To no one's surprise, I must again apologize for the wait. I meant to get this chapter out at least a week earlier, but the demands of my job interfered. Thank you in the meantime to Meneldur, whose input has proven invaluable as always, and to another reader whose questions (and our subsequent exchange of PMs) helped me clarify my ideas on the situation between Zuko and the Earth Kingdom.
Thanks as well to my reviewers, as I really enjoyed seeing your response to last chapter's revelation. Some clarification re: your analysis for Attila1987: Notice that Ozai says he trained Azula not just to kill, but to "exact promises" and "extract information." The skill she gained from her training could be put to many potential uses.
Your speculation on the basic nature of this training was intriguing, but would be a little self-defeating, as you pointed out the impossible nature of the task. Also, Azula had already learned how to kill from her training in firebending and hand-to-hand combat. Instead, Ozai's objective was twofold. To train Azula to keep her head about her in the act, so that she could do what needed to be done, and to make her skilled enough (and convincing enough) that she could effectively distract her partner and/or make him compliant to her will.
And yes, the Earth Kingdom did learn of Azula's escape (and Zuko's disappearance that night) suspiciously quickly. As it probably won't come up in-story for a while, I don't mind telling you now: You were right. It was my idea they had a Dai Li agent secreted among the asylum staff to monitor Azula. Good catch.
Warning: The following chapter exceeds 13K words, part of the reason it took so long to write. Hopefully it's worth it though, as we get plenty of Azula, as requested. And Zuko gets his hug.
Happy reading, and (as always) please leave a review!
Azula stood at the bow. Her simple linen harem pants, tied at the waist and cut to mid-calf, stirred in the breeze. Eyes narrowed against the glare of morning light off the water, she squinted to discern the approaching line of land on the eastern horizon. The ship had made only one stop previously, at Fire Fountain City to resupply. It was there that Azula, supposed cousin to the cook, had "boarded" to join the crew in sailing for the colonies.
It was a credit to the ignorance of these unwashed peasants that they could think she was any relation to Rai. The two women shared little more than the same skintone and a cabin in common. Azula's skepticism toward that plan must have shown when Rai voiced it, for the cook reassured her, a little nervously, that she had seen cousins look less alike. Azula thought of square-jawed Lu Ten with his sleepy eyes, and privately agreed.
She supposed the crew might just be pretending to buy her story, to avoid the inconvenience of imprisoning her — until they handed Azula over for whatever bounty her brother had placed on her head. Except that they were heading in the wrong direction. And Azula didn't give pirates that much credit for patience, even if they might possess a certain low cunning. No, Fire Fountain City would have been the opportunity to act, if anyone had recognized her. So far, the only person she thought might recognize her was the cook.
Rai treated her with a grating familiarity and borderline deference by turns, such that even five days later, Azula could form no definite impression of her. She still remembered the first night she shared the cook's tiny cabin. Rai had dragged a metal washbasin into the middle of the wood plank floor, and made a bath for the fugitive princess, by then somewhat ripe from days passed in the hold. The bath was practically scalding, just like Azula liked it. The cook went ashore for a time then, she said, to buy food and some new clothes for her to wear, while they cleaned the ones she stowed away in.
The hot water soothed the ache in her sprained ankle so effectively that Azula thought she might have fallen asleep in the bath, for the next time she looked to the candle set atop the crude dresser, it had burned noticeably lower than she remembered. She stepped out of the washbasin, dripping water all over the wood floor but surer of foot than she had been when the cook first found her.
Azula grabbed the towel draped over a chair for her, and had nearly patted herself dry when she caught sight of her reflection in the weathered mirror standing in the corner, and stopped. She had deliberately avoided looking in any mirrors when she left the house on Ember Island. Not that Azula needed to look in a mirror to hallucinate her mother, but the act seemed to invite it for whatever reason, and she wasn't taking any chances.
She moved to stand in front of this one now, dropping the towel away from the water and studying her reflection. Her split lip had knit almost completely in the intervening days, to a tender pink that Azula knew from experience would not scar. In another week or so, her burn would fade too, leaving no trace of her singular failure.
What actually surprised her were the bruises, big ones painted gray, yellow, and green across her right shoulder and back and left hip and both knees and an elbow. Azula frowned at her reflection. She never used to bruise so easily. When she moved closer to the mirror, she could even see the subtle mark of fingers around her neck and where he held her hips against him…
Leave it to her clumsy brother to injure someone during sex, Azula reflected wearily. Sometimes she wondered how Mai put up with him. But he was probably a lot nicer to Mai, since he cared for her at all. Azula thought that probably made a difference, when people had sex.
Her head hurt, she realized. All of her hurt, as if she needed to see the full extent of her injuries in order to feel them. She wanted to climb back in the bath water and fall asleep again, for longer this time.
It was weakness, and Azula dismissed it out of hand. She had slept long enough in the asylum. That was exactly what she'd go back to if she were captured. She could not afford to make these kinds of mistakes, even in her own thoughts, she told herself. She told herself. Possibly out loud.
The tint on her lips, the kohl lining her eyes were gone from days of wear, and she hadn't brought any cosmetics with her. Azula wondered now why she took the time to apply them in the first place. If she hadn't, he might never have found her…
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Her jaw clenched. When had she become so weak? Azula studied her reflection with critical eyes. What would Father say, if he knew what she was thinking, what she allowed herself to think? He would despise her. He would have every right to. Her fingers curled into fists, closed around something that wasn't there.
The door opened behind her, and Azula tensed. But it was not the figment of her father that she banished. Or her mother, that she knew she hadn't. The hallucinations never used doors anyway, neither came nor went. They simply were. No, it was the cook.
Rai stopped just inside the door, a bundle of cloth in her hands and her round face gone slack with surprise. Clearly, she expected Azula to be finished by now and not standing naked in front of a mirror. It was still no excuse for not knocking. Azula crossed arms over her breasts and scowled into the mirror, rather than turn around and acknowledge the intrusion as anything more than a minor annoyance, soon to be removed.
Rai didn't leave or apologize, or even avert her gaze, but looked on Azula with something more akin to anger than embarrassment. Azula was about to demand what the hell she was looking at, when the stout cook spoke first. "With men like that, it never stops," she volunteered, gray eyes taking in the fading bruises and burn, her slow-mending ankle. "No matter what they promise."
Azula made no reply, only glared daggers at Rai's reflection in the mirror. The cook remembered herself, and paling visibly, dropped her gaze like a chastised servant. She laid the new clothes on the bed by the door, and ducked back out without a word, closing it behind her.
The princess fought a sigh now, her hands gripping the wood guardrail as she traced the line of the bowsprit and jib that cut her view of the coast in half. That was not the first indication Rai had given that she escaped an abusive relationship, and believed Azula had just done the same. She was content enough to let the cook keep thinking that, if it meant three square meals a day and safe passage.
Azula just hoped she didn't insist on trying to give advice or share her own experience. She had not asked for or invited such a confidence, but that didn't tend to stop someone with an agenda. And the cook had an agenda, that much Azula knew.
Just what that was proved harder to pin down, when her behavior toward Azula was so contradictory. As irritating as it proved to be on the receiving end of her pity, or transparent attempts at friendship, it was the respect Rai afforded her, on occasions like her trespass on Azula's bath, that made the princess truly wary.
If she were the same breed of royalty as Zuko, she might think this a natural consequence of her noble bearing, and no more than she was due. But Azula was second-born, and she knew that it was not enough to be owed obedience, or loyalty, or love. You had to exact it. You had to earn it. It would not simply be given.
That was the mistake that would undo her brother, and Azula intended to avoid it.
Her hard-won reputation did not precede her here. So far as the cook knew, she was simply Lin, only child of an admiral in the Fire Navy. She had fled their family home after her father was arrested for war crimes, and their servants had stripped the place, leaving her with only the clothes on her back.
