The Avatar Saga—Azula's redemption
Chapter 12: Of Shaving and Scarring
By Flamehead23a
Disclaimer: I don't own avatar, nor any character affiliated with the show, I do own The White Phoenix, however. Please don't use this story as your own, nor post it other places without my approval. Reviews welcome, critiques scrutinized, and flames absorbed and redirected with twice the power. Please, Enjoy!
"Well…who were they? The nine that scattered?"
"Fair-Voiced stands first so eloquently.
The lovely—wearing roses encrown'd.
The Proclaimer who watches history.
The Giver of Pleasure by sweetest sound.
The Flourishing, The Songstress—Staff and Sword,
Ivy and Cypress—two masks left mirrored.
She of Many Hymns with creeds as her ward.
The Whirler dances, always revered.
The Heavenly, robed in points of bright light
Will always be dreaming, she cannot sleep.
Together, these Nine, the Source they delight.
Mimema recorded, else all should weep.
I am with them beneath Parnassian heights.
Musagetes leads the Nine with shining lights."
"…I'm never going to get an easy answer from you, am I?"
"Through eons of working with mortals, I have found that the easy answers are never fun… little Kouros."
Here begins Episode 5
Α βαττλε οφ ωιτς κομμενκες...ανδ γοοδ μεν ωιλλ μακε μιστακες...
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"…You shaved."
Azula and Zuko stood at the palace's front gate. Zuko was dressed in more casual attire, glad to be out of his restrictive formal wear. Most of his hair was down, past his shoulders, with a bit kept up in a loose topknot. His silk vest was frog-buttoned down the middle, a deep red with yellow trim. He wore a pair of two-toned pants, colored a deep red and mahogany, which tucked into shin-high, pointed boots that were each adorned with the Nation's seal. On a single shoulder, trailing down beneath his belt along one side of his body, he wore a strange sash— the serpentine form of a dragon snaked up from the bottom of the brocaded silk to spray elaborate fire over his shoulder. He rubbed his bare chin with a small smile.
"Well, even the Fire Lord wants to please his girlfriend."
The two walked down the busy streets of Capital City. Zuko never took a palanquin—from his coronation he made the effort to be a Lord of the people. Never an imposing shadow behind a curtain of flame, Zuko earned his subjects' respect through goodwill and familiarity, not fear. And it showed—the townspeople bowed respectfully as they passed, honored by his presence but not to the point of petrification.
Mat joined the two from behind, rubbing sleep from his eyes and muttering apologies.
"Sorry, but would it have killed you to wait a little longer?"
"I have a schedule to keep." Zuko responded. "I can't push back a day's worth of meetings just because you want an extra hour of sleep."
"Hey," Mat gave Zuko an appraising look. "You shaved."
Zuko rolled his eyes and shook his head, tossing Azula a meaningful look, who just smiled innocently back.
"A clean face and a schedule to keep." Mat said ruefully. "You're a changed man, Zuko."
Azula continued where Mat left off—as if taking notice of her brother's face for the first time that morning." Oh, and you must have done all this of Mai. I never thought you to be so…accommodating for someone else, Zuzu."
"Honestly, neither did I." Zuko looked back to the palace, almost as if he could see Mai through the maze of architecture. "But time has a way of changing people. Before finding Aang, I only thought about myself. But just a year after that first fight onboard my ship I had devoted my life to bringing peace to the world. I guess after the war all that devotion found two outlets… our people, and Mai."
"…And what was Father devoted to?"
Zuko sighed and clasped his hands behind his back, his leather bracers creaking. He eyed Azula, and she could almost see the gears in his head turning. "I've spent the last five years trying to figure that out. I was hoping you could tell me—you were his favorite."
Azula walked for a while in silence. "I don't think I was his favorite, more like I just never gave him a reason to banish me. Ozai conquered not to govern or to enlighten, but to control. To subjugate the weak to his will." Azula paused, watching children run past, kicking a ball down the street. "Everything he did was to prove he was better than everyone else. Prove he was above any other human alive."
"Must've sucked when Aang stripped him of his bending then." Mat said, taking an orange from a fruit stand and flipping the vendor a coin. "How can you be above someone when they have control over something you used to be a master of, but don't anymore?" Mat peeled the orange, and bit into it like an apple. "There goes your entire worldview—gone in a puff of smoke. Change like that must have left quite a mark."
"Yes…" Azula's voice was distant. "A mark…"
…………………………………………
Pohuai village, 97ASC. (After Sozin's Comet)- Year of the Snake
"Father?"
