Typhoons, Nursery Rhymes, and Love
If there is anything to be said about her daughter, it is that she is capable of turning any situation into one in her favor. Where Zuko is perseverant and headstrong, Azula is perceptive and quick, and it takes Ursa three months to realize that her daughter is only half as damaged as she claims.
It's only because Azula lets her see.
Shadows stream down her cheeks but her eyes are highlighted with each strike of lightning. Where so often there is dullness or raging pain, there is a calculative stare that straddles the line between wary and confident. The wind slams against Ursa's window, and when she touches Azula's hair it is clumped by rain; Ursa realizes that the gleams on Azula's face aren't tears (can't be, she's doesn't anymore) just as Azula kisses her.
"Mother," she whispers like she's pleading, even as her lips curve neatly up against Ursa's jaw. "Mother."
Ursa remembers when Azula was a girl (she still is a girl, her mind screams, even as her thumb brushes over her nipple), how she cried about the thunder until she learned to associate it with her father. Until the first time she watched a fire bender command lightning. During typhoons she would slide into her mother's arms and insist that she make Daddy stop the storm, it's too loud.
Azula's hand presses between her legs and Ursa sucks in a stream of humid air. "Sweetheart," she murmurs, and can't remember the last time she called Azula that. "This," she begins.
But the kiss Azula lays against Ursa's lips is gentle as falling rain, and when she pulls back she whispers "Mother."
The thunder sounds like aching and Ursa's fingers curl against the sheets.
