-Chapter 2: The Offer-

He didn't know how long he sat there before he saw Azula begin to stir. This was it. This was the moment he had been preparing for since he had talked to Doctor Kuzon a month and a half ago.

So naturally he was affronted when all Azula did upon awakening was to blink groggily at him, mutter "Hello, Zuzu", and then shift her body into a different position before closing her eyes again.

Zuko was disturbed by Azula's rather unenthusiastic response at seeing him. He would have thought that his presence would have evoked an angrier response. Or at least a response that indicated some degree of interest into the reason he was here. Maybe Doctor Kuzon was right about Azula simply not caring about anything any longer. If that was true, then he didn't know what he was going to do.

When it became obvious that Azula wasn't going to say or do anything more, Zuko asked testily, "That's it? That's all you have to say to me after all this time? 'Hello Zuzu'?"

Still not opening her eyes, Azula said, "Ah, forgive my rudeness. Let me begin again. Greetings and salutations, Fire Lord Zuzu!"

Zuko ignored the mocking tone with an ease that came from long years of practice. And in a bizarre way, it relieved him to know that his sister still had enough spirit in her to make fun of him.

"Don't you want to know why I'm here?"

Azula finally opened her eyes and looked over at him. She said bitterly, "I think it's blatantly obvious that what I want doesn't matter any more."

"You're not even going to pretend to be interested so that you can figure out a way to take advantage of the situation? Come on! The new Fire Lord visits you and you can't see how you can turn things in your favor? You really have changed."

Azula gave a careless shrug.

Zuko got to his feet and stared down with an expression of contempt. He said, "So that's it? You've given up? I have to say that I'm disappointed in you, little sister. I wouldn't have thought you'd become the type of weak person who would try to escape from reality! I guess I don't blame you. If I was a sore loser like you then I'd also want to go to a dream world where I could pretend I still had my self-respect and dignity!"

Azula struggled to pull herself to a sitting position. With an enraged expression on her face, she said, "What do you want from me? You're here to gloat? You want my opinion about new curtains for your office? Can you get to the point and leave already? The last I heard, there were laws against torturing prisoners and if listening to you whine about how pathetic I am doesn't count, I don't know what does!"

He finally got the reaction he was looking for. He hadn't recognized this gaunt, unkempt woman as his sister until this moment.

Zuko sat back down in the chair and said quietly, "I want to help you."

"You're doing a stellar job so far," Azula replied sarcastically. She was breathing heavily and seemed dismayed that she was already out of breath from a simple tirade.

"I'm here to take you home."

Azula just stared at him as if she couldn't comprehend what he just said. Finally, she said, "You've never been very good at mind games, but I was almost convinced by that. Impressive."

"Azula, I'm serious!"

"You're always serious. That's your most annoying quality, Zuzu. That, and the fact that you're apparently still a naive fool. Has being Fire Lord made you lose your mind? Well, you wouldn't be the first. I can personally attest to that."

"I thought you'd be happy."

"What I am is suspicious. Do you really expect me to believe that you trust me to be around you? Why are you doing this, Zuko?"

Zuko noticed the use of his proper name. She was finally paying giving him her full attention He leaned forward and said, "Because if I leave you here, you'll die."

Azula rolled her eyes. "Why would you think that? Just because I'm not throwing tantrums like an infant and trying to set my helpers on fire like everyone expects of me?"

"Because you haven't once tried to escape. At first, I thought you were just trying to get everyone to lower their guards. But look at you! You can barely stand up! The Azula I know would never let herself be reduced to such a state. You seem content to simply waste away in here."

"I'm still not sure I see why this is any of your concern," Azula said coldly. "There are always winners and losers in war. Granted, I never expected to be the loser, but here we are. I appreciate your brotherly concern, but it's misguided. You have no obligation to me, and I will not accept your pity!"

"It's not pity-"

"What then?" Azula snapped. "You want me to be your chained hog-monkey? A pet you can trot out on special occasions to show what a benevolent and merciful ruler you are?"

Zuko glared at her. "It won't be like that! Look, you'd obviously still be a prisoner. Under house arrest, technically. But I intend to let you have as much freedom as is appropriate under the circumstances."

"That doesn't make any sense! Do you honestly believe that I'm no longer a threat to you? This is either a very bad joke or an insult, brother. What do you get out of this?"

