Dominion

by Aurelia le

For the Fire Nation royal siblings, love has always warred with hate. But neither the outward accomplishment of peace nor Azula's defeat have brought the respite Zuko expected. Will his sister's plans answer this, or only destroy them both? These chapters (double-update): Ursa gets a rude awakening. Azula gets a letter. Zuko makes plans. Iroh finds them questionable. Also, EVERYONE

26. Divided, Part 1

Previously, in Dominion:

"Princess, a palace coup has — removed your brother from power." […] "Does he live?" Azula quietly demanded […] "Does my brother still live?"

…

Kwan sighed quietly, considering him. "Fire Lord," he spoke slowly. "I appreciate this cannot have been easy to admit. But moving forward, I need to know your goal in seeking help. What is it that you want?"

…

"But none of that matters now Zuko's been deposed," Azula spoke over her. "To answer your question, that's why I told you. Because he's in no position to give either of us what we want now," she said bitterly, hugging her elbows. "Because you don't know where to find him any more than I do. You're stuck with me, until I can deliver you to someone who does."

…

Uncle Iroh told them the blockade was broken, and a hostile Fire Nation poured fresh troops into the colonies every day. Aang was leaving tomorrow to work with Bumi in brokering a ceasefire, to visit the Northern Air Temple and replace his airbending staff, to lay Momo's remains finally to rest…

Katara barely had to think about declining, when Aang asked if she wanted to come with him.

…

"Why don't you tell her how you really gained your title, Dragon of the West?" His voice dropped darkly, "There's a story she'll never forget."

…

He paused. "I just wish I knew we could count on Zuko to hold up his end. You're sure you don't —"

"I told you," Toph grumbled and tossed up her hands, tired of this line of questioning, even knowing as she did that there was little else to do up here. "I can't tell when someone's lying in a letter."

"But what reason would he have to lie at all?" Sokka speculated, his voice falling to a whisper. […] "When he said he didn't know why she left him alive —"

"— and we shouldn't listen if she says something desperate?" Toph spoke flatly.

…

The letter was another matter. Poppy Beifong pressed it into her hands, eyes shining with hope […] Azula broke the seal with a slim finger, to see whether the damning letter held any mention of her. She read it through once quickly, and then again. By the third reading, her eyes burned and she began to find it hard to breathe. She gripped the edges of the scroll so hard it crumpled, and had to squeeze her eyes tightly closed before she could loosen her grip. The letter held no mention of her. It said —

It didn't matter what it said.

…

"You have helped," Azula said firmly, her eyes never leaving Ty Lee's face. "And you can help me best by staying right where you are. I need someone on the inside."

Ty Lee's eyes widened. Did she mean … "You mean be like, your spy?" she said nervously, grabbing the end of her braid to fiddle with it.

"Not exactly," Azula corrected, her eyes shadowed with exhaustion. "I just need to know there's someone who will help me if I need it, among my enemies. Someone I can trust. I need you to be," she paused as if thinking of the right words to describe this, "my safety net. Can you do that?"

…

"I know this is something — you have to do," he breathed into her neck, and it was only the feel of her back drawn taut beneath his touch that stopped Zuko from kissing her there. "If anyone can get him back safely — it's you. Just be careful."

"I always am," she dismissed, and Zuko let her go this time.

---

Azula sat at a long table set with her favorite dishes, and wondered if this was a test.

The tapers had burned low while she waited for her father, the finer details of their dining room lost to the encroaching dark. She couldn't eat until Father arrived.

She couldn't eat even then, she reminded herself. Azula had begun taking her daily ration in the morning, after discovering she couldn't get out of bed without it. Father approved her foresight, her adherence to his plan even if she didn't understand it.

He still required her to join him at mealtimes, to speak to him about events of the day or what she had learned or thoughts she couldn't voice in front of his war council. It was a mark of familiarity and trust. Azula took it as the honor intended.

Even if it was hard to hold up her end of a conversation when she was increasingly unable to think of anything but food. Even if it was hard to focus on what her father was saying when she had to watch him eating.

She couldn't stop her stomach from rumbling, but had so far managed to forbear from snatching one of her favorite firecracker shrimp from the gilded platter. There were so many, and Azula knew she could rearrange them in perfect symmetry to hide her theft. Father wouldn't even notice one missing…

Of course he would notice one missing, even if the servants didn't tell him. Half a dozen of them lined the panelled walls, still and silent as statues in their crimson robes and conical hats. Azula could almost forget they were there even when she wasn't starving.

And she was starving.

