Chained as she was to the grate, Azula could hardly move. Bound by her wrists, she could not bend. She roared, like the daughter of the fire lord, and it could not be called a scream because princesses like her did not scream, they did not sob, they did not cry.

Blue fire scorched her lips until the comet disappeared beyond the horizon, following the path her father had sailed as he left her behind.

Then there was nothing but the chains chafing her wrists and her barren, parched mouth. Her lip was split down the middle from the dry heat as she stretched them tight around her bared teeth.

Her body was an empty bag of flesh, and the grate to which she was chained dug into her knees like blunt teeth worrying a dried up, hollow bone.

The sound of running water scraped against her ears.

Her wet hair ran rivulets down her back. Her heavy uniform stuck to her skin.

When footsteps approached, she tried to burn the sound of them away, to scorch the threatening tread of boots, to teach them a lesson, but her mouth was empty, and too small for her tongue.

Nothing escaped her lips but a ragged gasp, which she hid behind the crooked curtain of her hair, because she could not bend.

Just like when Ty Lee had betrayed her, had chosen Mai over her, had taken her bending away. But the fire had come back, and it would come back again—it had to.

Her body could not betray and abandon her too.

Her fingers twitched against the chain as Mai and Ty Lee circled in her thoughts, like hovering vultures. She had put them in prison so she would never have to see their faces again, yet it seemed she saw them more than ever, lingering in the shadows of her vision, in her dreams, in every waking moment.

Zuko crouched too close for her to turn her eyes away. He offered her water in a humble cup made of clay. Her scar marred his chest. Their father's scar marred his face and overshadowed his mother's eyes. Soon, he would bear his father's crown, the crown that had almost been hers.

His father's son, and his mother's boy.

Azula flushed from shame, from embarrassment that anyone (but especially him) should see her in this way, on her knees, defeated by some water tribe peasant. Her hair, unbound, became caught in the chapped parting of her lips as a hot wind blew.

"Come on, Azula," Zuko said.

She craned her body away, so that the chains bit into her wrists and hands, so that she could not see his offer of water.

He had everything. He had the kingdom. The throne. He'd even found his pathetic honor.

He had everything but this one thing he asked of her—that she drink from his hand like a child. Of course she would never give him that satisfaction.

Who did he think she was?

Sighing, he set the water aside, and reached towards her, unlooping the chains that bound her to the grate, setting her free. It was a mistake. She would show him.

Azula lashed out with a loosely formed fist, her hands too tired and numb, already pricking as the blood returned to it, and he caught her wrist and held her elbow as he breathed words she didn't understand into her ear.

Then he let her go, turning his back on her to join Katara—the one who had defeated her, doused her fire with water, leaving her with nothing, just as the comet had left her with nothing, and her father too.

She tried to spit after his retreating body but her throat was too dry. Racking coughs shook her shoulders, and her fingertips scrabbled at the courtyard, scorched and burned from their Agni Kai, as if she could find whatever they had taken and stripped from her there in the ruins of her old life.

Li and Lo came for her. She was sure she had banished one of them, but here they were, guiding her like she was three. She pushed their frail hands away, and they caught her fingers, kissed her scraped knuckles with their withering lips.

They wiped her face with their rags and the cloth came back damp and grey with soot. "Your father's back," they told her.

Would Father burn her for failing to keep the kingdom safe while he was away, or would he send her somewhere where he would never see her face again? Would he do both, like he had done to Zuko? She would not scream, whatever he chose. She would not cower. She would not beg—as Zuko had.

"He doesn't want to see you," they said.

So it would be exile then. Would she have her own ship? Would Uncle come with his sage words, or would it be Li and Lo with their shaking, synchronized voices? What task would he give to her to prove herself once more? To regain her lost honor?

She could do it. She had brought Ba Sing Se low, and it could be done again and again until it was nothing but ash. She could turn the Earth Kingdom into a charcoal scar, and she could boil the oceans of the Water Kingdom until they wandered in deserts.

Pain doubled in her side, and she staggered into Li (or Lo). They did not shy away from her, so she pushed harder.

They were stronger than they looked—or had she grown weaker?

