Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: the Last Airbender, or any of its characters.
Authors Note: Okay, so I wrote this after seeing the finale of Avatar. One of the things that got to me the most was Azula's complete fall into madness. I used to hate Azula, but after seeing her breakdown I realized that as cruel and inhuman as she seems, she is a human being and has her limits. So this is set after the finale sometime. Bear in mind I wrote this at like 2 in the morning, so... :P
You, Azula, are going to be great someday. It's you who will take the throne, I am sure. You are a true prodigy... you by far best your brother, Zuko.
Her hand twitched, clutching onto the metal bar. She glared bitterly into the darkness, her black hair falling over her now pale, gaunt face.
I trust you and only you with my nation now, Azula.
Her grip on the bar tightened, her knuckles turning white.
What is wrong with that child?
Monster...
Monster...
Monster.
She blinked. She was a monster. She had known this almost all her life. And she had accepted it, had used it to her advantage; monsters were feared by all. Monsters got what they wanted, by being what they were.
Unloving, power hungry creatures, unafraid to destroy anything and anyone who may be in their path.
Monster. Azula was a monster.
You miscalculated. I love Zuko more than I fear you.
"No, YOU miscalculated!" her shriek pierced the silence, repeating the conversation that had occurred after Mai's betrayal. "Traitor! TRAITOR! FILTHY TRAITORS, BOTH OF YOU! ALL OF YOU!"
She twisted around to point to a wall, meaning to bend fire to release her ever-building and never-ending frustration. She let out an animal like snarl when no fire was produced, reminding her once more that the Avatar had forever taken away her bending.
Curse the Avatar, she thought wildly as she snapped her teeth. Curse him, curse Zuko, curse Mai and Ty Lee and her mother and the water tribe girl and every other moron who had brought her down!
She snatched a piece of her now greasy, tangled hair. She attempted to run her fingers through it as she used to when it was clean and perfectly cut, but now her hand caught many tangles and snarls. She yanked at it roughly, curling her lip in disgust at the knowledge that she currently looked like a horrid mess, certainly no longer recognizable as Princess Azula.
You see, Azula was once beautiful. Azula was once graceful. Azula was once skilled, clever, honored, favored, a prodigy; Azula was once perfect.
And she was... only a girl. A young girl of fifteen, twisted, manipulated by her father since an early age. A girl who mercilessly trained her body day after day until she collapsed of exhaustion, creating her petite form into a dangerous killing machine. A girl all her life unknowingly being used as a tool, all the while thinking the favoring from her father was out of love.
No, Ozai had reasons for favoring her, none of them included love. He was not capable of loving anyone but himself. He, also, was a monster.
Because monsters were feared, monsters got what they wanted...
Her eyes widened and her breath quickened, and she threw her head against the bars of her cage, letting out an ear shattering scream as the awful truth pounded loudly through her head, over and over again; she had nothing. Her years of cruelty, of manipulative power over people and their fear, of the favoritism of her over her elder brother, of her carefully thought out plans and deceptions all added to a bitter and hollow nothing. Nothing except her sitting in this cold and dark cell where she would live out the rest of her once promising life, all her outstanding potential wasting away into a shell of a princess.
But even in those days where Azula had everything... she'd really had nothing, hadn't she?
She'd had nothing, because her entire life was one large and well convincing lie. And this particular lie was one she, too, had fallen victim to believing.
She told herself people respected her because of her perfection. She told herself Mai and Ty Lee were her friends because they were obviously in awe of her perfection. She told herself that yes, of course Ozai loved her, and she was so confident in herself and her abilities and so called 'perfection', she truly believed she and she only could conquer the world and anything in it.
But, no. People respected her out of fear. Mai and Ty Lee did as she asked out of fear. She herself had pushed everyone away, keeping them all at a distance out of her own fear; fear of falling under the false illusion of trust and love. Fear of defeat and failure, of things out of her control, of vulnerability. Fear of imperfection...
For Azula, in reality, was far from perfect. And she knew this once long ago, but lied to herself until she, like everyone else, believed the image she maintained.
Azula never truly had her father, never had Zuko, never had Ty Lee or Mai.