It had to be her favorite foods. Her mouth watered at the scents of garlic and ginger and ghost peppers, at steam wafting up from baked aubergine and braised abalone served on the shell and the tureen of fugu chiri, the glint of candlelight on fried onions and savory glazes and the skins of pitted cherries and stuffed grape leaves and the crusts of mooncakes…

Zuzu said Father was thoughtless. (Zuzu never dared say he was cruel, but the implication was there.) And maybe with Zuko, he was. But with Azula, Father was always deliberate. Frighteningly deliberate, even if his motives took a long time to reveal themselves.

This must be a test, she concluded. But she would pass it, like all of his tests. She would prove that he was right to choose her.

Her hands began to shake before she hid them quickly under the table. Her brother walked in at that moment, as if called into being and not just to mind. Azula sat up straighter, her eyes flying open in inexplicable alarm. She glanced at the servants, who did not react to his entrance.

"What are you doing here?" There wasn't even a place set for him…

His brows pinched in question. "Getting dinner, what else?" Zuko frowned at her. "Why aren't you eating?"

Her stomach gave an unpleasant little flip. He was about the last person with whom she wanted to discuss this. Zuko pointed out in obvious suspicion, "These are your favorites," and she scoffed even though he was right.

"Like you would know." It had to be a lucky guess; Zuzu was too preoccupied with his own problems to remember anyone existed besides himself.

"'Course I do." He smirked a little and crossed his arms to tease her, "You're such a glutton, I never get any!"

Azula smiled despite herself, ducking her head to hide it. Zuko peered beneath her twin tails of hair, as if trying to find her out. "Did you put something in it?"

"The food?" She looked up at him, bewildered. "What would be the point? We have royal food tasters."

"You put fire ants in my socks," her brother groused, and Azula couldn't help laughing.

"I was five!" And you were an obnoxious tattle-tale.

"Then why aren't you eating?" he demanded again, but Azula had a lie ready this time.

"I'm not hungry."

"I can hear your stomach growling," her brother flatly replied, and the offending organ chose that moment to betray her again. Well, she didn't say it was a good lie…

"Wait…" Zuko let down his arms in shock. "Is Father punishing you?"

"No —" Azula spoke too quickly, but Zuko crowed, "He is!"

Her face burned, but Zuko's lit up like his birthday came early. "I can't believe it. We have to call the court historian and get this on record: You actually made a mistake!"

"I did not!" she hotly objected, standing quickly from her seat — only to sit back down just as quickly when a dizzy spell overtook her. Zuko didn't notice, thank Agni. "Dad's training me!"

"For what, to live like a peasant?" He was laughing at her. Zuko, of all people, was laughing at her. Azula would wipe that grin off his face right now if she could stand without falling over.

"To bend lightning!" she retorted with fists clenched, and Zuko frowned down at her.

"You're too young to bend lightning."

"I'll be the youngest ever lightningbender!" Azula insisted, shivering with the intensity of her desire.

"Well, have you done it yet?" he doubted, and she bristled at his implication.

"No, dumdum, that's why Dad's training me! He wouldn't offer if he didn't think I could do it." He never offered to teach you lightning…

Zuko tensed like he could hear her thinking it, and shot back, "Yeah well, call it whatever you want, at least Dad never starved me."

"No, he just banished y—" She choked on the words.

He banished you. You have a scar now, Azula remembered, staring at his smooth, unblemished face with a peculiar tightness in her chest, as if all the air had been sucked from the room. And you're older. I haven't seen you in two years.

He banished you…

Zuko didn't react to her words or her little conniption fit, just grabbed one of the bowls pointlessly set out for her and ladled some of the blowfish soup into it, casual as you please. Her eyes darted again to the servants, who had not remarked the presence of the banished prince of the Fire Nation in all this time. Quite possibly, Azula was the only one who could see him.

This had to be a dream. She fell asleep at the table waiting for Father, and this was some kind of hunger-induced nightmare. The alternative was too frightening to contemplate.

Azula only snapped out of her shock when Zuko began slurping the soup right out of the bowl like some kind of uncouth peasant. "What are you doing?" she hissed reflexively, though that part was obvious. His motives were less so. Did he even have motives? What the hell even was this? "You can't eat until Father gets here!"

"He's not even coming." Zuko wiped his chin with his leather bracer before the soup could drip onto his tunic, and Azula cringed. It had been a long time, but she never recalled his table manners being this abominable.

"He forgot about you. He forgot about both of us."

"No, he didn't!" Azula argued, glancing to the servants again and deeply unnerved when she saw they were watching now, silent. Like they were waiting for something. "You're going to be in so much trouble…"

"Mmmm, this soup sure is tasty!" Zuko ignored her to taunt, waving the bowl beneath her nose before he drank more of it down. "Too bad you don't want any."

