TRIGGER WARNING: SELF-HARM

Slowly autumn rolled away into winter.

The seasons in the Fire Nation were never obviously divided. Only some of the trees lost their leaves, and the climate barely changed. Autumn and spring had more storms, while winter was the driest season. Other than that, dew still clung to green leaves, waves still washed on the sandy shore, and the sun above beat down with the same strength as it always did.

Azula was not as unchanging as the seasons. She was growing, and not only physically. Her bending skills were becoming more and more fine-tuned. Kadija taught her a thousand different ways of manipulating fire, until Azula was able to perform feats she had never even seen her father do. She should have felt happy, she told herself. These were accomplishments of which to be proud. But there was no happiness.

She could feel herself falling into a slow lethargy. Though none of her skills slackened, she performed them with less and less enthusiasm. She had not cried for one month…two months…three months…

Nobody noticed the difference. Nobody cared to. To Ozai, Azula was the perfect daughter. She spoke only when spoken to and said only what her father desired to hear. Her bruises had started healing.

Azula felt dead. She was irritable with her handmaidens. One day, she shot a fireball at one simply for bringing her the wrong pair of shoes. She liked watching the woman duck and cringe, and made a mental note to repeat the punishment much more often.

There was nothing to alleviate the depression. She had not made good on her promise to visit Ty Lee. Once or twice Mai sent a messenger hawk to her. Azula ignored them, and gradually the missives stopped coming.

She was not a robot. Azula was not a monster. For every smile she gave Kadija, every perfect firebending move, every sentence she read in every textbook, every war meeting she attended at her father's side, there was a thin cut made by a sharp knife somewhere on her body.

In the corner of Azula's bedroom, there was an ornamental vase. It had no flowers in it, nor any remarkable pattern. It was made of beautiful red glass that looked like fire when the sun shone through it.

The vase was slowly accumulating pieces of paper. Some of them were written in a neat hand, some scrawled as if by a madman. Some were clean and devoid of anything but the writing. Some were stained with blood.

Every time she removed the knife from its hiding place, Azula told herself that this would be the last time. Every time she slid the blade across her skin and watched the crimson trail that followed, she wrote on a piece of paper.

Unable to master new move.

Father reprimanded me.

Felt lonely.

Zuko doing better in school.

Note from Mai.

Father called me to his rooms last night.

I don't know what's wrong with me.

Some of the cuts healed. She didn't always dig deeply. Sometimes the pain was too much. But some of them became scars, until the faint lines littered her body. Azula was careful not to leave marks where anyone could see. She wouldn't make the mistake she had made with Mai again. Her upper thighs, her lower stomach, and her chest were covered with marks. If Ozai noticed, and surely he did, then he didn't comment.

Azula wondered if he even cared. He inflicted enough pain on her that doubtless he didn't care whatever she was doing to herself.

She wondered if anyone cared. She thought of Mai and Ty Lee and then drew the knife across her skin again. She knew they cared, and she hated them for it. She wondered sometimes if she would ever see them again, and thought that it would be better if she didn't.

There was no good news from the front. Ba Sing Se remained as impregnable as its reputation. The smaller Earth Kingdom territories were slowly being conquered, but these little gains meant nothing. Azula could tell that her father was losing patience. During one meeting he threatened a general with death should the man not have good news for him. That particular general never returned. Nobody ever commented on his absence.

Azula felt ill. There was something rotten growing inside of her, and outside of her nothing was better. There was no light. Azula had forgotten what she was working toward. She only cared about survival, and she watched the world go by with indifference tinged with terror.

"Princess, a message from your father."

It was early spring. The climate was still the same. Azula still felt cold. She was sitting alone in her room, reading one of the gigantic history books that were her only friend and refuge. She looked up to meet the servant's eyes.

"Give it here."

He handed over the piece of paper. Lately Ozai had frequently been too busy to see Azula himself, and he had taken to sending others in his place. Azula was not about to complain, even if her father always made time to see her at night.

"Now go."

The servant bowed and exited her room. Azula broke the wax seal—was it really necessary to seal a missive that would not leave the palace?—and read her father's narrow, imperial handwriting.

There is to be a demonstration of lightningbending at the Academy by an old master. I want you to attend. It is about time you learned. Three days from now, first thing in the morning. You will go. No questions.

