notes: originally, i planned for this to be part of no word for blue, but it took on a life of its own. also, there's some triggering stuff here, just be aware— self-harm, mental illness, physical & emotional child abuse, partner abuse, mentions of rape. rated m for a reason.
once I had it all, had everything
the real princess, the ruling queen
I walked with arrogance, with vanity
but I made sure my heart they wouldn't see
— living in exile, sleater-kinney
The day of the comet blooms orange and red and pink. Rise and shine, royalty, come meet your maker. Agni smiles upon all his children, Mother once said in her cloying way, but Azula's god is her father's, heralding redemption and condemnation with equal vitriol. She has always been far too arrogant for religion— what is a god to fire incarnate?— but even she cannot burn back the shades of her parents, one turning her head in distaste, the other laughing as he watches her fall.
There's madness fizzling down her spine, but as she brushes her hair, laces her boots, applies bright red lipstick (so strange, the detritus of routine when she is on the verge of glory) she refuses to notice the ghost of her mother behind her eyelids. She is so beautiful, she thinks as she rotates in front of her big mirror. Like a spirit. Her boots shine brighter than the sun. No, she is the sun she is the sun she is the sun. She turns around once more, ostensibly to look for wrinkles in her tunic, and pronounces it good. Better than good. Perfect.
Today is the most important day of her life— more important than Zuko's banishment, more important than when she claimed Ba Sing Se. Azula has always been such a smart girl, always watching, listening, waiting until it's time for her to make her grand entrance. And if there's one thing she's learned, it's that people are conquerers or they are conquered; for someone of the house of Sozin, of noble flame-in-the-veins blood, there can be no room for deliberation, no blurred hinterland to escape to. She is her father's daughter— she was born to rule from her first squalling breath. Today, she rapes the Earth Kingdom, the filthy, barbaric expanse that mocked her with its dust and grime and cold, and becomes a queen worthy of standing by Lord Ozai's side. Today, she will redeem herself.
She is not really thinking about her father, though, or her mother, or her brother, or the lengthy string of ancestors she has been striving to please for fourteen years. Instead, she contemplates The Girl, and she should be angry. She was angry, three weeks ago, so angry she thought her skull would split open from the sheer intensity of it. Now she'll never admit it to anyone as long as she lives, but she might just be sad.
Long ago, her father owned her mother, and this is how married nobles behave; a firm hand at the back of a neck, lowered eyes, bruises that blossom blue and green and purple beneath expensive foundation. If Mother was nothing else, she was the perfect model of old Fire Nation womanhood— pious, obedient, quiet. Azula watched, and she listened, and she learned that this was what she would grow up to be. Flower arrangement. Perfumed hair-sticks. A sale to the highest bidder. Marriage, fashion, babies, petty court intrigue, who's fucking who and who's betrothed to who and who insulted who at last week's gala. That was her mother's world, her inheritance by virtue of a chromosomal mistake.
But Azula has always been avant-garde, and the fire smoldering in her has never allowed suffocation; never would she bow down. She ripped the heads off her dolls. She fought with the snot-nosed girls at school and made sure she won. She bested and humiliated her precious, sickly older brother, proving herself superior once and for all. She scraped her knees bloody and burned her arms learning how to bend, no matter how much it hurt. And in the end, every scar, every aching muscle, every smack and harsh word Mother gave her in return for her efforts, turned out to be so worth it.
(Monster.)
The Girl was just another game, she tells herself, practice in kissing and fondling and sex that she needed for men. Balmy summer days and catching fire bee-flies and cartwheels in the surf, lying on their backs, bellies filled with cinnamon apples, pretending that they knew how to find constellations... all of that went by the wayside after Zuzu got his ugly face exiled. She had skills. Skills Azula needed, skills she had no time to acquire. And if she took her to bed... well, Father has whores, too. People own other people. Being with a girl was not the same as being with a man, her father's best councillors panting and slobbering and gasping, but she still learned her lessons well. Erogenous zones. How to dress seductively, bat your eyelashes, peel off clothes without them tangling. Most of all, how to remain in control.