Ozai's eyes turned to Azula, slowly. The two were riding in the royal palanquin, black lacquered and wrought from gold. Azula folded her hands in front of her, politely waiting for her father's response. She was at her place beside him, her legs folded beneath her on a pillow while he sat on a heavy, hardwood chair. Azula knew to wait, kneeling next to her Lord and father, until he acknowledged her. When he finally did, she smiled.
"Yes?"
"I wish the answer to a question, Lord," she said, her head slightly bowed.
"You wish much," His voice was hard and unyielding, like the ebony of his chair. "Better that you wish the right to ask a question, and pray I see fit to answer."
Azula bowed her head deeper. Even talking to her father was a contest of wills, a battle of etiquette and the rules of respect. No wonder Zuko was banished—he spoke with his heart, not his mind.
Ozai waited until he felt his daughter was properly shamed, then acquiesced. "What is this answer you seek, Daughter?"
Azula could hardly keep her curiosity from getting the better of her. She wanted to leap from her place at his side and lean just against him, to better laugh and smile and generally adore her Lord. But she was her father's daughter, and knew what would result from such…expression. No, she would restrict herself, mold her life to fit alongside his. Azula's very being was his to command, and she knew she would never escape that.
"I wish to know," She began, "Why you mark the people you defeat in duel or battle?"
She snuck a glance through her eyelashes at the impassive face of her father. Without looking at her, she knew he could tell what the real question was.
"Like I did to your brother, you ask?"
She paused, then nodded. She kept on the mask of innocence, though she knew how precarious a line she walked by bringing up such a subject. But Azula had to know—like her father, she hungered for power. And that power came hand in hand with knowledge—she could only become powerful by truly understanding the events of that fateful sunset duel.
Azula had been enthralled by the power displayed at that auspicious Agni Kai. The two duelists—one supplicant, one terrible—didn't fight so much as instruct her in a lesson on the futility of mercy. At first she had delighted in the screams, the caustic smell of cooking flesh. The casual use of such strength, such power, had sent chills down her spine and twisted a vicious smile onto her face.
It wasn't until her father forbade the healers to treat his own son that she fully realized what, and who, she was watching. This was her family, her inescapable destiny. She could either follow her father and destroy others with the casual ease of a tyrant…or be destroyed just as easily as her brother had, crushed beneath the pointed boot of a truly unstoppable force.
"Yes, Father," she said. The tremor in her voice began as apprehension, but ended as anticipation of her father's answer.
"Who was the greatest warlord to live in the past thousand years?" Every word was deliberate, stressed. Each syllable came down like a hammer striking heated metal and coating her with a shower of sparks. A dry, thin smile escaped him. "Ignoring the obvious supremacy of Sozin, Azulon, and myself, of course."
"Chin the Conqueror, Father."
"And what made him great?"
"Chin would use fear rather than fighting to win battles. He would sever the heads of every man, woman and child in a village, then show them to the next target of his conquest— as a presentation of clout."
"Yes." Ozai hissed the word, taking enjoyment in the mere mention of Chin's ancient crime. "Chin, uncivilized and brutish as he was, knew the effectiveness of fear as a tool—he knew that the right message would fly faster and farther than the truest arrow, pierce deeper and wound easier than the sharpest sword." He turned his eyes entirely on his daughter, the recently titled Crown Princess. She took it as the signal to do likewise—continuing the dangerous ballet of form and conduct. Gold eyes met amber, and they drank in each other's thirst for power.
"But what, my daughter, was Chin's greatest mistake?"
"Challenging Avatar Kyoshi in single—"
"Do not bore me with what your lessons have told you, girl." Ozai's drawled voice oozed contempt, and the temperature in the palanquin jumped as he traced circles on the arm of his grand chair. Sweat beaded unwillingly upon her brow, but Azula kept her eyes on his face—to look away now would be weakness…failure.
To look away now would be as good as death.
"Look deeper, Daughter. Aside from facing a fully realized Avatar, what did Chin do wrong?"
Beneath her mask of demure respect, Azula panicked. She didn't know what he wanted from her. Her mind raced over the countless lectures from her instructors, the generals' meetings she had secretly watched, but her dizzying intellect could not formulate a proper response. Azula then made the biggest mistake one could when failing to give Ozai the answer he wanted—she told the truth.
"I…I know not, Father. That is why I seek your wisdom."
His nostril's flared, and smoke curled from the tip of his slender, tracing finger. His eyes were of a tiger lion, ready to eat its own cub out of displeasure. Azula locked her eyes onto his, forcing herself to match his stare with one of her own; knowing that failure such as hers had killed greater figures than she, and praying to every spirit she could that he would spare her. Eventually he took a deep breath, and that dangerous, serpent's smile appeared once again.
