Twist of Fate
Chapter 14: Baci
Ozai continued on through the halls of the palace, the wheels turning furiously behind his eyes even as his outward expression remained smooth as a block of ice. It was abundantly clear to the general that both Lu Ten and his erstwhile ally would have already tried to kill him if they thought they could get away with it; for all of their experience, they were still terrible at masking their true thoughts from someone with as keen an eye as the Fire Lord's brother.
His mouth turned down into a frown as Ozai was forced to once again face the fact that his ineffectual sibling was sitting on the throne that should have been his, but the spike of anger passed almost as soon as it had come. Soon enough, the general reminded himself, he would be the one taking up his father and grandfather's legacy and restoring the Fire Nation to its rightful place of power and glory.
Very soon, indeed; Ozai knew that every moment he waited to rid himself of Lu Ten was one more moment that the crown prince had to prepare, and the general wasn't about to take any chances with his nuisance of a nephew.
Which was why Ozai was about to finally draw the last hidden weapon he possessed out into the open: a gift from the Grand Secretariat of Ba Sing Se, to help them achieve their mutual goal with the maximum amount of expediency. A cell of conditioned sleeper agents, highly-trained, highly-motivated and, once activated, utterly without the capacity for disobedience. Even someone as powerful as Lu Ten would have a very hard time dealing with such a group, and Ozai had something in mind to make sure that even a Dragon would fall before them in defeat.
Making his way to the small smithy that handled repairs for the everyday mechanical devices the palace's residents owned, the general opened the door and entered without any of the usual ceremony. The effect of his sudden arrival was felt instantaneously; both of the workers who were on duty at the time went rigid as planks of wood, before recovering themselves and snapping into the best approximations of a formal salute that they could manage.
"General Ozai, Sir," the man he had come to see spoke up after a tense moment. "This is an unexpected privilege. What can we do for you?"
"You," Ozai said, gesturing dismissively to the other man, "can leave us. I have something I must discuss with your colleague."
"Of course, my Lord," the second blacksmith said hastily, before turning sharply and all but scurrying to the door that led into the smithy's supply room. Once he was sure no one would interrupt them, Ozai turned to face the clearly nervous blacksmith and smiled.
"The Earth King has invited you to Lake Laogai," he said simply, before watching the heavy-set, muscular man's brown eyes glaze over in recognition of the code-phrase.
"I am honored to accept his invitation," the blacksmith intoned flatly. "What are my Lord's orders?"
Ozai's smile widened.
"You remember whom the other members of your group are, yes?"
The other man nodded once.
"Of course."
"Good. Find them, and wake each of them up as I have you. I expect it to be done by the end of the day today, if not sooner. Once that has been taken care of, resume your duties here and await further orders."
The blacksmith nodded again.
"I hear and obey, my Lord."
Ozai snapped his fingers once, breaking the trance. The blacksmith blinked, and when his eyes re-focused they were possessed by a singular intensity. He walked out of the smithy without another word, and the general waited a few moments before leaving as well. Now all he had to do was use Xian as his gopher for one last task, and then—
"Good day, father."
Ozai pulled himself out of his thoughts with a quick blink, and was mildly surprised to see the person he'd just been about to think of standing right in front of him.
"Azula," he greeted his daughter smoothly. "Where were you earlier? I expected to see you at the council meeting concerning the problem of the Northern Water Tribe." Ozai's eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly, and the change in his expression was not lost on Azula. "Perhaps you caught wind of your cousin's safe return before the rest of us, and were busy greeting him?"
"Lu Ten is alive?" the princess replied after making sure they wouldn't be overheard, inwardly thankful that her genuine surprise at her cousin's condition masked her relief that her father hadn't just asked her where she'd been, rather than making a false assumption on top of that. "I thought you said you'd taken care of him, father."
"And I thought I'd taught you to have at least a modicum of discretion," Ozai countered, his smooth voice turning acidic. "Now come with me, and keep your mouth shut until I say you may open it again. I have something I want you to do for me."
