The palace is quiet and her bare feet are quieter. Each tile is cold beneath her soles, and it takes five paces for her to cross just one. There are lots of tiles between her room and her destination. She can count well (she got to sixty-seven only last week), but not this well.
Like the tiles, the corridors are big too. They are also dark. Most of the torches have been extinguished for the night. She tries not to be scared, but she hasn't learnt to conjure her own fire yet, so if Koh the Face Stealer or Juk Juk the Ice Bringer were suddenly to emerge from the shadows… Well, Azula won't let herself think like that.
Nonetheless, she shivers and hugs her elbows. Her head is bowed so her hair falls like a shield before her face. Koh only attacks the faced, so if he can't see that she has one, he ought to leave her alone. And she's not too worried about bumping into walls or suits of armour; she's travelled this path on much darker nights.
Something loosens in her throat when, at last, she rounds the last corner and the light is there. That warm rectangle of gold thrown from an ever-open door over the tiles and up against the opposite wall.
Azula almost smiles.
She slows down now, already feeling a little warmer. She tries to quiet her breathing - the sniffling will give her away if she can't control it. She scrapes at her nose with a pink sleeve that's a little too long for her arm (extra tissue room) and claws the moisture from her cheeks. Then she tests her breathing - nice and slow, Azula, yes, fill your lungs until they feel like bursting and then slowly let it all out, but don't make a sound. Ah, excellent. She's really gotten good at this. And even though it's a secret skill, she feels it's one of her more important accomplishments. Even more important than beating Zuko to master the Fire-Wolfbat Form.
Zuko… Her brows crumple again, and her eyes start to sting NO she is a master of Not-crying. She let herself cry on the way here, and then she stopped. She can't start again now. That would be stupid, and it would only give her away.
One more deep breath (she's so proud of her silence - not even her snotty nose whistles a little) and then she takes the last tile - the last five steps - slowly, stopping at the border of light and dark.
She crosses her ankles and turns as she sits, leaning her back against the wall (slowly, in case the wood starts to creak), bringing her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around them. The darkness ends on her left, and she is just within the borders of it. Close enough to the light to feel safe, immersed enough in darkness to remain concealed.
She leans her cheek against the hard bones and takes her sixth watch in the past five nights. The suit of ancient firebender armour across from her holds a very shiny shield, and in it she can see the tiny warped reflection of her mother.
Princess Ursa doesn't do much at night. She mostly stays very still, hunched over her desk, waving blue-black ink over crisp parchments or sometimes just examining the funny masks she has hiding in a secret shelf in the wall above. Azula used to wonder why she didn't go to bed with Father until very much later, but she has come to be grateful that she doesn't. It isn't until a long time after midnight that Ursa will retire to the night, extinguish her candles and leave her study, walking down the corridor with downcast eyes (tired eyes, Azula thinks) to the royal Fire Prince and Princess' quarters. Azula tries to leave long before then (though it has come close a few times)
Some nights - Azula's favourite nights - Ursa will even hum a little to herself, or sing. Sometimes, if it is early in the night and she has only just finished saying goodnight to Zuko, it's that silly soldier-boy-coming-home song that plays in her throat. But other nights, a different tune gently rises from her lips. Azula doesn't know what song it is - she's never heard anyone else sing it around the palace before - not even Uncle Iroh (and Azula's pretty sure Uncle Iroh knows every song there is! Except maybe this one) - but she knows that it's a very sad song. Maybe it's silly for a song so sad to sound so beautiful, but Azula has wished more than once that she were brave enough to ask her mother to sing it to her as a lullaby.
At least she gets to hear it in these little hours of the night, sitting beside her mother's doorway.
Tonight, Ursa is silent. In the silver-caste shield, Azula watches her. The secret shelf is closed, and no mask is in her hands. Her ink pot is lidded and her calligraphy brushes are nowhere to be seen. Only one candle is lit tonight, the one on the nearest corner of her desk to the door. This dimmer lighting makes it hard to distinguish her movements and make out what she is doing, but the rustle of papers brings Azula think she is reading a book, or perhaps old letters from her usual correspondents (Uncle Iroh, Azula has always presumed).
