AN: Hi. First posted ATLA fic. Small offering, I know. Just a quick character piece. Many thanks to 99 and another friend for giving this a read over for me months ago when I first wrote it. It was at their suggestion that I'm posting this. Title taken form the amazing Agalloch song. Feedback appreciated.
In the Shadow of Our Pale Companion
Azula has known Death.
I.
From the corner of her eye, she sees Zuko tremble and begin to weep. Ursa wraps her arms around his shoulders and turns his face into her body.
Azula stands alone.
Ozai crosses the chamber, fire licking at his heels. He is tall and strong and unmarked, his opponent's flames having never so much as singed the the pale flesh of his bared chest. His foe lies vanquished at his feet; a squealing, writhing mass of blackened flesh. Ozai kneels, places both hands where the man's face used to be and presses. Smoke rises, the man screams – a loud, anguished note – and then falls silent; body still.
Ozai dismisses all but his children and as the room empties he beckons them forth.
Ursa's fingers trail along Zuko's shoulder as he stumbles shakily toward their father.
The smell of burning flesh is foul, bitter, acrid – it brings tears to Azula's eyes and she struggles not to wretch. Zuko quivers when they approach the corpse, face drawn and pale.
It still smolders, a smoking black, twisted heap on the floor of the Agni Kai chamber.
Zuko shudders and twists away. He drops to a knee and spills his breakfast on the scorched tiles of the chamber floor.
Her father's hand drops onto her shoulder, heavy.
He is fire.
It is his palms: pulsing with heat even through her clothes.
It is his eyes: gaze burning like smoldering coals.
It is his voice: quiet but strong, the crackle of flames in a hearth.
"Why didn't I spare this man?" he asks them.
Zuko rises, wiping his mouth piteously on the long sleeve of his tunic.
"Mercy-" he starts.
"Mercy is a fiction." Thunder shakes the room when the Prince speaks. Azula – always more clever than Zuko, always more cautious – stays silent, committing his words to memory. "Mercy is a word invented by cowards to excuse their weakness."
Azula nods once, slowly, eyes flickering to the corpse again. She thinks she catches still-glowing embers hidden beneath peeling flakes of charred flesh and bites down fiercely on the inside of her cheek to stifle the frightened gasp building up in her lungs.
Flicking his wrist toward his felled opponent, Ozai continues. "And this is the price of weakness. Sit. Stay and ponder this."
He exits the chamber.
Azula drops to her knees, eyes locked on the corpse, measuring her breaths and fighting back the sick rolling of her stomach.
Beside her, Zuko coughs and shakes and turns his face away from the body.
"Stop being a child," she snaps, pity and embarrassment sharpening her voice.
Zuko gapes at her, stricken.
He is too soft, too like their mother.
Weak.
The word sits heavier on her chest than the sight of the burned man before her.
"How can you just...?" horror thickens Zuko's voice.
He doesn't understand.
Azula turns away from him, returning her full focus back to Father's lesson.
She will not forget.