The general kept on walking back towards his chambers, and Azula fell in step behind him without another word. Her mouth turned down in to a hard frown and her eyes smoldered with anger at her father's rebuke, but she knew better than to challenge him openly right now. The princess focused her thoughts on Lu Ten's survival of Ozai's ambush instead, feeling her temper sink back under control. Just a day ago, the news might have struck her as an unfortunate complication… now, however, Azula couldn't have been happier to hear that her cousin had avoided meeting his fate.
In the end, one more piece on the board would make it that much easier to bring down her father—and especially if that piece was one as powerful as Lu Ten.
Now, the only thing that remained to be settled was making sure that Hanzo knew where he stood in their relationship. His delusions of equality would make him unpredictable, and that was something Azula couldn't risk. That kiss he'd stolen from her earlier had been proof enough of that…
"Azula? Have you gone completely addle-brained? Sit down."
Her father's harsh words jolted the princess away from her rumination, just in time for her to realize that her body was beginning to betray her: a dim warmth was coiling in her stomach. She squashed it without hesitation, inwardly cursing the day she met Hanzo as she sank down into the chair across from her father. She'd thought her experience with Chan had been the end of this sort of thing—so what was wrong with her now?
"As I said," Ozai continued, eyeing his daughter from across the table with the kind of stern look he usually reserved for his other child, "I have something I want you to do for me."
"Of course, father," Azula replied, with a feigned approximation of her usual deference. She saw the general's eyebrows furrow the slightest bit, and pressed on before he could speak. "What do you require?"
"I am setting something in motion that will correct the Yu Yan's blunder in the Earth Kingdom," Ozai said calmly, "but I still don't entirely trust Long Feng's agents. So I need you to make sure that the task I have set up for them goes smoothly."
The princess nodded, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"And?" she prompted after a tense moment, drawing a cold smile from her father.
"You won't be doing this alone," he explained. "You are to meet up with one of my own messengers, the crippled librarian Xian. The two of you will round up the disparate agents, and then you will use them to carry out an assassination attempt on our most beloved Crown Prince," Ozai continued, the bitterness in his voice plain as day. "Afterward, I expect you to kill any of the agents that are left alive, including Xian. No one but you and I must know of this, Azula."
The orders hit the princess like a punch to the gut, and she was immensely grateful that the chair she was sitting in kept her from reeling backwards. This threatened to completely upend her entire plan, not to mention deprive her of two of her most important assets in a single swoop. Azula knew that she had to find some way around this, and quickly, or her revenge would become little more than a whimsical figment of her imagination.
"Well?" Ozai prompted into her silence, his tone impatient. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
Azula nodded quickly, hoping against hope that none of her internal turmoil had shown through on her face.
"I will do as you command, father," she said evenly, nodding. "I won't fail you."
"Take care that you don't," the general told his daughter coldly. "I have no use for faulty tools."
It took all of the princess's considerable composure to keep from reacting to the taunt; Azula knew now that her father was trying to get a rise out of her, to see if what Hanzo had told him earlier about her shifting loyalty was true. She bit back her rage and nodded again.
"I wouldn't expect you to," she said, before rising to her feet. "If you will excuse me, I'll go find this 'Xian' you spoke of," the princess finished, before bowing, turning and walking out the door.
After she was gone, Ozai's mouth split into a cruel smile, his amber eyes alight with malice. It was abundantly clear to him now that his daughter could no longer be counted on; she'd gone from being his most promising weapon to a failure even more disappointing than Zuko.
Hopefully, when he sent instructions to Xian to eliminate Azula following the completion of their assassination attempt on Lu Ten, the two of them would just kill each other and bring this farce to an end.
"You," Lu Ten breathed as he stared listlessly up at the ceiling, "are absolutely amazing."
June gave a light, amused chuckle as she reached over and let her hand trail along the crown prince's chest, before letting it come to rest on his abdomen.