Azula tossed the piece of paper aside and rolled onto her back to stare up at the ceiling. Lightningbending…it was a very rare gift. She didn't think that even Kadija could do it. Azula had started to wonder whether it ran strongest in the royal bloodline, though now and again one heard about skilled benders who had mastered the technique in some faraway place.

Lightning was, for firebenders, an ultimate goal and ultimate power. Yet only an elite few had ever been able to master it. Azula knew that her uncle, much as she despised him, was a lightningbender, and that only made her resent him more.

Utter control. Utter peace of mind. Lightning required the ability to let go of one's own thoughts and desires. It was the opposite of the basics of firebending—with lightning, determination and ambition were detractors. Lightning required utterly frigid serenity.

Ever since she had known what it was, Azula had dreamed of lightning. That deadly, vicious power, streaming from her fingers to maim and kill. It was quick. Precise. Deadly.

And then Azula remembered Ko Shen, dancing gruesomely in the air as electricity poured into his body. She remembered the nightmares of her father doing the same to her. Lightning could bring down anyone, no matter how strong.

She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything. The lethargic depression that had consumed her seemed to melt away as she considered the possibilities. Bending the sky. Bending perfect and beautiful lightning, more deadly than any other technique. The thought was utterly intoxicating, and somewhere inside Azula was brimming with excitement.

On the outside, she simply stared up at her ceiling, waiting for the day to come.

Azula approached the walls of her old school with trepidation. She knew it was ridiculous, that she would be welcomed with open arms and feeling fear of any kind was only weakness, but she couldn't stop the fear. She didn't belong here anymore.

"Princess, lead the way," one of her guards said, bowing deeply. Azula ignored him. Rather than simply dropping her off at the gates the way they had used to, the soldiers had been instructed to stay close to the princess. Azula suspected this was simply a mechanism of her father to check whether she was going to reunite with Mai and Ty Lee.

It was idiotic. Azula doubted whether her father could pick her two friends out of a crowd. He had never had a good memory for the faces of peasants.

Azula turned heads in much the same way she always had when she was attending school. She walked through the gates without looking left and right, heading for the courtyard where the demonstration was taking place. She hadn't taken a dozen steps when, sure enough, there they were.

"You liar!" Ty Lee cartwheeled across the grass before finishing in a front handspring, coming to land directly in front of Azula. For once, Ty was frowning. "Liar!"

"You will not address the princess in that manner!" one of her guards began, stepping forward and lowering his spear. "Apologize immediately, peasant!"

"Stand down," Azula said lazily, holding one hand up to stop the guard's advance. "I know her." She strode forward until she and Ty Lee were barely a hair's width away. "Do you really want to do this, Ty?"

Ty Lee's eyes widened, and for the first time since they had met she had fear in her eyes. "Azula…I only meant that—I mean, you promised to come visit…"

"I did promise," Azula said, smiling coldly. "And yet I failed to come. I am the princess, Ty Lee. Are you arrogant enough to think I don't have other responsibilities? Do you think I have enough time to come and visit you on your whims?"

"That's not what I meant!" Ty Lee's tone was rising, but she seemed to check herself and lower it again. "I didn't mean to imply anything like that. I just wanted to see you is all. And I really thought you would come to see me!"

"Perhaps one day when I'm not so busy," Azula said, still smiling coldly. She thought of the long hours alone in her room with her knife, and how that was valuable time when she could have seen them…and then shoved the thought away. They didn't deserve to see her at her lowest.

They don't deserve to see me, or I don't deserve to have friends like them?

Another unbidden thought. She shoved it away and forced all her hatred of herself outward, onto the girl standing in front of her.

"Now get out of my way. I'm busy. I don't have time to play with you any longer."

She tried not to see the hurt and the pain building up in Ty Lee's eyes as Azula led her guards past her. Azula tried not to think about the tears forming in those eyes. She didn't want to think about what she was doing to Ty Lee. All she could do was focus on hating her.

The faculty at the school had seemingly been sent word that the princess was coming, as they had a special seat prepared for her. Azula sat in the shade, with the headmaster on one side and one of the firebending teachers on the other. Her chair was draped with crimson and gold streamers. The other children were forced to sit in the grass, forming a semicircle around the podium where the lightningbender would perform his demonstration.

Mai and Ty Lee were absent. Azula supposed that it was a waste of time to have non-bending students attend a display of bending. Either way, she was glad they weren't there. She didn't want to have to feel guilt sweeping her stomach whenever she looked at the crowd.