Nothing about that circumstance was deserving of respect, even if it was increasingly common, to hear the crew talk. Her brother would gut their high command entirely, in his zeal to appease the poor victimized dirt peasants. She wondered how Zuko expected to defend himself when he finally beggared the realm, and they showed up on his doorstep demanding more reparations. But why should he think of defending himself now? He'd always had someone else to do that for him…
He was not deserving of respect, Azula considered bitterly. And neither was Lin, which just made the cook granting it — if only intermittently — that much more suspicious. She knew … something. And Azula intended to find out what it was.
"Hey, lady!" a bright, obnoxious voice on the edge of puberty intruded on her thoughts, and her brows tweezed with annoyance. Azula turned to regard the skinny kitchen boy, Rai's shaggy haired assistant, followed at a distance by the woman in question. She had not heard their approach over the rush of waves parting at the stem.
"Um…" he faltered, blushing violently in the sunlight when her gaze fell on him.
"Lin," the cook supplied from the head of the steps behind him, in the equivalent of a stage whisper.
"Lin," the kitchen boy echoed, grinning, and Azula saw that he still had all his teeth. Quite an accomplishment among this lot. "We're gonna reach Dao Sou soon."
Azula crossed her bare arms, raising an eyebrow. "You have a talent for stating the obvious." My brother could use council like yours, she added silently, and could not suppress a smirk.
He seemed to take this for a genuine smile, and heartened visibly. "There's a lot of shops and things, and some nice restaurants, if you don't mind Earth Kingdom food."
The sun-browned kitchen boy rubbed the back of his neck, as if bracing himself for a perilous undertaking. "I know all the best places, I could — show you around," he offered, eyes on the deck. He chanced a glance at Azula when she didn't reply, and added quickly, "If — if you wanted."
Azula blinked once. "No."
"Oh, okay," he choked out, cringing at her rejection. "Maybe some other time." Azula stared. "Okay," he repeated, and moved quickly to descend the stairs back to the middle deck.
Rai watched him go, then looked at her in obvious reproach. It was the kind of look she used to get from her mother, and Azula hated it at once. "He wanted to spend some time with you, that's all," she said quietly over the wind that tugged a few stray hairs from Azula's braid. "He likes you."
Azula didn't bother telling the cook what she told her the first time, that he was a twelve year old boy on a pirate ship, and would like anything with prominent breasts that wasn't three times his age. The look Rai gave her then was even worse than the one she fixed on the princess now.
And people wondered why she lied, when she got looks like that for telling the truth, Azula considered. She learned a long time ago which option served her better. And anyway, she shouldn't care what a peasant thought of her.
"You might have let him down easier," Rai continued, stepping closer with white hands spread at her sides. "He's a sweet boy, even if he trips over his tongue as often as his own two feet."
A scowl cut Azula's brow, when something in the cook's tone reminded her of Ursa's angry remonstrations, all the little pointless niceties she tried to drill into her daughter. What made this woman think she could succeed where her mother failed?
"I knew his like once," Azula contradicted darkly, thinking of her brother before he got his scar. "You shouldn't let the helpless exterior fool you."
"Really?" the cook asked in genuine surprise. "I hadn't thought —"
"No, evidently not," Azula bit out, heading off the inevitable question.
Rai gave a quiet sigh and let her hands drop, yielding to Azula's harsh glare. "Would you like to come with me then? Into town?" she offered half-heartedly.
"No," Azula flatly replied. "I will stay aboard. There's nothing for me there."
The cook lowered her eyes, so Azula couldn't make out her expression. "As you wish, m—" Rai stopped, glancing up almost fearfully to meet her sharp gaze. "Lin," she corrected, and left abruptly by the same stairs the kitchen boy took.
Azula frowned after her, then turned to watch the shoreline bob gently in out of view behind the guardrail. She counted silently to six hundred, before descending to the gun deck.
There was nothing to watch outside the ports but the waves for a while. Then the white stone seawall of the harbor crept into view, with rocks tumbled at its foot, and behind this, a tapered square tower a few stories tall, with a guardhouse perched on top. It was perhaps a customs office, or a garrison, Azula thought. The green tile roof clearly indicated their port as Earth Kingdom though.
The ship slowed to a stop, and Azula crossed to the opposite port to look down on the skinny wooden pier where they docked. The captain and three of his more heavily-muscled hands found her still standing at the port, when they came below decks to open the hold.
"Come to help us unload, girlie?" the captain asked her, fingering his thin black mustache skeptically. Azula thought he dressed more like the ring master of a circus than a ship's captain, in so many bright and clashing colors that she could practically hear Mai complaining it would make her throw up.
Azula turned a cool smirk on him, her burned arm resting casually on the sill of the gun port. "That depends. Will I see any of the money you make?"
The flamboyant man chuckled at her audacity, just as she guessed he would, and the two pot-bellied hands, brothers and the shorter of the three, joined in with a rumble of laughter. Only the hirsute third hand scowled at her, put off by her humor. But he hadn't liked much that Azula did since she refused his company — for lack of a better term — her first night among the crew.
"Ye'd make more money on your back, whore," he practically spat, cutting the laughter short. Then he actually spat on the wood planks, as if to punctuate his contempt.
Azula resisted the urge to put him on his back, in a more painful circumstance than he would have chosen. The captain looked about to reprimand him, but she spoke first. "With that charming disposition, I'm sure you'd know."
He registered the insult a lot quicker than Azula would have credited, and made for her with yellowed teeth bared in a snarl. She didn't bother to step back or ready any defense, as the brothers took hold of his arms to restrain him. "Knock it off, Lee," one of them cautioned, when the shipman in question shook him off. "Ye know what Rai said. She's off-limits."
"No woman orders me," Lee fumed, but Azula knew he wouldn't press the issue when he took in the stony aspects of the other three. "I'll be in the hold, when you lily livers get done jawing with that stuck-up bitch." He took a lantern from one of the brothers, threw open the hatch with a bang, and disappeared down the steps.
The bare-chested brothers tugged at the edges of their vests, the equivalent of shrugging, and followed him a moment later. Only the bald captain lingered. "Ye'd best go above decks, girlie," he said, though not unkindly. "It be gettin' close down here."
"I'll be gone before you come back," she promised, and resumed her watching from the gun port. This seemed good enough for the captain, whose clomping steps descended the stair behind her, until Azula couldn't hear him anymore.
It couldn't have been more than five minutes before Azula finally saw the graying cook walk down the plank and cross the pier. She waited until Rai had reached the shore before she climbed out the gun port and down the side of the ship, dropping to the pier when she got close enough. She saw the woman duck down one of the wider alleys between the squat, weathered wood storefronts that dotted this seedy town.
And Azula followed her.
To say that Iroh was worried was a vast understatement.
His brilliant and deadly and dangerously unstable niece had escaped, and he got to hear this not from Zuko, but by messenger hawk from the asylum. He knew enough from his nephew's own letters to be aware that Zuko was scheduled to meet with his opposition on Ember Island at the time of her escape. And he knew his nephew well enough to know that Zuko would go after her.
He knew no more than this until he landed on the western coast of the Fire Nation, at a large port town abuzz with the news of a grisly murder. General Shin had chartered a boat, to all appearances fleeing the Fire Nation, and then been found dead inside it, his nose, a hand, and a foot severed from his body, castrated and cut in half at the waste. The Five Pains, Iroh reflected grimly. The character for "traitor" was carved into the back of his bald pate. Naturally, rumors abounded.
Some pointed to his acquittal by the war crimes tribunal as proof that he was a spy for the Earth Kingdom, gone to sell them Fire Nation secrets. The army had caught him, they argued, and duly executed him. Other nationals insisted the military would have dealt more quietly with a traitor in their ranks. His gruesome end spoke to making an example. They speculated he might have been killed by order of the Fire Lord — for his involvement in the recent escape of Princess Azula, or for testifying against her to the tribunal, no one could seem to agree. Still others said Zuko would never revive the ancient capital punishment. This had been done in retribution by supporters of the fugitive princess and her deposed father, Ozai.