She could do anything—but keep the kingdom safe from her traitor brother as he rose prouder and stronger than she had ever seen him stand before.

She could kill the usurper—as her grandfather had once ordered long ago.

She would accept the banishment as punishment for her crime, as his mother had. After all, she was no stranger to these things as Zuko was, since his mother did not deem fit to share all the things they had done.

When she saw her father, she would offer this gift to him. He would not even need ask it of her.

She knew what he wanted in ways that Zuko never could.

"Princess Azula, come," Li and Lo said.

She let them push her back into the grand empty halls of the palace, so quiet after she had banished her people with their harsh, grating words carving the skin from her ears. She let them pull her into her room, and they locked the door behind her.

"Princess Azula, hold out your arms." She did because she knew this routine as they removed her clothes—it was familiar to her. They drew a bath for her, hot water pouring from the facets shaped like dragon maws.

If the dragons yet lived, she would kill one for her father, bestowing its head at his feet.

Grandfather should have asked for the head of the one that Uncle supposedly killed.

Li and Lo helped her into the bath, and she drew up her legs against her bare chest because the water burned, it was so hot. She let her cheek rest in the cradle of her knees as Li and Lo sluiced water over her hair, gold combs inlaid with jade untangling the knots that had been made by the wind and her thrashing against the chains.

She closed her eyes against the pull and scrape of the comb. It wasn't as good as a royal hair combing, but it was familiar.

They hummed under their breath something that Azula had not heard since she was a child. She clutched her knees with her fists as they murmured the words, resenting them.

Goosebumps rose along her arms as the water chilled. She tried to make the water warmer, but it only got colder and colder until she could no longer hide her shivering. Li and Lo tugged her to her feet, dried her, and guided her to the wide bed.

"Sleep now," they told her.

Azula looked over her shoulder at the shattered mirror. So many eyes and mouths stared back at her.

Were they hers—or did another peer back over her shoulder?

Of course they were hers. There was no trace of her mother in her.

She was her father's daughter, after all, as everyone did say.

Were those her father's eyes, her father's sneer in her curled lip, or was it Zuko's triumph over her that heated her cheeks red, that shamed and embarrassed her?

Azula turned away, her finger pointing at the shattered glass, and Li or Lo covered the mirror with a fine cloth made of red silk.

Their old hands tucked her into bed, pulled the covers to her chin like she was three so she pushed them away. Before they took their leave of her, they blew out the lamps, leaving thin ribbons of smoke behind them.

She fell into an uneasy sleep—she twisted and turned, woke with the covers wet and damp against her knees and her forehead slippery with sweat.

She sat up, fist over her heart to trap its fluttering, panicking beat. Someone had taken away her mirror and swept the shards away. Someone had put a tall glass of water beside her bed, and she took it in both hands, swallowing it down so quickly she coughed—but her thirst was not quenched.

She slid from the bed, wiping her mouth with her wrist, and forced her breath to steady. She guided her breath through her stomach, then struck out with her palm.

Nothing.

It was one of the simplest steps, the first ones she had learned as a young girl when Azulon yet lived.

She tried again, and there was nothing still.

Sweat ran down the stiff channel of her spine under the rigid rise of her shoulders. Hair caught in her mouth as her lips opened, panting from effort. Fine shivers shook her arms, ruining her form.

She heard her father's voice: do it again.

So she did.

Not even a puff of smoke.

If almost wasn't good enough—then what were these pitiful demonstrations? His voice whispered in her ear, and she shook the sleep and fatigue from her limbs. Her fingers brushed against each other like dry parchment, waiting for a spark, as she tried again.

Do it again. She heard his voice as if she was a child once more, coming to her from so many years ago.

She failed.

Again—Azula bashed her head against the wall of her chamber—again—never stopping even when pain sparked behind her eyes—again.

Sweat soaked her robe.

Do it again—harder, harder, harder until her pain burned blue and her head dizzied.

Li and Lo tried to pull her away, but she pushed them off.

Do it again, Ozai said, because almost isn't good enough.

Her skull ached.

