firebender, the greatest hero the Fire Nation had known since Sozin—now he's a pathetic, doddering fool who thinks he can make everything right with tears and tea. How did he fall so far? How can he possibly think he's still able to rise?
[ ]
There are more important things to ask about than a dusty old man whose best gift to you was dying.
[ ] Sozin. The visionary. The genius. The conqueror. Every living person in the world must know his name—and for the last hundred years, most of the dead as well. What led him there? What made him decide to burn the world down, a century before you ever thought the same? And at the end… what did he think of it all?
But there's something you're forgetting. Lo and Li are not at the Boiling Rock. You need to leave it first—and that means you need to come up with an answer for Mai and Ty Lee. Last time, you saved them because it would be interesting. And it was.
But why are you going to save them this time, Princess Azula?
(What excuse will you use to pretend?)
No.
No.
No.
What a stupid question.
You don't need reasons like that.
You're just going to save them because, after everything, they're still your friends.