The news only grew more troubling as Iroh neared the palace. He took a boat up the so-called "secret" river, and every passenger that boarded seemed to bring a new rumor with him, each one more outlandish than the last. That Fire Lord Zuko was amassing an army. He had declared war on the Earth Kingdom. No, he had gone into hiding with his family. No, the Fire Lady had fled the palace with his heir, Prince Lu Ten, while Zuko lay near death. No, she would divorce him for an adulterer.
Some said it was Ozai who'd been killed, assassinated by agents of the Dai Li in his cell … or burned to death by the young Fire Lord. It was public knowledge Zuko hated his father, after all. But why kill him now, others contradicted, and insisted rumors of his demise were fabricated to conceal his escape. Ozai had regained his firebending and fought his way out. Or no, the princess had freed him, and they were gone to the colonies to rally support for a coup…
They talked until Iroh's head ached, and he finally sought refuge in his humble cabin. Even in his reckless youth, Iroh had never been quick to anger, an unusual trait among benders of his element. But hearing so much slander and baseless speculation against his nephew made Iroh's blood boil. It was only his desire to enter the capital unnoticed that prevented him from speaking out against these ignorant gossips.
He would wait until he arrived at the palace, and then see what he could glean from the servants, Iroh resolved. They would know better than this lot just what had happened.
Iroh gained access to the palace through the kitchens, recalling that Mai had replaced most of the staff there after one of the attempts on his nephew's life killed a royal taster instead. They had found the one responsible, but there was some doubt as to whether he had acted alone, leaving little choice but to bring in new workers. He still remembered how upset Zuko had been to dismiss so many loyal servants, even if they were generously compensated. Iroh didn't like it either, though it served his purposes now, as none of the new staff recognized him.
He secured a steaming cup of tea for himself, and a seat on a hard bench beside the sunlit doorway that opened on the herb garden. No one looked twice at him, with his generous belly and unassuming smile, the maroon robes he had chosen specifically because they resembled servants' smocks. These people needed to be more mindful, Iroh realized a little sadly. It was true, there had been no more assassination attempts since Lu Ten was born, and the Burning Throne secured for a new generation. But that was all too likely to change, now that Azula had escaped. Even if she didn't have designs on Zuko's life herself, the nearer possibility of putting her on the throne would be motivation for her latent supporters to act.
Still, their complacency served his purposes now, Iroh reminded himself. He sat, and sipped his over-steeped tea, and watched and listened. Kitchens were bustling places, and cooking, very social work. These servants, being especially nervous, also proved especially talkative. It did not take him long to learn what he needed.
That Zuko went off alone without explanation the night of Azula's escape, and only returned late the next morning, wounded and unkempt. He had been withdrawn and distracted ever since, and only gotten worse since a heated meeting with an Earth Kingdom delegation ended in threats of war, on both sides.
That Zuko visited his father in prison the night previous, to what purpose, no one knew. Ozai lay in the prison infirmary now, heavily sedated for his pain and making a slow recovery from severe burns over his chest and his arms.
That Zuko grabbed him and set him on fire in some kind of mindless rage. Ozai would be dead now if the guards hadn't come running at the sound of shouts, and pulled the hysterical youth off of him.
That Zuko had to be dragged from the cell, screaming abuses at his father. Even if Iroh hadn't known what he knew, he recognized this as a bad sign.
It got worse. The servants whispered that the Fire Lord had gone mad as his sister. That returning to the palace at daybreak, he burned his great bed and its priceless canopy to a smoking pile of slag and ashes they were still struggling to clean up. That he had locked himself in his study after, and refused to see or speak to anyone.
They anticipated mass banishments next, and a few had already started packing. It was another bad sign that Iroh couldn't tell if the servants were joking or not when they said things like this. And that he was afraid to ask.
Iroh heaved a weary sigh, and set his tea cup down on the bench, rolling ponderously to his feet. He made his way past the servants, who only now seemed to notice him as they were forced to avoid his girth in the rush of lunch time preparation. Iroh gained the quiet of a cavernous hallway, and followed the light of torches to what had been his father's study, and Ozai's after him.
He passed imperial firebenders stationed at regular intervals along the hallway, and raised on the tales of his early triumphs, several of these recognized him, bowing smartly with their gloved hands held fist to palm. He also passed the royal apartments on his way, and here he stopped at the sound of raised voices down an adjoining hall, one of which he never expected.
"What are you implying?" Mai demanded sharply of a plump woman in a bright red kimono, who shrank from the rebuke. Iroh recognized her as Lu Ten's nanny.
"Nothing, my Lady, of course, but," her chins wobbled nervously, she clasped sweaty hands, "it is almost the prince's lunch time —"
"Zuko knows his schedule," the Fire Lady said icily.
"Of course," she agreed again, shifting her feet. "But our Lord has been under such a strain, mightn't it be better if — he were not alone —"
"How dare you?" Mai spoke quietly, but there was steel in her tone, and the unfortunate nanny flinched like she felt the bite of it. "He loves that boy more than life." She fingered the edge of her sleeve, as if to reassure herself by the blades Iroh knew she secreted about her person. "He would sooner hurt himself, than let any harm come to his son."
The nanny gave her a despairing look, which Iroh could only guess meant she thought Zuko would hurt himself. And Iroh wished, not for the first time, that he could have been here a lot sooner.
Mai caught sight of him standing at the end of the hall. "General Iroh," she greeted him, with her usual flatness of affect. The stout woman bowed her head and disappeared into the nursery, knowing defeat when she saw it.
"My lovely niece-in-law," Iroh returned, and she grimaced at the address. "Is my nephew still in his study?"
The angry line her mouth formed was all the answer he needed. "Talk to him," Mai said bluntly, and turned to leave. "He's making a mess of things."
And Iroh stared after her when she walked swiftly the opposite way down the hall, presumably back to the suite of rooms she shared with his nephew. He wondered at her harsh words, harsh even for her, and why Mai was not with Zuko right now, if he was so upset. He wondered just what that business with the nanny had been about.
He continued the way he had been going, and wondered again if he made the right decision, keeping certain aspects of their family from Zuko. Iroh suspected why his nephew had attacked Ozai, after so long and happy an estrangement. That it followed so closely upon Azula's escape could not be a coincidence, he knew.
And Iroh thought back to a few months after the war's end and the last time he visited his brother in prison, to put certain accusations to him…
"Azula is mad," Ozai dismissed then. But his golden eyes watched his brother from behind the bars, with a caution that wouldn't be readily detectable to anyone who didn't know him so well. "She doesn't know what she's saying."
"Maybe not," Iroh replied with deceptive quiet, his tone hard. "But I do."
Ozai dropped the pretense of ignorance then, realizing, as he always did with a little reminding, that Iroh was the one person he couldn't lie to. "And what are you going to do about it?" he sneered, slouching casually where he sat on the hard pallet.
And Iroh remembered that he had been just the same as a child, never clinging to falsehoods as most children would when caught in a lie, but admitting ugly truths with a studied disdain. As if lying were a game he chose not to play anymore, because it had lost its fun. A stale joke not worth examining further, and wasn't the other person a fool for paying any mind to it?
Iroh should have realized a long time ago that there was something really wrong with him. Iroh should have known that he could never be trusted with a child — any child — even one so obviously suited to him as Azula.
Especially one so obviously suited to him as Azula.
Ozai was speaking again, and all he wanted to do was walk out of the chill darkness of this cell and forget he ever had a brother. But Iroh forced himself to listen. He owed his niece that much, he told himself. Even if his knowing would avail her nothing now.
"It's over. I'm in prison," Ozai stated bitterly, brows forked in a scowl. "Azula will spend the rest of her life drugged in an asylum. So what remedy, you old fool?"
"I could tell Zuko what you did," Iroh put forth, so quietly he wondered if his brother would even hear him.
