A/N: I'm back! I took a LONG break for the sobfest that was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, but I'm back now!
And here I am, doing something I swore I would never do.
I'm turning Azula into an anti-hero. (anti-villain?)That means yes, this story will be Azula sympathetic. But I can promise that Azula is going to be beaten up quite a lot over the course of this story. So if you really don't like Azula but happen to be a sadist, stick around! Bear with me through the first chapter, it gets better, I promise.
House of the Rising Sun
I. How the mighty have fallen
"Have you ever thought that war is a madhouse and that everyone in the war is a patient?"
Oriana Fallaci
For a brief period during her fleeting childhood, Princess Azula had been curious.
She had questioned the world around her and managed to gain an impressive amount of knowledge as most children do. Among other things, she learned how to bend lightning, how to lie with a straight face and how to control the people around her.
One day, something her uncle had said caught her attention, and she later went to her father to get more information.
"Father, what is fate?" She had asked earnestly with her hands clasped behind her back and her head tilted attentively to the side.
"Fate," Her father began evenly, "Is what common people call it when they don't know who is screwing them over."
And presently, someone was most definitely screwing her over.
Princess Azula was not locked up in a nondescript cell because of her breakdown during Sozin's Comet, and it certainly was not because she was destined to be there. When she had finally awoken everything had snapped into focus, her acute attention to detail had returned all at once.
One side of her face was pressed into a cold floor and bruises and small black lines where bamboo needles had pierced her skin now covered her arms. Every blue vein was visible through her translucent skin; she could tell that she had not been exposed to sunlight in a while.
The space was hardly sufficient for practicing firebending, and as it was, she was having difficulty producing a spark. She was enclosed in stone with no perceivable escape and had naught but a tiny window grate for company.
She was alone with her thoughts. Thoughts that were the best friends she ever had. Distorted memories, feelings, and the remnants of an emotional roller coaster were hopelessly mixed together. Sometimes she thought she heard voices, sometimes she thought there was someone standing just outside her peripheral vision. She knew she had been alone for far too long for anyone to be there. Her ears were ringing, her mind was swimming. Muddy, unattractive smudges of old eyeliner pooled beneath her eyes in the summer heat.
Vague images began to surface in the midst of her disorienting headache.
The first was father, denying her the right to lead their glorious invasion force at his side.
Then her brother, standing before a blood red sky, surrounded by plumes of smoke and fire.
Throbbing blue and orange infernos were consuming her empire; she cast her arm out, drawing a stream of fire. Among the blur of her recollections, it seemed as though everyday life was some sort of bazaar dance. Her empire was burning at her hand and she didn't care, she didn't care, she didn't care. Why had she ever cared?
Then she was laughing, then she was crying in front of her dresser.
As her hairbrush made impact with her mirror, Azula no longer saw her mother staring back at her with pity, but herself. All she saw was herself shattering into a million little pieces.
For a fleeting moment, she was chained to the ground in the courtyard of the palace she had grown up in. She was being weighed down by water; she had been left to drown again. Something indescribable was crushing her, breaking her, and she could not breathe. She was regurgitating blue flames, she was choking on power.
It was the most acute agony, detached and unbearable and frustrating.
She knew there had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Under extreme stress it is not uncommon to completely detach from reality. There is a fine line between laughing, crying, and outright screaming, and Azula had never been very good at differentiating between her own emotions.
Whatever fever dream she had awoken from was now reflecting in her current reality. Shadows were jumping up the walls, phantom red and blue lights flashed behind her eyelids, whispers from nonexistent drafts pressed their lips against her ear.
Am I possessed? She thought absently, after an interminable amount of time.
Of course not. One of the voices replied. Azula smiled and silently agreed.
Perhaps she was a prisoner of war, in which case she would probably be freed shortly.
If she was a hostage, or bait for her father, she could easily escape the situation. She didn't need anyone to come and rescue her. She could handle her own problems and her father knew it.
Then again, it was also likely that she had been left here to die; likely that no one was coming for her, likely that her prison was inescapable, likely that she was doomed to decay with nothing but her illogical thoughts and an insignificant window grate.
But she didn't have to worry for very long.
The first time the previously invisible stone door swung out from the wall, Azula pretended to be completely civil. A man in deep crimson robes beckoned to her silently from the bright corridor.
She shamefully cringed at the unfamiliar light from her crumpled position in the corner and finally noticed the heavy chains that bound her ankles and her hands. Nonetheless, she recovered promptly and followed the man with sunken eyes out of the cell.