"Zuko, stop it!" She half-rose from her seat to glance out the dining room doors behind them. It would be just Zuko's luck for their father to walk in right now. It would be just her luck for him to walk in on her talking to no one…

"Dad's going to kill —"

Zuko jolted in that moment like he'd been struck by lightning, dropping the bowl to the black tile floor where it shattered, its contents splashing her boots. Azula leapt to her feet with a wordless cry of fright, her chair turned over, and the candles flared a searing blue when her brother fell to the floor in the throes of what looked like some sort of seizure.

Poison, the realization flashed through her mind, and Azula murmured instinctively, "Help him…" Her eyes fixed on the servants in desperation. The candlelight settled to orange, but the wicks had burned so low it was getting hard to see. "Get someone!" she shrilled.

But the servants just looked on Zuko and her with cold, dead eyes that caught the firelight like deadly beasts' emerging from concealment. They withdrew blades from the folds of their crimson smocks. Her throat seized when Azula realized, as she should have done from the first, that poison never could have found its way to her table without their complicity.

It was meant for me.

Zuko was grasping at the hem of her robe, but shaking too hard to hold on when she pulled away in terror. His breath came in quick, ragged gasps, his lips were turning blue, and his pupils grew to swallow the irises whole. Azula darted a glance at the doors but turned on him instead.

"You dumdum!" she screamed at him, absurdly. "Why didn't you banish them?" When you're alone, no one can hurt you…

Zuko didn't seem to hear her, convulsing so violently he banged his head against the hard stone floor, bent fingers clawing futilely at his neck. Strangled cries of pain issued from his throat, like an invisible assailant was throttling him. It was horrifying. He barely sounded human.

He would bite his tongue off and bleed out like the food taster who died right in front of Azula, the day Father brought her with him to inspect the kitchens. Who would try to poison you? she remembered asking him afterward, shaken. Ozai had just looked at her, considering.

Or you? he pointed out, and her eyes grew wide as saucers. You are my heir. He laid a heavy hand on the back of her neck, a familiar weight. There are many who would seek to harm me, through you. If you appear to be vulnerable, weak…

Azula moved without thinking, dropping down beside his head to haul Zuko up by the shoulders. "Stupid, you stupid — !" she choked out, struggling to hold on while he hit and scratched her. She bent to pillow his thrashing head against her stomach. "Breathe, you have to breathe…"

He was trying. He was failing. The candles flared and died with every breath he gasped, and each time they burned lower and farther apart.

The hairs stood up on the back of her neck, and Azula threw her arm out with an arc of flame to drive off the traitor servants who closed in behind them. Her fire cooled to orange and died before it even reached them, glinting off their knives. They barely retreated and only stood watching, like hungry wolves prowling the edges of a fire, waiting for it to die.

It wasn't real. It wasn't real. Just a stupid dream — "Wake up!" she cried to herself, to Zuko, to anyone. She didn't wake. He couldn't breathe, and soon his frantic thrashing slowed to motions more perfunctory, like the last lurches of a machine winding down.

Azula darted upright and let go in panic that she was hurting him, but Zuko just stopped breathing altogether. Sweat stood out on his wan face. Blood smeared the corner of his mouth where he cut it on the floor. His eyes — bruised and bloodshot and so imploring that she could not look away — locked onto hers in the semidarkness.

"Zuz —" her voice broke. "Zuko?"

His mouth worked futilely, but no sound emerged, nor any breath, like he was drowning on dry land. Tears streamed down the sides of his face, and while she watched in horror, an angry scar blazoned itself across his left eye to pucker the flesh and stem the flow.

Her shaking hands just cradled his jaw, too afraid to touch him. "No, don't — don't…"

Your brother is dead, her father spoke in a tone of mild distaste from across the table (from the recesses of memory). Azula looked up from her plate to find him watching her, expectant. She was supposed to say something. What was she supposed to say?

O-oh, she managed at last. Seeming to decide this was a question, Ozai grunted and tossed her the black-ribbon scroll that occasioned his announcement. He tucked back into his breakfast without so much as another glance at her.

Azula kept her hands steady when she reached for the scroll. She had to read it several times before the meaning sank in. She spent the rest of the meal staring unremarked at her father, wondering if he had put out a hit on his son.

Lies are supposed to be plausible. How plausible was it that Zuko would get blown up by pirates with a grudge? He was on the ship alone, but — But if Father wanted him dead, he would hardly discriminate, Azula reasoned. His whole crew would have died too, instead of being recruited for Zhao's little vanity project. Ozai would not have instructed assassins to wait until his hated brother took a walk…

She stopped at the thought of Iroh. Two boys he'd lost, his failure indisputable. What would he do, now that his replacement son was dead? Azula imagined him wandering the Earth Kingdom barefoot in sackcloth like one of those religious fanatics, wasting away with grief. It was such a ridiculous image, she wanted to laugh. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry.

She didn't know what she wanted.

Azula? Father was looking at her, brows creased in a frown. Having finished eating, he apparently remembered she existed again.