Li and Lo must have fetched her brother with his scarred face and scarred chest because he pulled her from the wall and forced her to sit on the bed. She tried to scratch him, but he wrestled her away, and then she realized, as her nails raked her own arms, that someone had clipped her claws—they were just blunt nubs now—useless.

When had they done it?

Had there been no fight in her?

Her lungs cried for air.

Zuko was shouting at her. It was normal for siblings to yell at each other. There would have been silence if she had been an only child. She remembered the silence that had descended upon the court when Father had banished him. No more shouting, no more crying, no more anything but him and his promises.

"What is the matter with you?" He paused for breath, sparing a moment to look behind him at the small crowd that had gathered. The Avatar was there—and he was also small, just a boy really. Zuko's new friends and allies were there—the ones he had chosen over family.

Once she hadn't been so sure that he would choose her, not when he had been playing house with his uncle—and then he had abandoned her again in the dead of night when they had both secured their seats at their father's side, when they'd both had everything that they had ever wanted.

What was it that Mai had told her? That she had—miscalculated? That she didn't know people as well as she thought she did?

Her lip twisted against her teeth and she clenched her robe in her fists as she thought she saw, at the very back, a fringe of shiny black hair and a too-long braid.

Azula forced herself to be calm, to hide her clawed fists safely away inside her sleeves. Father would be so embarrassed if he saw her like this—if their enemies had seen her like this. There had been a time when she had been cornered by her traitors and her enemies—and she had escaped.

"Prince Zuko," Li and Lo chorused together. "Princess Azula has lost her bending."

Azula clawed at her skin. She would have words with them—how dare they speak about her in that way. But her tongue refused to move.

She closed her eyes.

"Has she spoken a word?" Zuko asked.

"No, she hasn't." One of them patted her shoulder, and she jerked away. "It's just like the time when you were banished, Lord Zuko. She didn't speak for days."

The other nodded wisely. "For months."

They were lying. She tried to recall the things she had said, the orders she had issued but she could remember nothing except the blue fire blossoming from her palms, scorching the gardens, sending the turtle-ducks scuttling for the shelter of the pond—as if she couldn't have evaporated it from the garden had she chosen to do so.

"I thought that'd be the happiest day of her life," Zuko said.

It had been. She had been the only child, the only one who mattered. And the one time he had called for her, it was three years later to send her after Zuko, to bring him home.

"She's out of balance." That was the Avatar.

Whatever that meant. She had no use for Avatar talk.

"I was afraid you'd have to—" Zuko didn't finish, and an awkward silence fell upon the crowd. She almost wanted to ask what Zuko was afraid of but then realized she didn't care.

"She's just a kid though," the Avatar said. She leaned away when he leaned down that he might peer up at her from behind her veil of hair. "I mean, she's only a little older than me."

"She's dangerous." It was the boy. The one with the boomerang. "Remind me again why she's still here?"

Apparently nobody wanted her to hear Zuko's answer to that as he and the Avatar helped herd everyone out of the room until it was as if they had never been.

She faltered for a moment, and looked to the mirror where she had seen her mother though she had never been there physically. It was here that her mother had told her—Azula dug her fingers into the meat of her thigh to stop the memory of her mother with her long, beautiful the hair, the words she had spoken in her gentle voice, as if she had understood Azula, as if she hadn't thought her a monster—

"Azula?"

It was Zuko. He hadn't left with the others. Instead, he sat beside her so that the bed dipped under his weight. "Do you even know what's happened? Or are you too crazy?"

She glared at him under the crooked fringe of her hair. "I'm not crazy." The words came slow and sullen. They left her exhausted, and she hoped that Zuko would keep his mouth shut but very stupid people were always talking. She tried to steady her breath, to find it in her stomach, but it fluttered and flapped like the pathetic moths who flew too close to the candle flames and died, burning.

Zuko dipped his head to try and meet her eye. "Not even a Zuzu, huh?"

She bared her teeth, and Zuko flinched away, his eyes fixed on the wall in front of them. "The others don't think I should trust you. They think this—" he shrugged – "docility is a game that you're playing. A trick. One of your lies, because you always lie, Azula, you always do." He hesitated for a moment, and Azula thought he was going to ask her if it was—but then he must have realized how stupid a question that would be as he clicked his mouth shut. His throat moved up and down as he swallowed.