A gust of wind runs through the corridor, streaking its icy fingers along Azula's cheeks as it howls. She chokes down a whimper and buries her head momentarily in her shivering arms.
{It's warmer in my study, sweetie.}
That little voice again. Azula frowns at herself, wishing getting rid of that voice was as easy as making herself silent in the night. Instead it only grows more persistent, and louder (and with its volume comes a warmth she especially needs to quash).
But tonight, it has a fair point. Maybe it wasn't that voice, Azula thinks, peering around the doorframe for just a second to see inside (too quick to really see though), maybe it was just her normal, logical thoughts. Yes, that was it. She is cold, after all, and it would be much warmer out of these huge dark hallways.
She stands - still quietly - and inches towards the door, already thinking about every reason why this is dumb.
This is Mother. She doesn't even like me. She likes Zuko. Not me. She wouldn't care about my night terrors. She'd smile when I tell her, maybe even laugh, tell me it's my own fault for being such a terror myself and send me back to bed to have some more. At the very least she'd yell at me for being out of bed, wandering the palace at so late an hour.
Wouldn't she?
She hovers in the doorway, in the very edges of the light now, heels on the cool tiles but toes against mild wood.
The room looks much warmer from a more direct angle, and Ursa looks much more beautiful. Azula has heard snippets of the royal guards talking about her mother. Some of the stuff they say she doesn't fully comprehend, but she gets the main idea - Ursa is a very beautiful lady. She thinks of Lo and Li gushing in earlier years (along with the bigger half of the kingdom in general) of how similarly Azula resembles the Crown Fire Princess. This is the second thing that warms Azula towards her mother somewhat (the first being these secret midnight visits).
She lets her intake of breath be a little noisy, hoping it might save her having to say anything (because, in a way she can't explain, verbally asking for help is weak) but it doesn't, so she lets her mouth open and begins to form the single syllable on her lips-
Am I really going to call her "Mum"?
It sounds so… Alien. So foreign to think of that sound coming from her lips to ask for acknowledgment from that woman.
She's Mother. Mother. Only Zuko gets away with calling her Mum. Mother likes Zuko. Mother likes Zuko, not Azula. Ozai likes Azula, not Zuko.
Azula shivers at the idea of waking Ozai with her intruding footsteps ("Silly, weak girl!" echoes again in her ears).
But now her throat aches for the simplicity of that single syllable. Three letters, so easy to hum from between trembling lips; a mouth that too open too wide could lead to sobs falling out. There's a pain in her chest at the ease that that little word should be, especially when she thinks of the ease with which Mai and Tai Lee have always used it (she doesn't think of Zuko saying it).
No, this is silly. What is she doing here?
She stares at her mother's back. Her mother is still unaware. Her mother will stay unaware.
I need to go.
Throat tight, she goes to rock onto her heels so she can pad away on the silent tiles again. But she puts too much weight into bouncing off her toes, and the whole world might as well collapse for all the noise it makes.
Ursa flies from her chair, whirling around to face her intruder, her spier, her … Daughter.
All her muscles seize up and she winces.
Stupidstupidstupidstupid.
Her mother's face is startled. "Azula?"
Oh, Spirits. Go!Go!Go!Go!GO!
She spins on her heel, and this time the floor stays quiet (traitor). Arms flapping like she wants her legs to, she means to sprint down the corridor, round the seven corners, over the more-than-sixty-seven tiles back to her room. Slam the door, the noise might scare her off-!
But she can't, she is stuck, restrained by the wrist, seized by panic and a large hand.
The servants complain she never stays still enough for them to dress her ("Like trying to wrestle all the limbs of a giant bumplesquid into a safety harness without getting stung!") but now she finds her self frozen, as though caught in waterbender's ice. Two pairs of amber eyes meet, one wide and round, the other softer now, and warm beneath their thick lashes.
Ursa crouches so she is eye-level with her daughter. "Azula, what are you doing out of bed?"
The tone is soft, but isn't that a trap? No-one admits anything wrong to an angry-sounding voice, parents know this.
"Do you need something?"
Azula stares at her mother.
