I am not necessarily using any of the plot from the comics (The Promise or The Search). The first few chapters are flashback-y but I mainly focus on the year (give or take) after the war ends; Azula will always desire power, she might just gain it in a different way. And I am taking a lot of inspiration from A Song of Ice and Fire! Just fyi, I feel like the political vengeance and "win or die" atmosphere is very Azula~

"Time takes life away
and gives us memory, gold with flame,
black with embers."

—Adam Zagajewski

She hadn't noticed that anything was wrong with her daughter until she bent fire for the first time. Azula had thought that her little Lien was a non-bender; she never seemed to have the temper of a fire bender. Quite frankly, and much to her chagrin, Lien had reminded her of the air headed Avatar. But a mother's love is forever and she could deal with one of her children not being a bender.

But then it had happened; Lien was six years old, running after a butterfly, and Azula was holding her two year old son, Kuzon on her hip. A large predatory bird swooped down at little Lien and as Azula was about to strike it down with lighting she was caught completely off guard because her sweet little Lien had screamed and let out a wave of bright blue fire, scaring the bird away but not killing it. Pride had coursed through her at that moment; her daughter was a fire bender. Not only that, Lien looked as if she breathed fire the first time she bent it and it was blue.

She was told that her niece, who was a few years older than Lien, was already an accomplished fire bending student, but Azula knew that any daughter of hers would be a greater bender than his. Azula asserted that she would not train Lien as her father had trained her; she would not make Lien pay for any one's weakness but her own. And if Kuzon became a bender it would bring he and Lien closer, not separate them in competition; they would be unstoppable. She was Princess Azula of Fire Nation, a daughter of dragons, and her children would burn brightly.

When Lien's training had started Azula noticed strange things about her daughter; Lien was not strange like her mother was strange, Azula knew this. Lien was emotionally open and stable, she was the apple of her father's eye, she was doted on by her mother, and she loved her little brother dearly. She was not really a strange little girl, until Azula found out Lien could bend fire.

Most people have a healthy fear of flames, especially fire benders. Where in most situations water, earth, and air cannot hurt benders simply by touch, fire always burns and bites and seeks to destroy. Even a cool fire can kill. But Lien was different, she danced with the fire, ran to it, breathed with it, she was like a bright little flame herself. Azula had yelled at Lien on several occasions,

"Lien, fire is not a toy! It is not a pretty doll to play with, if you are not careful you can disfigure yourself and this can prove fatal! Pay attention."

"I'm sorry, Mommy." She looked up at her mother with strange eyes, "The flames sing, like the music box daddy brought me, sometimes I want to hold the fire close to my ear so I can hear better." She had blue eyes, like her father, the fire nation gene preferred a darker blue, and then a gold ring around her pupil. Azula could clearly see half of herself in Lein's large eyes.

Azula's brow furrowed in exasperation, "Singing flame—I can't even. Stop meditating so much, you sound like a Fire Sage. They're full of senseless proverbs and lose themselves in scrolls written by dead men." IN an act of poetic justice Azula had been given a daughter that perhaps rivaled Ty Lee in sheer peppiness and happy disposition.

"Yes, Mommy." She said obediently and she skipped back into doing fire squats and laughing as Kuzon tried to do the same with his chubby toddler legs.

And then she took a moment to think about her brother and niece. Does he think of her often? And is his daughter, Honora, as strange as Lien? It was strange for Azula to imagine Zuko with a daughter. Did Honora resemble Azula in the same way that Kuzon resembled Zuko? And did it haunt him like it did her?

Azula looked out to see Lien holding Kuzon by the hand and saying something to him about the turtle ducks that were swimming in their pond. The got along very well, never fought or made each other cry. Lien was like a little mother and she was Kuzon's favorite playmate. Azula hoped to be pregnant again after next summer, she wanted another little girl to call Ursa.

Motherhood had agreed with Azula in a way that she never imagined, something changed in her when she held her daughter for the first time. She had cried, at both her children's births, tears of joy. She had never known that kind of happiness or love before. That was how she discovered, when she looked back at her life, how little love she was actually shown.

It's a funny thing that looking in the past can do for a person. Things that seemed so cemented in one light can totally change and become something else entirely. Azula thinks that her father loved her once—but he loved power more and she became a weapon for him. In the end he loved no one but himself. Fathers have the uncanny ability to be the first men to break their daughter's heart.