He forgot about you. He forgot about both of us.

She smiled convincingly, and Father was satisfied. The corner of his mouth turned up and he nodded once. He stood from the table and left her sitting there while servants cleared both their plates —

The candlelight flickered on the edge of dying. The traitor servants drew so close that Azula had to exhale flame with her breaths just to see and to stave them off. She was nearly hyperventilating, her eyes stinging. Her fire bent a dull red that didn't warm her.

His head laid in her lap, her brother shivered once and stilled. His mismatched eyes fixed on something beyond her. Then they fixed on nothing at all, reflected the dying light of her fire like glass. Her breath caught.

He was dead. He was dead, and the candle's light snuffed out with him.

Tears dripped from her chin, her teeth bared and jaw clenched in a rictus of pain. Her hands cupped his still face. She wiped the blood from his mouth, ran shaking fingers over the ridges of his scar, and just … folded in place.

She might have run once. Why didn't she run? It was too late now. Too late a long time ago…

She could feel his killers at her shoulder. A rough hand seized her by the hair to wrench her head back, and still the fire wouldn't answer her call. They yanked her to her knees, his body slipped away, and panic bubbled up to take its place.

"Help him," she choked out, pointlessly. There was never any helping him (but no one to even try with her). "Mom, help him! Mom, please —"

But Ursa was years gone, her effort spent. As useless as a glass cannon, only good for one shot. He needed more than that. We both did…

"How could you leave?" Azula demanded of the dark, struggling against the grip of her captor to no answer but the beating of her own heart. She thought it would burst from her chest. "You promised," she was weeping now, so hard that she could barely breathe, "you promised to protect him!"

Everyone leaves.

In the end, it was only Azula, alone amid their enemies. In the end, it was only Azula, left screaming for her mother like a stupid little girl. She was still screaming into the dark when the cold edge of a blade opened her throat —

---

The sun was past its apex before her daughter showed any signs of waking. Even similarly sleep-deprived, Ursa had been up for hours by that time. She let Azula rest, knowing she needed sleep almost as much as she needed a square meal.

Stubborn girl, Ursa thought fondly, with more than a hint of exasperation mixed in. Azula slept beside the shadow of her little slab of rock, still dressed in military fatigues and painted with the dappled sunlight that shone down through the sparse trees.

Ursa hadn't meant to watch her sleep. Azula would hardly appreciate waking up to that. And it was not the first time in their shared travel that little noises of distress or anxious murmurs in her sleep indicated her daughter was afflicted with nightmares.

Ursa tried to ignore it and just make sure Azula was kept comfortable, feeling acutely guilty all the while. She hesitated to wake her, fearing that might only make it worse. (Or was that sleepwalking? Ursa could never remember.)

But this time was different. This time, Azula started calling out for her mother, and Ursa would be damned if she could sit idly by and listen to that.

Except Azula wouldn't wake. Ursa shook her and called her name, and even then, Azula fought her in her sleep, moaning and crying unintelligibly. Tears seeped from behind her tight-shut eyes.

When Azula woke with a start, Ursa's relief was short-lived to see the unbridled terror in her eyes. Azula's breath hitched, and her hand flew to her throat. She wrenched free of Ursa's grasp, half-rising from her sleeping bag before she bent double and emptied her stomach onto the grass.

Ursa was just fast enough to hold her hair back out of the way, though since Azula hadn't eaten in over twenty-four hours, only bile came up. It was over as quickly as it began, when Azula coughed and fell back onto her hip on the sleeping bag, gripping her diaphragm and crying in earnest.

And now Ursa was really alarmed. "Azula? Azula, what's wrong?" she demanded. "Is it the baby?" She laid a hand on the swell of her abdomen, but felt nothing amiss. "Are you in pain?"

"He was dead!" her daughter burst out, surprising her. "He was dead, he died…"

"Zuko?" Ursa whispered. She felt like her heart stopped, remembering Azula's harsh words back at the encampment. Do you imagine I owe you the truth? Was Azula lying to her or withholding information even now?

"He never — gives up." Azula gulped down deep breaths, visibly shaking. "He wouldn't — just die…" She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as her mother, and Ursa couldn't listen to this anymore.

"Azula, look at me!" Ursa seized her by the shoulders, and only stopped short of shaking her when Azula glanced up at Ursa with wide, fearful eyes that made her look like a little girl again. But this would hardly be the first time she played innocent upon getting caught.

"Tell me the truth!" Ursa demanded, as harshly as she could manage. Azula would respect nothing less. "What do you know?"

"Nothing, okay?!" Azula hotly protested, windmilling her arms to break Ursa's grip. "It was just a stupid dream!" Her voice broke and mouth shook before Azula clapped a hand over it, as if to hold back a sob. And remorse flooded in to quell Ursa's suspicion.