"You are fortunate I remember your tender age, child. I will permit you, only this once, the folly of not directly answering my question." He sat back in his chair, but Azula refused to let out her breath.
"Chin's demise," Ozai drawled, "came because he took fear only so far. It is true that actions speak louder than words, but this is only if the words used are your own… never forget, Azula, that the weak share empathy for each other, and living proof of your power speaks much louder than a severed head ever will."
Ozai actually smiled then, as if he had recalled the memory of his first kiss, or a childhood lullaby. "The rats will never understand man's tongue, but they will take note of their brother's screams."
The palanquin slowed to a stop, coming to settle gently on the ground. The red-silk curtain silhouetted the armored form of a field commander.
"Fire Lord, we have arrived at the captured survivors, just as you requested."
Ozai stood, his robes without a crease, his eyes glinting with danger. His expression was relaxed, almost eager—though Azula knew better than to assume her father ever rushed or overreached. He always moved at just the right pace.
"Come with me, Princess Azula." She rose, following as he stepped into the harsh daylight. "It is time you learned how one makes a kingdom submissive with fear."
Azula marveled at the way her father walked. His strides were purposeful, deadly, as if each footfall brought another province to its knees. Every movement was gauged, calculated—full of royal pride and grace. Despite the heavy armor and royal double mantel around his neck, he moved as if he wore nothing more than the finest of silks. Azula admired him with the admiration a daughter would give her father, the respect a pupil would give its master.
The devotion a sacrifice would give its god.
They stood in the ruins of a village destroyed by battle only that morning. What little that remained standing was charred and smoking; the dust of buildings and stench of bodies mingled together, invading Azula's nose. It was the smell of conquest, and oh how she delighted in it—her father's victory tasting sweet on her tongue.
Ozai often inspected the prisoners of battle. He told Azula once that it always helped to remind the world of his power, let them know that no matter how far they may live from the Royal Palace, they were not beyond his reach. It thrilled her to see their wretched state, kneeling in submission before her father—before her. She was above them, in status and strength, and they would never dare challenge the Fire Lord, or Azula, again. Her power, even as a child, was well known, and Azula could see in their glassy, dirt-brown eyes their fear of her.
The prisoners were beaten, bloodied, and close to death. The village had been overwhelmed, their paltry defense force completely unprepared for the sheer numbers the Fire Lord had committed to battle. The group they moved to had a guard for every prisoner, keeping those conscious in place with a hand on the scruff of their necks. They had tangled with Fire Nation soldiers armed with serrated guandaos—Azula knew just by the jagged, open wound that bit deep into one man's side. He looked a hairsbreadth away from dying right there.
"Earth Nation," Ozai almost droned, as if bored just by speaking to them. "Once again, your pathetic attempts at defending your homeland go predictably unrewarded. The power of my empire is absolute; you have no hope of victory." Looking at the Fire Lord's impressive figure, the prisoners quickly lost what little fight they may have hidden away. Many began to weep. One man even fainted.
"Please, keep this pointless conflict alive as long as you wish. In fact, I will take no surrender, save unless it is made with your dying breath. I find it only fitting for you to know that I desire not to rule your contemptible race, but to erase it."
It thrilled her, these prisoners' fear. These were people she could distance herself from, people she could subjugate and bring to heel without fear of inconvenient emotions taking hold of her. And even if she could have cared, Azula wouldn't have realized it, so enraptured was she by her father's effect on these men, these so-called warriors. His simple presence had caused them to shrink into their captors' hands with fear; the man with the spear wound had fallen over dead. Azula almost swooned with delight—this was power, power in its fullest potential.
"I have been told this land harbored a sturdy, resilient people. I hope that is true, for it is the only way you will survive what is to come." Ozai moved to a random prisoner in the line, his strides causing all whom he passed to shudder. Azula could hardly tell under all the caked dirt and blood and tears, but she was almost sure the prisoner was a woman.
Azula knew it didn't matter, Fire Lord Ozai saw neither male nor female—only weakness.
"Are you fast, girl?" If one knew no better, Ozai's tone could have sounded soothing, comforting even. Azula knew however, and the girl seemed to as well. She shrunk back, her blackened eye squeezed shut, while blood from a gash above her eyebrow mixed with the tears on the other side of her face. She shuddered as he came towards her, then lurched forward, grabbing for his robes and sobbing incoherently for mercy.
