Unlikely Hero

The door to the council room thudded opened, and Azula jumped. The longwinded Minister of Finance had been droning on and on in a particularly sonorous cadence that had sent her dozing off. She focused momentarily on the vulgar picture Zuko had been drawing of the minister's bald head resembling male genitalia. Clever.

A servant rushed into the room and began to whisper furious in Zuko's ear. Azula was tempted to poke the man in the butt that he'd unceremoniously shoved into her personal space, but Zuko went pale at whatever he said. He asked, "Everything's fine?"

The servant nodded.

"Does Mai need me?"

The servant shook his head.

Zuko hesitated. Azula resigned herself to actually having to pay attention. "Go," she told him.

Four hours later, Azula imagined all of the demands she could make for having to sit through that meeting that had been about changing one word in a territorial bill that actually had no impact on its meaning. It was a stalling method that had worked for the day, despite Azula making her irritation known.

As she walked into her quarters, she handed Zuko's sketch to Kota. "Seal this and send it to the Minister of Finance."

Since no one approached her about news—she pointedly didn't ask why Zuko had left the council meeting—Azula changed into comfortable robes, accepted a cup of fruit juice, and walked out onto her balcony to enjoy the quiet she took for herself before supper. She was barefoot and regretted it when she stepped on something.

...Something cylindrical and scaly.

Azula looked down, saw the black and yellow diamond pattern of a viper, and acted on pure terrified instinct when she screamed and lurched back. Her cup of fruit juice went sailing over the balcony railing. Her scream became a: "Fuck!" Hopefully her little nephew wasn't in the gardens to hear that. Hopefully her mother wasn't either.

All of her servants were outside a second later. Two Dai Li agents leapt from the gardens below her to surround her protectively. Kota caught sight of the viper and gasped in horror. "Did it bite you?!"

Azula heaved a sigh, put a hand on her racing heart, and tried to regain her dignity. She picked up the viper's headless body and displayed it. Her voice was hoarse from her scream but she managed to say, "Unless vipers have venomous fangs in their backend, I doubt very highly I was bitten."

A happy meow echoed from a tree in Ursa's garden, and Tonk—no doubt the origin of this snake carcass—leapt gracefully onto the balcony railing. She positively preened as she jumped down to wind between Azula's legs. Azula ignored the fact that her Dai Li guards' lips were twitching. "Don't you have something better to be doing?" she asked them pointedly.

They bowed and jumped off the balcony in the same amount of time it took for her servants to find something else to occupy their time with. Azula sighed and tossed Tonkara's gruesome gift over the balcony.

Someone in the garden began to scream immediately. That someone was Ursa. Azula lurched to the balcony railing and looked over it to see her mother shrieking at the half of the viper's body on her shoulders.

"It's dead!" she shouted out of pure self-defense. She managed not to laugh and put on a contrite expression when Ursa thunderously strode into her apartment a few minutes later.

That took a bit of groveling. She was completely hoarse from her two shouts of the evening and had to stomach a swallow of opiate extract to apologize to her mother. That ended up earning sympathy points.

After that crisis was averted—partly by the two glasses of wine Ursa drank posthaste—Ursa explained there was more to it than Tonk deciding to feast on a venomous snake.

"Tozin found it."

Azula felt a twinge of pain in her belly at the thought of her baby nephew poking a viper. That must be why Zuko had excused himself early. Because no one had spoken to her of it, Azula knew her nephew hadn't been bitten. "Where was his nursemaid?"

"Screaming her silly head off. Guards were there, of course, but they wouldn't have gotten there in time. Your cat apparently got the viper's attention, killed it, and snatched it up for a snack."

Azula stroked Tonkara's soft head, and her cat purred smugly in her lap.

Ursa's expression went sour. "That nursemaid said your cat was, and I quote, 'The bravest little animal I've ever seen!'"

Azula pointed out, "She's certainly braver than you and I, since all we did was scream when we saw the remnants."

Ursa shuddered. "Don't remind me."

The next day, Zuko glowered at Azula when she stopped him in the palace hallways. Azula looked back at him pointedly. He said, "I'm not going to thank you for your bearded cat happening to want to eat the animal that threatened my kid."

"It was only your firstborn son, of course," Azula pointed out.

Zuko scowled.

Azula continued, "I'm not petty enough to want thanks for something my animal did anyway. I do expect you to stop complaining about cat hair on your robes."

Zuko continued to scowl.

"Oh." Azula continued on her way out to the royal stables for her blessedly free morning; she turned an airy wave to her brother. "I sent your little sketch to the Minister of Finance. Have fun at the meeting!"

-end-