After a long morning of firebending training, the Fire Nation princess sat at her desk reading about Fire Nation politics, as usual. The day was warm as she preferred, she excelled at her training, and now she could work in peace. The day was just as she had planned.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Oh, great. It was her brother and her little sister...? Zuko had a stupid fake smile on his face, she noticed, that can't be good, and Kiyi was holding a bowl, which she handed to Azula.

"These are for you, Azu. No pits. I asked the servant to check it twice." The little girl smiled.

"Uh… thanks?" Azula said confused, looking at Kiyi. Then she gave Zuko a suspicious look. "Now, what's going on, Zuzu?"

"What?" He hesitated. "Why do you think something is going on? Kiyi and I can't come here to spend some quality time with you?" he said as he sat on the couch on the other side of the room, trying to be casual but clearly failing. At the same, Kiyi started looking at the documents and scrolls on Azula's desk.

"Not while I'm… - Give me that letter back, Kiyi! - busy, working… to help your governance, I may say." Azula took a deep breath, trying to remain calm as she gave him a glare. Then she looked at Kiyi who was near Zuko, still holding the letter. "Kiyi?" Do they enjoy making my life miserable?

"You want this, Azu? You will have to catch me… and you know how fast I am." The girl giggled as she saw a dangerous gleam in Azula's eyes. She was indeed pretty fast, almost as fast as the princess herself, something Azula was not really sure how to handle.

Zuko, on the other hand, was laughing at Kiyi's side. "I think she is afraid of losing to you, Kiyi," he said, giving Azula a mocking smile. Now she was mad.

"Enough, both of you!" There was a blue spark at the torches lighting the room. "Kiyi," Azula sighed, her voice calming once again. "Give me that back and I will finally teach you that firebending form about which you've been pestering me."

The little girl jumped and handled her the letter, after giving her older sister a hug. "You promise?"

"Yeah… I promise," Azula answered, rolling her eyes. "Now, Zuko..." She didn't even finish the sentence since it was more than obvious that she wanted to know what was going on.

"Alright, alright…" Zuko sighed and gave her a weak smile. "It's no big deal, really. It's just… mom is preparing a family dinner tonight. With us, Uncle, of course, since he is in town, and Noren."

"Oh…" she answered, observing Zuko's concerned face.

It'd already been a year since she had returned home and ended up working with her brother, as his chief political adviser. But since then, she has been avoiding her mom the best she could. There were, of course, moments that they were together and talked civilly, but Azula always thought the less they talked the better. And those family reunions her mom loved so much were the worse. She always felt so out of place. She could sense her uncle and her mother's husband staring at her, as though she really didn't belong there… And of course, there were her mother's chilling glances. Azula didn't even know what to think about that.

Her brother clearly had noticed all of this, and worse, he knew exactly how she felt about these situations. She cursed herself. Why did she feel that each day it was harder and harder to hide her feelings from him?

"Azula?" His voice made her come back to reality.

"Uh?" She gave him her usual cold glare and causally shrugged. "Is that it?" She sat next to him, eating some cherries from the bowl. "Why didn't you just tell me that?"

Kiyi was now on the other side of the room, taking some books out of the shelf and looking at their pictures. Azula rolled her eyes, thinking how she would have to put them all back in order again later.

"Azula… come on." He kept his voice low, so only she could hear him. "I know how you hate this kind of thing. And you always look so… upset… whenever we have occasions like these." The princess suddenly felt a weird feeling in her stomach as she noticed the worried tone in Zuko's voice. What's the matter with him? Was he actually this observant of her?

"So what? Can I skip it? No. Because you will make some sort of dramatic scene saying I'm hurting mom's feelings. So what's even the point of this conversation? What do you want me to do?" She tried to sound angry, but she was pretty sure she sounded more desperate than upset.

"What?" He looked confused. Of course the idiot was confused. "No, no. You got me wrong. I don't want you to do anything." He sighed.

"So why didn't you already tell me about this dinner… instead of coming here with Kiyi… and cherries… and this stupid face…" she groaned, and rolled her eyes again.

He rolled his eyes right back at her and shook his head.

"Look, Azula, I came here to… well, to show, to tell you… you have… hmmm…. a backup." He smiled a little. Now Azula was the confused one. He laughed weakly. "Yeah, don't look at me like this. I want you to know that it doesn't matter what happens this evening… I, actually, Kiyi and I are… you know, we're… here… for you… as backups."

A long silence followed. Then, Azula started laughing out of nowhere. And suddenly Zuko felt really embarrassed. Did he actually say that to her? Now that he stopped to think about it…. it sounded really stupid. "I mean…"

"So? You…. and Kiyi?" she cut him off, still laughing, "are going to be my backups? At dinner? Wow… I wish I dinner were that exciting…"

"That's not what I meant…" Now he was laughing a little too, although still quite embarrassed. "You know I meant…"

"You are so ridiculous, Zuzu…"

"Shut up…" He looked away, rolling his eyes.

The princess was pretty proud of herself for making her brother feel like a fool. Of course she knew what he was trying to say. But still, it was stupid, right? She didn't need Zuko's emotional support to go to a stupid family dinner! She wasn't that helpless, was she? Of course not. Her brother deserved to feel embarrassed for even thinking something like that!

But, it was funny how the idea of going to her mother's dinner now suddenly didn't seem so horrendous…

"Azu, Azu…" Kiyi came at her with a book, pointing to a picture showing an advanced firebending movement. "Can you do that?"

"Of course… Even Zuko can do that." Zuko gave her an unamused look. Kiyi smiled, already used to the bickering between her older siblings.

"Come on, you two…" he said, getting up and walking to the door. "We should start getting ready for dinner. Mom will be upset if we're late."

"Oh, because I care so much…." she said sarcastically. He looked her unamused once again. "Don't worry, Zuzu… I won't be late, I promise." She spoke seriously, softer than usual. "Not now that I have you two as backups." And the sarcasm was back. Zuko rolled his eyes at her as he left the room.

However, at dinner, he noticed – and he knew Azula would die before admitting it – his sister was in a much better mood than she ever had been during an evening like this. She was clearly trying to look grumpy or annoyed, as she usually looked at dinner, but he could see she was often smiling and even laughing at something silly someone would say. Maybe what he said to her wasn't that stupid after all.

A/N:

Credits to Purpleplatybusbear21 who copydesked it for me!