A/N: Don't expect substance. Just a little idea that surfaced out of my other fic.


Azula was surrounded, faces everywhere she looked. There were pretty servants with smiling faces doing everything for her. They combed and washed her hair, scrubbed up her shoulders, if she asked them too she was sure her drones would even climb right into the bath with her, washing cloth in tow and scrub every aching millimeter of her clean.

She really hated taking bathes, but what she hated more were all the people her Father seemed to think it took to bathe her. A person for nails, a person for hair, someone to carry a tray of assorted fruits in case she just might feel puckish. Somewhere in the back of her mind Azula wondered what it might be like to not have every inch of her body known by so many people like the back of their pruney grimy hands.

But her father wanted a clean daughter. Her father wanted a daughter that got all the best things. So it happened. She had all the things she could ever receive. All for the sake of being the daughter her father wanted. And she was too, she suspected.

Sometimes Azula got worried when she couldn't remember what kind of drink she liked, or whether she liked down or cotton. It was stirring really. Then she'd try both and still not know. They were clearly always different things, but she didn't know what she liked.

She didn't have a favorite color. She didn't know her favorite flower. She didn't know if a smell was jarring or sweet. She never knew if a maiden was fair or gruesome.

If her father told her she'd know. Father once told her that her mother was the fairest creature alive, and Azula still didn't doubt it. For those simple words she saw that face in her dreams, and attempted to measure others up to it's standard. Long hair is pretty. Long dark hair. Golden eyes.

Azula didn't exist. She needn't. Her only use was to be a tool and instrument of her honorable lord father. It would be foolish to even want anything else. Such a thing is to be the happiest job in the world.

Still she wondered who would hear her if she screamed. Sure people would come. But if she collapsed into their arms crying, shouting her invisibility out to the world, who would truly give a damn? Who would even listen?

With a long naked arm, Azula waved over the servant holding her tray of fruit. A grape maybe. Did she like grapes? Had she ever seen her father eat one?

The sweet taste filled her mouth before she could even think. Sweetish but tangy, with skin like a wiry film. Almost dry even. Funny how little the veiny insides were so different from the dark violet shield of skin.

Then again the universe was funny.