Azula had never been able to fake tears, she should have remembered that. Perhaps what Ursa mistook for guilt was only Azula betraying the content of her nightmares, too upset and disoriented upon waking to hide from her mother like she would usually do.

She might be just as worried about Zuko as I am, Ursa remembered, even if Azula was terrible at showing it…

And was it any wonder, the way Ursa reacted? She's trying, Ursa thought sadly, when Azula shifted to put her back to Ursa and swipe angrily at the tears that blotched her lovely face. You have to try, too.

Her daughter told Ursa the truth in her tent yesterday, whatever Azula had said before. She told you the truth, even knowing how you were like to react, Ursa reminded herself. She trusted you with that. This is never going to get easier unless you can learn to trust her, too.

"I'm sorry I snapped at you," Ursa said at last, laying a careful hand on Azula's hunched shoulders. Azula tensed visibly, her fingers raking her loose hair down to the scalp. "You just scared me."

Her daughter muttered something, bitterly. Ursa thought she caught the word monster, but she pushed on a little desperately. "You know I wouldn't blame you if — if you were scared, too."

"Oh my gods," Azula groaned weakly, dropping her head into her hands. Her shoulders shook, and Ursa rubbed her back up and down by way of encouragement.

"You've been so strong, for such a long time," Ursa prefaced her words carefully. "But sweetheart, it's not a weakness to care about your broth—"

"I don't want to care!" Azula screamed — actually screamed — at her, and Ursa jumped. Azula ripped her hands from her hair, blue flames flashing briefly to life in her palms, and turned on her. "Can you understand that?"

Ursa was too shocked (and a little offended) by her outburst to even attempt to answer what was probably a rhetorical question. The fire may be gone from her hands but it still shone in her eyes, a vivid contrast to the tears that welled in them.

"Just because I don't — want him dead," Azula grit out like the words were physically painful, "doesn't mean I want him in my life!" Her gaze shifted inward, she seemed almost to shrink before Ursa's eyes when she spoke in a choked whisper, "You don't know what he's like…"

Ursa tensed reflexively, and the words flew from her heart straight to her lips, bypassing her rational mind entirely, "I know what y—" —ou're like. She stopped herself just in time.

Or maybe not, when Azula's eyes flashed up at her in such a baleful glance that in that moment, Ursa could swear it was Ozai looking out at her. Sometimes the resemblance took her breath away. She has his eyes…

It was not a good moment to be without breath, or words for that matter. Azula pushed to her feet, and the look on her face was so terrible that Ursa thought she would eviscerate her with words alone. Or maybe strike her down.

But then Azula forced a smile thin as a razor's edge and clasped her hands behind her back as if to hide them. It was odd how much taller the diminutive princess seemed when she stood thus.

Azula bit out, "Well, who would know better than you?"

And Ursa blinked at her, bewildered. She thought Azula would tear into her. She would be justified for once, when Ursa was the one who made this personal…

She remembered, suddenly, Azula saying she would run from a fight she couldn't win. Was this a fight? Ursa wondered sadly, and when had it become one? Would she ever be able to talk to her daughter without fighting?

"It's hard to argue with my own mother on that score," Azula added lightly, and it shamed her. Ursa stood to reach vainly for her.

"Azula," she breathed, mortified. "I didn't mean —"

"Of course you did." Ursa pulled up short at her summary rejection, the dagger-glance of those brown-gold eyes. "Like your darling son, you are most truthful when you are most angry."

Her voice rang with some strong emotion, but Azula just turned aside and drew a deep breath with full lips pursed and shoulders tensed. Withdrawing. And too late, Ursa realized her mistake.

"Pack our things; we're leaving," Azula pronounced, imperious as only a born princess could be. "I need to go wash this taste from my mouth." Azula glanced with disgust at the evidence of her digestive upset, though Ursa guessed she objected more to the company.

But Ursa would not neglect one more duty as a mother. "You need to eat something," she spoke up quickly, and Azula hesitated in her exit. She glanced to the Komodo Rhino, which appeared to be sharpening its horn on the trunk of a nearby tree.

"Did you test the rest of the food?" she asked at last, grudgingly.

"I made breakfast a few hours ago. Most of it is still left; you'd just have to heat —"

Azula stared at her in evident horror. "You what?" Her voice fell to a harsh whisper. Ursa didn't know why. There was no one to overhear them. "I didn't mean to test it on yourself!"

"Azula, everyone in that camp adored you," Ursa pointed out reasonably, growing impatient with her fixation on this. Azula was going to hurt herself. Or her baby. "No one would try to poison your food.

"I had some, and I'm perfectly fine," Ursa added, when it was clear Azula remained unconvinced.

