Before Harry Potter and How To Train Your Dragon really hit me, Avatar was my biggest interest. This is the only fanfiction I've written for it, and I'm not sure why I found it today. But I did; and I hope you feel like I did when I was writing it - it makes my cry to watch this scene every time.

"All right hair, it's time to face your doom!"

I snatch up the scissors, and viciously hack down the front of my locks. The shards make a clipping sound, it sounds good – blades cutting through hair. Satisfying, sure.

I grin manically at the mirror. It's gone – I won't have to deal with it anymore! For some reason I feel unhinged, but the feeling is so subtle I don't care.

A voice sounds from behind me. Calm, warm, and with so much concealed sadness that nausea churns in my stomach.

"What a shame. You always had such beautiful hair."

I falter. Tears rise up my throat, but I clamp an iron hand down on them. Now is not the time for emotion.

In a perfectly controlled voice, I say, "What are you doing here?" I turn toward the mirror, and I see her. She looks exactly the same as she did the night she left – a hood pulled up over her head, dressed in dark clothes, but still a Princess.

If she can be a banished Princess with this sort of beauty, why was my brother marked so brutally as the Banished Prince?

She speaks again, and she actually sounds sad. "I didn't want to miss my own daughter's coronation." Is it true that she means what she says? That she cares?

Emotions swirl inside me, and I feel sick.

She's lying.

She has to be.

She always liked Zuko more.

"Don't pretend to act proud!" I snap. But even I can hear the fear and sadness in my voice. "I know what you really think of me…."

I stop.

I want to cry.

But Princesses don't cry.

Prodigy Firebenders don't cry.

Firelords don't cry.

"You think I'm a monster."

I almost choke.

I wish I wasn't like this.

I wish I could just bury my face in my mother's arms and worry about the war from afar.

I wish I wasn't a Princess.

But – no. I don't. I'm going to be Firelord. I deserve it. I was born with this… power. And I'm going to use it to kill the Water Tribe.

"I think you're confused. All your life, you've used fear to control people, like your friends, Mai and Ty Lee."

The words are startled out of me. First she shows up on my Coronation day, then she tries to mother me! She gave up the responsibility when she left me, years ago! When I actually needed a mother, someone to take care of me.

How is this my mother? Why not someone who understands me, who can help me sort out everything I've felt in my life?

"But what choice do I have?" I asked hysterically. "Trust is for fools. Fear is the only reliable way." My voice slows, and I pronounce my words carefully – this is my biggest, worst, most dishonorable thing affiliated with me. "Even you fear me."

Her words, in the same tone, only softer, more heartfelt, more heartbreaking, come immediately.

"No, Azula. I love you. I do."

Her voice sounds so comforting…

I scream and fling my hairbrush into the mirror. Big pieces shatter and fall out of it, and her image is gone.

I collapse in front of it and sob.

Nothing can help me now.