Azula raised her arms so that the sleeves fell to her elbow. The cool air pricked her skin. "You defeated me. I know when I've been defeated." She settled deeper into the bed, clutching one of the pillows to her stomach. "Just remember that it wasn't you, Zuzu."

"It was Katara." He smiled at her name.

Azula threw the pillow at him, and it smacked him in the face, his reflexes too dulled with thoughts of her to catch it. He didn't get it. Nobody understood. It wasn't Katara who had defeated her—it had been—her not being good enough. It had been her bending leaving her when she had needed it the most. It had been her father leaving her to face Zuko and Katara by herself. It had been her still not being enough.

"So we're back to not talking again. Okay." Zuko took a breath. "The Avatar took Father's bending away. He's in a cell now, which is why he hasn't come to see you."

Why would he even want to see her when she had so transparently failed to keep the Fire Nation safe in his absence? Zuko didn't know anything at all.

But she could make it up to her father—she could rectify her mistakes. She raised her palm, found her breath, and—

For the first time, Zuko looked at her. His eyes traced the shape of her face, found the line of her hand and followed it to her heart. "Have you considered that your bending would come back if you weren't trying to kill me all the time?"

He raised his hand to hers, so that their fingers almost touched at their tips. His hand was larger than hers—it had always been, but it hadn't meant anything. She'd always bested him where it mattered.

Calluses hardened his palm where he wielded his swords. Her hand was smooth, the skin soft and new. Only yesterday the servants had scrubbed the dead skin from her, made her smell new and clean.

Their hands were touching now—palm to palm, fingers to fingers, though his were bent at the knuckles so that their tips connected. He pressed a rhythm into her skin, something they had done when they listened to the players on Ember Island, when their mother and father had been with them, before the memories turned depressing.

She snatched her hand away, and scuttled back away from him so that she was pressed against the headboard, her legs drawn to her chest.

"I know you think that he's worth all this," Zuko said. "He's our father after all. But he's not." He looked at her, his eyes almost pleading. "He's turned us against each other. He's bullied me. He's bullied you." He touched his scar. "He may not have put a hand on you, but he's hurt you, Azula. He's hurt us both."

Her belly burned with hot shame.

Under his tunic, she saw the burn he had taken for the water bender, for Katara. It looked as if it were older than something he had received only yesterday.

Someone was always there for him.

"Sometimes, I forget that you're younger than me." His words were soft, and she had to strain to hear him. "We hadn't seen each other in years—and then you came, tricking me to come to a cell. Then you're—no, we—are taking Ba Sing Se. You said that you needed me." He looked at her as if this should mean something.

"Azula always lies," she said. "I'm a very good liar."

"You are. I think that's one of the reasons why it just made more sense for you to be the older child, the leader. I think that's what everybody wanted. You may have been born lucky, but you were still born second. Maybe that's why you had to be first because you weren't in the only way that mattered. And if I'm dead—then it doesn't matter anymore, right? You were the firebending prodigy—the only whose fire was ever blue. And maybe, we should have known then that something was wrong. And now you can't bend at all—which is a relief, to be honest, because I was going to ask Aang to take your bending away." Zuko shifted so that he was a little closer to her. "If there's one thing I've learned in my exile—the one that Father punished me with and the one I inflicted on myself—"

"—you broke Mai's heart. She was insufferable for days. Gloomy and grey and—" and still choosing Zuko over her.

He looked abashed. "I just meant to say that I learned that everybody deserves a second chance." He rose from the bed and turned to go. But he paused, looking back at her over his shoulder. "Even you, Azula. Don't waste it, please."

Azula covered her mouth, stomach roiling as she fell off the bed, landing hard enough to bruise. She rubbed them angrily, cursing her slow limbs, her useless body.

It was then that Li and Lo opened the door, their arms filled with baskets. They took away the ceremonial daggers and swords that hung on her walls, the scissors she had used to cut her hair, her perfect, beautiful hair, and packed them neatly in the baskets they then took away.

They had scooped her room hollow. It was impossible to even tell that it had once been the room of a princess, much less Princess Azula.