"Are you hungry? Do you need a drink?"
The little girl's eyes shift wildly, as though hoping for a redeeming excuse to fly out of the dark and snatch her from the firm grasp of her mother.
"Were you looking for your father?"
Azula shakes her head so fast she almost feels guilty (almost). "I-I was thirsty and I got- I got lost an-and I-"
"Azula... Darling, have you been crying?"
Her eyes still on her mother's again and she almost chokes as those amber eyes search her, not for weakness like the cruel orange eyes of her father and the royal tutors, but for fear.
"Did you have a bad dream, honey?"
The strangled noise she manages seems answer enough for the Fire Princess.
"Come here, sweetheart." The most gentlest of coos leaves rose petal lips and Azula finds tender arms scooping her against the soft warm breast of her mother. There is a smell that washes over the little girl, like daisies and vanilla oils used to untangle hair, but also something more; a safe smell. A mummy smell that warms her baby and relaxes the muscles that hold scared faces firm.
The tears begin dribbling again, and Azula feels weeks' worth of a steely resolution melt away. Her fists knot in long tendrils of raven-coloured hair, and her other fingers find anchorage in the folds of crimson fabrics.
"Azula." A gentle hand nurses the back of her head, and an arm is big and strong enough to cradle her four-year-old body and rub comfort into her quaking back.
Azula's mouth feels thick with the feeling of crying and trying not to cry and trying not to say that word. That word that, in the heat of this moment, as her mother sits in the illuminated doorway against the sturdy wooden frame and whispers quiet hushings in her ear, is too too close to the surface of her lips to not be spilt. Her mouth falls open to gasp for a breath (her nose is stuck with crying mucuses) and it trips off her tongue in the wet kind of way that makes her throat tighten so she cries more, because it is such a relief to say it. "Mu-um!"
The sound of this word, broken between a ragged pant, pinches Ursa's heart, and she gathers her girl tighter into her. Long fingers sweep through fine hair to be all the closer to her baby.
"Mummy!" Azula practically gasps.
There is a growing patch of warm wet against her collar bone that seeps through her gown.
"Mum… Mummy… Mummy… Mum…"
It is a constant murmur against her, and it almost hurts.
"Azula, honey, Mummy's here," she pauses to avoid the crack that would otherwise have broken her voice. "Mummy's got you. Everything's okay."
Her daughter trembles violently against her, and Ursa hates herself. She hates that she was weak and submitted her will to the Fire Lord's. She hates that she had children to the man she knew would never amount to a good father. She hates herself for favouring Zuko, even if it started off accidentally, fairly. It had seemed fair - Azula had Ozai and Zuko was bullied by them both. But how was that fair? How was any of it fair? From her earliest years, her children had instabilities that scared her, and Azula's had manifested into the kind of violence her father praised and encouraged and smiled at and, even once, paid an "I love you so much, my little girl," to. She hates that she is too weak to take them away from here. She hates that she brought them into this family. She hates that she hates them being here (because if they weren't here, they wouldn't be here). She hates that she ignored Iroh's concern in those early stages. She hates that she thought she could ever forsake them as simply Ozai's kin, Ozai's awful family, Ozai's problems. She hates that her baby is here crying in her arms and that the name "Mummy" sounded so desperately new on her tiny voice. She hates that she can't love her enough. She hates that she doesn't deserve a daughter. Not a bad one. Not this beautiful one. Not any daughter. Not at all.
"Shhh, honey, shhh, it's okay." Is it Ursa? Is it? No. Not when her throat is this tight too. Not for Azula. "I've got you…"
Her baby looks up at her, face a raw, blotchy mess. Red-rimmed eyes look up at her with all the terrified innocence contained in the world and pleadingly, a timid voice that she has never before heard begs her, "Can you please sing the song about being in your heart?"
She knows immediately the song she means - the one she sings to herself late some nights, thinking of her home and her own mother cradling her. She doesn't think about how Azula knows of it (she starts to, but Spirits above and below and around, it hurt, so she stopped {weak}). She finds a shaky breath slipping between her lips before she's really had time to make up her mind, and the words start on a soft melody. She doesn't realise that, on matters like these, her mind was made up since she first felt Zuko stirring within her.
