Azula has been woken up to stranger things than her father sitting at a table in his chambers, numerous bottles of alcohol scattered around him and smiling like the Fire Festival's come early— but this is close to the top of the list.

"Dad, it's hours until sunrise," Azula says as she stifles a yawn— princesses do not show their fatigue, even when roused in the dead of night by frenzied servants and not so much as given time to clothe themselves. "What happened?"

Her father is still smiling, either a man deranged or very drunk, and he opens another bottle of rice wine with a loud pop. Registering his unkempt hair and rumpled sleep robe, she immediately abandons all concern over her underdressed state. "Zuko is dead," he announces with a grandiose handwave, "and we're going to have a party. Just you and me."

The statement is arresting, seizes her breath for an instant. She doesn't know how to feel and doesn't want to know. "Dead?" she echoes, careful to keep her voice steady. "You're certain?"

"Admiral Zhao sent me a rather detailed letter," he continues, pouring the wine into two crystal-cut glasses. "Apparently, the idiot double-crossed a gang of pirates and they blew up his ship with blasting powder. What a tragedy."

... Well. So she is really the crown princess, the heir apparent. It's been almost a done deal since the moment her shaved, bandaged, drugged brother stumbled out of the infirmary, but there was still a minuscule chance that her father could recall him from exile, that he might actually succeed at capturing the avatar. No chance, now.

"Sit down," he orders— and it is unmistakably an order, despite his jubilant air. "You look pale; drink. All of it."

And she does sit down and drink all of it; the wine brings color into her cheeks, warms her chilled throat. He hadn't been a bad brother, had taught her how to paint and play the flute and hide in the closet until the worst of Father's rages abated. If he hadn't come first, if Mother hadn't always loved him more than her, maybe she would even consider his demise (at sixteen) a shame, because she will need to be perfect in his absence— all eyes on the crown princess, no fuck-up brother to distract from her failings while she exits at stage left.

(Fire Lord Azula; that is her future, written in stone. To think that six years ago she'd been the second-born daughter of a second son, grovelling at her grandfather's feet from her mother's prompting.)

Father is watching her. He has been watching her since he banished Zuko and pulled her out of school, acquitting or condemning every action— and right now, he can see that she does not look elated enough for his taste. So she raises her glass, and forces herself to smile. "Good riddance to bad rubbish," she crows. "It's really just us, now."

There's something strange in his gaze, she realizes, the way it lingers on the faint swell of her breasts. She doesn't understand. "It's always been just us," he mutters, and then he walks over to her and pulls her out of her chair, wrapping a possessive arm around her waist. "How old are you, daughter?"

He knows— he knows everything about her. Her stomach twists. "Fourteen. Last solstice."

"Your mother was seventeen when she married me," he says. "But you... you're so much older than her, in every way that counts."

She doesn't— he's moving closer to her, and he—

He kisses her sloppily on the mouth, and she forces herself not to do him a grave insult and flinch away. This is so wrong. This is so very wrong. This is not how she wanted her life to go.

But when has it ever mattered how she wants her life to go? She tilts her head back, letting him pin the butterfly of her thyroid with his lips, and won't fight when he curls his fingers around her hip— because she owes him more than she can repay, for raising her higher than she'd ever dared hope, and because the Fire Lord claims what is his.

(She asks herself if Father would fuck Zuko, too, were he still alive, as he pulls her over to the bed— if this is a privilege reserved just for her. She asks herself why she's gone back to being a little girl, as he tugs her robe open, waiting for her brother to take the beating when she was the one who broke the vase. She asks herself if being ripped apart by fire, as he thrusts inside her and bites down on her collarbone, could possibly be worse than this.)