you give me the anger, you give me the nerve; carry out my sentence — oh, I get what I deserve.
.
—the sparrowkeet's cage
.
He visits her once a month, regardless of what's going on elsewhere in the world or where he is at the time. He makes it a point, a sharp and bold point, to visit her regularly because — as he's explained over and over and over again — she needs to believe that someone cares enough about her to take the time to check up on her, even if that someone is him.
She hates it, how she hates it. Sometimes, she simply refuses to acknowledge him, other times she gets violently angry and throws things, but occasionally — just occasionally — he gets there when she's in a more serene mood and occasionally, she'll talk to him.
Mostly, her words are still tinted with the rage that's always fueled her; often, it's directed at her mother or Zuko or Iroh — never, Aang can't fail to notice, her father.
It isn't until almost fifteen years have passed since her fall from grace that Aang finds out why.
"He cared," she says hollowly, looking out the window. "He was the only one who did."
"That isn't true," Aang tells her fervently, and wishes it wasn't a lie. "You have other people who care."
She laughs at him, cynical and unamused. "Of course I do," she replies, turning to him, and for a moment, she looks just as in-control and deadly as she did at age fourteen, "but only now that I'm safe."
"It isn't... that," he muses hesitantly. "It's that... you care about people more now, and so they care in return."
"Really?" she asks, without a question. "People care now. That's why I'm still locked up here."
It's half sarcasm, half apathy. He wants to fix her, to tell her that she's free to leave this place and live her own life, but she's been here for over half of her life now, and besides... a free Azula is a wild card, and his deck is already full of wild cards; there's no place to fit another.
That's the bitter truth: he's here mostly to ensure that she stays here, and it makes him sick inside. She should be free, everyone should be free.
But he's not the naive child he was when he started this war, and he has to make the hard decisions: who is allowed to be free, and who must, for the good of the many, stay chained. He doesn't know if she deserves that kind of reservation anymore, but there are too many lives at stake for him to have faith in her now.
It's safer for everyone if she stays here, even if she's dying the slowest and most painful death imaginable. It's a small thing, but he at least wants to ensure that she isn't forced to do so alone.
"Your father didn't care about you, Azula," he says quietly, changing the subject because he can't make it better. "He was using you, you were just a tool to him."
"Better a tool being used than a lump of worthless refuse," she replies like a recitation, turning away from him and back to the window. "He cared," she explains simply. "A warrior must care for his weapons, an artisan must care for his supplies."
"That isn't caring," Aang says fervently, passionately. "Not how a father should care for his daughter."
She doesn't reply. For a few minutes, he watches her watching the window with blank and distant eyes. "What if... what if we left for a day?" he asks, swallowing his concerns and trying to compromise, trying to trust, trying to show her that he — if no one else — he cares. "You and me, and maybe Katara and the little ones, or — " he's about to say Mai and Zuko, but thinks the better of it at the last minute; Azula has strong emotions about Mai and Zuko — "Or just us, a day around the city, let you get out of this place for a while."
She laughs at him then, first with a low, breathy chuckling and rolling upwards into full-on hysteria, startling him out of his seat. "Only you," she laughs and laughs and laughs and for a moment, he's convinced that it's affection in her voice, but then it turns sharply down into something hard-edged. "Only you would think that a gift."
He leaves then, disturbed.
The next day — another break in the routine — he returns to her with a young red-and-gold sparrowkeet in a delicate gold cage. It's a gesture of goodwill and faith, and he prays silently every step of the way that he isn't condemning the poor bird to a terrible fate; he loves sparrowkeets, and he thinks that maybe she will too, if she just — if she'll just give it a chance.
It's been a long time since Azula has given anything, or anyone, a chance to prove its worth. It isn't surprising — she was taught every single day of her childhood that people were beneath her and unworthy of her time, which is how she acted and which is how everyone remembers her. No one gives Azula any chances anymore, and so Azula doesn't either.
He's trying. He's trying so hard it's causing him physical pain. And if she can take care of a pet and treat it well and — and find it in herself to care about a sparrowkeet, then maybe it will mean that she doesn't have to stay locked up here for the rest of her life. Maybe she isn't still a wild card, he thinks. Maybe she can be let out for good.
Maybe. Hopefully.
When he walks into her room (prison cell) with the bird, she recoils immediately and looks at the bird like it's covered in poison, sinking Aang's heart like a stone (again).
"What is that?" she cries venomously.
"It's a sparrowkeet," he replies, biting back a sarcastic snap to match her; he learned a long time ago that retaliation only makes Azula's acid sting worse. "I thought it might be... nice, for you to have a pet here. I know - I've been told about your... bad luck with pets," he adds delicately, and the twist to her lips makes his heart clench harder, "but that was a long time ago, and, well, they're pretty," he says finally, lamely, disappointedly. "And they sing pretty songs. I thought he might brighten up your room some."
"How nice," she says, and then, "Thank you," in a tone that sounds anything but thankful.
He feels like a fool, standing there in Azula's room at the mental ward with a birdcage in his hands, trying to fix someone who can't be fixed and doesn't even want to try, trying to find someone who is determined to be lost, trying to set right a person who was never right to begin with.
Without speaking, he sets the birdcage on her desk, where the little sparrowkeet begins chirping cheerfully. He pokes a finger through the cage and smiles as it hops around, inspecting it for a moment before flying off to one of the higher perches to sing. When he glances back to Azula, she's staring at it with a strange blankness in her eyes that almost makes him grab the cage and run away — but this is a gesture of faith, and it matters that he trust her with this. This is meant to show her that someone believes in her, believes that she's a better person now than before.
"Well," he starts uncertainly, "I'll go on, now. I just wanted to — to give you that."
She doesn't say anything to him as he leaves.
The next time he goes by to see her, the cage is empty.
Just like that, his last reserve of faith in her sputters out into darkness. Neither of them mention it; in fact, she barely speaks at all, and he finally decides that it's time. He's held on this long, to the illusion that he could somehow, through sheer force of empathy, save Azula from the fate her father forced on her — it's time to let it go, he thinks, looking at the empty cage with a twisting gut — she's too far gone for his help.
"How long," he says quietly, closing the door behind him and leaning against it, head resting in one palm.
"Hm?" the nurse asks, tilting her head in a way that reminds him of the poor little sparrowkeet.
"How long did it take her to kill the bird?" he finally manages to say, voice low and hoarse with an emotion he hates to name.
"Oh, she didn't kill it," the nurse replies, and he looks up, startled. "Right after you left that last time, she just opened up the cage and let it fly out the window. Wouldn't let us take the cage, though. Said it belonged with her more than the bird did."
He can't breathe for the weight crashing down on him.
Only you would think that a gift.
"Oh," he says, because nothing else will come. That's what it looks like, he realizes. That's what the word hopeless means when carved into someone's skin; and this is what guilt means when scrawled into one breathless motion. He's been wrong about her from the start, but not his faith; his faith in her isn't wrong.
It's simply fifteen years too late.
.
—take in the extent of my sin.