Several minutes after she had sat down, a man walked out onto the stage. He was old, probably around Iroh's age, though nowhere near Kadija. The students greeted him with a polite round of applause. Azula was studying him with narrowed eyes.

"I have been called here to show you lightning," he said without preamble. "Though it is highly probable that none of you here present will ever achieve so much as a spark of electricity." His gaze met Azula's; his eyes were bright blue.

He shifted into a powerful stance. His legs were spread apart, providing balance while he held his hands in fists at his waist. His right hand had two fingers unfurled, pointing directly upward.

"Lightning uses less of the body than simple fire, because lightning requires intense concentrations of energy in a single part." He spoke tiredly, as though he had rehearsed and rehashed this line a million times before.

"Once the energy is concentrated, it simply…bends." He held his two fingers upright and a glowing, crackling ball of blue-white energy appeared. The students gasped. Azula supposed that for many of them, this would be the first time they had ever seen lightningbending before. She tried not to think of Ko Shen as she stared at the light.

The bender stopped talking then, his concentration wholly on his bending. He twisted his hand back and forth in strange, snakelike motions. Azula leaned forward, concentrating, and saw that he was, in fact, increasing the amount of electricity. The sparkling energy around his hands was growing wilder and wilder, until he concentrated and thrust it upwards. The lightning shot away into the sky. There was a distant sound of thunder.

"That is the basic lightningbending form," the old man grunted, returning to his previous position. "Though lightning doesn't have many set forms. Since so few people use it, they usually just use their own techniques. Unlike firebending, there is no reference or encyclopedia. The power and direction is entirely up to the user."

He was reverting back to his recitation tone. Azula had to force herself to concentrate.

The demonstration continued for another half-hour. The man narrated everything he did in the same deliberate, desperately dull voice. He performed several other moves with electricity, but he was so boring that it was difficult for anyone to pay attention. Glancing around, Azula noticed at least three students nodding off, and even the headmaster seated next to her looked on the verge of sleep.

Azula herself had long ago ceased paying attention and was playing with a loose thread on her pants. She was revisiting her conversation with Ty Lee, thinking of a few choice things she could have said. She tried not to think of the horrified look on her friend's face…

I shouldn't care about what she thinks! I don't care about what she feels! I'm the princess! I'm the only one who matters!

While she had been raised, Azula had been told that mantra every day. Why was it so difficult for her to believe it now?

Because having friends changes everything, she thought dully, wrapping the stray thread around her finger and tugging until it pulled away from the fabric.

"Princess Azula, are you ready to return to the palace?"

Azula looked around. She had been so lost in her own thoughts that she had failed to notice the demonstrator stop talking. One of her guards was bending over her; it was he who had spoken.

"Yes, of course," she said, swinging her legs around to the front of the chair and standing. On her side, the headmaster bowed.

"What an honor to have you here, Princess—"

"Save it," Azula snapped, walking away with her guards behind her. "I haven't forgotten the time you tried to have me expelled. No use sucking up now."

All during the palanquin ride back to the palace, Azula was restless. No position felt comfortable. She constantly glanced out of the curtains, foolishly, as if seeing whether they were being followed. Of course there was nobody there.

Just Azula, alone with her guilt.

Azula had barely stepped foot inside the walls of the palace when a servant came hurrying toward her. He bowed deeply, smiling.

"Welcome back, Princess Azula! I have a message from the Fire Lord. He wishes for you to join him immediately within the throne room."

Azula nodded with a sinking feeling. Ozai hadn't told her that there would be a war meeting today, which meant he could only be summoning her for one reason. Azula tried to stop the bile from rising in her throat. She didn't want to think of what new bruises she would be sporting within the hour.

But, for once, Azula was wrong. When she entered the throne room, it was not Ozai alone waiting for her. Her father was sitting in his throne, but a heavy wooden table sat in the middle. The whole war council, it appeared, was present. Perhaps there had been a meeting, and her father had simply failed to mention it.

She ignored them as she circled around the table to kneel in her usual place in front of the throne. Her back felt hot; she was sure all of the generals were staring at her.

"You called, Father?"

"I did." His face was veiled in shadow. "You've returned from your lightningbending course. I want you to show us what you learned."

Azula felt as if her stomach froze. "You want me to…bend for you?"

