New story! Yay! My first sequel! Double yay! You're actually reading this! More yay!

Okay, this first chapter is kind of weird, and it's just Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee… so you'll have to bear with me until I put the next chapter up. Enjoy!

I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Shaping the World

---Chapter One: No One Mourns the Wicked---

--Two Years after Sense and Sensibility--

"The world is meant to suit us, Azula. If for some reason it does not, we change the shape and make it suit us."

Those words, spoken almost absently by a father to his daughter, his pride, his prodigy, had been carved into Azula's soul since she was seven years old. Assuming she had a soul, of course; even now, thirteen years later, that remained questionable.

Azula understood that whatever her father felt for her had not really been love, and she felt it was best not to care. He was dead now. If he were alive, she would be dead, that much was clear. She had failed to either capture or kill the Avatar. Her own brother, whom their father had considered worth just less than an insect, had kept her imprisoned for more than four years before allowing- he said that the Council the nations had formed to judge the war criminals had taken all that time, but she didn't care about anything he said- his blind followers to attempt to publicly execute her.

She escaped.

She found Mai, who had maybe once upon a time been her friend and for much longer been her willing minion, and they retrieved Ty Lee, who was less willing, from the circus. For two years the three of them had hidden from the Fire Nation soldiers, searching for them by Fire Lord Zuko's command. Soon Ty Lee would no longer be with them.

Azula had always been the prodigy; she was supposed to be smarter and stronger than her brother. Time had apparently not shown that, and long years in a jail cell had ruined the once perfect order of her mind.

She had regrets, now. Not that any of them involved her actions during the war. No, these regrets were far more recent, with effects reaching farther than Azula would have liked them to.

Azula didn't know the man's name. He had had a pretty face and an honest, open smile, both of which she despised. She was no longer pretty, thanks to her brother, and she had never been honest or open. His hair was long, though. She supposed she liked that. He was, by his looks, not much older than her. She was half-drunk, he was nearly sloshed. How else could he have been interested in a woman with a scarred face and only one arm? She was feeling lusty, and he somehow managed to satisfy her. She'd slipped out of his bed before dawn without waking him up, cursing herself for making such a foolish mistake. The old Azula had never made mistakes, and that the new one could was not a happy discovery.

She cursed him two months later when a medicine woman in a small, unnamed town confirmed her unpleasant suspicions.

She cursed him every day as her stomach swelled and the child grew.

She cursed him again when she, Mai, and Ty Lee were forced to stop in another village and stay there because she was too near her time to travel anymore.

She cursed him with every breath when she was in labor. She was used to pain; she had once reveled in it, but this had been different. This resulted in the presence of a small, slimy, screaming thing that Ty Lee held near her face and asked if she wanted to see. Azula pushed it away. Ty Lee was the one that helped the midwives clean up the baby; she was the one who named him. It was a him; Azula had to remind herself, a boy. Ty Lee called him Bane, as something of a joke. The name stuck, though. It was the only thing Azula found appropriate about the child. He was the bane of her existence.

Once upon a time Azula might have seen the potential in having a son, an heir. But that was then, and things were different now. Ty Lee wanted to take care of him, and Azula didn't. The solution was simple.

Ty Lee was leaving, and she was taking the baby with her.

Azula was glad, in whatever way she could even feel glad anymore. She didn't want the baby; she'd never wanted it. Every time she happened to glance at him she was reminded that she should be the ruler of the world, and he should be her heir. Of course, had the world gone the way it should have, Azula's son would be born legitimately. Assuming she'd married and had children. Ty Lee had become annoying anyway.

That left Azula with nothing but Mai and her thoughts. Mai was quiet. Her mind was not.

Azula did not like this new world order that had formed during her imprisonment. She did not like it because there was no place in it for her.

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Mai watched as Ty Lee gathered the few things she claimed as hers, and the even fewer things belonging to the baby. It wasn't very interesting, but it was better than watching Azula when the former princess was lost in her thoughts. If disturbed while she was thinking, Azula had a new tendency to continue with her thoughts out loud rather than come out of them. Her once sharp mind, while not dull by any means, was warped and disjointed. Trying to make sense of her logic was not fun.

Ty Lee picked up Bane. He was seven months old already, and starting to get heavy. But she took the responsibility gladly. She'd always imagined that one day she would get married and have children, but Azula had made that appear more and more unlikely. This was the closest thing she would allow Ty Lee to have, so she was taking it. "I think that's everything," she said finally. She turned to look at Mai. "You're sure you want to stay with her?"

