Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: the Last Airbender.
Mind Game
Azula just couldn't understand why her mother would bake in the kitchens where the lowly servants assigned to cook for her family spent their days and possibly their nights in her imagination. Azula thought it akin to playing in the muck with the cowpigs.
She would cross her arms in an petulant manner because mother always loved to bake Zuko's favourite strawberry cake especially on days when Azula had succeeded in making him cry, which was getting a little too easy to be considered fun anymore.
Mother only made Azula's favourite occasionally with the excuse that her favourite kind of cake was only truly enjoyed by her though Zuko's seemed to please everyone, of course. That would addle her mind, if it only was enjoyed by her shouldn't that make her mother happy?
Ursa frequently stated that it was always an honour to share and consume delicious food with others. Azula would remind her mother that her baking wasn't that good. After that kind of statement she would generally start walking to her room knowing her mother was going to send her there anyway.
Zuko was a growing boy and that was an apparently excuse to scoff all food in sight including Azula's special cake that their mother had made especially for her to share with her new friends. She had tried to tell her mother that her friends didn't like the type of cake she did, though her mother saw through the ruse and insisted they would love it. Imagine her anger when she found out her savage brother had ate nearly the whole thing, the supposed cake he didn't like! And it wasn't proper to serve a quarter of a cake to guests or so her mother told her and she had rolled her eyes in reply.
Her two friends had arrived at the palace and her mother had scrambled around the kitchens making excuses for Zuzu's lack of etiquette, which only added more fuel to Azula's already furious mind's fire.
She knew her mother was only trying to protect her weakling of a child from being metaphorically mauled by the younger superior one. It was a bonus that mother didn't know what daddy was teaching his favourite child. It was the exact circumstance Azula needed for a chance to play in her brother's head again. Her mother didn't approve of the mind games she liked to play with her brother, but her father did and even encouraged her when her mother wasn't around.
Azula sat at the elegantly decorated table, every one of the twelve seats arranged with fine plates and cutlery awaiting guests any time.
An apathetic and listless female child sat opposite her while the other child sitting at the table beside her couldn't sit still. The child squirmed in her seat exuberantly and annoyingly fidgety, she was no doubt waiting enthusiastically for something good to happen. The princess glared at the girl in pink at her lack of self-control and she stopped moving immediately with the expression Azula directed at her. Soon after she started to play with the tablecloth, reverting back to fidgeting.
Zuko emerged from the doorway coming from the hallway and his sister smiled at him in a way he never liked. Their mother soon joined them and presented them with a cake that wasn't at all as attractive or appetising like the earlier one had been.
Azula watched their mother leave the room with a weak apology about the previous cake that her daughter had already decided she wasn't going to accept.
"You aren't going to eat out of that, surely." Azula spoke, looking at her brother innocently.
The prince had scoped some cake into a bowl that was waiting in his place at the table for him to use.
He regarded his sister suspiciously. "Why?"
Azula relaxed in her seat and couldn't contain a giggle, the girl beside her echoed the sound. "Never mind."
"What's wrong with it?" He pushed the bowl away and grabbed another one from the vacant seat to his right. Zuko reacted with paranoia and replaced his cutlery with the other seat's allotted ones too.
"Are you going to use that one?" Azula asked, she quirked an eyebrow in an act of surprise.
"No." Zuko said pointedly trying to convince his younger sister he knew what was going on, even if he didn't have a clue.
Mai watched as he claimed hers as his own with a bored visage that changed slightly to an interested one, Azula's brother was weird. The usually stolid little girl had yet to personally experience the games her new friend liked to play.
"Zuko!" Azula grinned widely, their mother entered the room from behind her and scolded her son in front of daughter's two friends having witnessed his actions. Cake and a show, how entertaining. "That isn't polite, give Mai back her bowl."
"Yes, mum." He hadn't even attempted to explain his actions, their mother sat next to Mai.
He passed the bowl back to Mai and she watched it be returned to rest in front of her without a word.
Their mother began to cut into the replacement cake and didn't discipline her precious son for not waiting for her before he had started to help himself. If it had been her, she would be surprised if she didn't get sent to her bedroom.
Mai and Ty Lee were the honoured guests and attained the first pieces of the now cut cake. Zuko was third with another excuse from their mothers mental book of lengthy excuses because he was firstborn. When Azula was older she would seek to have that excuse denounced because everyone knew that first was the worst, the rough draft, the try out, her father had told her so.
Zuko brought his eating utensil to his lips and hesitated when Azula looked at him with a smile she normally made when she was about to physically harm him.
"Thank you for making this cake for me, mother." Azula uttered sickly sweet and smiled toward her brother lovingly.
"You're welcome, Azula." Their mother was more affectionate when she spoke to the pathetic turtleducks in the pond.
"May I be excused?" Zuko asked with a defeated countenance. He was certain Azula had done something nasty to his bowl and he sure wasn't going to risk getting sick.
Mai wondered why he was leaving, she was attentive now, drawn out of her thoughts by his words. She wasn't at one of her parents political parties, but her mother had warned for the thousandth time to behave and not to speak unless spoken to.
"What ever for, my love?" She questioned concerned.
"I'm not hungry." Zuko said.
Ursa beckoned him toward her with her hand then held it to his forehead. "You feel fine, but you can go if you want."
Zuko left the room without having touched one bite of the food from the 'tainted' bowl. Azula smiled widely at his departure although she felt a twinge of irritation that he had retreated from her torment so soon.
"Prince Zuko is strange." Ty Lee blurted out. Mai's eyes widened visibly, unaccustomed to outspoken children.
Azula was surprised when her mother didn't defend her brother to the little girl sitting across the table, maybe she hadn't heard. "He is."
"Azula!" She had, Azula realised.
Ursa never understood why her son had abruptly lost his desire for the cakes specially made by her, which he had enjoyed all through his childhood previously.
Azula reveled in Zuko's loss of appetite for the cakes, which she thought was a reasonable consequence for eating her favourite. As an added bonus all the cakes her mum made following that day tasted even better.