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Two. Obsidian.

"I'll have you know," she said as he unlocked her cell, "that I know exactly what spiderroot tea does to one's bending. I drank it today for convenience's sake. Don't assume I ever will again."

Aang didn't even know her tea had been drugged in some way, but he just nodded along and made a note to ask Iroh about it. "Ready, then, your majesty?"

Her lips drew up in a feral grin. "Lead the way, Avatar."

He did. She kept her chin high as they walked up the stairs, down hallways, towards the prison exit. Curious eyes trailed their footsteps as they walked past, but no one approached them. Eventually they arrived at the central courtyard, where his friends awaited them with Appa and their supplies.

Azula didn't pause or hesitate when she saw the massive beast, nor did she flinch at her brother's presence. In fact: "Zuzu! So good to see you. I heard you married the Water Tribe peasant." She turned to Katara, grin intact, and mocked a curtsey. "Your majesty."

Katara pursed her lips and acknowledged the prisoner with a nod. "Azula."

Zuko studied his sister and finally stepped forward, as if he meant to embrace her, and then thought better about it. He simply gripped her shoulder. "Please recognize this opportunity for what it is, for how good it could be for you," he told her. "Please, Azula."

Azula's gaze narrowed. "Brother dearest," she said with her usual drawl, "of course I know how good this will be for me." Again with the unsettling grin. "Just you wait."

Her tone chilled even Aang. Spirits help him.

"Let's go, Avatar," Azula called. "My brother must have more important things to attend to."

He helped her onto Appa's saddle and then turned to his friends, who looked apprehensive. He tried to put on a calm, reassuring stance.

"Take care," Katara said to him, eyeing Azula with unease.

He hugged her tightly. "Of course. I'll write often. You'll see, this will be great."

She shook her head at him. She didn't understand now, but Aang knew she would. Her compassionate heart was too busy worrying over him to see the potential in Azula's recovery, but she'd realize it soon.

Zuko also gave him a hug and words of caution. And: "take care of her," in a small whisper that reassured Aang that this was meaningful, and worthwhile, and necessary.

He made sure Azula was settled in Appa's saddle and took the reins.

And off they went.

"I could shoot you out the sky, you know," Azula said lazily. "Right now."

"Or you could read a book," he suggested. "The entertainment would last longer."

"The satisfaction wouldn't be the same."

"It wouldn't be replicable either. Are you sure you want to use your one chance to murder me now? I won't come back this time."

"Hmm," she said. "Book it is."

His heartbeat eventually settled. He kept his ears trained on her for the rest of the trip, and mentally prepared himself to walk on eggshells for the foreseeable future.

The nightmare woke him up that first night, as it usually did. The anxiety rolling around in his stomach was punctuated by the knowledge that she was only a short hall away. He slept fitfully, and he didn't dare approach her room until the sun was high in the sky.

Her door was cracked open and she sat, meditating, in front of the sunlight. "I know you're there," she said. "I hope you broke my focus for something good."

"Breakfast?" he said, not intending it to be a question.

She nodded. "Good enough."

He set the tray in front of her and undid the chains around her left wrist. They clattered against the wall in the Temple's absolute silence.

She sipped her tea and flexed her wrist. "I could kill you right now, you know."

He suppressed a shiver, thinking on his nightmare. "Or you could eat. Victory on an empty stomach isn't as satisfactory, I'd imagine."

She took a bite of fruit and nodded pensively. "Later, then."

It began after breakfast.

Months he'd worked towards this one moment. His knot in his gut hadn't loosened, but his mind was determined—this was what he needed, finally.

They walked toward the training yard side by side—it made him nervous to walk in front of her and she wouldn't know the way if he walked behind her. These silly logistical worries continually reinforced his absolute disbelief at the situation he'd landed himself in.

Was this actually happening? Had he truly managed to shirk his other duties for the foreseeable future for this one woman's sake? (And his own?)

He threw the first blast, fire, to stand on even ground before he attempted to outsmart her with his considerable advantage. It was tentative, unsure. A mistake. Meanwhile she gave everything she had. There it was, like in his nightmares, and he wasn't imagining the craze in her eyes. How long since she'd been able to bend with such liberty?

He ducked and rolled and the blast incinerated a column, which he quickly replaced with two seconds of earth bending—two seconds that cost him dearly. Her next shot flew over his head as he flattened his entire body onto the ground, and the next one singed his clothing as he rolled away. The next he blocked with a column of earth, and the fourth he redirected. It took him a long time to regain the offensive. He gave as good as he got, but he was controlled, a soldier conducing energy. She was energy embodied.

