.
When she is just a girl with eyes of fire and a heart of coal—she fights to be respected, and when her father laughs in something like happiness (but she knows thats impossible—he'll never be happy) patting her head like he's proud (he really isn't) she beams, even if she knows this will be short lived and only lead to a life of despair and hate.
.
When she is young she scuttles across the ground like a spider, cautiously, carefully, and very prepared (it's funny because one day she'll be a snake) while doing so, she overhears her father talking to her tudors.
"-She is a remarkable student, she will do great things one day-"
The man is silenced, and her fathers voice is heavy and deep as it sullies the babblings of a proud man, "One day, she'll grow up to be a magnificent princess," (she pretends this sentence doesn't tear her apart) she hears the chair lean forward, and assumes he is on his hunches. "But what about my son?"
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When she scuttles back to her room, black ringlets of hair tangled in a mop—she doesn't cry, not at all. She has to be brave if she will one day be Firelord.
.
Her mother looks at her in dismay, Azula sits in tattles of a red dress, it clothes her with frilly things, and lace, when it burns she cackles (her father has never looked happier, but when he turns to face his son, smiling dressed, very properly and much as a prince dressed much as a prince should be, he scowls, and it doesn't matter anymore) but she wants to cry.
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When mother goes missing Azula doesn't get sad. She just realises that mother couldn't take the heat. (When she laughs at the funeral the king laughs with her. Her brother runs away and does not leave his room.)
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She takes to power like a fish to water, she thrives in it—lives for the smoke that comes with death, and the pain of scorched fingertips, because she is Azula—and she will be Firelord, (not really) and if her brother falls, cheek aflame, from the heavens with an audible sound and a flurry of cursing and insults, then that is what must happen.(She almost sighs in relief, it is good he's been banished, she thinks. Azula had never been sure she would be able to kill her brother.)
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The lightening dances between her fingertips and her father frowns (even though he couldn't bend lightning until he was much older)—"Keep going."
.
Azula falls, she clatters to the ground—and when her brother wins, reigning victorious, she does what she is known for—she scuttles away, like a spider.
(No longer a snake.)
She is locked away, and weekly, amidst dirt and dust and blood, she is visited by the brother she once wanted to keep alive—but now, in her flower heart—wilted, dead, black, he is nothing but a reminder of her disgrace. And when he smiles at her, Mai is pregnant, he'll say. Or, the Avatar has had his first child. She refuses for a second to believe that her father would smile like that (Even if she once imagined he would).