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(control)

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When the glowing fades, Azula feels the power rush out of her like receding floodwaters. Suddenly light-headed, she sways and collapses almost on top of Zuko, who opens his eyes with a pained groan.

"... Azula ... ?"

"Don't talk," she says, struggling to her feet. "We're not out of this yet."

She looks out over the crowd, and does not flinch away from their measuring stares. Murmurs ripple between them as nobles reevaluate their loyalties. The Imperial Firebenders watch her suspiciously.

"Kill them," Ozai says, low and menacing, brushing soot and dust from his body. "They have betrayed the Fire Nation."

She swallows her impulse to attack as the Royal Procession subtly closes around him in protective formation.

"The only traitor here is you," Azula says with forced calm, glancing at the Imperial Firebenders' expressionless helmets. They make no move to attack her. "I had only the Fire Nation's best interests at heart, but you cared only for your own power. The moment you knew I had the authority to put you in your place, you tried have me silenced."

She whirls to address the soldiers and aristocrats watching and shouts, "Cast off this sad excuse for a Fire Lord! He doesn't deserve your loyalty. I do."

The silence is deafening.

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.

"What were you thinking?" Mai says, struggling under Zuko's weight as they dodge fireblasts. She turns to fling a handful of knives at their pursuers, and the attacks stop. "Trying a coup here, surrounded by nobles like my parents? People who got their power by looking the other way when Azulon died?"

"They should have bowed to me," Azula hisses, fighting the urge to set fire to the entire street as they run from the capital. She aims precise streams of flame at the firebenders trying to chase them along the roofs. "I'm the AvatarI'm the most powerful bender in the worldI defeated Fa ... Ozai in Agni Kai!"

"You can't betray Dad like that!"

A cruel smile twists her lip. "And I can't believe you're still defending him, after he tried to kill you for the second time."

Zuko twitches and turns away, shivering with nausea.

"An ancient restriction on the throne can't stop me. I can crown myself if the Fire Sages won't," Azula insists between breaths. "If I don't deserve to be Fire Lord, then who does?"

"I do," Zuko says suddenly. He ignores Mai's warning look and stands straighter with an effort. "You only want to be Fire Lord because of Dad! You don't care about the people of the Fire Nation! You don't care about the people of the world!"

"Don't make me regret saving you," Azula says flatly.

Mai elbows him in the side, but he carries on angrily. "You haven't seenyou've never been out therethey're all waiting for the Avatar to save them from us!" He whirls suddenly and hits an approaching guard in the face with an explosion of fire, and for a moment they're too caught up in the fighting to argue.

Something crosses Azula's face before they slip into the shelter of the docks, no longer pursued. She turns to face the others, looking serious.

"Azula ..." Mai says warily.

The tilt of her head is almost playful. "I'll give you the throne, Zuzu."

He frowns at her suspiciously, but Azula's already turned away. She looks over the ocean, to the other nations beyond it. Softly, she says, "If the world wants a savior, who am I to refuse?"

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Azula turns the moment over and over in her head, treading the knife's edge to find why she slipped.

The harsh, isolated arena, emphasizing her small size and lack of supporters. Or perhaps the shock of watching the crown princess overshadowed by a waterbending Avatar Spirit. Or even the fact that she sided with her weakling brother, the exiled prince.

It doesn't matter. After the vicious, searing joy of defeating Ozai in Agni Kai, she's calm enough now to realize that the revolution must be quiet, a thief in the night stealing Ozai's throne out beneath him.

Under cover of darkness, Azula drops down from the roof of Mai's mansion and slips in through a window. If the flawless placement of their daughter into the lives of the Royal Family and their proximity to the Palace are any indication, they're more devious than perhaps even Ozai expects.

She's counting on it.

Hurting him had felt good, but it's time to set the stage for her next move.

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"That can't possibly be Ty Lee, can it?"

"Mai! Azula! Zuko!" she cries brightly, looking at them upside-down. The acrobat untangles herself with a flourish and embraces her friends. "It is so good to see you!"

Zuko twitches and tugs his hood a little lower, looking at the platypus bear handlers suspiciously. "Not so loud!"

Ty Lee blinks innocently. "What's going on?"

Azula seems to grow taller and more confident, but her aura doesn't change. "I have a proposition for you. We're on a mission"

"Tell the truth for once," Mai interrupts. She ignores the princess's furious glare and says flatly, "We're not on a mission, we're on the run. The Fire Lord's gone mad and needs to be stopped."

"I'm biding my time and gathering support!" Azula snaps, fooling no one. She presses her fingertips into her temples before looking up again. "Ty Lee, I would be honored if you would join me on my mission to reclaim the Fire Nation."

"II'm sorry," she says, "but the truth is, I'm really happy here. My aura has never been pinker!"

For a few moments, Azula seems almost at a loss for words. Ty Lee's stumbling honesty has never failed to disorient her, but she recovers gracefully. "Well ... I wouldn't want you to give up the life you love just to please me."