She was also out of practice, out of shape, and she tired quickly. He knew she wouldn't surrender, so he called it a draw and suggested lunch.

He was shaken. He'd been evenly matched, and she wasn't at her fullest. His worst fears cropped back up, and he heard Katara's concern in the back of his mind. It was an opportunity, he thought, to really improve. Learn new things. Surpass himself.

He wished he could find the thought reassuring.

Eventually his other duties caught up to him. "I have to leave for a few days," he said one morning. "You can't come with me, but you can't stay here alone either."

She narrowed her gaze. "Returning to the palace wasn't part of our agreement."

"But there were no terms specifically against it, either," he said. "I'm honestly sorry. It's inconvenient for everyone, but there's no other way."

Her gaze hardened. "Your will is the way, jailer."

He flinched. He'd forgotten—even outside of the training yard, she knew exactly how to hurt him.

Halfway through their journey back to the Fire Nation, she spoke up: "So where are you going while I go back to the damp underbelly of my brother's palace?"

She said brother with her usual disgust.

"The other Air Temples," he said simply. "They're populated. They're technically under my authority, and I have responsibilities to attend to there."

"Technically?"

"I've appointed local authorities. Some things need my say, though."

"Such as?"

He hated that he found her interest unnerving. Still, what harm could there be in a few details? What if she was just honestly curious? "Well, for one, I'm going to officiate a wedding. For another, I have to go convince an Earth Kingdom ambassador that we won't be dropping our export tariffs."

"You have exports?"

"Our engineers are talented," he said, still unsure about why this conversation hadn't ended. "The artists too. We have a lot of refugees, displaced people who needed a fresh start. The cultural syncretism going on there has made for a very creative, innovative environment." Pride shone in his words; he loved what his home had become.

She seemed to disagree. "Pathetic," she spat. "Syncretism? You mean taint, of course, and dilution."

His grip on Appa's reins tightened. Did he want to get into this with her? No. Did he think it was important for her growth? Yes. "No, I don't mean that at all."

Why did he care?

She snorted. "Avatar, I won't speak for other nations' cultures, but I can tell you that an important reason for my father's war was quite noble. Our culture was superior. The world deserved to experience it in its full expression, not in a diluted, syncretic form."

"You think your culture is somehow pure and untampered."

"Our traditions are sacred," she said with conviction. She steadily added: "Our histories respected. We have done as our ancestors have for many generations."

He shook his head. "No, you haven't. Your history books are wrong; your historians deliberately misrepresent world history beyond anything you might brush off as bias. And when I was a kid, I was friends with other Fire Nation kids—you played different music, spoke with different slang. Don't pretend you don't know this."

"So culture evolves," she conceded. "It does not, however, mingle."

"Your brother married a water bender," he pointed out, and he was only getting started. Was this immature? Maybe. Did he care? Oh, no. Not at all. "I'm about to go officiate a wedding between a fire bender and an earth bender. Guess what, Azula? Your nieces and nephews will sing Water Tribe lullabies to your fire-bending grand-nieces and grand-nephews."

Silence. Then: "I could kill you right now, Avatar."

"You won't," he said. "You think I'm wrong and you won't kill me until you tell me exactly why I'm wrong and you're right."

Curiously, he didn't hear a peep from her for the rest of the trip. When they landed, he almost wished he could take her with him, have her see the glory of intercultural art and friendship. And he would have, if it weren't for the people, who still feared her (with good reason) and didn't thoroughly approve of his project.

So he locked her cell himself and promised to be back for her in less than a fortnight. She bared her teeth at him in a gruesome smile. "I'll be here," she said.

He thought about that smile on his way back to Appa, thought about her fingers pressed into the bars of her cell. This place did things to her.

He stopped questioning his motives then, and simply decided to make quick work of his trip. The faster he got her out of there, the better.

He didn't want to risk her throwing the stone overboard, so he waited until they were back at the Southern Air Temple to give her the little packet. "Here," he said. "It's customary to send newlyweds gifts, but for some reason they saw fit to send you one instead."

She picked it up gingerly. "You don't say," she drawled.

"I was surprised too."

She didn't seem to think it was a threat—she didn't seem to think anything relating to him was a threat, which was only slightly insulting and mostly concerning—so she opened it and threw the cloth wrapping and ribbon to the side, revealing a gleaming black stone.