"Interesting accommodations you have here." She began in an attempt to get him to explain why exactly she had been locked in an austere and indisputably uncomfortable room. Even outside of her cell there was nothing but stone and orbs of fire suspended in the air. "Although it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi." She added in a bitter tone, trailing behind her guide unenthusiastically.
He seemed to reject her presence. The shadowy hallway made his face practically featureless. She overlooked his silence, this unremarkable man was clearly was not the person she needed to appeal to. Negotiations were imperative at this stage; she had to speak with her captors immediately.
Azula was intensely aware of her current position. She knew she was certainly an important prisoner, regardless of who had captured her. The clatter of her chains echoed constantly.
They crossed a hallway; Azula caught a glimpse of four panels of clouded colored glass at the very end of the tunnel that were barely emitting any light. She took note of it as a potential escape route.
A massive door creaked as the man opened it, urging her to enter. She dragged herself across the stone threshold and past the cloaked man. Azula did not know what was waiting beyond the doorway for her, but she made sure to maintain her poise despite the extra weight she carried. She had barely shuffled inside when the door shut behind her without warning.
In that moment Azula felt incredibly lethargic, the cuts she had somehow acquired while unconscious burned and itched, her muscles were sore and the weight of the chains had taken a toll on her weakened limbs. She briefly contemplated what would happen if she decided to just turn in for the rest of her life, and simply leave reality to deal with its own problems. That, however, was not in her nature.
"Ah, Princess Azula. It's wonderful to finally see you up and about." At the end of the narrow room a man in the traditional garb of a fire sage sat behind an immense desk surrounded by an inordinate amount of scrolls and papers.
"I suppose." She said coldly. Her situation had just gotten slightly more curious.
"Yes." He scrunched up his face at her, confused by her offhand response. His headdress tiled to the side and he made no attempt to adjust it. "And how are you feeling?"
"Fine, considering I have been lying on the floor in a dark cell. There must be some kind of misunderstanding." Ah, good old fashioned devious diplomacy, how refreshing.
"This must be disorienting for you." The sage tugged on his long white beard and placed his pen on the ebony desk. Azula crossed her arms. Her chains shifted loudly. He jumped up from his chair suddenly. "Oh dear, I apologize. I forgot we put those on when we fled from Azulon." He moved to detach the manacles. "The entire city was in turmoil." He added. "We have been taking care of you ever since."
The shackles fell away from the princess, but she still felt like they were there. She massaged her chafed wrists tentatively and took a step back from the sage.
"I see." She sneered. "And you think it is appropriate to keep me in such conditions?"
"You must understand, your grace, our actions are only meant to protect you. It is much safer here for you than it is anywhere else." There was something presumptuous about his attitude that Azula did not find favorable. She kicked the metal links away from her. "It is our duty to keep you secure until the Fire Lord takes full control of the country. You see, you had an… incident during the battle." He looked suddenly looked sad, maybe even disappointed as he acknowledged her major psychotic breakdown.
Azula felt dread rising in her like the tide. There had been truth to her visions after all. Something had gone terribly wrong and she couldn't even begin to devise a plan to fix it. "That was a fluke, I'm sure." She replied calmly, but sternly.
"I told my associate to bring you to me as soon as you awoke." He motioned to the door, behind which the cloaked man probably lurked. "We must know if your father mentioned anything about a secondary plan."
In hindsight, she realized she probably should have asked him. She had never thought that the Fire Nation could loose its stability so quickly and she certainly had not wanted to imply that she thought her father's plans would fail. She appraised the sage once more as she was sure he was evaluating her.
"Of course." She told him evenly, meeting his pale eyes with her own. "Why do you ask?"
"We don't get news from the mainland very often, so we are not sure what is going on. We thought you may have an educated prediction. Do you have any idea when?" He questioned her.
"Soon, I would assume. But nothing is for certain. While I have greatly appreciated your generous service, if the country is in as much turmoil as you imply, I must leave now to reassert my family's control." She said sarcastically, adding the smarmy idiot to her hit list. Even if he happened to be loyal to her father, he was still entirely useless in her mind.
The sage was silent and the princess stood up straighter. "Princess, you understand that you must remain here." He told her gravely.
Azula froze. It had become quite clear to her in that moment that they had always intended to be her captors, and not her caretakers. She swallowed and pursed her lips.