Zuko sighed. He said, "Fear and greed aren't the only reasons that people do things."

"No, but they're the most reliable," Azula snapped. "If you tell me that you're doing this because you love me then I will laugh in your face."

Zuko could feel a headache forming. He rubbed his forehead as he said, "If it makes you feel better, one reason I want you close to me is so I can keep an eye on you. I am well aware that not everyone in the Fire Nation is happy with my new policies. It has occurred to me that there are probably certain groups that would prefer to see you on the throne, mentally ill or not, rather than me."

"Ouch," Azula said with a smirk. "Well, that seems reasonable enough. Honestly, Zuko, you could have just told me this in the first place and skipped all this nonsense about familial concern."

"I know you won't understand this, Azula, but I don't think it's nonsense to care about your family no matter what they've done. I still love Father despite everything. But he has to pay for his crimes. So do you, but unlike him you still have a future.

"You can still change. You've been living in a bubble your whole life. It took banishment and three years of Uncle pestering me before I realized that I had never truly been free. I had blinded myself to the obvious. People hated the Fire Nation, Azula. Many of them still do. I regret that in the past I had only helped perpetuate that fear and hatred. Don't you have any regrets?"

Azula stared back at him with a stony face. She said quietly but resolutely, "Regrets would imply that I have done something wrong. Everything I did was for our country and the Fire Lord. That's how it was supposed to be."

Zuko threw up his hands and gave a mirthless laugh. Then he said, "My country, right or wrong. An unsurprisingly common sentiment among our people. That's my problem. If I imprisoned everybody who felt like that then I'd have almost no subjects left. I suppose one hundred years of brainwashing isn't easily undone."

Azula's mouth curled into a sneer. She asked, "Is this where I break down weeping about how my horrible father and loveless childhood has made me a monster? You should leave the therapy to the professionals, Zuko. You're not any good at it."

"I don't think you're a monster," Zuko said softly.

"Liar," Azula said offhandedly like she couldn't care less about what he was saying.

Zuko got off his seat and knelt down next to Azula's marble bed. He repeated, "I don't think you're a monster."

A crack appeared in Azula's stony visage as she looked away. The first sign of vulnerability that she had shown in this conversation.

"Zuko..."

Azula suddenly shoved Zuko away with her foot and he fell backwards onto the floor.

"I don't know who you're trying to convince here. It's not a big deal. Everybody knows it. They all say it. Watch out for the evil princess, the mons- Ow!"

Zuko had kicked her in the shin. He got to his feet while his sister was rubbing her leg and giving him a petulant look. He was angry but not because Azula had shoved him. He leaned over so that he could look the other teenager in the eyes.

His voice dripping with disdain, he said, "Monster? Please, you flatter yourself. You're just a selfish, spoiled brat wallowing in self-pity. I have prisons filled with real monsters. There are admirals, generals, soldiers of all ranks and stripes who will never see the light of day again because they have tortured and murdered civilians, raped women and children, roasted entire families for sport..."

Zuko had to turn away to compose himself. The reports he had read still gave him nightmares. It had been necessary for him to separate the soldiers who had only been doing their duty from the ones who had committed heinous war crimes. While he had always understood that it was a reality of war, especially one that had lasted a hundred years, for certain soldiers to become no better than animals, he had not been prepared to read the actual details of their savagery or to be faced with the sheer number of such acts.

Azula may have been a bully and been extremely self-centered and callous, but she wasn't the monster she made herself out to be. The few times Father had allowed Azula to leave the palace to fight in battle (she was the only official heir after all), she had always acted as a professional soldier for the Fire Nation. She didn't commit more violence than necessary to achieve her objectives.

Even when she was falling apart, the worst she had done was banish everyone from the palace. Whether or not she would have preferred to act in more gruesome ways was irrelevant. She hadn't. Her boasting about her self-control weren't lies. She could have been worse.

It wasn't that Azula was above brute force. When the situation called for it, she was truly terrifying. But she preferred to intimidate and crush her opponents with her brilliance. Azula was many things, but she wasn't stupid. Unnecessary violence only caused more problems than it solved.

The conquest of Ba Sing Se was a perfect example. It would have been too much to expect that she actually cared about the troops under her command, but her perfectionist tendencies had led her to minimizing casualties as best as she could. The soldiers may have been pawns to her, but it still galled her to lose pieces.