"Or it's just a slow-acting poison," Azula contradicted, without any real heat behind it. Agni's blood, why did she have to be so morbid? "And you'll drop dead later, leaving me a few hours to contemplate my grisly fate —"

"Will you just eat the damned food?" Ursa lost patience at last, surprising herself and Azula both, who jumped rather comically at her outburst.

Her daughter stared at her. "… You cursed," she said rather obviously at last, her eyes round with shock.

Ursa tried to cover it with a smile that felt so uncomfortable it probably looked more like a grimace. "Don't tell anyone," she asked, only half-joking.

Azula side-eyed her a little suspiciously, but she took the pot from its tripod over the fire on her way down the incline to the nearest stream. And she saw Azula bend a flame beneath it, before Ursa turned away to pack up their camp. A home as temporary as any she had known since her banishment.

And Ursa wondered in that moment what home was waiting for her now, with her son deposed and in exile, with her daughter a fugitive and contrary as ever, with her family divided more bitterly than she could ever have guessed…

---

The sounds of the winter city outside Zuko's palace suite were muted behind woven hangings, designed as much to keep out the cold as for decoration. Enough ambient light shone through the weaves and through walls hewn of ice that he didn't yet need to light the whale oil lamps to make out his surroundings or the company. Though Zuko knew that would come soon enough, in the short days at this time of year and corner of the world.

Seated in a folding chair of whalebone and canvas across from where Zuko perched on the edge of his bed-furs, Doctor Kwan watched him skeptically. Whether because of Zuko's strange account or because of the nervous energy that made it difficult to even keep his seat, remained to be seen.

Zuko had woken with the sunrise again this morning, a good sign. The aches and fatigue that plagued his waking hours after his poisoning were fading like a bad memory under Katara's capable healing. He was rarely short of breath anymore, and his inner fire burned hot enough that, clad only in his bedclothes, Zuko was impervious to the cold that set his parka-clad companion to shivering.

His uncle's revelation had changed everything. From a depression so dark it almost drove him into the arms of a sympathetic (and married) friend, now Zuko felt on fire with hope. His mother was alive somewhere in the world, waiting for him. Azula had done the impossible, and found the woman he owed his life to, the mother he had feared dead for as long as he'd even had her in his life…

And yeah, that was Azula, and of course she could do anything, but — It gave him hope that if she could do the impossible, if Mai could do the impossible and get their son back, that maybe Zuko could do the impossible, too. That maybe he could make his family whole again, all his family. And finding Uncle Iroh less than receptive to those sentiments last night, Zuko had jumped at the chance to talk it through with Kwan, when his doctor showed up for physical therapy this morning.

They never did get to that. (Zuko was increasingly mobile anyway.) But Zuko had told him the whole story when Kwan made him back up and go over the events of last night in order, while the doctor scribbled away on his notepad. Then Kwan had just said nothing, apparently lost in doubt or contemplation until Zuko finally burst out, "You don't believe it, do you?" He fidgeted before he could stop himself. "Uncle didn't, and you're a, um, a scientist…"

Kwan held up his free hand to forestall him, brows pinched with annoyance. "Of course I believe in the Spirit World. There is empirical evidence for its existence, and recent evidence at that, thanks to the feats of your friend the Avatar.

"I am less certain that a person could go there bodily, or that anyone who is not the Avatar could go there even in spirit," he admitted, frowning severely. "But I confess this is hardly my area of expertise. It could be possible."

"My mom is descended from Avatar Roku," Zuko pointed out eagerly, "and so are Azula and me."

"I," the doctor dryly replied, and Zuko blinked once before he realized this guy was correcting his grammar. Really? "That would explain a great deal," Kwan acknowledged, but added, "though it doesn't explain why you felt compelled to tell me this."

"You're my shri— my doctor," Zuko pointed out a little defensively. "Aren't I supposed to tell you everything?"

Kwan looked shrewdly at him, appearing to weigh his words. He tapped his lead absently against the notepad in his lap. He took copious notes, but flatly refused to let Zuko read them … and made it clear their sessions would come to an end if Zuko ever forced the issue. It was more than a little infuriating.

The doctor spoke at last, "I return to the question I asked you at our first talk: What is it that you want from these sessions?"

And Zuko sat back in annoyance. He sincerely doubted Kwan had forgotten his answer the first time; he was probably trying to make some kind of point.

"Are you seeking confirmation?" the doctor spoke rhetorically. "I think not. You clearly believe this news to be true, and will continue to believe so regardless of what I or anyone else have to say."

"It is true —" Zuko began to object, but Kwan talked right over him. His reserve had begun to erode with their regular sessions, it seemed.

"Did you simply want to share the good news?" he put forward, and Zuko stopped, taken aback. "You have your friend Katara for that. Unless you find it too awkward to talk to her now."

