Author's Note: It never ceases to amaze me the constant interest people have in my old fic, 'Beautiful Dawn.' I get a least one favorite on it a week, it seems like. Going back and rereading it now, I feel like there is so much potential to it. My style is so much better today, and the story, I believe, needs to be retold in a different tone. I think I'll keep the old one up for sentimentality, though, so don't worry about it going away!

This rewritten version will omit all song lyrics, as well as my outward, italicized thoughts from Azula's mind. I feel the lyrics, though wonderful, distract from the professionalism, and the unity of the story. Only having some chapters be crowned by lyrics and others not bothers me a lot now. And as for the emotional whiplash of Azula's thoughts, they just don't mirror in with my modern, polished writing style. I mean, I can place in thoughts now and then, but not after every little sentence! It seems, what's the word… overdone, I guess now. Also, so, so, so many of the conversations will be altered. My conversational tenors in my work back then were extremely forced, and reading them again and again, I find that they are OOC –very OOC. In other words, this whole story is going to be tilt on an entirely new axis!

I hope I can make the same impact now as I did back in 2009! Please, fans new and old: review, favorite, subscribe, or whatever! The support I had back in the day will definitely keep me going today!

Updates/review replies/PMs may come slow because of very severe left/right carpal tunnel syndrome and equally severe left/right De Quervain's tendinitis. These syndromes have ravaged my hands, leaving me forever numb and forever without the fine motor skills I once took for granted. Typing is utter hell for me, as is picking up a pencil and scribbling notes. So, please be patient with me! I'll try my best!

Beautiful Dawn: Revisited

By: Passionworks

Prologue

The dispossessed princess, Azula's amber eyes squeezed shut as the shrill sound of clanking metal hit her eardrums. Pipes which encircled the ceiling of her Boiling Rock prison cell were clogged and rusted, and screamed as begrimed water made its attempt to pass through them.

She detested the noise, much like she detested the irritating sound of droplets leaking from the hairline chinks in her black, charred walls. The paint inside her institutional cell was, at one point before her stay, a toned gray, but much of it had chipped and burned to ashen black after her tormented spells of cerulean insanity.

Insane. That was what Princess Azula was now. Crippled by the instability of her devastated mind. She was a woman clothed in meager, blood-patched rags torn at the seam lines; she was a woman with poor hair, still somehow split and jagged from the scissor blades that sliced through it when she had once made the attempt to care for herself.

As the reverberations distressed her, Azula remembered vividly that fateful evening, when the sky had faded from blue to red and Sozin's Comet erected from the horizon line. She had banished her people, from the poorest servant girl to the highest Imperial Guardsman, fearing from them their rebellion and retribution. The prospect of choking, the certainty of an assassination, the lack of confidence in her ability to lead a nation…

The cold blow of air fluttered from one of the pipes above her, and speckles of dust spilled from its mouth and dotted the crackled stone floor. She shivered, and speculated just how warm it was outside this unornamented dungeon. She longed for the sun to touch and tan her pastel skin, to heat her heart. But no stone or brick could let in the rays of Agni, no matter what the legends had taught her in her youth.

This misery she felt was, in part, the waterbender's fault. The waterbender stole away her freedom and rights to the crown with just a single motion. The waterbender froze her inside a capsule of ice, like a fetus inside a womb, and chained her to the drain gratings below the coronation temple. The waterbender healed her surely doomed brother and brought him to his feet. The waterbender made Zuko's succession to the throne possible.

How many years had it been now since the comet, she wondered as yet another stream of frigid air filtered her cell. How many years had it been since she had seen the callous sapphire eyes of the waterbender? She did not know. She had stopped counting the passing days within the first month of her stay, finding it a pointless endeavor.

A click from her cell door disrupted Azula's queries. She assumed it was the ruthless warden awarding her an extra tray of dry rice, a crust of bread, and the rare cup of tepid tea, but it had only been hours, she guessed, since her dinnertime meal (that she did not eat, of course, fearing poison). Perhaps he came to taunt her with jives of peace again, came to spit on her face and label her the failure he and the rest of the world saw her as.

But when the door creaked to the side, Azula realized the form was not that of the warden's. The figure, cast against the lighting from the outside, was thin, but still of a masculine build, draped in a silken ruby robe. He stepped forward and drew himself away from the beam behind him.

"Azula," he said, his features becoming clear to the princess. "It's me. Zuko."

Azula's eyes automatically darted to the finely-dressed Firelord's singed left eye, which was nothing more than a glazed slit. His brow was low and his lips were set in a frown which, to the princess, read frustration.

"It's been three years to the day since your sentence," he reported abruptly, his expression bleeding from disappointment to awe at the time. "You're seventeen now."

Azula rolled her own eyes, which were drawn and bloodshot, and scowled at his admission. Musing on it to herself, she was surprised to know she was above the marrying age, an adult by her nation's standards, but, yet unable to determine her own destiny. She was bound to the path drawn by her crimes and the lifelong sentence attached to them.

Zuko continued, his voice brightening, "So much has happened to the world in the three years you've been imprisoned. Water and earthbenders have rebuilt the forests our war burned down, Ba Sing Se's wall has been restructured and their utopian society has crumbled, and Father's long and enduring trial just finished not a month ago. Hope is alive in all the people. Children are being born into a world without war for the first time in a century."