Ironically, Azula's admittedly ingenious plot of bringing the city down from within resulted in less bloodshed than would have occurred otherwise if the Fire Nation forces had broken through the wall. Obviously, nobody was going to give her a medal for that but considering that Zuko had helped with the final stages of that conquest he was grateful for the nearly bloodless coup.

Zuko would be the first to admit that his sister was a genuinely unpleasant person, but that wasn't a good reason to lock her away for the rest of her life. Technically, he didn't need a reason to do that, but he didn't want to be that kind of Fire Lord. Azula was his sister. She may not have been a very good one, but he couldn't simply turn his back on her. Uncle Iroh hadn't turned his back on him. Maybe his concern was misplaced and Azula was a hopeless cause, but he had to at least try to help her.

Azula looked taken aback and she seemed uncertain as to what she should do or say next. This was such a rare sight that Zuko couldn't help but smile a little. He decided to get to the main reason that he was visiting Azula for today.

"Attack me," Zuko said.

"What?"

"I want to demonstrate something. So I want you to attack me."

Azula raised an eyebrow. "And have you kill me for attempting a prison escape? Let me get right on that."

Zuko rolled his eyes. "I don't need a reason to have you killed. Uh, not that I would. What I meant to say was-"

"Oh, please shut up."

Before she had even finished speaking, she had already leaped up from her bed. Having expected this, Zuko was able to easily evade her neck strike. He was also able to dodge the next several attacks because Azula's strikes were not as sharp or precise as they used to be.

Judging by her frustrated expression, Azula had apparently also noticed this. Her breath was coming out in sharp pants and her moves were slowing down. A look of determination flashed across her face, and Zuko jumped back just as Azula sank down into a basic firebending stance. She took a deep breath and pushed her palms out in front of her body. She was clearly gathering her internal energies to create a burst of flame.

Suddenly, she stiffened and toppled over onto the metal floor. Zuko winced a bit as she landed with a thud, face-first.

"What the hell have you done to me?" Azula mumbled into the floor.

"The paralysis should wear off in a few minutes," Zuko replied. His hands hovered uncertainly above his sister's body. "Should I, uh, roll you over...?"

"No, I'm really enjoying the taste of leftover cleaning solvents."

"So... uh..."

"Roll me over, you idiot!"

Zuko gently grasped Azula's shoulders and turned her onto her side. He then grabbed one of her wrists and held it in front of her face. He said, "Haven't you noticed the iron bands around your wrists, ankles, and neck?"

"Of course I have! I thought they were supposed to be manacles, but there weren't any chains or even holes for the bands to connect together."

"You didn't think that was odd?"

"I didn't really think about it nor did I really care. I figured that they were some new type of restraint for when the doctors decided I was 'better' and could go outside."

Zuko settled back onto his heels and grinned. "Well, in a way, you're right. These are definitely new. I knew that conventional restraints wouldn't be enough for you. So I had the Mechanist, Sokka, Toph, and Ty Lee create something that neutralized both your bending and your nonbending fighting skills."

Azula slowly pulled herself into a sitting position and rubbed her legs. She said, "All this just for me? You've always been overly sentimental, Zuzu."

Her words were mild, but there was definitely an undercurrent of menace in her voice.

Zuko ignored the daggers Azula's eyes were sending him and continued, "I don't know how they work, but what they do is very simple. When the cuffs detect your body temperature rising above a certain point - as when you're trying to firebend or exerting a lot of physical effort - acupuncture needles inside the bracelets will snap into your chi points cutting off your bending."

"As well as the rest of me," Azula pointed out dryly.

"Even if you didn't have your bending you'd still be extremely dangerous, so I needed something that took you out of the fight completely."

"Yes, because I'm clearly such a menace right now," Azula said looking down at her emaciated body with disgust. Then she asked quietly, "You said that Ty Lee helped you make this?"

Azula's voice held something that Zuko couldn't quite identify. It wasn't quite anger and it wasn't quite sadness either but some strange mixture that somehow conveyed both a threat and a sob.

Zuko gave her a stern look. "It was either this or have your bending removed completely. She didn't want that. Neither did I."

He didn't bother to mention that as Aang had absolutely refused to remove Azula's bending without cause the only other option would have been to keep Azula locked up.

