They're watching her, the demons. They're always watching her when it's dark, when she's teetering on the edge of sleep, her sharp sharp mind gone slack. She knows they're not real. She made them up, that's where they came from, but she can't banish them. Stuck inside her mind. Stuck inside her— her brilliant knife mind. Slicing through any obstacle. Now it's eating itself. Now it's eating itself. Now it's eating itself.
You hurt people, Azula, and that's all you've ever been capable of. You're a monster. You're one of us.
She was never afraid of monsters in the closet, like her brother was, because she was the biggest monster. Because when she was tiny and scared, her mother used to hold her in her lap and tell her that nothing could hurt a princess of the Fire Nation— and then she got older, and their relationship turned to slammed doors and pinches under the table and what have you turned our sweet little girl into, Ozai? Her mother went away, but she stayed. She devoured.
You want to end it, don't you? they murmur. They're clumped up, amorphous, constantly shifting. Sometimes they're hiding in the shadows and sometimes they're crawling all over her. They look like her mother's old kabuki masks. But that's where you're fucked, Azula. That's when we get you. Go ahead, try to kill yourself. What kind of fate do you think awaits you in the Spirit World, after you almost ended the Avatar cycle? Do you think anyone is going to show you any mercy, when you never had any in life?
She doesn't want to hear it. She claps her hands over her ears, but they're inside her head, outside it, all around. You're not a child. You were never a child. You were sick and twisted even then; no wonder your own mother couldn't love you. You threw rocks at the turtleducks. You cheered when your cousin died because it brought you closer to the throne. You laughed and skipped when your father was going to kill Zuko. It just didn't matter who had to suffer, as long as you were amused.
She digs her nails into her forearms so hard the skin breaks, leaving bloody crescent moons. And just how much blood have you spilled, Azula?
"Shut up," she demands at last, always the princess. "Everything I've done has been justified, in the service of my nation and my Fire Lord. My person is my lord father's to command, and my place to obey him."
Excuses, excuses, more pretty excuses. You knew exactly what you were doing. You liked it.
Her father is good at banishing. Erasing. Getting rid of things he doesn't want anymore in a blast of flame, then pretending they never existed, like a child knocking over a sandcastle. Her mother and her brother and her uncle and her grandfather and her cousin have been disposed of— now the only one left is her. I put so much hope into you, Azula, he told her after the eclipse, his tone worse than any blow. I must confess myself disappointed.
He doesn't love you any more than he loves a hammer. There's nothing about you to love, only what you do for him— scheme, fight, strategize, manipulate. You could be replaced by a nodding, bowing machine with the same skills, and he would never notice the difference.
"Love is a weakness," she whispers into the shadows, rocking back and forth. "At least he keeps me useful. I don't need anyone's love."
Not even Mai's? Or Ty Lee's?
"Especially not theirs," she hisses. "Those traitors should fall to their knees every night and thank me for not killing them. They deserved far worse than what they got."
They never wanted you in the first place; that's why you needed an endless stream of threats to control them, broken wrists and singed hair and little brothers handed over to the enemy. You didn't have friends; you don't deserve them. You had lackeys. And they found a better offer.
"Zuko was a better offer?" His face swims around in front of her; worthless, soft, pathetic Zuzu, adrift once he couldn't cling to their mother's skirts anymore, begging her to please please please stop being so mean. Handed his crown back on a silver platter, and he couldn't even manage to hold onto that for longer than a month. Killing him would be euthanasia.
He shocked you, didn't he? He slipped out of your control and slithered out of your lies— found a higher goal in life than leaching all the good bits out of people, freed himself, and you never even saw it coming. There's a reason why your mother and uncle loved him best: he's not a soulless parasite.
"That doesn't change the fact that I'm still on top," she says sweetly. "He can choke on his peace and kindness and hope— he's camping out in the dirt with a bunch of guerrillas, as usual, and I'm going to be the greatest Fire Lord in history."
No, you're not. You couldn't care less about the people of the Fire Nation; you're a petty tyrant, nothing more, and the history books are full of those. Zuko got his half of his face burned off for them when he was your age. Who would want you in charge of their interests?
And to that, finally, she has nothing to say. She doesn't understand the question.
You're not a monster, Azula. You're just a sad, broken girl who's going to reign over a kingdom of ash and ghosts. And you're going to reign over it alone.
She crackles lightning between her fingers, again and again. It doesn't scare them, but it calms her, slows her heartrate, until she looks up and sees nothing. Get a grip, she tells herself fiercely. You've come too far to fail now. It's all lies.
(As she falls asleep, she thinks about sending a bolt straight through her mother's chest, smelling the ozone and the burn. This does not comfort her as much as she thought it would.)