Zuko sighed and rubbed at his face, deflating a bit under Kwan's questioning. "Of course not," he contradicted, quietly. "We were both just upset. We stopped before it went too far. It won't happen again.

"I mean, Katara still has this whole thing about — her mom dying. It might be kind of, um, insensitive to tell her I'm getting mine back."

The doctor nodded sagely, jotted a quick note down but said nothing. The silence had lingered just long enough to grow uncomfortable, when Kwan (unusually for him) finally broke it. "I must admit, I find your untempered enthusiasm surprising. Refreshing, perhaps, but surprising.

"Has it not occurred to you that Princess Azula could reveal to your mother the secret you have been so desperate to keep, from friends and family alike?"

Zuko stared. "I didn't — even think of it," he admitted, dropping his gaze. It was a particularly glaring oversight, when Aang warned him Azula had threatened blackmail.

"You don't seem especially worried," Kwan observed, and Zuko glanced up at him.

"I don't think she'd do it," he said automatically, surprising himself with the thought.

Kwan's eyebrows pointed toward his receding hairline in disbelief. "What makes you say that?"

"I don't know," Zuko admitted, embarrassed. "Just a feeling."

"If you had to guess…" his doctor prompted gently, but Zuko still glared at him.

"Well, I guess — It's fucked up, isn't it?" Zuko gestured helplessly at Kwan, who did not disagree. "I mean, I don't need to tell you that. And telling Mom could make Azula look bad, too.

"She went to all this trouble to get Mom back. All the ways she could've tried to free Ozai, and she chooses this way? I think she wants our mom back, too. I don't — I don't think she'd risk it."

"This assumes Princess Ursa would take your side in the matter," Kwan pointed out neutrally. "Do you really believe that?"

"It doesn't matter what I believe," Zuko spoke slowly, his heart heavy when he remembered just who told him that, "just what Azula will believe. She's always been … insecure about our mom. She thought —" You never loved me! "— she thought Mom preferred me, to her."

"Did she?"

"Of course not!" Zuko hotly defended.

"Then how could you know this?" Kwan pressed him, and Zuko cringed at the memory.

"Uh, she said so?"

"To you?" Kwan tried to clarify, and Zuko bristled at his implication.

"Yes," he shortly replied. "And Mai and Ty Lee."

At the doctor's silent attention, sat poised to take notes, Zuko sighed. He drew his legs up to sit tailor-style on the furs and slumped a bit, explaining, "We were sent on this forced vacation to Ember Island, before the Day of Black Sun. Mai broke up with me, Azula made a fool of herself with some guy, I got kicked out of a party; it was just generally a disaster. Anyway, we ended up on the beach sitting around a fire, just talking about our problems.

"Everyone except Azula. I mean, she'd sit back and make sarcastic comments no one wanted to hear," he clarified. "And she slow-clapped at the end and insulted us, like she does.

"So I said, she wouldn't understand," Zuko spoke tightly. "Because … she was just so perfect.

"And she said, 'I don't — have sob stories like the rest of you,'" Zuko recalled it with painful clarity. But you did, you did, his heart cried. Why didn't you tell me? Just one more of her lies…

"She said, 'I could complain how Mom liked Zuko more than me. But I don't care. My own mother,'" he whispered in unconscious imitation of his sister, "'thought I was a monster.'"

Kwan had actually stopped taking notes at some point in his account, and sat staring at Zuko. "That's why I think — Azula wouldn't tell our mom," he reiterated, awkwardly. "She said she didn't care, but… Why would she even bring it up unless — unless she really does?"

"What did you say," the doctor asked him with a strange urgency, "when the princess told you this?" And Zuko wondered, not for the first time, if Kwan still hoped to help Azula, too.

"Um … nothing?" Zuko blankly replied, only more confused (and defensive) when Kwan looked at him in utter disbelief. He let his feet down and sat up straight, spreading his hands helplessly. "Why would I say anything?"

The doctor sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, reaching up to massage his own forehead. He closed his eyes before he spoke, as if it were too much to look at Zuko right now.

"Because by remaining silent, you tacitly agree with everything she just said."

Zuko exhaled like he'd been punched in the gut. Oh gods, that was — That made so much sense. Why was he so bad at this?

Zuko fell on his back on the bed-furs with a groan of frustration, gripping his hair. This was years ago, and he was just now realizing his mistake!

The doctor sighed lightly through his nose and stood to enter Zuko's field of view. He extended the hand not holding that damned notebook to pull Zuko up, and Zuko hesitated only a moment before he took it.

"The past is past," Kwan said simply, sounding like Uncle Iroh about to launch into a proverb. "You can't change it. But you are undertaking these sessions because you want to do better in the future. So tell me…"

The doctor resumed his seat, and put to Zuko, "What would you say to Princess Azula if she were here now, and she said those things again?" He glanced at his notes. "That … your mother preferred you —"

"Mom didn't play favorites," Zuko spoke automatically, and Kwan paused.