They told her it was not for forever, that the Fire Lord only feared that she would hurt herself.

But they lied.

She knew a prison when she saw one.

Her brother was putting her in her place just as neatly as Li and Lo had taken her things away.

She paced the room until the sun disappeared into darkness. She flexed her fingers. Before, the night had reminded her that her bending was weaker now, that she was at the mercy of the sky, of time, of things that she could not touch or even reach because firebenders rose with the sun.

She had been without bending during the eclipse, but she knew it was the moon's doing—not her own body's doing. With the threat of the eclipse came the promise of the comet.

No promise waited for her now—only the four walls of her room and a closed door and falling under her brother's shadow.

When her pacing brought her to the door, she reached out, and turned the knob. It wasn't locked, like she had been expecting it to be. She donned her robe, pulled the hood low over her face, and slipped into the same slippers she had worn on Ember Island. It was easy to sneak out, to make no noise on the lush carpets that lined the palace hallways.

It would have been easy to dismiss her as a shadow if any had seen her, but the palace was deserted, its usual occupants too busy sleeping off the lively celebration for the new Fire Lord, sleeping off the drink they had swallowed as if they did not realize the depths of their own treachery, their own betrayal. Outside, the remnants of ribbons clung to the trees. The lingering smell of hot fire flakes seared the air. The streets were sticky with crushed traces of mangoes.

They had thrown all of this for him, and the ceremony hadn't even taken place yet.

She kicked at a pebble and it skittered across the courtyard.

They would learn, they would pay, once she was in a position to teach them.

There had been no celebration for Azula. There had been no one. No crowd. No dignitaries from the other kingdoms. No celebration. No laughter.

It had been meaningless, until Zuko had showed up to stop her and steal the Nation from her.

She twisted the robe tighter around her, quickening her pace as she approached the prison that had once contained their treacherous Uncle. She stared up and up its high tower. Of course, Father would be there. Of course he would. And when she found him, her bending would come back, and she would be able to burn through the lock, and she would free him, and then they would burn Zuko's nation and his people to the ground.

She would regain what she had lost, what was hers.

This had been her father's gift to her, and what had he ever given Zuko but his scorn and a scar?

Azula plucked a torch from the wall, holding her palm before the flame. It warmed her, and it burned her. It was as familiar as her name on her lips, and she closed her eyes, breathing in the flickering smoke as deep as she could before coughing it back up.

She climbed the winding stairs until she reached the very top because Zuko would have wanted to put their father there to discourage ill-advised rescue attempts.

As if a high room in a tall tower could stop her when she had brought low the walls of Ba Sing Se.

Her father sat caged in a cell, huddled in a grey cloak that had once been red. Azula's skin prickled in goosebumps from the chill, and she shivered.

She fell to her knees before the cell, jiggling the lock so it clanked against the bars. Her father stirred at the sound, his cloak falling so that she could see his bare shoulders.

"Azula," he said. His voice was cracked and hoarse as if he had not used it for an age. "Is that you?"

She raised her finger to her lips—just because she had slipped past the guards didn't mean they weren't listening. Perhaps they were sleepy with generous cups of rice wines, perhaps they weren't. She held the iron lock in her hand, her thumbs circling its gaping hole.

The blind Earth Bender probably could have handled this no problem. Not even the Dai Li had been able to bend metal. A flash of irritation seared through her.

Why hadn't they learned? What if she had need of a metal bender, as she did now?

She remembered that she had banished them, dismissed them from her service.

A shadow fell over her, and she glanced up at her father, at the towering length of him. "Didn't you bring the key?" he said. "Didn't you take it from your brother?"

Her eyes flickered downward, her mouth curling into a snarl. Zuko had been in her room that very day, and she had not seen it on his person, so had not thought to take it from him.

How could she be so thoughtless?

But it didn't matter. She would melt the locks with the fire of her rage. Nothing burned hotter than a blue fire—she had proven it time and again.

Pressing her palm over the lock, she steadied her breath and—

A cold breeze shook her, and her father's had, bitter laugh echoed it.

"What, did they take your bending too? That would explain much."