The princess scoffed, her brother's elation barely grazing her. She twisted a finger through a loose tress of her frazzled raven hair, letting it then fall to her bosom. Shifting her position against the furthermost wall in the cage, she waited for Zuko to carry on, as she sensed that he had more to say.

"You're not going to say anything?" he asked, prodding her emotions. "Spirits, Azula, what happened to your fire in life?"

Azula responded with a weary sigh, a weak sickness in her chest rattling her voice.

Zuko inquired, "What's become of you? Where's that fighting spark in you that battled it out for the crown just three years ago? Where's the sister I knew and loved once?"

She said not one word to this, though she felt at her breast a twinge of regret for losing her vigorous side. She still held bitterness, resentment, hatred, but most of her spirited emotions were bottled up inside. Her will and determination had faded away, and morphed into melancholy and grief. And pity too, for herself and her father, whose own goals for her were far from being fulfilled.

"I need a suitor… an heir to the throne," he had said once. "That's all I ask of you…"

"I know you're still upset over your defeat during Sozin's Comet," Zuko said, distracting Azula from Ozai's prophecy, "and I know it'll be difficult to gain your forgiveness, but I have a feeling you'll come around."

Both siblings looked up; the jiggling pipes above bellowed and groaned as a rat skittered along their tops. It sniffed at the rust before jumping into one of the sizable holes in the scorched wall.

Zuko peered down. "And I have good news for you," he informed. He turned to the door and gestured briefly. Azula, curious, arched her neck and examined what little she could see of the hallway. A second figure, a female, entered, dressed in a grayed cloak with a hood. Her footsteps were cautious and deliberate as she took her place next to Zuko. Even with her hood covering her skull, she was significantly shorter than the Firelord, and more so when she pulled it from her head and unveiled her face.

Ursa's warm but aged expression was softened by the light of the corridor behind her. She smiled sincerely as Azula flinched, and extended an affable hand toward the cell's bars.

"Azula," she whispered tenderly, "it's been so long."

In an almost animalistic gesture, Azula bared her teeth at the sight of her mother, whom she repulsed. Her hatred ultimately originated from the woman's obvious acts of favoritism towards Zuko in their young childhood. She detested seeing her again, so much so that her presence summoned horrid memories of solitude and animosity.

"You're broken," Ursa calmly said as she crouched down to Azula's level and dropped her hand, "that much I can see. I hate seeing you this way."

Zuko interrupted, "I finally got word out from Father as to where he had banished her. Turns out she was exiled to the Earth Kingdom and lived in the lower slums of Ba Sing Se as a refugee, just as Uncle and I did before the Jasmine Dragon opened."

Ursa said, "I lived out my days there longing to return to the Fire Nation, just to tell you how much I loved you. And I still love you, Azula. I hope you know that."

Azula uttered a low growl, suddenly recalling what explicitly brought her to this institution. Dragged to the psychiatric wing of the Boiling Rock, the doctors unveiled that she suffered from schizophrenic hallucinations, terribly realistic visions that seemed almost like daydreams. The apparition whom she feared most was that of her falsely doting mother, wishing desperately to reconcile and make peace.

This was what she was seeing before her now, not her brother and mother in the flesh, but mere phantoms of them.

She felt the harsh sensation of deception tingling down her spine. She rose, screaming, and shot a blue, fire-riddled palm forward. From her lips came hotter flame as Ursa and Zuko scurried out of the cell, and closed the groaning door behind them. Seeing that they were no longer with her, Azula ceased fire. Still frightfully upset from the encounter, she sniffled as she listened to their descending footfalls down the outer corridor.

Another shrill moan left the ceiling pipes. Azula sighed in despair as a single tear streamed down her white cheek. Again, she was in isolation. She had no inkling as to whether or not her mother truly was back. All her life, she had assumed the woman had died, and her death went unnoted by her family in her absence. But, perhaps she was wrong. If real and existent, Azula doubted Ursa would visit again, in fear of her own safety. If not that, it was her true lack of care for her daughter that would keep her from coming.

The former princess contemplated then if her aura of silence was over, if she was again to become her mindless self. The thought alone was enough to bring her down on quivering knees. Olden memories flashed before her mind, those of force feedings, pinpricks and injections flooding her veins, the flurry of white coats dressing her in a straightjacket.

Azula buried her head in her arms and choked back a fitful cry. Her mother had returned to devastate her once more with taunting lies of love and forgiveness. She was not foolish enough to take Ursa at her word, yet, with all her aching heart, she desired to one day hear her mother reveal how much she truly cared. She desired even more to hear herself not doubt her at all. But, like the rusted pipelines along the prison's ceiling, Ursa's voice aggravated her. Whatever came from her lips only caused her pain and misery and a lifelong sentence of lonesomeness.

Azula's heavy heart sank. No longer able to hold her turbulent emotions back, she began to weep, the flowing tears hitting her plain clothes like bullets. In a tired fury, she rested herself on her side, and pressed her front against the farthest wall. She prayed to the spirits as she cried for just a moment of sleep, and hoped in vain that they would answer.

Spirits don't heed the words of monsters, she assumed then, as she curled into a fetal position, and waited for the rapture of morning.