When Azula thought her mother hated her—Ozai was the only person in the entire world that she believed cared for her so she did whatever she could to make him happy. But it never lasted. And it was only years after her mother had died and an argument with Mai that she realized her mother had never hated her or thought she was a monster, Azula's mother loved her. Maybe they were different and Ursa couldn't always understand the way Azula acted but Azula knew that her mother loved her. Her life right after the war had changed many things for her.

Azula had never felt at peace after her father the phoenix king failed to rise from his ashes and wasted away in his cell for a few years before dying a sad man who was not very old in age. Azula had eventually been released from the mental institution with a clean bill of psychological health, maybe half a year after the war ended. Zuko seemed very content to keep her locked inside the palace, like a gilded cage, without much worry or care as to what she was doing so long as it never bothered him.

"You won't be allowed outside of the palace grounds at all." Zuko said with as much authority as he could muster. He was still young and still slightly afraid of Azula's superior bending skills. "And when you go out into the gardens or courtyards you will be accompanied by members of the Fire Guard. Any attempt at leaving the palace grounds will result in you being confined to your apartments. Do you understand, Azula?" Rolling her eyes Azula unenthusiastically replied,

"Yes, I understand."

"I would appreciate it if you continued your duties as Princess and Lady of the palace as long as I remain unmarried."

"What do I get out of that arrangement?" Azula never did anything for nothing. He could easily ask one of their older distant cousins to fill in the job position of Lady of the palace and the duties of a Princess were to be pretty and obedient.

"I was hoping that since you were a good daughter and did them while Father was Fire Lord you could be a good sister and do them for me. I also figured that either of those jobs would be infinitely better than sitting in a white padded room alone with a straight jacket." Azula shot him a particularly nasty glare for that comment. She had suffered from a mental breakdown and spent months remembering who she was and getting her dead mother to stop speaking to her in reflective surfaces.

"I suppose you think I should thank you on bents knees for saving me from the horrible fate of being institutionalized for the remainder of my days for following orders and obeying my father."

"Following orders, Azula?" He was raising his voice, "Did father ever tell you to kill me?"

"Never directly, but the long winded speeches about how useless, weak, and pathetic you are, were laced with the unspoken command."

"I don't need any validation of my strength from you, Azula. I defeated you."

"Because I suffered from a psychological breakdown, you baboon. You got lucky, don't deny it. You know that had I been myself that day, I would be wearing the crown."

"Obviously destiny intervened that day—"

"Destiny," She cut him off sharply. "Destiny is a word weak men use to justify things they cannot control. It was not destiny that got you the crown. It was a stumble on my part and a plan on Father's. It is situational irony at best." Zuko gave her a hard look as he scrambled for something intelligent to say,

"Regardless of what you call it I am in charge now and you will do as I command."

"Well then," She said sardonically, "By all means, command me." She put all of the poison she could into her glare and Zuko leered back at her with an anger that made her giddy. As Zuko stormed away Azula felt a splash of satisfaction crash into her mussels. Most interactions with Zuko ended this way, not that Azula minded. Zuko had some misguided sense of inferiority when it came to Azula and whenever he tried to assert his authority Azula did whatever she cold to undermine it with little effort.

Finding herself tired and severely annoyed after nearly all of her interactions with Zuko, Azula found comfort in the white courtyards that were once tended to by her mother. The private courtyards were only available to the royal family and the few servants that worked there. It was decorated with a few ornate torches of intricately designed white gold that held the emblem of the Fire Nation at the top; there was along pool of water made from smooth, cream colored stone with white koi fish and small lily pads with yellow flowers. A few moments later servant brought her a tray of cherries—she was sure there were no pits.

"Princess?" The servant girl was asking Azula for permission to address her. She was probably a few years older than Azula. She had long braided hair and was wearing traditional Fire Nation red; by all means she was a very plain girl and slipped by unnoticed in most situations. Azula thinks she was the baker's daughter.

"Yes?" Azula asked looking at the servant girl and trying not to be to intimidating.

"This was given to me by a young man for you." She had her head respectfully bent and Azula took the paper, thanking the girl as she dismissed her. She unfolded the slip of paper and found a poem written inside:

I am curious,

How you caught the yellow flames

Burning in your eyes.

At least the poem was adequately short. Sometimes they went on and on without an end in sight. Azula almost never finished reading any of them.