Ty Lee smiles and offers a bow. "Thank you, Azula."

"We'll catch your show before we go."

Her performance is stunning, although they don't try particularly hard to enjoy it. Zuko practically sulks while not offering an equally-bored Mai his fire flakes. The circus is too loud and colorful and, well, Ty Lee for any of them.

Azula's nails leave deep gouges in the bench. She wishes fiercely for power enough to make Ty Lee come with them, instead of being forced to hide like fugitives.

They're on their way out when she comes running behind them, shouting, "Guys! Wait for me!" Her makeup has been smudged hurriedly away.

"I thought you wanted to stay," Azula says, forgetting to hide her surprise.

"I was just thinking that your auras would need brightening up!" Ty Lee says, smiling wide. "You're all so dingy and gray, you'd end up unbalanced without me!"

Azula stares for a long time, trying to read Ty Lee's open hidden face for the real reason she's here, but her round gray eyes reveal nothing.

"... Let's go," she finally says.

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"I'm going to be the Avatar," Azula says. Toph snickers.

"You already are. But it's nice to see you embracing your destiny instead of chasing after your father."

Azula doesn't seem to hear the suspicion in her tone. "I'll need to master the other bending styles."

"The combination of all four elements in one person is what makes the Avatar so powerful. I could've been unstoppable," Toph sighs wistfully.

"You only ever mastered earth?"

"Wasn't like there was any way for me to learn fire or air during the war," she says with a shrug. "I met a waterbending master once, but it just didn't click. Like trying to convince the seasons to turn from spring to winter." Toph smiles almost bitterly.

"I have no choice but to learn air," Azula says, drifting into thought. "Aang mentioned sky bison."

"You might find some in the Air Temples," she says. "They say the shadows of the past can be felt by the present."

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The Southern Air Temple is cradled by viciously familiar mountains, but Azula doesn't say anything as they climb, not even when she sees the gouges in the cliffs where Sozin's primitive war machines were hurled away, to shatter to pieces on the rocks below.

The carnage inside is terrifying and inspiring in equal measure. Ty Lee takes one look and refuses to go any further than the door.

Azula tries to read katas from the way the dusty armor lies. She can see the circular motions that drove disciplined rows of elite firebenders into disarray. The airbender didn't move far from the center of the room, though, from the way the inches-deep grooves in the stone radiate outward, accompanied by Fire Nation skeletons that look like they've been sliced cleanly in half.

Azula's curious enough to step onto the bowed, shattered tiles, into the circle baked completely black by concentrated fire.

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When they cut off his escape route, he dances in and out of their ranks, dodging plumes of fire and throwing soldiers into each other.

An elder make a scything gesture he's never seen before, and yells, "Now is not the time for nonviolence, Aang!" as a troop of soldiers falls with echoing finality, sliced to pieces.

But more come, as unrelenting as the blazing comet itself. He's tired and afraid and angry. Everyone will die in screaming blood and smoke if he doesn't do something.

Kuzon shouts something at the expressionless masks, tears streaming down the ash on his face as he hurls fire back at the desecrators, but he's too young to fight elite soldiers. Flames catch him in the chest with deadly accuracy. He turns helpless eyes to Aang so he can see the luster fade from the gold

Something unspeakably powerful seizes his body. He sees his own hand, tattoos glowing, airbending a metal war machine into the opposite mountain, to shatter to pieces on the rocks below. In its wake, soldiers fall apart like cut paper, metal armor useless against the divine wind.

But more come.

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Azula gasps and finds her hands shaking. She stumbles away from the charred tiles, feeling icy cold that has nothing to do with the altitude. There aren't even bones left of him, just a scorch mark and a rising taste of bile in her throat.

"Good job," she finally says to the sad-looking boy in yellow floating by the edge of the room, carefully avoiding the scattered skeletons. "I didn't think you had it in you."

Mai shoots her a glance that could be concern, but Azula shakes her head and lets her turn the same look on Zuko, who stands in the chamber with a white-knuckled grip on his swords and emotions in full bloom over his face.

It is unspeakably hard to stand here as both murderer and murdered. Azula wonders if she's forgotten who she is, if she can't feel pride or guilt for Sozin's sake. Perhaps she's not a true descendant of Sozin after all, because all she can feel now is clawing, crawling despair.

The world is broken if this is what it means to be Fire Nation.

(she is a boy younger than this but not by much, and his skin is burning, burning, and then he is gone)

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The Fire Nation stopped hunting the Air Nomads after the first genocidal attack killed their Avatar. No airbenders were seen since, but Azula finds herself traitorously wishing they'd all been wiped out when she senses killing intent. She instinctively throws herself aside, narrowly dodging a wave of compressed wind that could have crushed her windpipe.

"Murderers! Defilers!" shouts a hoarse voice.

