The Long War

The meeting room doors slammed open. "He's gone!"

Zuko looked up, startled to see his sister standing in the doorway, clutching a blue-grey cat, huge tears standing in his eyes. "Who's gone?" he asked warily.

"Haru! Oh, Zuko, why would he leave me?" She burst into tears, great, heaving sobs racking her. The cat protested angrily when she blew her nose in its fur. "Am I that ugly now? Have I gotten that fat? I didn't pay enough attention to him, did I? Oh, he must hate me!"

"Uh, your Majesty," Bumi stood, clearing his throat uncomfortably, "if this is not a good time, perhaps we should adjourn our meeting…"

Zuko refused to allow yet more interruptions to his planning for the coming war, especially not from his pregnant, hormonal sister. He didn't understand why his mother was letting her run amok like this—why couldn't Azula take a page from Katara's book and rest?

Not that his wife was actually resting.

"Gentlemen, please, stay seated. I'll resolve this shortly." He grabbed Azula by the arm and dragged her to the corner. Finicky as ever, Kisu took offense to the way Zuko was manhandling his mistress, despite all the abuse the cat suffered under her care, and took a swipe at the Firebender.

The young Fire Lord scowled. "Keep that thing on a leash, will you?" he hissed, "and stop barging in on my war councils! If you're not going to contribute, then do us all a favor and just keep away!"

"War meeting? Oh, no, I forgot!" Azula smacked her forehead. "I got the invitation, but then Haru left…" Her lip trembled, and fresh tears floated into her glassy gaze.

"No more crying," he snapped. "Take your tears, your wallowing and your cat outside."

But Azula had never been one to listen to her brother. She dashed her tears away and straightened her spine. "No," she hiccuped, and pursed her lips. "You're right. No more crying." She set her jaw and tipped her chin up. "I'm the princess," she reminded herself staunchly, "and I should act like one."

She headed for the table.

"Wh-what are you doing?"

"I made a promise to you," Azula told him. "You brought Mom and Dad home, so now I'm going to be your war tsar. Remember the deal we struck?"

"B-but…what about the baby?" Zuko was horrified. These past few weeks, Azula had been…well, there were about a thousand synonyms for "moody" he could have used, but wolf-bat-shit insane was the one that came to mind. Agni, she couldn't lead a row of turtle-ducklings to a pond, much less an army to war.

His sister snorted. "Oh, pshaw, Zuzu. For centuries, women in the rice fields have been having babies in the mud and dirt, slinging them over their teats and going straight back to work afterwards. Being a princess, I'll bounce back ten times as fast!"

A vein pulsed at his temple. "This isn't a rice paddy! This is war!"

"And I'm going to make sure you run it properly," she said primly.

She greeted the mostly male congregation with all the regal air she could muster. The delegates rose and bowed respectfully—and a little apprehensively—to her as she sat down at Zuko's right. The Fire Lord didn't want to delay this meeting any longer, so he sat down, as well.

Azula smiled widely, making everyone's skin crawl, and asked sweetly, "Now, if someone will bring me up to speed…"

They did, not underestimating her ability to understand their battle plans for a moment. Numbers and strategies and statistics and even more numbers were thrown at her as they gave her the hard-facts rundown of the campaign they'd planned thus far. Azula absorbed it all in that calm, calculating way of hers, nodding slightly as she moved the pai sho tiles around her brain. As she processed the data, she stroked Kisu rhythmically with a slender, crimson-tipped fingers, head to tail, sleeking his gunmetal coat until it gleamed in the firelight. The cat purred begrudgingly.

"…And with aerial support from our remaining war balloons, we estimate the casualties will be few and superficial," Admiral Jee finished for them. The gray-haired man who'd been Zuko's lieutenant all those years ago had been moving up the ranks quite quickly, she'd noticed.

Mildly, Azula asked, "And what color are we painting the balloons?"

"Uh…color?" Everyone stared blankly at her.

"I was thinking something neutral." The princess tickled Kisu's chin ponderously. "Perhaps a sunny pastel yellow. Green would be nice, but…"

But it reminded her of Haru, and her mouth pursed tightly. She swallowed down the tears misting her eyes and looked up at the delegation again. "Forgive me, I was thinking about the good old days back in Ba Seng Se."

The Earthbenders glanced sidelong at each other.

"I don't think the color of the balloons matters that much, Azula," Zuko said, a patient warning lighting his eyes. "Deployment along the western coast—"

"Of course it's important!" She surged to her feet, nearly dumping the cat, but managing to scoop him up midair before he bounced against her knees. The princess threw a fervent glare across the room. "Do you want the soldiers to become depressed by all the black and red everywhere? This is a war, not a morgue!"

She stared around her then as if suddenly seeing her dour black-and-red surroundings for the first time. Everything was the color of death and bloodshed here! What kind of place was this to raise a child…uh, army?

She frowned deeply. "No, none of this will do at all! We need light and color! We need to inspire our troops! This is a coalition effort, and we need to market it as such. This is a new war against a foe we can't even localize!" She shot a fireball at scrolls of plans on the table, setting them all ablaze. "Draw up the plans again!" she declared. "I want nothing but perfection!"

And with that, she swept out of the meeting room, leaving slack jaws in her wake.

"I must apologize for my sister," Zuko said after counting to twenty. "She hasn't been herself lately…"

"Actually, I agree with her assessment," Arnook said. "We should refit the troops with new uniforms and repaint all the heavy machinery. This is a global effort, after all. We should march under one flag and act as a united nation."

"Orange!" Bumi exclaimed. "We should paint everything orange, with white stripes and green polka dots…"

As they argued over a color scheme, Zuko slowly sat down and buried his face in his hands, wondering when life had decided he deserved this torment.