Azula studied the smooth, polished surface of the surprisingly light metal bands around her wrists. She said in a thoughtful tone, "So if I'm understanding you correctly, these things react to an increase in body temperature no matter what the cause?"

Zuko rubbed the back of his head ruefully. He replied, "There was no way to get around that. You'd probably be rather uncomfortable if you got a fever, but it's not like you'd be moving around much then anyway. And you'll probably want to avoid sitting in a hot bath for too long."

Azula's voice was icy. "And what about exercise and training?"

Zuko hesitated. He had irrationally hoped that his sister wouldn't catch on to that particular aspect. He chose his words carefully as he said, "You should be able to maintain a light regimen as long as you don't work up too much of a sweat-"

The sight of Azula's murderous gaze made Zuko extremely glad that he had tested out the efficacy of Azula's new restraints before telling her this news. But this sight also irritated him. It was just like his selfish sister to expect to gain something like greater freedom without having to sacrifice anything in return.

Zuko glared at her. "I should have known better than to expect gratitude."

"So I should be grateful that you plan to turn me into a soft and dainty princess?" Azula asked in a low and biting tone.

"No! I'm not planning anything like that!" Zuko exclaimed. Just imagining Azula giggling and twirling her hair like Ty Lee made him want to shudder.

"You don't leave me much of a choice here. You're a deadly weapon, Azula. As you correctly point out, I can't trust you. The only way I can have you around people I care about is to keep you out of shape and your bending neutralized. But it doesn't have to be this way forever."

"Because the first chance I get I'm getting these damn things off me?" Azula challenged.

"Give me some credit, Azula. I'm not just going to let you roam about the palace at will. First of all, you will be watched by guards at all times. By the way, these guards have been handpicked by Uncle and they have no personal connection or reason to be loyal to you whatsoever. Toph has also verified this."

"You keep mentioning this 'Toph'. She's the blind Earthbender, right?"

"Yes, one of her skills is detecting when someone is lying."

Azula smirked. "That didn't seem to work too well with me."

"I've heard about that. But Toph has a more important role in my plan than being a lie detector. She's going to be staying at the palace for the foreseeable future, so she is going to be the failsafe."

"Failsafe?"

"You probably know this already, but Toph's a metalbender. She helped make those restraints, so I accept her conclusion that they're nearly unbreakable."

"Nearly, you say," Azula said with a speculative gleam in her eyes. Zuko knew that she was simply trying to provoke him, but he was getting tired of Azula's tendency to treat everything like a game.

So he spoke more harshly than necessary when he said, "In the time that it would take you to get the restraints off your wrists and ankles or remove the one around your neck Toph would have already decapitated you."

Azula's hand gingerly grasped the collar around her neck as she stared at him with widened eyes.

Zuko felt bad about blowing up like this, but he needed his sister to take him and this situation seriously. He also hoped that Azula wouldn't call his bluff. Even if Toph could remotely metalbend, he wasn't sure that the girl would be able to kill someone so easily and gruesomely. But with his other measures it shouldn't have to come to that.

Azula stood up and walked over to her bed. She was facing the wall when she said, "Zuko, you've put a ridiculous amount of effort into this. What is it that you hope to accomplish?"

"I don't know," Zuko admitted. "Maybe this is a stupid idea, but I won't know that for certain until I try it. I'm offering you a chance, Azula, and I will only make this offer once. But be aware that no matter what you decide, those bands aren't coming off. So you can either wear them in this room where you can rot or at home where you can make something of yourself."

He was taking a risk making this offer to Azula in the form of an ultimatum, and he wouldn't been surprised if she refused him simply out of spite. Instead, Azula sounded amused as she replied, "You've finally grown a spine, Zuzu. I suppose your motivation for this doesn't matter. A gilded cage is still better than a dreary asylum, so my answer is yes."

Azula finally turned to face him. She crossed her arms and looked down on Zuko. Despite the unflattering hospital gown she was wearing she still managed to convey a regal bearing. She said, "I believe that it's only fair to warn you that taming me will not be as easy as you think."

"This is not about taming you, Azula," Zuko said in exasperation.

"Whatever you say, Zuzu."

Azula was right about one thing. This was definitely not going to be easy. But nothing in life worth doing ever was.

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