"You're not bad yourself," she said, a smile in her eyes that her muscles were too tired to mirror on her lips. "A little more practice, and you might be able to keep up with me one of these times."
"Ouch," Lu Ten said with a smile, turning his head to face the bounty hunter. "So I take it I was imagining all of those fascinating sounds you were making earlier, then?"
June was silent at that, and the crown prince marked up one small victory in the back of his mind. The pair settled into a companionable quiet that Lu Ten found quite comforting; as soon as he felt June's hand tense against his muscles, though, he knew their brief moment of contentment was about to end.
"So," the bounty hunter said at last, "what happens now?"
The crown prince picked up on a slight twinge in her voice, and he frowned.
"It sounds to me like you've already written my answer off, June."
"Well," she said nonchalantly as she arched her back, stretching in a way Lu Ten found to be highly distracting, "I know exactly what you're going to say, and I know it's going to be stupid. So why wouldn't I write it off?"
"Then why'd you even ask?"
The bounty hunter smiled.
"I just wanted to make sure I was right. You wanna bet on it?"
The crown prince gave an exasperated sigh, still too exhausted for verbal sparring.
"Unbelievable," he muttered with a weak smile to take the sting out of the word, before his expression became serious again. "You need to get out of the Fire Nation, June."
"I knew I should have made you take that bet," June said, rolling over onto her side to face Lu Ten and moving her hand up to rest against his cheek. "Listen, kid—"
"Stop calling me that."
"— I know you love being the storybook hero and all," she continued like she'd never been interrupted, "but this isn't something you can take on your own. And I'm definitely not going to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. You think Ba Sing Se would be any safer for me than here? At least I can watch your back for you if I hang around."
Lu Ten arched an eyebrow in confusion.
"Who said anything about Ba Sing Se?"
June shrugged.
"You didn't, but I know Ursa is going to," she explained. "If what Senyaka told us is true, she's waiting for the right moment to make a move against Long Feng. And who better to send over as an agent than someone who used to be near the right hand of the Earth King?"
The crown prince meditated on the question for a few moments, but in the end his stance on the matter didn't change.
"As long as Long Feng is alive," Lu Ten said, "he's a threat to us. And if Jet is waiting for word from Senyaka to act, he's going to be waiting until someone tells him the old man is dead. I'd say we could send a message instead of sending an agent, but—"
"If it fell into the wrong hands, Jet's cover would be blown, he'd be killed and we'd never get another shot at this," June finished for him, before looking back up at the ceiling and sighing. "You're right, I'll admit it."
"Hey, I'm no happier about this than you are," the crown prince insisted, "but this way you get away from Ozai, and you get a chance to take out Long Feng at the same time. It's the best possible approach."
June groaned and rolled her way to the edge of the bed before swinging her legs over and getting up, doing one more final stretch before turning her attention to the task of gathering up her scattered clothing. Lu Ten saw what she was doing and smiled, remembering what had happened to the top she'd been wearing earlier.
"You can just wear some of mine, if that would be easier," he said, unable to completely keep the smile out of his voice. June gave him a wry smile.
"In your dreams," she countered as she stepped back into her still-intact pair of black pants, before coming to the unfortunate realization that the other half of her uniform had been cut in half by a certain overeager Firebender. Shooting Lu Ten a scathing glare as it became the crown prince's turn to smile, the bounty hunter swallowed some of her pride.
"Give me one of your shirts," she said shortly. "I'll consider it payment for that worthless scrap of clothing sitting in the corner over there."
"As my lady commands," Lu Ten replied, his smile not wavering in the slightest as he got out of bed and padded over to his closet and chest of drawers. Opening the second draw from the top, he pulled out a burgundy tunic and tossed it to June, followed by a pair of pants for himself. She caught the tunic and put it on, but as she turned towards the small table where her skull hairband was resting, June was stopped by the gentle-but-insistent pressure of a hand around her wrist.
