The Wolf With the Red Roses

Azula was not used to internal conflict.

She couldn't explain the bizarre urge she'd felt to confess, to tell Father she hadn't for one moment considered her relationship with Sokka a substitute for Zuko's abortive engagement. It had just... he was attractive, he'd made her laugh, and she'd wanted to.

And he drew airships, and he was always thinking, and he smelled like salt spray and a bottle of perfume he'd picked up on Ember Island and he made her smile and he kissed her like he was auditioning for a part and she couldn't think about him without this stab of awful, blazing tenderness and she thought about him all the time.

Continue, Father had said, and that was good, wasn't it? Wasn't that what she wanted? She could hardly say she'd wished he'd told her to break it off, could she?

She had nothing that wasn't his first. The thought bubbled up, black and oily, and she recoiled from it. After all, that was how Zuko thought, and look where that had got him.

Mai screwed her eyes shut, and massaged her temples.

"Okay. Say I agree. Say I let all these people into my house and let them drink all the wine and get their feet all over the cushions and all that sort of thing. Say I let Azula into my house. Say I let that happen. What are you hoping for here?"

Ty Lee, contrary to what Mai was bracing herself for, seemed to deflate, just a little. "I just want to see if they can get along. You remember what it used to be like, right?"

Mai knew she had lost, but she had never once conceded anything gracefully and she wasn't about to start now. "Better than you do, apparently. It took months for my hair to grow back, I remember that."

"But it was better than this, wasn't it?" She sounded almost plaintive.

Mai sighed, defeated. "Yeah, I guess."

"So I think it's worth a shot, don't you?"

Mai glared, sharply but without any real heat. "Easy for you to say, it's not your house that might burn down."

Ty Lee smiled, and patted Mai on her head. "Thank you so much! Oh, and don't tell Zuko Azula's coming."

This time the glare was several degrees angrier. "What?"

Ty Lee stared blankly. "You really think he'll agree to come if he knows she'll be there? You know how stubborn he is."

Mai's eyes narrowed, as she suddenly wondered how long Ty Lee had been planning this. "I want to go on record as saying this is a bad idea. Not that that'll make any difference, but I want someone to hear me say it."

"So, we should probably head out pretty soon," Katara said, pointedly, at a still-recumbent Sokka, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"Yeah... I was kinda thinking I might sit this one out? Or maybe we could leave early or something?" Katara recognised that the we in that sentence did not include her, and she scowled.

"Oh no, you are not letting me walk into this by myself. Besides, Azula's going to be there, what are you so worried about?"

"It's gonna be weird," Sokka snapped, suddenly, bunching his hands into fists. "Zuko's gonna be there, and we haven't really talked ever and I'm gonna have to act like we're friends and it's gonna be really awkward!"

Katara opened her mouth to refute this, then stopped herself. She found that she could not, in good conscience, suggest that any conversation with Zuko was not going to be awkward, given her own experience.

She could, however, give advice. "Just don't bring up his scar and you'll be fine. Now come on-"

Sokka gaped. "You didn't."

Katara flushed, and scrambled to defend herself. "It just slipped out! Besides, you were the one going on about his face-"

"Not with him in the room!"

"It's still rude!"

It was almost impossible to miss the way Zuko's shoulders stiffened as he saw who was at the table, leaning back and observing him with lidded eyes, so naturally Sokka missed it entirely, and slapped him heartily on the back with enough force to almost knock him over.

"Hi... buddy!" Sokka crowed, grinning wide and shouting loud enough to very nearly mask the panic in his eyes, "how you doing?"

"What?" Zuko asked, distracted. "Oh, uh. Fine, I guess."

Sokka's rictus grin widened, conveying I would give literally anything if it meant getting out of this conversation more efficiently than he ever could in words.

But Sokka had managed to turn Zuko's unique horror at realising he had been set up for an evening socialising with Azula into the far more common terror of trying to make awkward small-talk with a sibling's new significant other, and so he consented to being steered into a chair.

Wine was produced, looted with no small satisfaction from Mai's family cellars, and passed around in a manner that suggested that either Mai was an accomplished aristocrat, used to cowing guests with her unconcerned extravagance, or that she had no idea how much alcohol was far, far too much alcohol.

"So, Mai," Katara started, setting her cup down and gesturing around the extravagent drawing-room. "Is it just you in this place?"

Mai shrugged. "Sure. Parents are away, took Tom-Tom with them. Servants have the night off."

"Seeerrrvants," Katara replied, and there was a gleam in her eye that Sokka recognised with a bubbling of familiar dread, so he pointedly kicked her in the ankle before she could get into an impassioned bit of oratory on the Rights of The Working Classes.

"Where'd they take off to?" he asked, loudly, over Katara's grumbling. "Your parents, I mean."

Mai shrugged. "Who cares? If I ask, they'd only tell me, and then I'd have to go with them. I can do without having to listen to variations on Why Can't You Be More Like A Normal Daughter more than three times a year." She ground to a halt, and scowled, as though she hadn't meant to voice the end of that sentence.

"Oh. Uh. Sorry."

"Ha," Mai snorted, leaning back, and for the first time that evening it actually looked as though she was drunk. "It's all the rage. Ty Lee's parents auctioned her off to some Admiral guy, so she left the country-"

"I joined the circus!" a voice contributed, brightly, from somewhere behind a sofa.

"The logical choice," Mai concluded, blandly. "And as for these two-" she gestured suddenly at Azula, who very probably nobody but Sokka noticed suddenly stiffen, and Zuko, who went very still.

Sokka figured it was time for him to do the decent thing, and loudly interrupt before someone got horribly maimed. Unfortunately, the only thing he could think to say was well my Dad's a pretty cool guy, which would almost certainly get him knifed.