Ozai snorted with contempt. "Because his good opinion means so much to me."
"He would have you killed," Iroh concluded gravely, ignoring the interruption.
"For the sake of a sibling he hates?"
Iroh just looked at him in the closest thing to pity he could muster. It would be beyond the comprehension of someone like Ozai how Zuko could love a person he had every reason to hate. But his sparing Azula and seeking her recovery were proof enough of that for Iroh.
Ozai turned a tight-lipped smile on him, as if guessing the train of his thoughts. "You overestimate his care for Azula. He only likes to think he loves her. To convince himself he is better than her, better than me," he gestured to himself, "a noble and compassionate Lord.
"But if she ever recovered to threaten his precious peace," Ozai inclined his head to lend weight to his words, his eyes glaring fiercely beneath sharp brows, "if he ever got the chance to pay her back without guilt, or risk of public censure … well then, you would see his true heart…"
And Iroh stopped in his recollections, collecting himself instead for a talk what was long overdue. When he finally tried the paneled door, Iroh found it unlocked, and his nephew sitting on the floor in a corner of the sunlit study, his back to the wall and his knees propped up.
Zuko held a sleeping Lu Ten to his chest, rocking the toddler side to side while he whispered fiercely into his ink-dark hair. It might have made a tender scene, if not for tears streaking the haggard young father's face. And of his susurrations, Iroh could make out only pain, and a promise. No words were intelligible.
His nephew's bloodshot eyes lighted on him like a spark catching the second he entered the room. Iroh saw unreasoned anger flash in them, before Zuko softened with relief. "Uncle?" he croaked in a voice hoarse with weeping, like he hardly dared believe it.
"Nephew." Iroh returned his greeting warmly, though he had to force a smile for the first time in a long time, at the sight of the man he regarded like a son. Zuko was pale and hollow-eyed with sleeplessness, still clad in a traveling cloak creased with wear. His long hair hung loose, and a day's growth of stubble shadowed his jaw, interrupted by the bare ridges of his scar. It had not appeared so much like an open wound since the day Zuko received it, Iroh thought. His eyes were so red and irritated he might have tried to pluck them out of his head.
He looked like a wreck of a man.
The diminutive nanny appeared behind Iroh in the doorway, quiet as a cat, and caught his gaze meaningfully. And Iroh realized with a sickening jolt what she had been about to say, before Mai interrupted her. Better if he were not alone — with Lu Ten. She thought Zuko too unstable to trust with his own son…
Iroh grimaced and gave the briefest of nods to the graying nanny, clearing his throat. "It is almost lunch time," he said pleasantly, clasping his hands, and Zuko blinked up at him in evident confusion. "Lu Ten will be hungry when he wakes," Iroh added gently, and his nephew seemed to catch sight of the nanny standing at the door for the first time.
"I for— I forgot," Zuko said haltingly. He shifted Lu Ten to his shoulder, one hand braced behind his head, to climb to his knees and then carefully to his feet. The young prince yawned and blinked contently. His face turned into his father's shoulder and little fists gathering handfuls of Zuko's hair and cloak. "I'm sorry."
"It's alright, my Lord." The older woman spoke softly, and Iroh saw the pity in her eyes when she looked on his nephew. She approached and held out sturdy arms for the child, her long sleeves trailing. And Zuko reluctantly parted with him, extricating his hair from Lu Ten's baby fingers.
The toddler whined faintly in protest when he woke in the crook of the nanny's arm, and his light eyes fixed on his father. "Da?" Lu Ten questioned, reaching for him when the nanny moved to leave, and Zuko's hand flashed out almost compulsively to stroke his hair. A tremulous smile spasmed across his nephew's face, and Zuko looked like he might cry again.
"I'll see to his care," the nanny promised in parting.
Zuko withdrew his hand. "Thank you," he whispered brokenly. And she left, taking the boy with her.
"Zuko," Iroh prompted kindly when the door closed behind her, laying a supporting hand on his nephew's shoulder. "Please tell me what is troubling you."
Zuko startled at his touch, and shook his head once hard as if to deny it. "I can't," he choked out, grasping his own elbows as if withdrawing into himself. Iroh let his hand drop with a quiet sigh. So much for the direct approach.
"The asylum wrote me that your sister escaped," he stated simply, and noted how Zuko glanced away at this. "Why did you not send for me?"
His nephew looked up in surprise. "I didn't think of it," he admitted slowly, as if amazed at the oversight. "I'm sorry."
He keeps saying that. "I heard what happened with your father," Iroh tried, edging the conversation onto more delicate ground.
Zuko had the good grace to look ashamed. "Mai told you," he said dejectedly, letting his arms drop.
It was not a question, but Iroh answered it anyway. "The servants were talking —"
"Does everyone know?" his nephew fumed bitterly, turning his back abruptly on Iroh to stalk to the bloodwood desk, littered with scrolls. Zuko bent to grip the edge of it, as if he would tear it from the paneled wall.
"They're servants. They talk," Iroh reminded him patiently, remembering that Zuko had never been particularly good with people, and couldn't be expected to know this.
"They know that you burned him," Iroh said, his tone carefully neutral. If Zuko sensed any blame, however imaginary, he would never open up as he obviously needed. "They just don't know why."
Zuko looked over his shoulder then, his eyes dark with pain, and it took Iroh a moment to realize his nephew was gauging him. "You should sit down," Zuko said hoarsely, but it was he who slumped into an elegantly carved chair before the desk. He bent to grip his head in shaking hands, his teeth clenched in anguish.
But Iroh stayed standing. He knew what Zuko was struggling to say, and he should not make him say it. Iroh knew how impossible it was to even think it, let alone put it to words. Maybe that was why he couldn't speak. No wise adage would come to him. He'd been dreading this moment for years, and now proved just as useless as he always feared.
Zuko spoke to the gray stone floor, his voice choked with tears. "I found out what — he did to — to Azula…"
It wasn't fair. His nephew fought so hard — Iroh fought so hard — for the man Zuko was today. He only wanted his nephew's happiness. But how could Zuko be happy, when he was continually sabotaged by his father's crimes?
Iroh wished he saw an end to it, but he knew that even Ozai's death would not stop revelations like these. Azula told him three years and more ago, without even meaning to. He heard it in her soft words, read it in her fingers straining, eyes as empty as a doll's. Dead on the surface, screaming underneath. There was no limit to his brother's depravity.
"He abused her," Zuko brokenly echoed his thoughts. Tears streaked the right side of his face, his eyes fixed desperately on Iroh. "He — violated her."
Iroh watched his nephew scar all over again. And he couldn't look away.
"You don't look surprised," Zuko said slowly after a moment, his white face gone still with suspicion. He let down his hands and sat straight abruptly, fingers clenching. "Why don't you look surprised?"
"Zuko…"
"You knew?!" his nephew shouted in outrage, surging to his feet so abruptly the chair turned over behind him. "You knew, and you didn't tell me?"
"What good would it have done?" Iroh said helplessly, spreading his hands. He felt helpless. "When I learned — the war was over, and your father was in prison. He couldn't hurt her anymore."
"Oh Agni," Zuko almost whispered, his eyes widening in sudden realization. "That's why, you stopped going…" And Iroh recalled his explanation at the time, the only one he could give. Every time I see what has happened to her, it only makes me hate my brother more.
"It was so shameful," Iroh admitted. "I could not even think about it, let alone tell anyone —"
"You could have told her doctors!" Zuko cried, his voice dangerously close to breaking. "They might have helped her, and she wouldn't have escaped! I wouldn't —" His nephew fell silent, stricken.
And Iroh stared when an awful possibility occurred to him. His crippling guilt, his secrecy, the hours Zuko disappeared, the state he returned in. The fact that after days of searching, not one of Iroh's contacts in a world-spanning secret society had reported seeing Azula…
It would have been self-defense, or an accident. It had to be, but Zuko would blame himself, Iroh knew. That was the kind of man his nephew was.