Their attackers look more like ragged bandits than the monks of the history books, but she's always known history to be packed full of lies. Any airbender strong enough to survive the purges couldn't have been too enamored by peaceful, spiritual life. "Stand down!" she shouts, sounding every inch a princess. "How dare you attack your Avatar!"

She airbends like she firebends, with sharp, explosive movements, but there's no doubt that she can use both elements as she lets them leap into the sky.

Their leader, an old man with flinty eyes, shakes off his look of surprise with a grin that shows too many teeth. "Yeah, right! Even if it's not a trick, we'll just kill you, and the Avatar Spirit will come to a nation more worthy than yours, firebending scum."

Zuko almost lunges, but Azula raises a hand to stop him, casting cool eyes over the rest of the band, who look less certain. "Kelzang, let's at least hear what they have to say," says the woman at his elbow, though the war fans in her hands stand ready to attack.

The right words come easily to Azula's mouth if she doesn't try to believe their content. She angles for enough moral outrage to make up for her lack of authority and subtly slight her attackers.

"If you think you can create balance by killing me, you've learned nothing from what happened here a hundred years ago. The pain and suffering needs to end. We're going to end the war, whether you like it or not, and bring a new era of peace and kindness."

While his companions look convinced, Kelzang sneers. "We don't care about the warthe Earth Kingdom's exploited Air Nomad refugees for a century. If it weren't for us they'd desecrate the temples. They'll get what's coming to them, and so will the Fire Nation."

Azula thinks Aang would be embarrassed by these supposed Air Nomadsno more than bandits, bitterly clinging to the blood-soaked past without remembering their ancestors' ways.

Behind her, Zuko says in disgust, "This is your world, too," and for a moment the airbender looks chastened. Then Zuko vomits and collapses, entirely ruining the moment.

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Azula doesn't hover by his side. That would be ridiculous, and besides, Mai's already seized all the prime space for herself.

Instead she practices spinning in ineffectual circles like an idiot while Kelzang fires blasts of air at her feet with too much enthusiasm. Ty Lee watches intently, a look of concentration on her round face when she thinks Azula can't see.

"I know how to dodge already," she says impatiently. "This is a waste of my time."

He scowls at her for a moment, then says, "Jump."

She leaps over the wave of air passing under her feet, still bristling. "This is child's playaugh!" Her feet seem to miss the solid ground as she lands, sliding straight out from beneath her. The hands she throws out to catch herself are flung away from the stone, and she lands hard on her face, bruising her jaw.

Kelzang smirks and says, "You'll have to stay in the air longer than that, Avatar."

She glowers at him with blazing eyes. Impatiently, she snarls, "Enough with these games. Just show me the airbending forms, and I'll do them."

"There aren't any formal katas left to learn, after what your people did to the monastery libraries," the airbender says darkly. "Build them up from scratch, like we had to." A mocking gleam shines in his steel gray eyes. "Unless the spoiled little princess can only learn things handed to her on a silver platter."

Azula stands and meets his challenge with a dangerous smile. "Don't underestimate me, peasant."

When he tries to unseat her again, she pulls something from her memory (this is child's play) and lands on a whirling ball that comfortably blasts away his wave of air. The look on his face says he was expecting her to simply slow her descent.

"That's a highly advanced techniquehow did you"

She smiles at his poorly-hidden envy and says, "I invented it half a century before you were born."

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"I'm not afraid of you anymore," Mai says suddenly, without a trace of emotion in her eyes.

Caught off guard, Azula tells the truth. "I know."

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When she's certain the others are asleep, Azula finally lets her royal posture go. She slumps beside the fire with a sigh.

"You don't know what you're doing," Toph says, rolling her eyes. "Again."

"I'm a people person," she insists. "I can handle this. As long as I don't make empty threats and let them think they're doing what they want"

Toph laughs aloud. "All your life you've used fear to control people who could be your friends. Zuko and Mai, who rescued you from that prison. Ty Lee, who's putting her entire family in danger to help you, when she could be living her dream. For a prodigy, you're a real moron."

Azula glares. "If you're trying to make me feel guilty, it won't work. They chose their path. They know the consequences."

Toph looks at her with unnervingly empty eyes. "They're all you have. Trust them, and they'll return the favor."

"Trust is for fools. Fear is the only reliable way," she snaps, letting the fire flare with her agitation.

"I bet Ozai taught you that."

The fire dims to sullen embers as Azula buries her face in her arms. Almost to herself, she says, "What other choice do I have?"

Ursa sighs and puts an arm over her shoulders that Azula doesn't have the energy to throw off. "I don't want any meaningless platitudes, Mother," she growls, and immediately feels like a sulking child.

"Everything will be clear in the morning," she promises gently, ushering Azula to her bedroll. She tucks in her daughter and hums a long-forgotten lullaby, silhouetted by the fire.

Zuko wakes up with tears still drying on his skin.

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