"What a stupid question", Azula thought scathingly, "My eye color is a product of genetics. Nothing else. How absurd". She crumbled up the poem and threw it over the balcony hoping the poet would go after it.

By this time her long dark hair had grown back completely and her body was changing form from that of a girl to a young woman. The allure of a pretty princess overcame intimidation for most of the young men that frequented the Fire Nation court so Azula became a popular receiver of lover's tokens. They would bring her cherries and sweet plums, some would buy jewels or braid flower crowns, and often she received poems praising her graceful manners and porcelain skin. Which was ridiculous because she skin was a dark olive color and her grace came from the training she received to kill silently. So the manner in which she moved was more deadly than it was graceful in the common sense of the word.

Her Uncle thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world. He had left his beloved tea shop in the capable hands of his close friends in the Earth Kingdom and had come back to the Royal Capital in order to help Zuko in the earliest and darkest times of his reign. On one occasion a suitor had sent to her and ornate cherry wood chest filled with Gensing and jasmine tea, commonly known as the Princess's favorites. For some unearthly reason these also happened to be her Uncle's favorite as well. The gods were funny this way, creating likeness in the most opposite of people.

"How honored I feel," Uncle Iroh said while preparing a kettle of said tea for himself and the royal siblings, "To have such a beautiful niece and for her to have such thoughtful admirers." The aroma of jasmine filled the room and Azula, although constantly on edge around Zuko and Iroh, felt a bit at ease.

"Do girls really like this kind of thing?" Zuko asked incredulously looking over to Azula who was inattentively inspecting her finger nails; she had them painted red this week.

"Women of any age love to be wooed by their significant other." Azula saw a chance to pounce and looked up with an impish smirk,

"Why do you ask, Zuzu?" She saw him scowl a little bit and the look in his eyes got defensive; the moment his arms crossed she innocently administered the rest of her poison, "Oh that's right, you do have a girlfriend. But I haven't seen her in a while, how is Mai?" Zuko's grip on his steaming cup tightened a fraction and Azula pleasantly sipped her tea.

"She's fine." He was being tight lipped and before she could say anything too really get him angry her Uncle interrupted.

"How do you like the tea, Princess Azula?" Glancing down at her half empty cup Azula wondered if there was anything clever she could say…but decided against it because Uncle rarely got angry and was never as amusing as her brother.

"It is adequate." He smiled then and looked too much like her father, she felt a weird warm sting deep in her eyes, her uncle made Azula miss her father and something sad was put on her face.

"So who gave you the tea?" Zuko grumbled in an attempt to brighten his mood. Azula scowled and could not remember the name of the young man, only that he sent a servant to bring it to her and the gift was presented to her in front of her brother and Uncle. She shrugged her shoulders,

"Who knows, I usually dispose of the tokens I receive; if not to the trash than to charity or my hand maidens." A darker look entered her eyes, "I have no interest in the perverse love games of power hungry noblemen that seek to control me through marriage." She didn't notice she had gotten so carried away until she looked up to see the concerned face of Iroh and the confused expression in Zuko's eyes.

"I'm not going to just give you away to someone because they give pretty things, Azula." It was his attempt to comfort her; his hand reached up to rest on her arm when she abruptly rose; the armor she wore, the nearly identical kind she and Zuko had dressed in while their father was the Fire Lord, made her look particularly intimidating,

"You will not give me to anyone." She left then, gracefully sweeping out of the door. The Fire Emblem resting in her top not shown brightly in the sun, like a flame burning in her sea of dark hair. A raven's dusty cawing jolted Azula away from her musings.

She must have been feeling oddly nostalgic because she never really let her mind linger in the past the way she was today. Lien was sure to be getting tired by now; she had been training all day. Azula saw her yawn while looking to the sun that was slowly setting below the red horizon; the silvery moon was full but dull with the daylight still painting the sky. Kuzon's head was resting on Azula's shoulder and she was rocking him back and forth.

"Come inside, Lien. Let's go see what your father is doing."

"Yay, Daddy!" Lien cheered as she ran up the gravel walkway of the gardens and into their home. It was warmer inside. The nights were so cold here but the walls were lined with colorful tapestries and there was always a fire burning in whatever room Azula occupied. She made sure of it. Azula handed off the sleeping Kuzon to a servant so he could be put to bed and followed after her daughter to find her husband.