Iroh knew the kind of man his nephew was.
"Zuko …" he said almost fearfully, heart thudding painfully in his ears, "did you kill her?"
"What? No!" Zuko took a quick step back in shock, as if Iroh had dealt him a physical blow. But his denial came swiftly enough that Iroh knew it was the truth. He tried not let his relief show. "My gods, how could you ask me that?"
"What else am I supposed to think, when you are acting so guilty?" Iroh finally demanded, thrusting out a callused hand. Frustration followed quickly in the face of his relief. He was too old for this. "Why don't you just tell me?"
"I don't want you to look at me like Mai does!" Zuko burst out, but seemed to realize his mistake immediately. He paled visibly as Iroh considered, would the taciturn woman tell him what he needed to help his boy? He could not let things stand as they were.
"Please, Uncle," Zuko begged, grabbing Iroh's wrist as if to stop him, when he hadn't moved from the spot. "Just leave it alone." He looked almost scared, ashamed, terribly lonely. All things he had no business being.
Iroh gazed sadly at him, and laid his other hand over Zuko's, to soften words he knew his nephew wouldn't want to hear. "My nephew, you need to talk to someone —"
"Talking doesn't help anything!" Zuko insisted angrily, throwing off his grip. "I just have to find her!" He stalked away, crossing the cluttered study.
"You don't have to talk to me, but you need to talk to someone," Iroh addressed his back. "If you are losing control like this, burning your father —" Zuko kicked a wooden end table beside the door to splinters in a burst of flame, and Iroh began to understand why the servants lived in fear of his temper all of a sudden.
"He deserved it!" his nephew said savagely, turning on Iroh with his fists clenched and back bent as if ready to charge. "He deserves to die! He deserves to die for what he did!"
Iroh schooled his expression carefully, as only years passed in a vicious court could teach him. It would not do to let Zuko see he thought the very same thing, when he found out. What his nephew was considering was political suicide. Instead, he ventured carefully, "How would you explain it, after all this time?"
"I'm the Fire Lord," his nephew bit out angrily, glaring into an empty corner. "I don't have to explain myself to anyone."
Iroh frowned. He had come to expect better from Zuko. "Your father said much the same thing once —"
Zuko jerked as if stung. "I'm nothing like him!"
Iroh paused at the violence of his reaction. "I never said you were," he placated, feeling even more out of his depth.
"I'm not, I'm not…" Zuko insisted, turning for the door as if to flee. Instead he struck the door so hard with a fist that it rattled on its hinges, his other arm braced against it.
"Nephew, please listen to me," Iroh said earnestly, closing the distance between them. Zuko leaned his forehead against the door, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, his breaths harsh and unsteady, but he didn't try to move away. Iroh took that for a good sign, and reached out to give his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
"If you kill him, Azula will never forgive you," Iroh warned him gravely. He felt Zuko shudder. "And … you will never forgive yourself."
Zuko lifted his head to look sidelong at Iroh, and whispered desperately, "She'll already never forgive me." His eyes were wide and horrified, as if fixed on something Iroh couldn't see. "I'll already never forgive myself. So why not?" He barked out a bitter laugh that cut Iroh to the core. "Why not?"
Iroh dropped his hand in shock. This was even worse than he'd guessed. "Zuko, do not do this thing," he ordered sternly, but his nephew only turned away to put his shoulder into the door, and then his back. Zuko slid down until he sat at its foot with his knees propped up and his head bent, in much the same attitude his uncle found him. But Iroh was not deterred.
"Remember who you are, remember how far you've come," he exhorted, kneeling beside the young man though it made his joints scream in protest. "Think back when we were fugitives in the Earth Kingdom, living out of caves, stealing to survive. You said once that there was no hope. Do you remember what I told you then?"
His nephew grimaced and made to turn away, but Iroh grabbed his shoulder, holding him fast. "You must never give in to despair," he said urgently, when Zuko reached up to cover his own eyes, crying silently. "Allow yourself to slip down that road, and you surrender to your lowest instincts —"
"I already did."
Iroh stopped when Zuko said this. Zuko stopped when he realized he said this, and sat up on his knees. His red eyes darted to Iroh's face in breathless horror, like he expected his uncle to turn from him as from some hideous deformity. When Iroh didn't, any reserve he had left crumbled, and Zuko looked on him in torment.
"Oh gods," he choked out, reaching for Iroh as helplessly as a blind man groping in the dark. And when his uncle reached back to steady him, he grabbed the old man in a clumsy embrace, clutched the back of Iroh's robe, and buried his face in his shoulder.
"Everything I do just makes it worse!" his nephew wept, voice muffled by the fabric of Iroh's robe. "Everything I do — just makes her worse…"
His uncle hugged him quickly back, as much to restrain Zuko as to comfort him. He was shaking so badly Iroh worried he had made himself sick with guilt.
"I just wish — I could take it back," he whispered hopelessly.
But Iroh could not help him take it back. He didn't even know what it was.
All he could offer was a solid presence to hold on to. An ear to listen, when Zuko felt safe enough to confide in him. And years to give perspective to the trials of youth.
His nephew would survive this, he knew. Iroh would make sure of it.
Even if Zuko didn't.
The messenger hawk wheeled in a darkening sky, flying low to avoid the flicker of lightning through the clouds. It never thought to look down for the arrow that felled it, and plummeted in a flash of russet feathers to the alley adjacent.
Azula let down her borrowed bow, permitting herself an understated smirk at the accuracy of her aim. It was nice to see some skills were transferable. The ponytailed stallkeeper gaped at her, speechless where he stood before his meager wares.
Azula handed the bow back to him. "I've reconsidered," she said regretfully, her eyes smiling. "The grip is not to my liking."
"That was — the post office —" he sputtered in disbelief, not even seeming to register the sudden fall of rain on both their heads.
"Yes, you might start thinking how you're going to explain this," Azula acknowledged, reaching up with a sharp-edged finger to tap her lips in conspicuous thought. "Or acquire a taste for hawk meat."
Azula felt the tug of a small hand at her pants leg. She looked down.
"Why'd you kill that bird for?" a dusty little girl who reached about waist-height to Azula asked curiously. She wore a brown dress cut from roughspun cloth. Her feet were bare and her short hair hung loose, and when Azula didn't immediately reply, she wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
Azula crossed her arms, arching a brow at the hand that still gripped her white pants, and the guttersnipe was perceptive enough to let go. "I didn't like the way it was looking at me," Azula lied calmly to her. "Kind of like you're looking now." Her green eyes bugged. "Get lost, kid."
Azula didn't wait for her reply, instead loosed her arms and strolled through the warm rain into the alley. She found the dead messenger hawk lying beside a waste bin, the shaft of an arrow protruding from its breast and one wing folded under its body.
She wondered that the hallucination of her mother didn't appear to scold her for killing it, or threatening small children. She crouched beside the bird to remove the leather cylinder strapped to its scaly leg, and started to pry it open. Defenseless little creatures should know by now to stay away from her, Azula considered in mild annoyance. Even the stupid turtleducks had that much sense.
"— seen it! One shot and then bam!" Azula's jumped to her feet when the girl's shrill voice preceded her around the corner, and backed against the white stone wall. Clutching the cylinder to her chest, she sprinted the narrow expanse of the alley and halfway up the wall opposite, propelling herself with a backflip and whisper of flame from her heels to a roof overlooking the cobblestone alley.
She landed lightly in a crouch at the edge of the black slate roof, but its inclination was shallow enough that Azula didn't lose her balance, supporting herself with a splayed hand. Her amber eyes narrowed when the next moment, the little urchin came pelting down the alley, clutching a twig and trailed by two broad, tan men in grass-green tunics, trimmed in pale yellow. They stopped where the hawk had fallen. The little girl chatted excitedly up at the taller of the two men, while his bearded companion knelt to examine the bird.