"What—?" she started to say, before the crown prince cut her off with a kiss. It was far gentler than any he'd shared with her in the past hour, and underpinned with a strange mix of emotion and need that June found to be as magnetic as it was disconcerting. She was drawn to what it implied, but at the same time she was saddened by what else it meant. Letting herself sink into the embrace, she flowed along until they broke apart, feeling a slight chill brush over her in the absence of Lu Ten's warmth.
"June? Are you all right?"
The bounty hunter blinked, and the crown prince could see a note of pain buried beneath her layers of indifference.
"This is goodbye," she said, "isn't it?"
Lu Ten smiled sadly, drawing June back into another embrace and resting his head against her shoulder.
"I guess it is, sweetheart," he said softly. "But I'll be fine, I promise. You worry about coming back safe, and I'll be here waiting for you."
The bounty hunter sighed against the crown prince as she felt the last of her resistance draining away; letting go of the freedom that being a freelancer gave her was a heavy sacrifice to make—but if the tradeoff was being able to be with someone who, for once in her life, actually valued who she was, it was a trade that June was more than willing to make.
"You'd better be," she replied, tightening her grip before releasing it altogether and taking a step back. "I've been burned too many times now to have it happen again, kid."
Lu Ten's smile turned from sad to genuine.
"I'm not like those sexist idiots who run the Earth Kingdom's army," he assured her. "I actually like having a partner around who can go toe-to-toe with me. Keeps things interesting."
June smiled in kind, relieved that she'd put her faith in someone who would actually cherish it.
"Right back at you," she said, before turning and walking toward the door.
"You forgot your…" Lu Ten called after her, glancing at the skull hairband still sitting by his bed.
"Just give it to me when I get back," June's reply came floating back into the room behind her, and the crown prince smiled wide.
The sun was beginning to dip down from its zenith when Zuko and Katara made their way back to the village, and this time hardly anyone spared the pair a second look. The prince took that as a good sign that he was beginning to be accepted by the Southern Tribe as a whole, and no longer viewed as an outsider from the Fire Nation. Zuko noticed then that the cold in the air didn't bother him nearly as much as it had a few days ago; he was probably carrying himself more like a Water Tribesman than a citizen of the Fire Nation, without even realizing it.
The thought of what the look on his father's face would be if he could see his son now made Zuko laugh out loud, drawing a puzzled look from Katara.
"What's so funny?" she asked him, and the prince just shook his head.
"Nothing," he demurred. "I was just thinking about how different this place feels."
"Different how?" the Waterbender pressed, a light note of concern in her voice that didn't pass by the Firebender unmarked. "Good different, or bad different?"
"Definitely good different," Zuko reassured her, smiling. "It doesn't feel like home yet, but it's getting there." His smile widened. "The company certainly helps."
"Flattery gets you nowhere, Prince," Katara teased him, her eyes glinting with humor. "You'll have to try harder than that."
Zuko was about to say something else when the Waterbender gave a big yawn, blinking twice and shivering slightly once it had passed.
"I'm beat," Katara said at last, as the pair finally arrived at the door of their house and entered. "That spar of ours must've taken a lot more out of me than I thought; I'm gonna go take a nap. Thanks for the Firebending tips, sifu," she finished, leaning up slightly and giving Zuko a peck on the cheek before heading toward her room. There was a slight spring still lingering in Katara's stride despite her fatigue, and The prince gave a small smile as he watched the Waterbender go. He was just about to follow in her footsteps and grab some shut-eye when a voice stopped him in his tracks.
"Well, aren't the two of you just precious."
Its tone reminded Zuko of Katara's voice to an almost eerie degree, except it was older and layered with the gentle humor that only mothers teasing their children seemed to possess.
"I'm glad you think so, Lady Kya," the prince said as Kya stepped out of the shadows at the far side of the room and made her way over to the stove, smiling the whole way.
"Just call me Kya," she told him as she busied herself preparing a pot of seal-tea. "I'd say we're past formalities at this point, wouldn't you? Have a seat; make yourself comfortable. I'd like for us to talk, if you wouldn't mind."
