~+~Ten for a Bird You Must Not Miss~+~
The Eastern Wing of the Fire Nation palace had become somewhat of a crypt.
It used to contain the Fire Prince's and the Fire Princess's bedrooms, studies, sitting rooms, and dens. Any other empty rooms on this side of the palace belonged to them. The Western Wing was reserved for the Fire Lord and the Fire Lady.
But Zuko clearly would not be using those rooms anymore. Azula claimed that she felt lonely being in that side of the palace all by herself. So she was moved into her mother's old quarters on the Western side of the palace, leaving the old Eastern Wing completely barren as if it was just an old and fetid memory.
None of the maids had asked why the Princess had moved quarters. Very few of them believed that Azula had insisted so strongly that she be moved to the other side of the palace due to loneliness. But, they didn't dare ask the Princess for fear that they would be severely punished. Those brave few who did stutter out the question either received an intense verbal lashing or complete silence. Other than that, she also didn't socialize much with anybody save her father. And even those interactions were meant only to gauge her progress in her studies and in her Firebending. What was even more saddening was that Azula didn't seem to mind it. It was all she knew and she had been bred to go through life like this ever since she was a young girl. If Azula resented the privileged yet relentless training she had been given for the past few years, the Princess didn't show it.
So because Ozai wouldn't have gone to that side of the palace anyway and because Azula dutifully abandoned it, the Royal children's childhood stayed in the old wing to rot and disappear into nothing.
One of the maids walked reluctantly through this abandoned half of the castle. Every month, the old rooms would be dusted and cleaned for maintenance purposes, and none of the maids had enjoyed doing it. There were so many rooms, pieces of furniture, and windows that needed dusting and cleaning that it would require an entire day's time just to clean the Eastern Wing to satisfaction. Of course, the maid just happened to draw the shortest straw that day and was stuck with the laborious job.
It was close to sundown and the maid was almost done cleaning. Just one room left at the end of the hallway and she would be free for the night. Then she could bathe, retire into her room, and curl up for the rest of the night and relax her tired muscles.
The large double doors with the brass door handles led to the final room. The maid quickly pulled out a rag and some polish and made sure to rub out the dull sheen of the door knobs and make them shine as if they were only just fashioned yesterday. She used a different rag to grab onto the handles of the door and pull them open.
It was the children's sitting room.
The whole place was sad. The shutters to the windows were closed tight, the curtains were drawn, and the chairs and couches were pushed flush against the walls along with the wooden furniture. The wood floor was damaged and dull seeing as how it hadn't been tended to in an entire month, and the cobwebs hanging in the corners made the room look even more abandoned and devastating.
To think that fourteen years ago, she was a fifteen year old girl who tended to Fire Princess Ursa during the happier times of her life. She was scrubbing the windows in her bedroom, folding her clothes, dusting her rooms, bringing her tea, and acting as one of her companions when it seemed as though she had none. It had all seemed so long ago.
In particular, the bright, happy, and smiling faces of Prince Zuko and Princess Azula stuck in her mind.
She knew the children ever since they were very young. They were the sweetest little things she had ever seen. They had round faces, bright smiles, sparkling eyes, and exuberant laughter. She even remembered them at a very young age sharing their toys and playing together in this very sitting room. They snuck away from their parents and from the maids and servants to various places in the palace to hide and play games in secret. Zuko would always declare that he would protect his younger sister and Azula would always say how much she adored her older brother.
But over the years, the laughter turned to yelling and the yelling turned to cursing. They saw less and less of each other until they did their best to avoid the other. The mother favored the son and the father favored the daughter. An animosity grew between the two siblings over the years seemingly out of nowhere. Now the Prince was banished, and the Princess had turned into a cruel and vindictive young prodigy that showed absolutely no remorse for her exiled brother.
The woman sighed. Perhaps she was the only one that noticed, or maybe she was the only one that cared. But the maid desperately wanted to know what had happened. How did such sweet children turn into such dark and pained shadows of their former selves?
It could have been so many things. The favoritism and neglect. The disappearance of their mother. The death of their grandfather. The ruthless parenting of the Fire Lord. The competition between the two siblings. The Prince's punishment and banishment. There were so many flaws and cracks in the lives of the two children that it was difficult to pinpoint when and how they had changes so drastically and how they grew so apart.
She pitied them. She knew in her heart that Azula was not as devious and cold hearted as she seemed. She also knew that Zuko wasn't as bitter and as hateful as he seemed after the dreaded fight with his father. She had proof of their happiness and of their love for their family. But apparently, the Royal Family had a habit of turning into the morphed and disfigured versions of themselves over the years. She had spoken with the old maids in the palace. There was a time when Azulon hugged his two sons every day and sat in to watch them show off their Firebending skills during training. There had been a time when Iroh and Ozai were inseparable brothers who did everything together. There had been a time when Ursa and her husband were deeply in love. Yet they had all fallen to the curse that seemed to befall the Fire Nation Royals. They had all become so different and so changed…no one recognized them anymore.
The maid almost wished that the Prince and the Princess would break this terrible cycle, and that they wouldn't fall victim to this terrible fate. But this in front of her was what was left: a dark, dusty, and dirty sitting room that no one dared look at anymore. It was lost, forgotten, and invisible. And try as she might to clean it and fix it so that it would look beautifully cleaned and polished, there was no hiding the fact that life would never truly come back to this part of the palace. It was dead. It had been for a while, and it would in all likelihood stay this way.
The maid dragged a rag along one of the pieces of furniture, erasing the thick dust that coated the surface. She wouldn't lose hope, not yet. She would hold on and not let go to the small chance that maybe this cycle would be severed. Maybe it wasn't too late for the two children. Maybe they could still reshape themselves into the people they were meant to be and not into the people that life had morphed them into.
But until then, this crypt would remain, and it would house the broken pieces of the Royal Family while the marred remainders struggled through life alone.
Until then, their despair will rule over them all.
They will count the days until the pain is numb and gone.