"Come stop your crying
It will be alright
Just take my hand
Hold it tight." She takes the hand from Azula's hair, and holds it out to her, an offer.
Small pale fingers wrap around the larger palm. They are sticky with tears, but it doesn't matter.
"I will protect you
From all around you
I will be here
Don't you cry." She has to take an extra deep breath before she sings the next lines, and is silently grateful that she has had the opportunity to develop this quiet skill in between heated arguments with Ozai.
"For one so small,
You seem so strong-" it goes all squeaky, but only for a moment.
"My arms will hold you
Keep you safe and warm
This bond between us
Can't be broken
I will be here
Don't you cry
'Cause you'll be in my heart
Yes, you'll be in my heart
From this day on
Now and forever more
You'll be in my heart
No matter what they say
You'll be here in my heart, always."
The sobbing has quietened to sniffling. Ursa soft fingers wipe tear tracks from the small pink cheeks beneath golden eyes that watch her with a heart-breaking reverence. She sings to her daughter, and for all she's worth, damn it Ursa, she will keep these tears from surfacing in front of her daughter.
"… I know we're different but deep inside us
We're not that different at all
And you'll be in my heart
Yes, you'll be in my heart
From this day on
Now and forever more."
Azula feels so small here, her ear against this deeply-vibrating chest, a solid heartbeat and a beautiful melody reverberating directly into her skull. And, here, small is the most wonderful feeling in the whole world.
"… When destiny calls you
You must be strong
I may not be with you
But you've got to hold on
You'll see in time...
I know…"
There is a warm feeling that settles deep inside her own small chest, that Zuko has "his song", about the brave soldier boy coming home, and "Azula's song"… Azula's song is this.
"...Believe me, you'll be in my heart
I'll be there from this day on,
Now and forever more
...No matter what they say
I'll be with you
You'll be here in my heart
I'll be there always
I'll be with you
I'll be there for you always
Just look over your shoulder...
I'll be there always."
Azula's heart beats so painfully in the silence that follows that she croaks, "I love you, Mummy."
Arms tighten around her. "I love you too, Azula. More than you will ever know." Her mother's voice is a whisper in her hair, a warm breeze over her cheek and ear, and it smells so sweet that the little girl smiles.
It is these quiet moments in the night that time allows to pass slowly. So slowly, that Ursa is almost surprised to hear her daughter's voice again, rather than the even breaths of sleep.
"In my dream," Azula's hands are tightly wound in her mother's clothes. She can't look up to meet her gaze, but Ursa never looks away. "Daddy was firebending Zuko." Her little voice is so quiet, and her eyelids look to be growing heavier by the minute. "And I keeped telling him, "no, Daddy, stop, you're hurting him!" but he just didn't listen and he just keeped on firebending him until he was all gone."
Her mother's hands still on her body, maybe to help her listen, thinks Azula.
The girl thinks for a moment, and breathes deeply (she lets it be loud this time, though). "I know I don't be nice to Zuko lots of the time, but that's only 'cause…" because you give him lots of nice, Mummy. But you only give me mean. "Just 'cause. But that doesn't mean I don't love him, Mummy, I promise. Zuko's my brother, and I don't want him to ever be hurted. Especially not from Daddy."
There is a quiet as Ursa listen to the sounds of her daughter's fingers rubbing through the fabric of her robes. Sounds that should be quiet, but aren't at so late an hour. She doesn't know what to say. Doesn't know what to think. But she is a mother, and that is her job. So she resumes the soft circles of her hands against Azula's back, and she says to her daughter, "Zuko is safe, sweetie. Your daddy wouldn't hurt him."
"I know," the little girl says, but her lips still pull back into a smile at her mother's words.
Ursa bites her lip (in an attempt to convince herself [or stop the guilt of lying]).
And she holds her baby girl to her chest, thinking about how she was only so high when she sneezed and singed her brother's eyebrows (for the first time) and the few times she spent brushing her hair into elegant topknots for playdates with the governor's daughter and the pride that swelled within her bosom when the midwife told her that her new daughter was a miniature of Ursa (that anything so perfectly new could be at all related to her…).