The prince clearly heard the shift in Kya's tone when she mentioned a 'talk', and it didn't take long at all for Zuko to figure out where this was going. But he wasn't worried about Katara's mother when it came to being accepted by her parents; her father was a much imposing presence.
"Of course," he said with a short nod, sitting down at the main table and sighing in relief as his legs eased up completely and he felt the stress in his muscles ebbing away. "I don't mind at all, my L—Kya."
Kya snickered at the switch, looking up from the pot and smiling over at Zuko.
"Your mother really drilled those manners into your head, didn't she?"
"Yeah, she did," the prince answered, finally letting himself relax. "Did you two get to know each other well, when my uncle came down here to study Waterbenders?"
"Yes, we did," Kya said, her smile growing more distant as her thoughts drifted back towards the past. "We were both Katara's age then, and neither of us had ever met someone from the other's nation. We spent hours on end just talking about life in the Water Tribe or Fire Nation— and by the time your mother left with Iroh to go back home, I was practically begging Ursa to take me with her." Kya laughed at the memory, but a heartbeat later her eyes became tinged with melancholy.
"We each had our responsibilities, though," she finished, "and Ursa's… prevented her from associating openly with her acquaintances from other nations, and especially the Water Tribe."
"You mean she married my father," Zuko supplied with more than a hint of bitterness in his voice, and Kya nodded.
"Ozai let her send the occasional letter, but actual trips here were out of the question. Your surprise visit to drop that proposal on us was the first time I had seen Ursa since her stay here with Iroh all those years ago.
"But I didn't ask you to listen to some old woman prattle on about her past," Kya finished as she brought the prepared pot of tea to the table, along with two mugs. "I wanted to talk to you about Katara."
"Thank you," Zuko said as he took a full mug, taking a sip of the refreshing drink and taking the opportunity to collect his thoughts. The prince was quickly revising his initial opinion of Kya: she was far cagier than she let on, and probably just as strong as her husband—the subtle, finessed compliment to Hakoda's overt raw strength. "What about Katara do you want discuss?"
The woman snorted openly at the question, taking a sip of her tea in turn and smiling.
"Relax, Zuko," Kya said easily. "This isn't any sort of interrogation—that's much more my husband's style. I just wanted to thank you; for everything you've been helping Katara with since your arrival, that is."
"You don't need to thank me for any of that," the prince said evenly as he took another drink. "I'm just repaying Katara's kindness. She could have turned me down flat when my mother and I first got here, but instead she gave me a chance to prove myself… so that's what I intend to do."
Kya had to fight to keep the smile off of her face, inwardly joyful that finally someone like Zuko had tried to court her daughter. But she had to keep up the pretense of seriousness for a little longer, until she'd made her point.
"You don't understand how rare that is, do you?" she asked him. "Every single other young man who's tried to put a necklace around my daughter's neck, save one or two, has just taken Katara's acceptance for granted. Either because of who they were, or who their father was, they thought there was no way someone like Katara could possibly refuse them.
"But you, you're willing to put everything out on the chopping block and let her decide for herself, on her terms. That's incredibly selfless and brave, Zuko. I'm very proud of you."
Words of praise had been the last things the prince thought to expect, and he felt bowled over by Kya's generosity.
"Really, it's nothing that special," he countered, trying to shift attention away from himself again before his composure started to crack. "I just want Katara to be able to make a choice this important for herself. If she doesn't want me here, I'll go home and that'll be the end of it."
Kya could do nothing in the face of such youthful resolve but give a smile that was almost pitying.
"You say that like it doesn't scare you. You don't have to pretend that in front of me, Zuko."
The prince felt something shift inside of him, and unease began to creep into the corner of his mind.
"What's there to be scared of?" he asked as casually as he could.
"Rejection," Kya clarified. "It always stings, no matter how many layers of armor you put up to protect yourself from it. There's no shame in fearing it; deep down, everybody does."
Zuko felt the weight of truth in her words hit him square in the chest, but he refused to budge.