(There is a very, very small part of her that remembers, the truth is, I'm jealous. How do you get all the boys to look at you like that, want to be around you? Why do you fuck them if you won't get anything in return? I took generals into my bed because once I fucked one I owned him for the rest of his career— money, property, connections, whatever I wanted to squeeze out of him. What are you doing? Why don't you want to be mine, and only mine?)
The Girl hadn't wanted to sleep with her, though. The Girl hadn't wanted to come with her and track the avatar. The Girl hadn't wanted to be her right-hand woman. The harder she'd tried to claim The Girl for herself, the more she chafed and pulled away. Azula scowls as she rotates her shoulder— she can still feel the pinched aftereffects of the chi-block, reverberating through her nerves like they're plucked shamisen strings. Her body is a weapon, molded since childhood for mass destruction; being incapacitated by a nonbender was never part of the plan.
"I gave you everything," she tells the mirror matter-of-factly, clicking her steel toes together once and then twice. She walks away from her vanity and begins to pace. "Everything. You were the last, forgotten daughter of a second-rate nobleman when I found you, and I raised you higher than anybody in your entire half-baked family could have dreamed. At least Mai had Zuko to whore herself out to. I'm all you ever had."
Mai. Dear, dear Mai. Mother had thought that her brother's prim, quiet betrothed would make a wonderful friend for the violent, terrifying princess, but Mai wasn't her friend, not really. She played the part to perfection, smiling shyly from underneath her bangs whenever her superiors passed by, but Azula recognized even at six that she, too, had something fundamental missing. So she thrust shuriken into her hands and made a cold-eyed, sneering second-in-command out of her, because two fucked-up girls deserved each other. Never did she suspect that Mai could be driven by anything stronger than the desire to avoid ennui, least of all love for her shit-for-brains brother. Stupid, stupid, stupid, yet her betrayal stings far less.
She gave The Girl wealth, and status, and prestige. She gave The Girl a glorious mission. She gave The Girl a way to distinguish herself beyond being 'the pretty younger one.' She even gave The Girl a place in her bed. And in exchange, she had only one demand— loyalty. Don't leave me, like everyone else does.
Well, The Girl certainly worked her over. All flush-cheeked innocence and glossy pink lips and soft, scented wrists, masking a ruthless heart that would put Great-Grandfather Sozin to shame. She should have never judged the scroll by its frilly calligraphy, never allowed herself to get attached. When has love or attachment functioned for her? Cousin, mother, brother, uncle, sister-friends, (father?) down the drain, and she's surprised by some fickle slut abandoning her in the name of peace or harmony or fear or Mai or whatever was going through her tiny mind.
She reaches up to (neurotically) sweep a piece of hair off of her forehead, scowls as her sleeve rides up. There are so many marks on her body that long clothing hides, burns and cuts and bruises. Great arching scars; wrist to elbow, elbow to shoulder. Some are from her father, from an endless blitz of where is he where did he go did you know how is he still alive are you lying to me are you lying to me now you worthless cunt after the eclipse. Others—
it was very loud, inside her head. She wanted to die so so very much after all of her plans collapsed around her ears, after one by one everybody left her for dead. She has spent a lifetime being flawless, the jewel in her father's crown, and a single moment of overconfident miscalculation—
She picks up a knife on her vanity and skates it over her arm— playing, not drawing much blood, just playing. It's always a game, especially when she loses. He says that he'd hate to give his special girl a scar like Zuko's, but he'd love her even if she's a dyke as long as she remembers her duty.
They all fall down. Mother sounds so much like monster to her unaccustomed ears.
I love you, The Girl suddenly says in her syrupy voice. I love you, Azula. I hate when you do that.
"I hope you're getting fucked on all fours in that prison," Azula replies just as sweetly. "Like an animal. That's what you'd be without me, you know— your father would've probably sold his seventh look-alike daughter to the seraglio if I hadn't made you useful."
You hurt me, The Girl says. All you do is hurt. It's all you can do. Your mother was right.
