There are many things everyone knows about Azula.
She's beautiful and smart and scary, she's dangerous and loyal and vicious (she's mad and insane and a hundred thousand other things) but there's far more that they don't know.
Azula has many secrets, and they all come down to one thing- one person. Her mother.
Azula trusts her father more than any other person in the world, but she hasn't yet- and will never, she swears- tell him that when she found out her mother was gone, she cried. She doesn't tell Ozai that she would give everything she has in the world (including him) if she could have her back. And she really doesn't tell him that she's been jealous of Zuko for as long as she can remember.
All of these are dangerous words, and even more dangerous ideas. (And if there's one thing Azula knows, it's the way words on the wind can cut and hurt and bleed, how they can kill a person in a far crueler manner than steel alone.) But there's one other secret that burnsburnsburns and there isn't anything she can do because it's in her blood and she knows that Ozai couldn't have this in his without the entire nation knowing, so it must be her mother's fault.
After all, Ursa's mother, Meinu, came from a village suspiciously close to the Western Air Temple.
And her family had always had grey eyes, all of them.
And, really, how does any nation get all benders, no matter their spirituality? There would have been- must have been- a few who weren't. And what better place to put the cast-offs, the not-good-enoughs, in than a village that wouldn't complain?
Azula closes her eyes, sometimes, and hears screaming wind in the background. Then, she yanks blue fire the color of a cloudless sky out of the heavens with nothing more than her will and cradles lightning in her palms like the Airbending Masters of old. (There's a lot Sozin took from those he deemed weak.)
She's five when she understands the truth about fire, and how bending anything else makes her weak. (But she can't be weaker than Zuko. She can't. She won't.) So Azula trains herself to listen to the air, to see the pockets with heat that can be turned to flame with a little bit of effort.
It's easier, in the later forms, to use those flames, instead of the ones inside of her, like her father and everyone else tell her to do. And lightning might be cold fire, but it comes from and is birthed in the sky. (And everyone knows the skies belong to those of Air.)
She's better with lightning than any Firebender before her.
When Azula sees the Avatar, she envies his ease with bending. At night, though, she traces the paths he took out of fire blasts and knives with her memory alone, letting her body make the long, swaying movements so different from those she's trained herself, with the practiced care of a Master, and dreaming of a world where she doesn't have to hide everything inside her.
She sits in the Drill, and when there's nothing to do (Mai's right, it's really boring.) she thinks about her heritage.
The Avatar thinks the Air Nomad's never believed in revenge.
And it's true- but only up to a point. After all, it's easy to read the tales about people in the past, or strangers on the other side of the world, and call them fools. To say "revenge is evil." Even, say "all revenge is evil." But how could anyone stand under the same sun and sky as their parent's killers and not want revenge?
The Air Nomad's never dealt death. But they had a courage Azula can almost admire (because she doesn't have it.) and she traces the scrolls that her great-grandfather stole and wonders if anyone in the Fire Nation ever thought of anything other than the sound of fire, blood, and pain. After all, anyone who moves into the land of their enemy to get revenge has a strength she cannot deny.
Sozin, Azulon, and her own father would never have had any qualms about rooting them out. But there would have been some, who would question, who would have married and loved and lived with those of Air, and they would never be able to raise their hands against their neighbors or friends or family.
Even then, that might not have stopped any of them. But Ursa's marriage- Azula almost shut that thought down right there. It was painful. It hurt, and it whispered sedition and treason into an ear that was- almost- exclusively loyal to the Fire Lord.
No. Azula steeled herself. I am as much a daughter of Fire as I am of Air. I am strong.
Ursa's marriage had brought the blood of Air into the Fire Lord's line. Both Sozin and his father had only one child; Azulon had two only because Uncle Iroh was sickly when young. There was no reason for another child after Zuko- he had rarely fallen sick.
So Azula had looked at the files, rooting around desperately until she found a sheaf of papers nearly burned out of existence.
With some quick math, she had determined the truth. Then, she had burned everything in that wing of the palace and blamed it on a drunken fight with two unfortunate guards caught in the inferno.
She had been conceived two weeks after Ursa had sought a consultation with a Fire-Teller- a man known for his ability to determine whether a child was gifted with an element. Zuko had been a Prince of Fire for as long as he lived- he was short-tempered, fierce-willed, arrogant, and the most- thrice-damn him to the deepest pits of Koh's lair- honorable person she'd ever known.
Azula wasn't.
She was Air, with all the freedom and cowardliness of that line. And she was Fire, with all the fury and self-hatred of that line. (A poisoned knife kills two people, not just one.)
Power, she weeps sometimes.
Power- that ugly, horrible thing she fights her brother every day for. It hurts, and every time she swings it at Zuko it cuts her as well.
The only question is who can bleed the longest.
And that has led to this- to two siblings standing on opposite sides of an Agni Kai court, bending flames the color of blood and tears, burning the castle they lived in for the whole of their lives to ash around them to defeat the other.
Airbending is not gone, little older-brother. A sweep of her leg yanks flames out of the ground and into his flickering jet. And you were a fool, we were all fools to believe it so. She dives to the side, just missing his fierce double punch that nearly burns her armor. And I am Ozai's daughter. Her control is faltering- unacceptable though it may be, her training isn't enough for this. If I am to go out, I will go out with a bang! Lightning sears her lungs as she holds it in her hands like a living child. Hatred pulses through her throat, and she wants to vomit when she sees the readiness of her brother.
I hate you, Zuko.
The lightning leaves her arms, and the world fades to shades of rain-washed grey.
I will not lose to you.
The truth curdles in her gut like a too-old sweet. Say it, the wind whispers into her ear, cold as polar winter. Say the truth.
I will not lose to you, Zuko. Because Airbending must survive. And I am the only one who can do this.
Blood flecks the bottom of the asylum where she stays, and she doesn't stare at it for too long. Zuko has won. But she will drag herself out of the cliff she's thrown herself off of (somehow, it isn't that big of a deal when you command the wind, though.) she will return, and Airbending will return the way it's supposed to, the way the Avatar cannot understand it.
Until then, it is a small price to pay for her freedom.
Okay. So- how many fics out there think Ty Lee is an Airbender? I've even read some about Mai being one, and a bunch of others being secret Airbenders. That got me thinking, what if the one person who, quite literally, couldn't be an Airbender was one? The only other person I could think of for the job was Ozai or Iroh, but those- weren't as fun to do because we really don't know that much about them.
Azula had everything I wanted- a backstory I could elaborate on, a bad-ass villainess I've always (secretly, *wink-wink*) admired, and a sliding roll into insanity that's just awesome to write.
And this is what happened...
I'm really messed up, aren't I?
Read and Review!
-Dialux