"I've been rejected before," he said flatly. "I've gotten over it just fine."
Kya wanted to tell him that this kind of rejection— the pain of being spurned by a potential partner— was in ways even more terrible than neglect at the hands of a family member. But she held her silence, knowing better than to travel down certain paths here: she was trying to inspire confidence in the young man, not tear it down.
"Yes, you have," she replied at last. "You've grown into a fine young man; certainly one more noble than his father. And I'm sure Katara will see that, when the time comes for her to choose. Unless, of course…" Kya began, before trailing off with a decidedly conspiratorial gleam in her eye.
"Unless?" Zuko prompted her, and she shrugged.
"Unless you wanted to propose to her first," Kya finished, smiling. "On your own terms, though; not like that embassy you and Ursa made when you first got here. I'm sure that would go over well." The smile on her face had turned downright mischievous, and truly Zuko wanted to believe that such a thing would work…
But he couldn't convince himself of it.
"I'm not going to force anything on your daughter," the prince repeated obstinately. "I respect her too much to do something like that."
Kya sighed, having played her last gambit and run up against the brick wall of Fire Nation stubbornness that seemed to run especially strong in males of the royal bloodline.
"And that is very noble of you, Prince," she said as she rose from her seat with a smile. "For what it's worth, I can't think of anyone I'd rather have as a son-in-law."
Zuko rose to his feet and bowed low, humbled by the unfettered kindness and generosity Katara's mother had shown him.
"Thank you very much, Kya," he said as he ended the bow. "It's worth a great deal to me that you feel that way."
"You are most welcome, Prince Zuko," Kya said with a smile. "Now go and get some rest," she continued, maternal once again as the atmosphere in the room shifted noticeably. "Katara had the right idea; all of that Firebending must have worn you out. I'll fix up some lunch in a little while, and wake you up when it's ready."
Zuko nodded and left the main room, walking down the hall towards his own room—
When he suddenly and unexpectedly felt himself get pulled hard from his left side as a pair of hands gripped his arm. Zuko barely had time to react before the only thing he could feel was a general sense of softness and warmth. When something brushed up against his tongue, the prince's reeling awareness finally pieced together that he was being kissed. Deeply. By Katara.
And that it felt really, really good.
His arms wrapped around her midsection on their own, pulling her even closer to him. The kiss continued until they had to break apart for breath, and Zuko felt even more flushed than Katara looked.
"Where did that come from?" he breathed out after a few moments, and the Waterbender beamed at him.
"Consider it a 'thank-you'," she said. "For respecting me."
"You don't have to…" Zuko found himself repeating, before the implication of Katara's phrasing finally sunk in.
"You heard us?" he asked, but by then Katara had already left him alone in the hallway.
The prince smiled and shook his head, wondering what he had done to deserve stumbling into something as great as this. Deciding to simply not worry about it, come what may, Zuko walked the rest of the way to his room and sunk down on top of his bed with a sigh and a smile, asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
Azula felt unease knotting tighter and tighter in her stomach as she tried time and again to think up a way out of this mess and couldn't, and not even the hastened speed of her strides could take her mind off of the doom that seemed to be lurking right around the corner. The princess assumed that her father would also give Hanzo orders to kill her, and the only thing keeping both of them alive was the fact that Ozai was mercifully ignorant of their partnership.
A partnership that, despite all of her fervent desires to the contrary, Azula couldn't afford to test the limits of right now. She wanted to humiliate Hanzo for what he'd dared to pull on her, but the princess wasn't stupid; she knew someone like him wouldn't suffer a great enough insult to his pride. And if the bastard prince turned against her, there was no telling what he would do. Someone like Hanzo couldn't be left to his own devices— especially when the alternative was that Azula had him right under her thumb.
It was with these thoughts running through her head that the princess arrived at the room she'd secreted Hanzo into, fully expecting to be able to stand over his bed and imperiously command him exactly what to do and how to do it in order that both of them could keep breathing.