"Of course she was right," Azula continues blithely. "I'm a monster, and you're fucking naïve. Always have to have me do the thinking for you, always trust that it's not going to sting."
You're scared, The Girl says. You're so scared of me—
With a strangled cry, she hurls the knife at her, because she doesn't deserve to die by flame or lightning. It lodges itself in the wall, harmlessly quivering— and she is alone. She was alone the entire time. "I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid, you stupid bitch."
"Princess?" And then there's a bodyguard in the doorway— staring at the knife, her face smeared with lipstick and sweat and kohl. She wants to burn the pitying look out of his eyes. "Are you all right? Is there an intruder?"
She doesn't even have the energy to fuck with this one. "Get out." Get out get out get out get out get out get out—
He leaves. She slowly, carefully, repaints her face with shuddering hands. Stop being worthless and lazy and pathetic, she tells herself, like Zuko; you saved yourself from falling off an airship with a diadem and you can't handle a little betrayal? Think about the lightning, be-the-bolt-be-light-as-the-bolt.
It doesn't work. Her hair has started falling out in sporadic, terrifying clumps. She fainted in a stairwell yesterday and didn't realize that she lost two hours. She can't remember when she last slept. She doesn't really sleep, anymore. Sometimes she chats with her mother until the older woman's praise grows saccharine, or shoves the guts back into Lu Ten's gaping yawn of a stomach. Sometimes she is (lucid) and does paperwork or calisthenics while the rest of the palace slumbers. But unconsciousness frightens her so much— a vulnerability that she never consented to.
The Girl used to stop her when she got like this, or at least tried to stop her from careening towards an odd, private little breakdown. Nobody cares enough to stop her from wrecking herself now, and she's long since forgotten how to cry, even though misery is twisted up in her throat like a vise and her chest is so tight— you're the most beautiful, smartest, perfect girl in the world, even though you just called me a tease in front of everyone at this shitty rich boy party. Even though you can't live up to anyone's expectations. Even though love has to be earned and you keep failing all the tests. I'll still put my head between your legs with a smile, because you're an idol to me.
No, she doesn't want to recall Ember Island, ruiner of every emotional shield she'd built up since childhood. She wondered why she could make a man soil himself with a single glare and get any one of her father's generals into bed, but boys didn't want to kiss her and tell her that she was pretty. She wondered how people would treat her if they didn't know that she was Princess Azula (answer: badly). She wondered at what point she started trying to lock The Girl up and throw away the key. She wondered a lot of things.
The bonfire was the worst. Mai, crushed by her social-climbing parents; The Girl, running away to the circus because she and her airhead sisters were identical; Zuko, morally conflicted because Father doesn't give a shit about him. But the crown jewel (she is the pinnacle) was her personal contribution: "My own mother thought that I was a monster." Bravo, Azula. Rousing performances by everyone, but yours was truly the high point, the cruel despot finally admitting that she had a heart after all.
— it's not much of a heart, not enough to have elicited the cow-eyed pity it did from her. She knows that she will win, with the same certainty that she knows her mother never loved her. And once she returns triumphant after burning the world to ash, she's going to visit that dingy, cold cell Ty Lee is rotting in, and she's going to pin her down and fuck her until she's covered in bruises and bitemarks, until she's weeping like a child, until she spends herself all over her hand unable to resist. It would bring Azula great pleasure to destroy her in this most primal way possible; feel her tears, her cries, the softness of her skin and the perfume of her hair annihilated into something darker. Maybe she'll kill Mai in front of her and then she'll do it; that's even better. Father will be so proud of her again, won't he?
Everything— everything will be all right, the pieces finally put together. She'll be the sole heir to the throne, she'll just have to care about herself, she'll have the worship from afar she's always wanted. Zuko and Mai and Ty Lee will lie dead at her feet. She won't have to take sickly-sweet bursts of opium smoke to steady her gaze or cut her skin wide open to remember what it feels like to heal, anymore. There will be no more visions swimming in front of her, taunting her with what could have been.
"Today," she tells the mirror, "I'm getting my honor back."