At first she thought they might be workers from the post office, though that would be remarkable response time. Then she noticed they wore baggy yellow pants and leather shin guards, but their feet were bare. Earthbenders. From the garrison perhaps, or some home guard. She could think of no other self-respecting adult who would walk around barefoot in public. At least the Beifong girl had some excuse, using her feet to see as she did…
"See?" The middle-aged stallkeeper ran up behind them, then bent double to catch his breath. "It's just like — I told you," he panted, gesturing to the fallen hawk.
"I see a dead bird stuck with your arrow," the bender still standing turned to reply, giving the street girl a brusque push away when she tugged at the hem of his tunic. He furrowed rock-like brows that dripped with rain. "No sign of this woman."
"Why would I tell you at all, if I'd done it?" the stallkeeper snapped. "It was that little colonist, with her Fire eyes." The earthbenders exchanged a look that Azula couldn't decipher from her vantage.
"You sure this is a post bird?" said the man who examined it, standing from his crouch. "There's no letter attached."
"I watched it take flight. We're two blocks from the post," Ponytail argued, crossing skinny arms. "Girl watched it too, like she was waiting for it. She probably took the letter."
"Wonder what's in that letter?" one earthbender said to the other, his voice low and gravelly over the soft fall of rain.
"Find the girl, and we'll find out," the bearded bender replied. "You're off the hook this time, Wei Jin," he dismissed the stallkeeper. "But you probably want to screen your customers more carefully."
"She wasn't a customer," Wei Jin grumbled, stooping to tug his arrow from the bird, and walk stiffly back to his stall. "She didn't even buy anything…"
The scrawny little girl started poking the dead messenger hawk with her twig, and the earthbenders nodded to each other in silent agreement, ignoring her utterly. They took off at a jog down the alley, and split up at the next junction, taking the left and right forks out of Azula's sight.
Her mouth curled with contempt. A messenger hawk didn't think to look down. A dirtbender didn't think to look up. There was a metaphor somewhere in there that her uncle wouldn't appreciate. Father would, but he was in prison…
Soon, she promised herself. And him.
Now to see if her stunt was worth the trouble. Azula stood atop the roof, and the little girl looked up. She froze.
But the urchin only waved up at her with a cheerful grin, before dropping her stick and capering back the way she came. Azula stared after her, frowning. What a fickle creature. But she supposed most children would seem so, in comparison to her.
She picked her way carefully across the rain-slicked roofs of several contiguous shops and homes, gaining the shelter of a wooden water tower on stilts. Azula sat tailor style on the flat sandstone, with her back against one of the thicker stilts. She drew the scroll from its leather cylinder with her front two fingers, and opened it. Rai had gone into the post office, and this letter was winging its way westward, before Azula shot its bearer down…
She read the characters once through. And then again, more carefully.
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names. But in the presence of princes, the cleverest jester is mute. Tens of thousands of bones will become ashes, when one general achieves his fame. But to forget one's ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without root.
When the tree falls, the shadow flies.
In shallow holes, badger moles make fools of dragons. The same water that bears the ship may sink it fairly. A person with a bad name is already half-hanged. But men in the game are blind to what onlookers see clearly.
If White Lotus to Home Port, Boat seven tiles to Foreign Port, two tiles West. We strike for the interior. I trust this message to find you better than the first, and await your next move.
Her jaw clenched. It read like clumsy poetry on first inspection, but she recognized the ancient proverbs when she read them. This selection could not be happenstance, but meant to communicate some coded message.
Azula knew one other person who spoke in proverbs. And the scroll was addressed to Long Zhi. The jasmine dragon.
Her uncle.
The white hands that held the scroll clenched, and threatened to tear it asunder. It took all her willpower not burn the damned thing to ashes. You already suspected her, Azula reminded herself. You saw it coming this time. She wondered why that didn't dull the sting of betrayal.
"Priorities," she muttered darkly, glaring at the scroll. This cook was nothing to her. But her access to Iroh … Azula could use that. Think.
The most obvious subterfuge was the abrupt break from lyric form to communicate what looked like moves in a Pai Sho game. Boat seven tiles to Foreign Port, Azula read again, and scowled. To communicate her movements, more like. But the directions were far too vague, and wrong besides. They were sailing East.
Then she realized, if the directions were specific to a certain point of reference… White Lotus to Home Port. The White Lotus was Iroh's favorite gambit in his favorite game. You, like most people, underestimate its value, she could almost hear him admonish her again. Not this time, she answered silently, and a grim smile curved her lips.
If Iroh was the White Lotus, then Home Port would be… The palace. Of course, Uncle would fly to darling Zuzu's side at the first word of her escape, Azula reflected scornfully. She wondered what clumsy lie Zuko would tell to cover his mistakes this time, and if Iroh and his friends would find him out. Mai had probably discovered the truth already, if she knew that knife-wielding traitor…
Azula blinked back a sudden burning in her eyes, swallowed past a tightness in her throat. Her uncle lived in Ba Sing Se now, she recalled, though she couldn't say just how she knew. That was probably where Rai sent her first letter, from Fire Fountain City. It was too late to intercept that one, and Azula had no way of knowing if it had been lost, or would be waiting for him on his return home.
She could destroy this one, and buy herself some time. But the cook was sure to send another when Azula disappeared. You could kill her, she considered, and dismissed the idea just as quickly. The last thing she needed was to leave a trail of bodies, or a trail of any sort. Unless…
Azula smiled. She could lay a false trail. All she had to do was figure out the Pai Sho coordinate system, and forge a copy of the scroll — with a few amendments.
She climbed to her feet, motivated by the prospect of misdirection, and stuffed the scroll and message cylinder into her pocket. Azula jumped from the edge of the low roof and back to the ground just as the rain let up, wending her way down cobblestone streets to the pier where her ship was docked. A ferret-faced barker with lips bigger than hers stood before one of the junks moored near the pier, dressed in green culottes and a sleeveless tunic, belted with a silk sash.
"Earth Nation, Fire Nation, Water Nation!" he sang out, spreading skinny arms in welcome to passersby. "So long as bargains are your inclination, you're welcome here! Don't be shy, come on by!" He caught sight of Azula, and she quickened her stride, but he sprinted after her with surprising alacrity.
"I can see —" he began, making to throw an arm around her shoulders and compel her patronage.
"Try it and die," Azula bit out, and he shut up quickly enough after that. Withdrawing his hand, he made no move to follow her when she walked swiftly to her own pier and up the plank to the boom.
Azula saw no sign of the cook either ashore or aboard ship, and didn't seek her out, descending wood plank stairs to the cool, shadowed interior of the boat instead. Except for two deck hands and the moping kitchen boy, Azula encountered no one in the narrow halls, and gained the captain's empty cabin without resistance or any question as to her purpose.
In her experience, it was usually enough to simply act purposeful, and no one would question your purpose. A lesson her brother could take to heart. She conceded it might be harder to manipulate appearances with a quarter of your face burned off, but Zuko didn't even try.
She closed the paneled door behind her, and turned to take in the cabin. It was more richly appointed than the cook's quarters, as she might expect. A bed with gold silk hangings was pushed up against one wall, and there were several shelves crammed with books, scrolls, and the occasional knickknack at the opposite end of the room. Ornate carpets covered nearly every inch of the wood plank floor, and thin sunlight fell onto the dark wood desk from the windows at its back.
Azula threw herself into the chair behind the desk, searching the drawers for… A world map. She spread it over the fine grain and secured its edges with two flat stones, black as jet. She snatched up a calligraphy set and laid it more comfortably to her left, and wetting a fine brush in the inkwell, divided the map width- and lengthwise with swift, sure strokes. These halves she divided into thirds, and each third into thirds, until she had laid the 18x18 grid of a Pai Sho board over the map.
The results were … rather disappointingly obvious. So much so that for a moment, Azula wondered whether the cook had meant her to intercept the decode the message after all. Could people really be this stupid? Azula wondered. She frowned, realizing she had no better explanation at the moment.