When Azula opened the door, however, she found herself staring incredulously at the bastard prince. Hanzo was on his feet and pacing the room like a caged lion, looking for all the world like he'd never even been laid up in the bed that sat empty against the far wall of the room. His broken wrist was still in a splint, and the band of now-gray cloth still circled the burn on his other arm, but apart from that he looked fine.
"What do you think you're doing?" Azula snapped, closing the door abruptly behind her and taking a few threatening steps forward into the room. "You need to be resting!"
Hanzo stopped his resting pacing, looking up at the princess with an arched eyebrow.
"Since when did you turn into a mother hen-pheasant?" he asked her skeptically, before he noticed the look in her eyes and the tension in her posture. "Are you all right?" Hanzo said solicitously, his dark green eyes genuinely worried. "Did something happen with Ozai?"
"Stop asking me questions and just shut up," Azula seethed, his amber eyes burning with tightly-controlled frustration and anger. "Yes, something happened with my father. He suspects each of us is up to something."
"Which we are," the bastard prince allowed, before sinking into thought. "But as long as he hasn't figured out that we're working together," Hanzo mused, "we should still be fine."
"He told me to kill you."
There was a moment of silence as it became clear to the bastard prince just how screwed they were.
"Oh," he said at last. "That's not good."
"No. No; it isn't," Azula agreed sardonically, before beginning to pace around the room herself. If she could just think of a way out of this…
"That means he's probably going to order me to kill you, as well."
"I know that!" the princess snapped again, not even looking up at the bastard prince. "Just be quiet and let me think!"
"I can't help you if I don't know what's going on, Azula."
"I don't need your help, damn it!"
A strong hand gripped the princess by the shoulder and spun her around to hold her at arm's length, and Azula found herself staring right into a smoldering pair of dark green eyes.
"Yes, you do," Hanzo insisted, "just as much as I need yours. Now tell me what happened with your father."
Azula briefly considered trying to slash one of his eyeballs with her fingernails, but decided against it and sighed.
"He's woken up a sleeper cell of agents given to him by Long Feng," the princess explained as Hanzo lifted his hand from her shoulder. "He wants us to use them to assassinate my cousin… and then he expects us to kill each other, I assume, to cover his tracks."
"That's not surprising, coming from him," the bastard prince said evenly, but Azula could tell something inside of him had cracked; the usual calm in his eyes had been replaced by tension and concern. "Looks like he's making his move, then. We should react accordingly, Azula."
Her amber eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"What are you getting at?" she asked pointedly, an inking of an answer forming in her mind that was so outrageously implausible it couldn't possibly be the one Hanzo was about to give her.
But it was, all the same.
"I mean we should just kill all of the sleeper agents," the bastard prince said with a tone that cut like steel, "and then go after your father."
"Are you insane?" Azula hissed, her eyes widening again. "That's suicide!"
"And you'd rather wait for your father to come to you with a smile on his face and slash your throat open, is that it?" Hanzo pressed. "Ozai's holding an axe over our heads, Azula," he continued, his voice bleeding quiet intensity once again. "Both of us. Even if he doesn't know we're working together, your father suspects each of us enough that he wants us dead. And I don't know about you, but I'm not about to just sit on my hands and wait for the reaper. I've lost enough in my life already; your father isn't going to take what little I still have from me."
The words were full of edge and fire and hatred, so much of each that Azula almost took a step backwards. Instead she stood her ground, focused the pieces of her scattered will, and forced herself back to calmness. She had to keep the upper hand between them, or everything would come to ruin regardless. The princess saw now that Hanzo was little more than a mad dog when angered— and that such anger, while formidable, was useless without a strong hand to temper and guide it.
"Fine," Azula said after a long moment, every ounce of her commanding poise back in her tone. "But if we're going to go merrily to our deaths, I'm leading the way. If we follow what we can still salvage of my original plan, we might have a slim chance."
Hanzo gave her a smile that was at once admiring, amused and hungry, and it sent a light jolt arcing up the princess's spine.