She braced herself, lips twisting around her teeth, and tried again.

He kneeled in front of her, reached for her through the bars that he might cup her cheeks in his hands like he hadn't done since she was small. His hands were cold but warmth flushed her skin, and she closed her eyes as she leaned into him. "Azula," he whispered. "Daughter. What has become of you?"

She curled her hands around his wrists.

"Did the Avatar take your bending too?" he asked again.

She shook her head, the ragged edge of her hair brushing against their skins.

"Answer me, Azula," her father said. He tightened his grip around her until his fingers dug into the base of her scalp, until he pulled uncomfortably at her hair.

He was going to ruin it. Everybody would be so upset if he ruined her hair. She needed to answer him before he pulled any harder. Azula opened her mouth, her tongue scraping the syllable somewhere from her scorch-burned throat. "No."

"Then what happened?" His thumb found the corner of her jaw, that place that leaned into the soft yield of her throat.

Her hands scrabbled for purchase around his wrists. "I don't know. The comet—" words faltered in her mouth. The comet had filled her with energy, crackling, burning, consuming energy that split from her fingertips and cracked air with light and thunder, that left her a smoking, hollow place.

"You must have been glorious. You, the firebending prodigy, powered by the comet." He pressed his face against the bars, and they were so close that Azula could feel his breath fall against her face. "So how is it that Zuko was able to defeat you?"

She clung to his wrists even tighter as it became more difficult to breathe. "I was betrayed," she whispered. She had cheated first, technically, but that wasn't the moment of betrayal. She couldn't name the exact moment, but she knew she had been betrayed—even before Mai had chosen Zuko over her. Her friends had betrayed her. Her family had betrayed her. And now her body betrayed her too.

"I trusted you, Azula, with the heart of empire, and you let it go. You failed me." He opened his hands so that her head dropped, her neck craned backwards. Air and blood rushed through her until she was dizzy. She clung to his wrists even tighter as she fought to find her balance, but he jerked his hands back hard, slamming her fingers against the bars. She was forced to let him go. As she rubbed the pain from the bones, her knees shuffled forwards so that she was pressed more closely against the bars even as her father edged away from her, his arms still folded across his chest, his brows overshadowing his eyes, his mouth a gaping sneer.

"And now you've come to me with what? With the empty gesture that you would save me if you could, but only if you had not lost your Dai Li friends, had not lost your nation's throne, had not lost your status as the Fire Lord I was so generous to bestow upon you, had not lost to your brother who was never as talented or clever as you—had you not lost your bending though no one stole it from you as mine was stolen."

"Father—" Azula forced the words out. "Please." Zuko's parting words circled in her ears. "Please give me a second chance. I will not fail you again. I have always made you proud, doing whatever you've asked of me."

"You have failed me countless times. You failed to return your brother before he escaped to Ba Sing Se. You failed to properly kill the Avatar—oh yes, I'm aware that you gave Zuko the credit so that it would be his own undoing instead of yours. But it is I that pay the price of your failure. He slid down the wall of his tiny cell and turned his face away from her. "You were my greatest hope, Azula. You were supposed to be everyone that Zuko was not." He raised his hand. "I don't want to see your face again."

"—you can't—" Azula breathed, her arm snaking through the bars as she reached for her father. "You can't treat me like that, like—" Those desperate words sounded so familiar in her ears. Hate rose through her and she hid her face behind her hair because Zuko had never lost his bending, even when he wandered lost in the Earth Kingdom. He had just refused to use it.

She should have accepted his challenge to Agni Kai then. When he was eager and stupid and too confident.

"Compose yourself, Azula." As he spoke, her returned to her, his strong hands reaching through the bars to hold her, to rest on her shoulders as he had once depended on her to fulfill the jobs he could entrust to no other. "Return when you have regained your bending and can free me from this place."

She bowed low. "Yes, father."

Then he turned away from her completely, hiding himself in his faded robes.

Zuko was waiting for her when she reached the bottom of the tower. "What?" she snarled. "He's my father too."

"Some people would question your loyalties," he said, smiling at her as if they shared a joke. She said nothing, but quickly outpaced him as she returned to her own rooms, but he was never far behind her.