She rotated the map ninety degrees clockwise, so the Fire Nation was at Home Port, and traced slim fingers down the lines. She counted tiles, tracing a path up and across, and smirked. She rolled up the map and stuck it in her pocket, withdrew the cook's scroll from her other and smoothed it flat with the stones. Azula found fresh paper in the top right drawer, and laid this beside the original, but paused before she began her forgery.
Should she include the proverbs? she wondered again. Even knowing they pertained to her — probably — Azula couldn't be sure she had correctly guessed their meaning. The first line seemed to indicate that she was traveling under a false name, or that the message referred to her by another name, or both.
But in the presence of princes, the cleverest jester is mute. Rai had kept her silence, but she was not a jester, she was a cook. She cooked for the palace, Azula realized suddenly, before she ever served aboard this ship. Azula had to struggle to recall her round face bleached of color in the blue light of her flames, when Rai prostrated herself before the Burning Throne alongside the rest of the kitchen staff.
Her face had stayed curiously void of expression, when Azula pronounced their banishment. But something like relief glinted in her eyes when she rose to leave, and Azula noted it even then, filing away the incongruity for later review. Then everything else had happened, and she forgot —
She didn't forget you, Azula chided herself. She knew you the minute she found you in the hold, but you overlooked her to your peril. Just like Mai and Ty Lee… She stopped. This was a lesson she already learned. That she hadn't learned it four years ago couldn't be helped now.
The general probably referred to either herself or her father, but Azula didn't know what to make of the tree without root, when it falls, the shadow flies… She propped her elbows on the desk, and rubbed her temples with the points of her fingers. She could feel her headache coming back, annoying in its frequency.
Badger moles, dragons… A reference to her flight to the Earth Kingdom, most likely. The water that bears the ship may sink it. Her continued reliance on the cook might have defeated her, certainly. The bad name referred to was probably her own; Azula was under no delusions that she was anything like a popular figure in the Earth Kingdom. But half-hanged? Was she supposed to be in some danger here?
Azula sighed. She didn't have time for this guesswork. The captain and his crew would return from hawking their wares and resupplying in town soon, and she would be missed, if she wasn't discovered outright. She copied some of the proverbs and discarded others, and made some additions based on her memory of the ancient sayings, to maintain the loose rhyme scheme.
She altered the directions disguised as Pai Sho moves, and compared the two copies side by side, with a critical eye. She could tell no difference in the calligraphy, and the characters she had to extrapolate followed the general slant and emphasis of Rai's handwriting.
A forgery had gained her father his throne — with some timely intervention from her mother, she supposed. Now a forgery would gain Azula her freedom. Dad always said it was a useful skill, she recalled. That must be why he taught her so early.
Maybe she had broken some encryption with the changes, and Iroh would recognize her hand in this, but Azula was past caring. At best, she would successfully misdirect him. At worst, he would know that she knew he was hunting her. That crafty old bastard could do with a dose of humility anyway.
She rolled up the forged scroll and stuck it in her pocket beside the map, and then burned the original to ashes that she dusted from her hands. Azula knelt beside the door and peered under the crack to check for the passage of feet in the hall, and seeing none, slipped out into the abandoned corridor.
Azula was surprised then, on rounding the next corner, to practically run straight into the clashing captain. "Oh, there ye be!" he said uncomfortably, doffing his brown tricorn hat in the lamplight of the hall. "We be casting off soon, and yer cousin's in the galley, making a stew. She was lookin' for ye."
"What a coincidence. I'm looking for her, too," Azula lied smoothly, glancing aside when she stepped around him. "With both of us at it, I'm sure we shall eventually succeed." She left him to ponder that, and made straight for the cook's quarters instead, only stopping when she had shut herself inside.
Azula tore the sheet from her bed, and quickly bundled the clothes she wore on her escape into it, along with a comb and a bar of soap, the sturdiest pair of boots she could find — for when her sandals got to be a liability — and the leather pouch of coins she had seen Rai stash in the bottom drawer of the dresser one night, when the cook thought Azula was already asleep.
And she paused when it occurred to her this might be Rai's entire savings. Let Iroh compensate her, Azula thought coldly. He had a habit of rewarding failure. She dropped the coin purse into one of the boots, cinched the ends of the sheets in a knot, and walked out the door with her bundle clutched tightly in one hand.
It would be better to leave while the cook's duties still distracted her, but Azula's stomach chose that moment to rumble, reminding her of the need for food. She walked past the turn to the galley, and onto the gun deck instead, prying open the hatch to the hold and climbing down again. In day, the sunlight shining through the open gun ports actually managed to reach nearly to the bottom of the steep wood stairs, if only weakly.
Azula stepped into the darkness of the hold, and opened her hand to light a flame to see by. And the hatch closed with a bang behind her.
The fire died in her palm when she turned back the way she came, and the light from an oil lamp fell over her instead, illuminating its bearer. That lecherous sailor from the morning picked his way down the stairs on bare feet, a lantern in one hand and the blade she had broken off the halberd in his other, wrapped in sailcloth to blunt the edge where he held it.
"So," he drawled coldly, stopping near the bottom of the stairs with one foot set above the other, "little firebird decides to fly the coop." His black eyes narrowed hungrily. "If you was half as sharp as that tongue of yourn, you'da never come back."
"Let me pass," Azula demanded, clutching the bundled sheet tighter in preparation to run. Even she didn't relish the prospect of firebending when she was hemmed in by wood planks and crates on all sides.
"Before you get what ye came for, Princess Azula?" he rejoined. She glared at him, and Lee grinned in triumph. "Ye won't be gettin' that, but you'll get what ye deserve. My offer still stands." He set the lamp down on the steps at his feet, to withdraw a rolled up paper from the waistband of his pantaloons. He let it fall open to display her image, and characters too tiny to read at her distance.
"But seein' as there's a price on yer head," Lee added smugly, casting the wanted poster aside into the dark, "I guess it's you as will be payin' me. If ye please me," he offered, "I'll deliver ye alive to the king's justice. If ye don't, well …" He let the threat hang and left the lamp where he set it, to descend the stairs with her blade held ready before him.
Azula dropped the bundle, and blue flames licked at her clenched fingers, with a light colder and brighter than his oil lamp. A threat clearer and more eloquent than his would ever be. Lee scowled, his eyes flashing when he snatched up the lantern and angled it sharply down, to illuminate the floor at her feet. "I wouldn't try that if I was you."
And her eyes grew wide when Azula caught the dull green gleam of the blasting jelly that crusted the wood planks, and the white of the sheet where she dropped it. She didn't wait for him to reach her, but turned and ran into the dark, cursing him silently to herself. The fool would kill them both, and for what?
Azula needed to draw him away from the hatch before she could open it unmolested and escape, she considered, letting the flames die in her hands to make herself harder to track. She ducked down the aisles of crates, tracing the same path she'd tread a dozen times in the days she spent confined here, back to her hiding place —
She ran hard into the side of a crate where there shouldn't be one, fell back winded, and cursed herself for a fool. Of course if he laid an ambush, he would cut off her route of escape. Azula barely turned before he was upon her. His coarse hands closed around her neck and squeezed so hard she thought he would snap it. He shoved her against the crate behind her, brutally banging her head for good measure.
Tears sprang to her eyes from the force of the blow, her head swam with lack of air when he forced Azula to the floor and straddled her, pinning her beneath his weight. He kissed her savagely, and she could feel him hard against her. Her fingers clawed uselessly at his beard, she arched and kicked futilely for purchase, unable to summon so much as a spark of flame.
Panic welled up to drown her like the water unseen all around them. He would kill her, he would kill her, and he wouldn't even stop. She would never leave the darkness of this hold, never see the sun again…
He forced his tongue in her mouth, and she bit down hard enough to draw blood. It was no defense her father ever taught her, but it served. He recoiled with a choked cry, loosed his grip on her throat, and Azula drew a swift breath. So that when he cursed her and pinned her by the neck, when his other hand grabbed for her breast, she was ready.