"Excuse me?"
"I am sorry, but it is the only way. When the Fire Lord starts making inquiries to your whereabouts, we will already have you here."
Azula was not familiar with what it felt like to be used as a means to an end.
But she instantly knew that she did not like it.
"Who told you that you could keep me here?" Her voice was trembling dangerously on the brink of hysteria. "Because they were grievously mistaken."
"We must not take any unnecessary risks, Princess."
"You don't have the authority to keep me here against my will!" She yelled. Suddenly she was contemplating using her discarded chains to strangle him. She heard the door behind her open.
"Sadly, Princess, I think you'll find that you no longer have the authority or the option to leave." He declared smugly. For a moment, Azula was supremely confused and it took her longer than usual to figure out why. No one had ever assumed a superior tone in her presence. But this man looked at her with something like pity or regret. He treated her like she was something broken and forgotten on a dusty shelf. Her authoritative mask abruptly fell away as shock set in. She looked away from the sage and every sound was drowned out by the roar of blood in her ears. Something had indeed gone very, very wrong.
Azula tried to summon her fire, but it still wouldn't come. She screamed at the old man as he took his seat behind his desk and picked up his pen once more, but he didn't respond, nor did he acknowledge her. She didn't know what she said to him, if she said anything at all. Soon multiple hands were on her, pulling her back out of the room. She clawed and kicked but the light show in her head had started up again, flashes blue and orange assaulted her. Entire walls of fire clashed and the phantom voices spoke once more, but this time it was her voice that echoed.
"You can't treat me like this."
"You can't treat me like Zuko."
"I'm sorry it has to end this way brother."
"No you're not."
The memories abruptly faded into nothing. Azula's eyes cracked open, gray light spilled in from the window grate in her cell. Her now greasy hair had fallen in front of her eyes. There was a patch of crusted blood on the crown of her head where one of the guards had thrown her against the stone wall. She slowly sat up, not coping very well with the vertigo. As she gradually righted herself, she saw a vertical streak of blood that had most likely been made when she had slid down the wall after being knocked unconscious.
"What, no lighting today? Afraid I'll redirect it?"
Azula punched the wall while holding back tears. It might have been some consolation to know exactly which fire lord had imprisoned her. The sages were involved in this war whether they liked it or not, and they were required to choose a side.
Zuko would have been understandable. She knew why he would lock her up, even though she had once done her best to keep him out of prison herself. Her father, however, was an entirely different case. If her father was indeed directly responsible for her incarceration, she really had been screwed over. At first she tried to convince herself that this was an impossible conclusion but she also reminded herself that he was quite possibly capable of anything. Nevertheless, the seed of doubt was planted and she couldn't help but wonder.
Every fortnight Azula would wake to find that clean clothes and some food had materialized on the floor. She stayed up for full days waiting for someone to open the handle-less stone door so she could run, but they never came.
She threw herself against the wall many times hoping to make it budge, but she only succeeded in bruising her shoulders.
She scaled the wall with her bare hands and reached the window grate, only to discover the sight of more stone. Eventually she fell to the ground with every single one of her nails broken and the skin flayed off her fingertips.
There was no difference between night and day now. She woke up at what seemed like midnight and would pass out at high noon. She ignored the food and water her captors provided in case it was blocking her bending. Even after three days of fasting, she still couldn't produce a spark. She blamed it on her prolonged time in a dark cell. Firebenders rose with the sun, but Azula awoke in the darkness.
She was pathetic, worthless. She had no resources and no allies and therefore she was powerless. She couldn't even get herself out of a simple box. Her father was not coming. Her countrymen were no longer loyal to her. All of her bridges had collapsed and her boats had burnt. Azula never thought it would be daunting to find herself with no one in the world she could rely on. Not even Ty Lee and Mai were there to help her come up with a clever escape plan. That was fine by her, she didn't need them. The instant she had decided to lock them up instead of killing them was a moment of weakness that would not happen ever again. Treachery would not be permitted in her empire.
Azula imagined every possible outcome of the battle during Sozin's Comet. She tried to envision what could be going on during her absence but could never decide which option seemed most likely. Either her father had locked her away to prevent her from getting in his way and was now shaking his head at the embarrassment she caused him, or Zuko had put her here, cried a little bit, left her under the supervision of the supposedly humane sages, forgotten about her, and was now enjoying life as Fire Lord being fanned and fed peeled grapes by beautiful virgins on his golden throne. The image made Azula throw her fist into the wall once again. It was like her entire life had been a race to nowhere.
