Helooooo my little bunny rabbits!
Sorry, I know it's been a heck of a long time...everything just caught up with me, and I've had no time to do anything. But this came from that - it took a while, but it's finally finished :D
Enjoy, my readers! :D ATO xx
DISCLAIMER - the fabulous Mike and Bryan own Avatar: The Last Airbender. (p.s. who else is still confused when someone talks about Avatar the movie?)
Read on, my brave warriors!
Azula's death was really, in all honesty, an accident. At least, that was how Aang liked to think of it.
His first and only accident.
She had escaped from the asylum a few years back, then disappeared into dust – no one knew where she had gone. Most assumed she had run out of ideas and managed to off herself somehow: wandered into the forests and starved, or strayed too near the sheer cliff tops that banked the Firenation islands on nearly all sides. Everyone knew her face from the millions of wanted posters that were stuck on every empty stretch of wall across the entire world – it was deemed imperative that she be found and apprehended. A large reward was posted above a crude but still suitably recent portrait of her: her captive's painting, the ones they used to keep track of every high-risk prisoner in the Firenation.
At first, the search had been rabid. Azula was hunted by most every man and woman; corners were checked in their thousands, every building, every alley...every shadow was checked for her presence, but she was nowhere to be found.
No one thought she was still alive – it did not matter either way, because she was insane. A hopeless case, they had called her back in the asylum. Her rage was there, but none of her cunning. She had lost the part of her mind that had made her the cool, terrifying young woman, the Crown Princess of the Firenation, a legend in her own right. She seemed less of a threat, and when a year went by without her capture, the manhunt was called off, in all political correctness.
But still the Firelord was wary – the Avatar's right-hand man told him not to worry, that she could not start an arising, that she was too psychotically challenged to do anything besides sit and drool...but the Avatar was suspicious too.
In the end, he was right to be. When he was just seventeen years old, she sprang from the one shadow no one had thought to check – his own. In the middle of the empty countryside, she suddenly appeared, when he was alone but for one other human being.
Her.
Her hand was at her throat, blue fire crackling at her fingers...and Aang's vision began to blur, and the world began to tilt.
In all honesty, Azula should have known better. Even she was not stupid enough to attempt to threaten her. But then, some reasoned: she was insane. And she deserved it.
Aang saw it differently. He had lost control as soon as he'd seen Katara's suddenly tear-stricken face, her blue eyes cold with terror, locked on him as Azula cackled, icy flames bursting towards Katara's dark skin. As much as he thought he could control his Avatar nature, sometimes: it was all too much.
He roared, and his fists burned white hot.
When he came to, they both were on the ground. Katara was struggling under Azula's heavy, still form, crying silently as she attempted to escape the Princess' body that was oozing life all over her. Aang stood there, in total shock and silence, as Katara pushed the lifeless girl away, rolling her across the grass before standing shakily, brushing off her clothes as if the burnt edges were nothing more than mud stains, the ashes of the dead Princess' clothes nothing more than dust. They'd looked at each other, unmoving, tears wet on both their cheeks, before she moved towards him. He held out his arms, and she wrapped herself in them, soaking the rest of her tears on his robes before taking a deep breath, looking back up at him with dry cheeks, a shaky smile...but her eyes were cloudy, ocean mist drifting through her normally clear gaze.
But then: Aang's were no better. They were almost black.
"Aang?" His gaze did not move from hers, but he didn't answer, "Aang?" Katara shook him gently, "Aang, please? Answer me?"
After a minute or so, he quietly murmured, "I killed her." Katara bit her lip and pressed her face into his shoulder so she wouldn't have to answer him. "She was going to kill you...a life for a life." Another beat of silence, then Katara suddenly felt his tears soaking into the arm of her robes, and she pulled back to see him weeping uncontrollably. This reaction was not entirely unexpected, and she sat them both down on the ground, moving him into her arms, gently stroking his cheeks as he cried. It was shock, she knew. Aang was frightened and scared and shocked by what he had done.
It was not to be unexpected.
She glanced across to the girl's body, her eyes involuntarily trying to squeeze themselves shut as she remembered, in the clear, inescapable distinctness of memories that have occurred only a few minutes past and stick in the mind like freshly painted ink, bright and only just unchangeable. Remembered the girl go stiff above her, her body crackling with electricity as she toppled, her face locked in an eternal grimace.
Such a sad way to leave this life.
And then she looked away.
Aang didn't let her go for hours afterwards. Even when the physicians insisted she be given some peace, some time alone, he refused to let her out of his sight. He had only been vulnerable for those few, tortured minutes, then he was on his guard, tense and alert, challenging the world to try what the – foolish, they now called her...what folly, Azula, what folly – disgraced royal had tried. Electricity still tingled in his veins, snapping at Katara's skin when he kissed her all over, gladly and gladly and gladly again and again and again, thanking the stars that she was still alive, no matter whom he had to kill to keep her that way.
But still, when the crackling faded and the power seeped away completely, he was left in her arms again that night, crying into her soft chest salty tears, the little boy in him broken by what he had finally been forced to do.
"It was an accident," she whispered to him, believing it with everything she had, "Azula was in the wrong place at the wrong time – it was an accident."
Aang had to believe it. Because if it was an accident: he could make sure to learn from his mistakes.
The Avatar never killed a soul again. Katara and Aang both agreed that if it was in a hundred years, it would still be too soon. Even if it were one person, it would be one too many.
Azula was an accident. A tragic accident.
No one was to blame.