Setting Zuko's vest on fire hadn't worked that well. Setting this man's beard on fire yielded better results. He flailed back with a bellow of surprise, beating at the orange flames, and Azula scrambled out from under his legs. And when he drew the blade from where he must have tucked it in his waistband and came at her, she kicked it from his grasp.
She rolled swiftly to her knees to put some space between them, and threw the crouched sailor into the crates behind them with a concussive burst of flame. She lowered her arms, but lit a flame in her palm to confirm he was out. Lee lay unconscious at the foot of the wood crate, fallen facedown so the fire in his beard was stifled. He was still breathing, but blood seeped from a cut on his forehead.
Azula took ragged gasps, breathed deeply of damp air that smelled of mildew, and staggered to her feet to back away. But her head throbbed so painfully she could barely keep her balance, and she could still taste his blood in her mouth.
She bent double with hands on her knees, and vomited onto the wood planks. Azula stood to wipe her mouth with the back of one hand, holding her torn shirt together with the other. She shuddered, but chided herself all the same. When had she ever been this squeamish? It wasn't as if she killed him…
Azula was surprised to realize she actually wanted to kill him. Granted, she had only ever killed one person, and then only technically, since he came back to life. But she tried to kill that same airbender and his insipid friends multiple times on campaign for her father, so it was not an unfamiliar concept to her.
What was surprising was the wanting. She wanted to kill him. For Azula, it was not a matter of wanting to kill anyone. It was a matter of them needing to be dead. She allowed that her brother might be an exception. But then sometimes, she thought he just brought that out in people.
She lit the flame in her palm again, and considered her helpless attacker.
The bang of the hatch thrown open reached her ears, and she turned to face the new threat and clutched her torn shirt tighter. But it was only the stout cook who ran up to her, her lantern bobbing with each stride. She halted when the light fell over an unconscious Lee, and sucked in a quick breath.
"My gods," she whispered, horrified. "Are you hurt?" And Rai stepped closer, reaching for her —
"Why? Come to finish the job, you filthy traitor?" Azula seethed, and she stopped short.
Her face fell in the warm light of the oil lamp, when she spied the scroll sticking out of Azula's pocket. And she said quietly, "You weren't supposed to find out this way."
"How was I supposed to find out?" she demanded bitterly, seizing hold of the forged scroll to brandish it at Rai like an accusation. "When my uncle came to haul me away in chains?"
"I know you — you won't believe this," Rai said haltingly, tears shining in her eyes. Oh, she's good, Azula thought scathingly. "But — I wanted to help you."
"You wanted to help yourself," Azula spat, and interrupted when the cook made to protest, "Oh, don't deny it. Everyone's like that. Just not everyone admits it."
"You don't know what dangers you face in the Earth Kingdom," she contradicted urgently. "Their courts have sentenced you to death, given any man to right to carry out your sentence. There are more like him out there, Princess," she gestured disgustedly to the felled sailor. "And not all of them will act alone. Neither should you."
"What would you have me do?" Azula rejoined. "Go back to Zuko? That's just another kind of prison."
"Your uncle —" she tried.
"— thinks I'm a monster. He never raised a finger to help me. Why should he start now?"
Rai looked more than a little pained, when she lowered her oil lamp in what appeared to be a placating gesture. "He would do right by you," she insisted quietly. "He's a good man —"
"He's a fool and a hypocrite, as big a fraud as my brother!" Azula denied, so hotly her hands shook with rage. "His help is a box shut away from the sun, and more drugs than I can count on both hands! If he wants to help me so badly, he can go die in a fire!"
The cook just gazed sadly at her, the sort of look her mother used to give her when Azula said something unkind. "If I can't convince you to stay," she said slowly at last, "will you at least let me give you some money, and food for your journey?"
"You have nothing to give me I haven't already taken," Azula stiffly replied, and met her gaze evenly, noting her lack of surprise at the theft.
"As you say, Princess," she meekly replied, inclining her head. Azula glared daggers at her, and thought, Be thankful it wasn't your life I took, traitor. But she couldn't bring herself to say it.
"Tell my uncle what you will when he comes," Azula dismissed her wearily, lighting the forged scroll aflame. She let it fall to the floor, where it curled up and crumbled to ashes. "You know nothing that could harm me."
Rai didn't reply, just stood where she left her among the crates and burlap sacks, with the lantern clutched in both hands. Azula strode back the way she came, stooping to retrieve the bundled sheet on her way out of the hold.
She didn't stop to gather any provisions. There was a sour taste in her mouth, and it made her feel sick all over again to be down here in the damp and the rot with these people. Azula took the stairs two at a time and slammed the hatch closed behind her when she reached the gun deck. There was no lock on the latch, but she could thread a rope through it, and knotted this securely to prevent Rai from following her.
She gained the open sky of the weather deck, and ignored the bustle and shouted commands of pirates adjusting the rigging or navigating their course into the mouth of a river. She held her torn shirt together with one hand while she walked swiftly aft, her eyes fixed straight ahead and jaw clenched. One of the barrel-chested brothers from the morning elbowed his twin when she passed, and they stopped in their work to gape at her state of partial undress. But neither dared ask what had happened before she was gone.
The lifeboats were hung from pulleys off the back of the stern, one to either side of the windows into the captain's quarters. Azula set down her bundle and leaned over the rail to grip one of the ropes in her right hand, while she frayed it with a careful flame from two fingers of her left. She applied the same treatment to the rope that supported the stem of the boat, and tugged gently on both to test their strength.
Azula nodded once to herself and took a deep breath, considering that if this didn't work, she was going to end up very wet. She grabbed the bundled sheet, and vaulting over the rail, jumped into the lifeboat.
The cords snapped simultaneously enough that Azula managed to stay afloat when she hit the water below, though the splash soaked her and left a solid inch of seawater in the bottom of the lifeboat. She knew this because the back end fell a little before the front, and the jolt of impact threw her off her feet and practically face-first into the floor.
It worked though, she saw, climbing painfully to her knees to look back the way she'd come. No one had time to come looking for her yet, while the boom kept its slow progress upriver, hemmed in by mountains on one side and fertile farmland on the other. No one appeared at the back of the ship to witness her escape. Best keep it that way, Azula reminded herself.
She climbed over one of the wood plank seats to reach the front of the tiny boat, and held her hand out over the water to heat it, and raise steam to cover her escape. Sweat beaded on her forehead, as much from the concentration and effort required to heat such a large volume of water so quickly as from the rise in temperature. She took a moment to wonder how waterbenders made this look so easy.
When she couldn't see the ship any more and was confident no one on it could see her, she lay back against the side of the boat, and let the current out of the mouth of the river bear her away. The steam would have seared her lungs if she were not a firebender, and conditioned to withstand extremes of temperature.
Even so, every breath hurt. Her wet clothes clung to her like a second skin, heavy and ill-fitted. Her eyes watered. The back of her head ached. She leaned it against the edge of the lifeboat, and waited.
Not for rescue, as most passengers might do on such craft. She knew how that would end, had always known. Even if she denied it to herself.
She didn't know why she denied it to herself.
The sun beat down unseen, a sourceless light amid the swirl of vapor and quiet slosh of the waves. The steam condensed to a chill dew on her skin. And Azula still didn't know.
If you're thinking right now that she must have a target painted on her ... sorry. This won't be happening every three chapters, I promise.
And I didn't originally plan for events to go down that way. But it occurred to me I ought to follow up on the exchange at the end of the first scene, or it would just be so much filler. And I didn't want Azula to escape without being made to confront her betrayer, so we could gain that insight into her emotions and worldview. And the attempted rape accomplished both purposes, so yeah. I hope you liked it anyway, or (considering the nature of events) at least found it plausible. At least she got a better outcome this time. The pirate ... not so much.