"As you command, your highness."
Azula waited a heartbeat longer before pulling the bastard prince to her, gripping the back of his head and capturing his lips in a kiss. She pushed harder than Hanzo every time he tried to one-up her; she needed to bring him to heel, and if this was how it would be done, then so be it.
You idiot, a small voice broke in with dry disapproval from some back corner of her mind. He's just giving you what you want. You're not taking control, he is.
That remains to be seen, the princess countered acidly, shoving the prying shred of circumspection away and focusing back on the duel at hand. She refused to let herself enjoy the sensations running through her at the contact, striving to keep her coherence together.
"Just give up, Azula," the bastard prince murmured against her lips as he broke the kiss for a fleeting moment. "You're not going to win this."
Oh, really now?
She moved her hand down from the back of Hanzo's head, and felt him stiffen at once. He tried to back away, but Azula held him firm and kept moving her hand down, intent on raking her nails across his back…
And then she felt something that made her stop dead in her tracks. Her grip slackened at once, her eyes widening in shock as Hanzo broke off the kiss and took two of the fastest steps backwards the princess had ever seen. His eyes looked torn between rage and shame, but the only thing Azula could give him in return was shock.
"That…" she began, before the next words died in her throat and she had to try again. "That was… how?" the princess managed, while Hanzo gripped the bottom of his loose shirt and pulled it over his head. "Who did that to you?"
The bastard prince said nothing at first, merely turning around so that Azula could get a good look at what her hand had felt. Her original impression confirmed, the princess could only stare at the sight in front of her in mute horror.
Hanzo had been branded.
A circle of blackened flesh in the shape of the Earth Kingdom's elemental symbol had been seared into the upper half of his back, the upper point at the same height as the bottom of his shoulders and the bottom resting at the middle of his spine. Only a lone square of skin in the middle of the brand was unmarred: the hollow space in the center of the symbol.
"Who did that to you?" Azula repeated, her voice softer this time. "How did you even survive it?"
Hanzo turned back around to face the princess, and she saw that his chest was marked by several scars that left white slashes across his chest, some small and some larger. He gave her a sad smile, not at all surprised by the expression on her face. It was the same one that had been worn by the first and only other person to witness his brand before now… right before Hanzo had cut his head clean off of his shoulders.
But he was stronger than that now; stronger than his vanity and self-loathing. And so he smiled, and let his eyes convey the ghost of his pain.
"That, Azula," he said as he turned and began to walk back towards his bed, "is a long, sad story. Let it lie."
"Tell me," the princess insisted with just enough force to put a hitch in Hanzo's step, and he stopped right by the edge of the bed.
"Why do you want to know?"
I want to know how you ever made peace with that much pain.
"Just tell me," Azula said, walking over to him and sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Please."
The branded prince tried to bring himself to say 'no', but he cracked in the end and sat down with a sigh. He knew how much it must have taken for Azula to go as far as to plead with him, and in truth he'd been waiting for someone to share the story of his mark with since he'd gotten it on his seventh birthday.
If she really wanted to know, far be it for him to deny her.
"The man who gave this to me," Hanzo began dispassionately, "was my father."
…
…
A/N: Ugh, that was a rough last bit to write. At least the rest of it was (more or less) shameless fluff, so that balances it out. Also, Zutara. Huzzah!
Now it's time to thank the new reviewers from this past week, because they are awesome: typicalloser, HarlowR and canyousayclaire. Glad to have y'all aboard!
Also, thanks as usual to all of the constant readers, both for your feedback and for putting up with the slow-burn pacing of this story for so long... it's about to heat up in a big way over the next few weeks, for real.
As for next week's teaser, Azula learns about the history behind Hanzo's brand, Lu Ten has one hell of a rough night, and Zuko has a heart-to-heart with Sokka over the impending possibility of his engagement to Katara. There may be other bits as well, space permitting, but those are the sure things.
Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you next week!
- Jazz