"Hey, you remember when Mom died?" Katara asked, suddenly, staring moodily into the bottom of her cup.

Sokka blinked. "Yeah."

"No, no, I mean," she shook her head in frustration. "You remember after? Dad was gone for a year doing Chief stuff. A whole year. It was like they were both gone."

Sokka's knee-jerk defence stuck in his throat. "Yeah." With anyone else, he might have thought Azula's fingertips brushing his leg was an accident.

A pall dropped over the gathering, thick and awkward. Azula, maybe trying to puncture the mood, spoke up.

"Well, maybe Zuko would get along better with Father if he ever did as he was asked-"

The only sound was Zuko's chair clattering backwards as he leapt to his feet, before he stormed out of the room without a word. Mai started, untangling herself from the sofa, not even taking the time to acknowledge Azula as she charged after the Prince.

In the deathly silence that followed, Katara fought the sudden urge to cough.

She caught up with him in the garden, and he stopped at the sound of her hurried footsteps, but didn't turn around. His shoulders heaved, slow and heavy.

"Why is she here?" he snapped, temper rising like water welling up behind a dam. "Why is she here?"

Mai didn't have an answer. Everything she could think to say seemed so flimsy, so glib.

"I'm sorry."

He spun on his heel, jaw working crazily, breath coming in great heaving lungfuls, fists bunching and opening.

"I hate her," he spat, mouth snarling around the words. "I hate her." His eyes were shining and Mai didn't have to ask to know how long this had been coming.

Later she would decide she took this moment as seriously as it warranted, but in the heat of the moment, cheeks still flush from the wine, she just said the first thing that popped into her head.

"Well I guess this is a positive development. A month ago you'd have mumbled about how sorry you are and then stood in the corner for a few hours."

For a second he looked shocked and Mai's throat closed at the thought that she might finally have hurt him, but he closed the gap between them and pulled her close, clutching at her like he thought she was going to disappear. His breath rasped into her shoulder and she wasn't sure if he was crying or laughing and she wasn't about to check and see. She just held on to him like he was the only real thing in the world.

Ozai did not open his eyes as the man approached his seat. As he bowed, Ozai began to speak.

"The conspirators have found their agents."

"Just as you said, my lord. An assassin from the islands."

That did get a reaction, as Ozai finally looked up. "A single man?"

"Apparently so. He should arrive tomorrow morning."

Ozai smiled thinly. "Their pockets must be lighter than I thought." He contemplated the fire, apparently oblivious to the other man. "Summon my daughter. It is time she understood."

The retainer hesitated. "...My Lord?"

Ozai's eyes narrowed. "You have concerns? Do you doubt me?"

"No, my Lord. It is simply..."

"You doubt her loyalty? Or her competence?"

"She is a child, my Lord. Surely we can outmanoeuvre the conspirators without her."

"She has been trained for this moment her entire life. I will not allow that investment to be wasted. Summon her."

They were on a roof. Azula didn't know how they'd got there, and, just at that moment, it didn't seem to matter much. The last instant she recalled was the texture of the ceiling as voices swirled around her, and now, here she was. On the roof. Sokka was there, too, and, to Azula's brain, which was currently experiencing the world in primary colours, this seemed only right and proper.

"Heeere's a riddle forya," he grinned, unsteadily, as the boomerang whipped back to his hand. "How'dya fit a circle insiside a triangle? No, wait, Imean how's a triangle like a circle? No that's not... I'll gettit in a second."

Azula gave this due consideration. "Question doesn't make sense. Not fair."

"Nonono, see, this" he waved the boomerang vaguely, "goes inna, inna circle, yeah? Goes wooshwooshwoosh, lotsalittle circles making one biig circle, yeah? But, but, it'sreally all triangles! It's sneaky likethat."

Azula blinked.

"Okay, see, I wanna hit... that-" he gestured to his right, where a pennant fluttered over a nearby house. "WhereamI gonna aim?"

She waved at the pennant. "That way."

"Yeah, but I forgot, there's, like, a wall inthe way,"

"There isn't."

"But what if there iiis. Okay. So here's me, callit one, and there's the flagthing, call it three, where's two? Issthere." He pointed dramatically to a patch of empty air, some way in front of him. "Sooo..." he drew his hand back, and threw, unconcernedly.

The blue steel arced through the air and returned to the sound of ripping cloth. Sokka presented her with the ripped pennant and a grin. "Tadaaaaaaah."

Azula took a long swig from the bottle.

He was vaguely aware of time having passed. It was cold, colder than he'd gotten used to, and he was sitting on something uncomfortably hard. He looked up and his head span, the stars smearing together above him and around him and probably below him as well if you really thought about it and Azula was there, perched like a gargoyle, knees tucked underneath her chin, curled into herself and solitary as an island.

She started to speak, slow and slurred like she was mumbling at the bottom of a well, full of false starts.

"I gottanidea. We shoul- we shud. They wouln'... they wouldnbeable to touch us. Yunnow? Wouldn... woulbe mine. Jusmine. Not'is, allmine."

"Whayousayn?"

"Ws shoulget married."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "They wouln... woulnever see us coming. You can. Make balloons."

He blinked, astonished. "You r'member?"

"I remember. Eeeeeeverything," she intoned, very seriously, and reached out to tap him on the nose, only for the action to end up as a sort of general smearing of his face.

He huddled up against her, throwing an arm around her shoulders, and pulled her close.

"F'r warmth," he explained, in a scholarly manner. "'S cold."

"My Lord?"

"...Where is my daughter?"

"...We don't know, my Lord. She appears to have left the palace."

"...I see."

"Should we send a search party?"

"No. She will return soon enough. When she does, I want her brought before me."

"As you say, my Lord."