"Obsidian," she remarked, looking pleased. "One of the Fire Nation's symbolic jewels. Cheap, but very respectful."

Aang wished Haru and Jie could witness this moment. "It's cultural syncretism."

Azula choked on air. "How dare—"

"Lava," he interrupted her with glee, "is rock exposed to very high heat. Recall that I married a fire bender to an earth bender." Azula's face was actually turning red, a reaction he hadn't dared hope for. "And lava becomes obsidian when it cools very quickly, something I"—he wrapped a gust of wind around the two of them—"can accomplish quite easily. So there, Your Highness, is your proof. From its inception, your culture has been inherently syncretic."

Electricity crackled between her fingers. "I will kill you, Avatar."

"Maybe," he conceded, eyeing the volatile energy in her hands. "But killing me won't prove me wrong, and I don't see you coming up with any good counterarguments. Even if I died today, Azula," he said, looking down into her eyes, randomly remembering that he's actually taller than her, "my truth would remain truer than yours."

She released a war cry like none he'd ever heard from her before, and he had only enough time to bend a wall of rock between them before her strike completely disintegrated it.

"You're wrong!" she screamed. "All of you! You traitors! You've desecrated my home, my culture, my life!"

She punctuated her cries with blasts of electricity, some of which he redirected, some of which he blocked. He didn't attack, only deflected, over and over, listening carefully to her words, but not retaliating.

This. This was it.

"Is this what you wanted, Avatar?" Another blast, rock crumbling. "Here I am! Bare! Defeated! Done!"

He dove away from a bright blue conflagration.

She parted the inferno, holding in in place around her. "I," she growled, swinging a blaze at him, "am what's left. I, of everything the Fire Nation was, remain."

He pushed the flames down with his own bending, backing away from her slowly, trying to redirect her path away from Appa and towards the training yard.

His movements stalled her attack. "You." Her gaze sharpened. "You did this. You destroyed my family legacy, my nation, my life. You!"

He was a little worn out, but not enough to excuse him losing his temper. This was just him being human, flashing back to the scared little boy he once was. "Yeah?" he spat at her. "Well guess what, Princess—your family did that to me!"

He struck back at her with a roaring wall of flame, pushing the blue back. "Look around you! You think I destroyed the Fire Nation? Your towns are populated, brimming with life—but this! These ruins were my home!"

She staggered for a moment, but deflected all his shots. Something inside him, meanwhile, had broken, a dam finally allowing release. A part of his conscience tried to whisper in his ear that no, it wasn't fair to take this out on her, that she wasn't truly responsible for any of this… but he couldn't do it anymore, couldn't tolerate her ignorance and her self-righteous anger, no more.

"I've had to watch my home turn to dust!" He shot a rapid succession of fireballs at her, all of which she evaded. One hit a column, which began to crumble, only further feeding his ire. "It was a century for you, Azula, but it was a few days for me—mere days between seeing my friends, my mentors, smiling and breathing, and then finding their skeletons—right—in—this—room!"

He felt it as he hadn't for years, his emotions coalescing into a blinding panic, and the Avatar State attempting to consume it for him, soothe it away, expel it in a wave of energy he knew Azula could not survive.

So he reined it in like the adult he was, and capped his temper tantrum, clenching his fists and gritting his teeth and containing his breath until his chest felt as though it would implode.

"I was twelve," he exhaled.

Azula stared at him. Her eyes betrayed no emotion beyond shock, but the openness in her expression was the most he'd ever seen her allow.

She turned on her heel and ran in the direction of her bedroom.

It was unlikely that she'd escape without him noticing, and he didn't want to be near her right now, certainly not near enough to chain her to the wall as he should. So instead he ran towards Appa and sobbed into his most loyal friend's fur until exhaustion claimed him.

AN:

Hi again! Thank you very much for reading, and a special thank-you to those who have favorited and followed, and an extra special thank-you to those who've reviewed. I'm glad you're enjoying my work!

I made it political and I'm not sorry at all. The show tackles interesting political topics in a way that is accessible and reasonable to a very young audience, which blows my mind every time I watch it. I hardly think I did that justice here, but this chapter's discussion on immigration, culture contact, and historical cultural syncretisms has, I hope, paid my respects to the show's commentary in some small way.

Feel free to discuss this or any other thoughts about this chapter with me! Discussion is my favorite thing.

M.