Azula was enraptured. This girl's life hung on the Fire Lord's slightest whim. Azula not only dreamt of holding this sort of power—she hungered for it. Watching her father's impassive face, she, along with this girl, hung on his every word.
"A division the Komodo corps will incinerate Gaipan at sun down. Again, I ask: are you fast, girl?"
The girl could hardly believe her ears—she openly wore her astonishment, while Azula hid hers much better. She knew her father well, but still wondered what he was up to. Many of the prisoners within earshot raised their heads as well, hope beginning to kindle in their eyes.
"You… you would let me warn them?"
"If you can run fast enough," Ozai replied. "On your feet girl, let us have a look at you."
The girl shot to attention as if burned. She stood in Ozai's eclipse, even this movement causing her to pant and sway in exhaustion. The soldier could barely stand, and she was one of the least wounded among the prisoners.
Azula knew he didn't feel pity. Pity was for the helpless—a sickly-sweet feeling one found for others—a low emotion. Her father taught her long ago that only the flawed and weak gave pity to others, like her brother had shown for those young soldiers, or like her mother had shown for anyone she met—they did it because they one day hoped for pity themselves.
"No, no, no," Ozai made a display of inspecting the girl, who tried her best to stand tall. He kept the charade of a concerned friend going, but with each passing second, the soldier's short-lived hope bled out, while fear slinked back to replace it once again. "You might just make it in time, but you will be so out of breath you will be unable to give a proper warning." Ozai's caring face turned positively wicked. "Here, allow me to insure they receive the correct message."
With a wave of his hand, the guards restrained her. The girl's hope was dashed entirely, her fear contorting into absolute terror. Ozai unfolded his hands from behind his back, and spoke to Azula in his satisfied, twisted rumble. "This is why I mark them, Daughter. So other's—whoever lay eyes upon them—will know my power. Never let the world grow forgetful of your authority, Azula. Never let them question your control, your rightful place above them."
Fire Lord Ozai lifted one hand to hover above the girl's face, his long, slender fingers outstretched. Leisurely, he hands formed the fateful sign, and the air around the prisoners heated considerably.
"Remember this, my child. Only when you stand atop the world are you perfect." The fireball burst into Ozai's palm, the size of an apple. It did not flicker but rather pulsed, a constant and climbing heat. The ball folded into itself, each time doubling its destructive force, the immense temperature never straying farther than Ozai's hand. The orb grew to a deep, blood-red—the same as it did with Zuko, mere weeks before.
"And only when you are perfect are you truly powerful."
Ozai pushed the ball into the side of the girl's face. Like a heated knife through tender flesh it sunk, her skin boiling and charring, bits of ash turning brittle and falling to the ground. The girl's screams caused everyone, even the guards, to turn their heads away. Everyone but Azula. The shrieks and howls filled her with rapture—this was what it would take to be powerful, to not live under the rule of her father or anyone else.
It was a beautiful, empowering scream, and Azula couldn't help but laugh for the sheer joy of it.
Azula knew the burn to be the same Zuko had received—her father spared no mercy for weakness, be it from the enemy or his own son. She resolved to never be on the other end of that mark. No matter what it took.
Finally, the fireball had diffused entirely into the girl's jaw; leaving Ozai's hand against her charred and disfigured face. He rested his hand for a moment, almost caressing the wound, before withdrawing his palm and wiping it against his robes, already disgusted by the sight of the scarred, cataleptic prisoner—the shuddering, limp, lolling mass of flesh that she was. The girl's head rolled and hung, still steaming, until her guard jerked her back into the torture of consciousness.
"Take her two li in the wrong direction and dump her." The guard bowed as he exited, and Azula realized the true beauty of her father's plan—this girl was never meant to reach the doomed village. Instead she would find another hovel, and some other group of rats will hear her screams, and know the power of fire. Azula let out one last breath before turning to her father. She couldn't wait to ask her next question, punishment be damned.
"Will you show me how, Father? Teach me how to do it?"
And Ozai looked upon her with those cold, amber eyes, his mouth still holding that same minuscule, contemptuous smirk. There was no love in that face, but right then Azula didn't need love. She needed the knowledge he had, the power he exhibited. Ozai knew this, and he was glad.
"Why do you think I left the other prisoners alive? Practice makes perfect."
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Ho'kay! there's chapter 12! for any wondering what I based zuko's travel/fighitng/not in the palace outfit on... look no further than here: (B&W detail:h==.com/art/Three-Years-Gone-Zuko-93916449 and color: h==.com/art/ATLA-Three-Years-Gone-94037535)
review docket is 3/10-- keep it comming!