Mai smirked slightly. "She'd be worse if she was alone."

"Yeah." Bane squealed softly, and Ty Lee shifted him. She looked into his big green-gold eyes, and Bane squealed again, treating his caretaker with a large smile. The baby didn't really look like Azula, and he certainly didn't act like her. At least, Ty Lee didn't think so. She had no way of knowing what Azula was like when she was a baby. She turned back to Mai. "I guess this is goodbye, then. It was fun, at first."

"When did it stop being fun?" Mai surprised herself with the question, since she rarely felt curious at all, much less gave into curiosity.

Ty Lee didn't have to think very long. "On the Day of the Black Sun. The day we lost." She smiled. "Does that make me bad? That I only stopped enjoying what we did when we stopped winning?"

Mai's smirk widened just a bit. "We were always the 'bad guys', Ty Lee."

"We didn't have to be," the acrobat said, biting her lip.

"Aren't you gone yet?" Azula asked impatiently. She hadn't moved from her spot next to the fire-pit, where last night's embers had already gone out.

Ty Lee put on a smile. "I'm leaving now, Azula." She waved Bane's little hand at the former princess. "Say goodbye to mommy, Bane!"

Azula made a sound of disgust and turned away. Bane laughed, and Ty Lee smiled a little more. She turned back to Mai. "Come see me if you're ever in Gaoling, okay?"

Mai nodded. Both of them knew it was unlikely that they would ever see each other again. That Ty Lee would never see Azula again was almost guaranteed. She wasn't sure exactly how she should feel about that.

Ty Lee settled Bane in his baby-sling, picked up her things, and set off for the nearest town.

Mai watched her go for a moment before returning to Azula. "What do you want to do now?"

Azula's right hand touched the faint scars the attempted execution had left on her cheek. "I want the world, Mai. I want things to be the way they should have been six years ago." She stood up. "I want Zuko and his little wife dead."

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Ty Lee rubbed her shoulder where the baby-sling had hung all day. She was lucky to get a room in Gaoling's smallest inn, especially since it was near the time of the underground earthbending tournament. It wasn't an official event, but everyone knew about it, and that was all the locals could talk about. She suddenly realized that Bane had crawled in front of the fireplace and was reaching for the flames.

"Bane, no!" she cried.

The baby turned to look at her. His hand was already in the fire, and he wasn't reacting. Ty Lee jumped up and grabbed him. He let out a small cry of surprise at being lifted into the air so suddenly. Ty Lee examined his hand. There was no burn. She frowned. That wasn't possible. Even most firebenders couldn't put their hand in a flame they hadn't produced without being burned even a little.

But then, Bane's mother had been far from the average firebender.

The fact that Bane might take after his mother after all, even just in this small way, scared her.

"That's bad, Bane," she told the baby softly. "Fire is a very, very bad thing to touch."

He just looked up at her and smiled.

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"It is strange," Azula said later that night, "how people create the things they call evil. Two years ago I was nothing." Her voice took on an edge of bitterness. "The outcome of the war left me with nothing, and the imprisonment that followed turned me into the scarred creature I have become. It was when I escaped that the rumors flew, and the people began to fear me again. Even the mere mention of my name has many of them trembling in terror. It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world follows suit."

Mai had heard many variations on this rant before. "We should leave," she said, "before we're seen."

Azula nodded. "Of course. It wouldn't do to be caught before we've managed anything, would it?"

Ty Lee had headed south from the campsite. Azula decided that she and Mai would go north, to Ba Sing Se. It was, after all, the site of her greatest triumph. Her downfall had not come until later, after she returned to the Fire Nation. But she didn't like to think about that. She had other business for her mind to attend to, business much more important than silly, still-painful memories.

"The world is meant to suit us, Azula. If for some reason it does not, we change the shape and make it suit us."

---End Chapter One---

A note: Bane (pronounced bah-neh) is Japanese for "spring", as in a metal spring. Haru (who may or may not be Bane's father; I'm not going to say) is Japanese for "spring", as in the season. That's my little joke. Ty Lee does pronounce the name "bayn", so she is playing on the fact that Azula doesn't want the baby. The Hebrew word for "son" is also pronounced that way, though I chose Bane's name before I found that out. What can I say, I like word-play.

Yes, I know the idea of Azula having a kid is about as insane as her being drunk and having sex. But it's been a part of this story too long for me to take it out, and I don't want to anyway. I'm sorry if you don't like it. Hopefully you like the story so far anyway! Thanks for reading, and please review!