"Precisely." Ozai leaned back in the throne and folded his hands in his lap. "I assume, of course, that you are up to the challenge. After all, you are my most capable child…"

Azula didn't think she could breathe. She couldn't refuse. She couldn't! But this…how could her father expect her to bend lightning, just like that? She wanted to glare at him, but she knew it was useless. She had only one choice—to perform.

"Of course, Father." She stood and assumed the form she remembered the man showing them that morning: legs spread, arms at her waist, two fingers pointing up at the sky. She ran over what he had done in her mind—but she couldn't just mimic the moves. Forms weren't enough to produce lightning. She needed…more.

Azula thought over the infinite scrolls she had read on the topic. Lightning required deadly precision and focus of mind. Only one who was mentally serene could summon it.

She tried to empty her mind. She breathed in slowly and out with equal speed. She tried not to think about the fact that her heart was racing, her palms were sweating…

If she failed in front of the generals, she knew Ozai would punish her. Azula's breath caught in her throat. Serenity? How could she be serene at a time like this, under such pressure?

You must! she ordered herself. You cannot fail! Failure is not an option! Failure is never an option!

"…Well, Azula?" Ozai asked. Was that a tinge of malice in his voice? One or two of the generals tittered. Azula's blood boiled. Was this only about humiliating her?

She couldn't stop the anger that was building up inside of her. She thought of the movements she was about to execute and lifted her head high.

Azula's two fingers wound through the air like a snake. She thought about fire concentrating in them, about pushing fire out of them…

Failure is not an option!

But when Azula finished the forms and lunged with her fingers outstretched, it was not lightning that came forth. It wasn't even fire.

Azula stared at her outstretched fingers for what seemed like an eternity. They…they hadn't even sparked. Her mind was racing, desperate to come up with an explanation.

There was none to be found save one.

Failure.

Was that a round of drumbeats, or the steady thumping of her own heart? Was there an ocean rushing outside the walls, or was it only her breath? Why did she feel so cold, as if she had just been dunked in ice-cold water?

Azula's eyes strained until they began watering and she began seeing double. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. She wanted to dig her nails in, burn herself, something to stop the overwhelming feeling building inside of her.

Failure.

Were the generals laughing at her? She was sure that they were, though the only sound she could hear was the rushing of blood in her ears. Was she going to die? She couldn't stand it any longer. She couldn't stand there, feeling as if she were about to erupt. She couldn't deal with the pain. She had failed. Not only in front of her father, but in front of all the generals. Azula didn't want it. It was unbearable. There was something broken inside of her and something wrong with her brain. She wasn't crying. Sadness was the furthest thing from what she felt. The only emotion rushing through her brain was pure, unbridled panic.

Failure.

Was someone speaking? Their words were falling onto deaf ears. Azula's mind was swimming. She didn't realize she was hyperventilating. Her vision was becoming pixilated. She couldn't force her eyes to focus on her arm long enough to realize that she was trembling violently. She was utterly nauseous and couldn't believe she was still on her feet.

Make it stop! I can't have failed! I can't! I've never failed before! Never! I'm useless if I'm a failure! Zuko is worth more than me…I am useless. Pointless! I don't even deserve to die.

It was a wonder that the obscenities Azula was screaming at herself on the inside hadn't spilled out. She stood there, the center of attention in the spacious throne room. All eyes were fixed on her in the silence. Nobody made a sound.

Until Ozai shifted, crossing his legs, and the spell was broken.

Azula couldn't remain standing any longer. Her legs couldn't support her. She fell forward, ungraceful, and managed to catch herself. She splayed her hands out in front of her, head hidden in her knees, as if she was appealing for mercy from her father.

But Ozai wasn't even on Azula's mind. Failing him meant nothing to her. She knew, deep down, the reason everything hurt. It wasn't failing anyone else.

It was disappointing herself.

"That will be all, Azula." She didn't dare look up at her father. She couldn't bear to see the stern expression she imagined he must be wearing. She wanted to die, there on the marble floor. It would be merciful for her father to throw fire at her.

"Yes, Father."

Somehow she stood. Somehow she bowed. Somehow she managed to turn and make her slow way out of the throne room, still screaming on the inside. She thought of a knife, lying far away in a pile of silk in her rooms, and she smiled a twisted smile.

Azula would punish herself for this failure more thoroughly than anyone else ever could.

She already had.

A/N: Too sleepy to write long note. Love you guys. See you next week.