She quickly found out that the fire sages were not humane at all.
After a month or so had passed, eventually they began to mess up as she knew they would. Every so often the superior sage would call to see her, exchange pleasantries, make sure she had not gone insane in isolation, and have her escorted back. This gave Azula time to observe, and to plan.
She took a metal bar from the mess in the sage's study when he was not paying attention. She resisted smacking the unctuous bastard upside the head with it and smuggled it back to her cell. She later pried the stone door open and ran to the hall where she often saw light from stained glass even though it was the dead of night. She was beginning to feel the fire of freedom once again. There was a door there, but it was locked. She broke the glass and tried to break its hinges, but the sages and their guards were alerted by the noise and her escape failed miserably.
"Your crimes cannot go unpunished Princess." The superior sage told her gravely.
They held her down and sheared her long dark hair with a jagged knife; they cut her eyelashes off with rusty scissors. There was blood in her eyes as she knelt chained to the floor.
"Perhaps your shame and the shame you have brought upon your nation will be clearer to you now. I hope you will remember it constantly and remember why you are kept here."
She tried to wipe some of the blood away with her forearms because her wrists and hands were securely attached together. "I thought you sages believed in the dignity of all people." She spat.
"You still do have dignity Princess." He sighed. "Just not as much as you did before you came here."
"But it wasn't my choice to come here in the first place!"
"You have disappointed your family, and your people. We have shown you mercy, yet you are unappreciative. We have given you all the respect we can without losing our own honor." The old sage shook his head and closed the door of her cell.
The princess of the Fire Nation collapsed onto the filthy floor of her prison cell with her topknot cut off like a traitor. She bit into her shoulder, willing herself not to sob. The pain of every new injury made her nightmare a reality.
Months passed but Azula did not try to escape again. She was a sleeping dragon, silent but always fuming. Guards were now posted in the halls closest to her cell. The sages were her captors, but they continued to act like her saviors, like they were doing her a favor by incarcerating her.
Life was excruciatingly tedious. Madness seemed appealing and interesting in comparison. Her hair grew back quickly, but it would take a long time for it to return to its former glory.
She carved her name and all her titles into the solid rock and occupied herself by trying to run all the way up the wall, which kept her agile. She asked for a book occasionally and read with the meager light from the window grate and the cracks in the wooden ceiling.
Azula was meditating quietly on how she could recover from her situation when she heard yelling from the hallway. She tried to ignore it, but that eventually proved impossible. She rolled her eyes. "Do you mind?" She yelled, doubtful that they could actually hear her. The shouts seemed more distant, so she closed her eyes once more and took a deep breath.
This time an unexplainable sound disturbed her usual silence. She opened her eyes once more, but she couldn't quite place it. It was almost like whistling. Something was whistling like it was falling through the air…
Azula jumped up and pressed herself against the wall just as part of the ceiling caved in. Wooden planks and other debris crashed to the floor. Clouds of dust made it difficult to identify the projectile that had caused the damage. She squinted and approached it cautiously. Something inside the dust cloud began coughing and cursing. A small creature skidded to a halt at her feet. She stared down at it, dumbfounded, and it returned her gaze. She was not sure what bothered her more, the fact that she almost recognized the thing, or that it seemed to recognize her.
A figure popped out of the wreckage and Azula took a step backward.
"Damn firebenders on rooftops." He mumbled. He dusted himself off and looked around.
The dust settled, leaving nothing between the two of them. Azula was speechless in spite of herself.
To her horror, she found that she recognized the creature's companion as well.
The young water tribesman looked at her in wide-eyed disbelief. "Azula?"
A/N: Okay first chapter! Yay! Please give me feedback early so I don't fuck this up. I already have about 30,000 words written but I'm hesitant to post the rest until I have a better idea of how it's all going to come together.
It seems to be turning into a dark!fic that's like a study of Azula's relationships with pretty much everyone in the show, so believe me when I say everyone will be mentioned. (even if they don't show up for a while) Currently this is filed as a Drama fic (I seem to lean toward those) but it may turn into angst (of course, it will be Azula causing the angst, not feeling it...)
Mostly canon ships (Sokka and Azula will be bantering, but otherwise this is just a major ship tease, sorry! I like to be honest with my readers)
Moving on! Suggestions, corrections, love- clicky-clicky!