Azula stifles a yawn and Ursa smiles gently down at her.
"I should go to bed." She goes to stand, but Ursa holds her close.
"It's okay, little one. I'll carry you." She goes to stand, but something catches her eye. "Azula, is this yours?" She pulls a shimmering pink blanket out from behind the firelily pot that guards a foot from her study doorway.
Azula's eyes light up even behind heavy lids. "My blanket!" Little hands grab, and a mother willingly provides.
"Didn't you lose this last week?"
Azula nods, clutching her blanket close.
Ursa stands up. "But… How did it get all the way out here…?"
Azula doesn't answer, maybe because she is already so far asleep.
Ursa hates the answer she comes up with for her own question. The tiles are big and cold and these winding corridors are big and dark and no place for a little girl. She wishes her daughter was awake enough that she could ask her for the truth. (But she knows both answers are the same.)
She carries her daughter through the hallways, past Zuko's room (she hears his little snores through the cracked door and grins, thinking fondly of his father-not-Ozai). The door for Azula's room is open. Azula's room is too big for a girl who doesn't even go to school yet, and her bed is so empty. Nonetheless, Ursa tucks her between the pink covers, lays the pink blanket over the top and pulls it up beneath her chin (because she remembers from her own childhood that this is the safest).
This little girl, with smooth pale skin, long dark lashes, closed eyes and a faint soft smile, is Ursa's. She is innocent and wronged and, Spirits, she loves this little girl, despite the greed that sharpens her smile too acutely and the manipulation that arches her brows too high and the fear and pain that dulls her eyes.
"I love you, Mummy," Azula croaks without opening her eyes.
She brushes a few strands of hair that have tangled between her wet eyelashes, and leans down to press a gentle kiss to her forehead.
"I love you too, Azula."
In another world, Ursa could have been this little girl born to a father who coerced all but perfect power and a mother who corrupted herself trying to incorrupt others. Azula is not the perfect girl that other mothers see in their four-year-olds, nowhere near it; and this is very much Ursa's fault, and Ozai's fault, and Ursa's fault even more for letting Ozai do this. But Azula is beautiful, bold, brave and strong (so so strong)...
"Sweet dreams, my darling." Ursa straightens and walks away.
"You too, Mummy," slips through the door just before she closes it.
And, deep down, Ursa realises as she walks back down the corridors, rubbing stubbornly at dry cheeks, her daughter loves.
Princess Ursa finds herself back at her desk again. Beads of moisture roll from cheek to desk and the papers thereon. She lifts this topmost paper, her bottom lip trembling as she looks at this picture, one of the finest of Jung-Li's works. A handsome man throws his son over his head, spinning him around it seems from the splaying of their dark heads of hair. A smiling wife looks on, sitting on the white sand of a happy beach, a young girl who looks just like her, only perhaps several times more beautiful (with several times more potential) in her arms smiles too.
She knows at the time of the painting, she was even then fearing for her little Zuko in his father's semi-untrusted arms.
But if she could be an outsider, looking in…
In another world, this is the archetypal image of a perfect family. The father is brave, the mother nurturing, the brother certain, the sister tender.
In another world… That is them. Ozai is brave, Ursa is nurturing, Zuko is certain, Azula is tender.
In this world, Ursa cries.
A/N: So... Here is a piece that came to me late one night when sick was keeping me awake. I'm not at all happy with how this wraps up (can you say "complete and utter rubbish"?) but the rest of it I'm semi-okay with... I think...
But, yeah, I take ZERO CREDIT for this beautiful (and absolutely heartwrenching) song In My Heart (it's from the Disney Tarzan movie) by Phil Collins. And while I'm at it, might as well state the obvious, that these beautimous characters and the wonderous world in which they live don't belong to me (gosh diddly darn it) but rather the wonderful (life-ruining) duo we call Bryke.
So, yeah, this will definitely see some revision in the near future (I'm so sorry about the ending/last half of this, like seriously sorry) but I hope you enjoy the rest of it and let me know what you think of it? :)
Credit for the absolutely stunning cover image goes to Nuri at !