And, her mother...
Her own mother was the only one, besides Azula herself, that knew Azula was not perfect. And yet, her mother was the only person who had ever told Azula she was loved.
Love? She laughed, a hysterical and high pitched sound. Love was a stupid thing, for fools. It only made you weak. She didn't need anyone's love, not Ozai's, not Zuko's and not Ursa's.
Warm, wet tears slid down her face as she began to wail and cry like an angry child. Still sitting on her knees, she fell to her back, the chains pulling uncomfortably at her wrists. She screamed into the musky cell air at the unfairness of it all, choking on her loud sobs.
She remembered as a child how she watched her father with wide eyes, in her short period of innocence and naivety. Zuko, she knew, looked to Ozai with the same undying admiration, but Azula was better and Ozai knew it. Ever since she had become old enough to be trained in firebending by her father, her mother and brother and even her uncle all watched her with wary eyes. But this mattered little compared to Ozai's approving smile.
"You'll need to learn the art of deception," he would tell her. "Learn to lie convincingly, learn to take people's fears and use them against them. Fear is your greatest ally- you can trust no one. Learn to be in control of the situation at all times." And so she did.
For fifteen years she had kept her calm, poised exterior. For fifteen years, everything she did was to please her father and better herself next to Zuko.
And it took fifteen years for her to finally crack. She'd cracked and succumbed to her emotions- something only stupid Zuzu would do, but she was so much better than Zuzu-and thus her father left her behind. He knew she was slipping. His tool was broken and no longer of use.
Her desperate, insane sobs turned into furious screams.
She screamed, because her failure outcast brother had defeated her, favored princess of the Fire Nation.
She screamed, because she had let herself be lowered down to a level where a novice water tribe peasant could defeat the infamously skilled princess in battle.
She screamed at her father, the one person she had left after losing Mai and Ty Lee, for abandoning her at the first signs of her breakdown.
She screamed because even if her mother had loved her, she'd loved Zuko most, she was Zuko's mom first and she was Zuko's mom last and she could have at least said goodbye to her too.
She screamed at the cell she was trapped in, at the ragged and filthy clothes she wore, at the chains securely around her wrists, for they meant that everything she had trained for, every single moment, month, year she had spent grooming herself to be the next Fire Lord were all a complete and utter waste.
She screamed because she knew she was once untouchable, unstoppable, an unmovable force, now reduced to a crying screaming mess resembling a small child throwing a tantrum.
The screams suddenly and finally stopped. Azula breathed heavily and unevenly, and she pushed herself back up into a sitting position. She licked at her dry lips and rested her head against the cold metal bar of her cage, golden eyes staring unseeingly at the far wall.
The truth of what her life really was had hit her hard, had stunned her. Instead of her life leading to that of one filled with the power and control she so hungrily desired and fantasized about as a child...
It lead to nothing.
At an age where most young people were only preparing for their lives to truly begin, her story had come to an end.
She would survive long years in this cage, but she would not live them. All because her father raised her not as a human being, but as a weapon. All because of the lies she had fed everyone, including herself.
Monster.
She blinked hazily, once... twice...
Finally, Azula let go of her grip on the cage, gazing at her shaking hands. For hours she sat there, what was left of her mind contemplating over everything she had just brought herself to realize.
Monsters never had happy endings, did they? In the endings of stories, the monster was always destroyed.
This is the tale of a highly adored princess whose once promising future was suddenly diminished, like a once brightly burning fire is stomped out. It's the story of a skilled prodigy, who realized that the cruelty and manipulation she had used to control people was the reason she was so very alone in the world. But above all, it's the tragic tale of a fifteen year old girl, whose mind was so corrupted and disturbed at such a young age that she eventually lost it completely. A girl who forever secretly craved something she had long forgotten how to do, something she no longer had the slightest hope she would ever receive; love.
I love you, Azula. I do.
(You can trust no one.)
This is the story of Azula, Princess of the Fire Nation.
Authors Note: Okay, please don't be too hard on me, this is my first fanfic. Constructive criticism is more than welcome, reviews pretty please?