"So Azula was wrong?"

"No! I mean, yes. I mean —" Zuko stopped in frustration, and tried to explain. "She only thought that because Fa— Ozai turned her against our mom, against Uncle, against anyone who could have helped her…"

"I see," the doctor spoke neutrally, marking something down. "So that is what you would tell the princess? How do you think she'd receive that?"

Zuko smiled bitterly. "Considering she still wants to trade our mother for the monster who did all that to her?" he pointed out, even if Kwan needed no reminding. "Not well." He shook his head.

The doctor made no reply, just watched him in the blue-tinted light that filtered through the ice, the light that made Zuko feel like he was breathing underwater. Just waited for Zuko to find the words to repair an injury so old it should have scarred by now.

He remembered the water from the Spirit Oasis Katara offered him, before they were even friends. It's a scar, he had rebuffed her then. It can't be healed.

There were worse things than scars, he knew now. There were wounds that never healed, that were worse than unsightly. Wounds that bled freshly with every beat of your heart, because they were inside you.

My own mother, thought I was a monster.

And at last, he knew what to say. "I'd tell her, she's not a monster." Zuko hugged his elbows, and spoke tightly, "She can choose good, or evil, just like anyone. And I know —" His throat closed, and he looked at the doctor to make himself get it out. "She's done good. For me, for Ty Lee. Even Mai. She's done good…"

Kwan did not react, until Zuko finally had to ask, "What — what do you think she'd say then?"

And the doctor cracked a thin smile. "Now that, I couldn't begin to guess."

---

Father knew. She couldn't stop thinking that Father knew.

He watched Azula more closely than usual, once she was cleared to leave the infirmary and resume her duties as princess. He was never obvious about it, but she could always feel his eyes on her: at table, while she trained, at her lessons, even when he was nowhere in sight.

She knew that he was disappointed, he must be disappointed. He had been unusually solicitous, since —

It only put Azula more on her guard. Father never forgot, and he never forgave. If she slipped up again, if she miscalculated… There would be no second chances. This —

She didn't know what this was.

Maybe that was why she couldn't sleep. Azula left her sickbed only to lie awake in her sumptuous four-post late into the night, listening for footfalls outside her door, or the click of the hidden panel in her wall.

You do see the necessity of your training. It wasn't a question. Her answer wouldn't matter, if it were.

There are precautions we can take…

He hadn't come to her bed since — since before Ty Lee left. She knew that he would. She just didn't know when.

And she couldn't sleep. Until a few nights ago, when Azula found a solution in the last place she ever expected to find the solution to anything.

She didn't know what impulse drove her from her restless rest in the gray gloom of the hours before sunrise, and to Zuko's old room. It was stupid. It might have been anyone's room by now, he'd been banished for so long. He took most personal effects and anything recognizably his with him in his banishment, as Azula discovered in the first few weeks he was gone.

His chambers were sealed to the hallway, though not to the secret passages. The servants didn't even dust them anymore. Azula still slept on top of the covers, just in case. She dreamt of open doors and whispered goodbyes, of the mother she hadn't paid a thought to in years.

It was stupid. Mother only ever came here for Zuko, not the room. It's not like it had some power to summon her, or that Azula even wanted it to. Now that Zuko was gone, Mother would never come back. She was probably dead anyway. Azula certainly didn't care.

She thought she used to come to his room more often, probably when she was too young to remember. Maybe she was afraid of thunder storms, or imaginary monsters. Little did you know, she thought bitterly. Children were afraid of those things, weren't they?

Azula didn't think that she had ever been a child.

It worked. She slept. But it was still stupid. If Father came to her room and she wasn't there, if Father found out — He would think she was shirking her training, or worse, hiding from him. There was nowhere she could hide from him, and she knew how that ended for Zuko.

So why did she risk —

"Azula." Her father laid a heavy hand on the back of her neck.

Azula sat alone at the long table by the windowscreens in her chamber, reading the same passage of a proposed edict over and over while the gears of her mind worked fruitlessly. She nearly jumped out of her skin before Azula clamped down on the involuntary reaction, and froze.

It was an unforgivable lapse in concentration. If this had happened while they trained, it would have ended with a visit to the court physician. Except they didn't have a court physician right now, because Father had had him executed.

"Yes, Father?" she breathed, trying to control the hammering of her heart, waiting for the blow to fall. He did not remove his hand even when she jumped. Azula imagined him crushing her skull like an egg shell, and had to swallow the urge to throw up.

"So that is your answer?" Ozai spoke above her, his voice laced with amusement.

Isn't it always? the mutinous thought rose briefly to the surface of her mind, before she banished it. Azula broke into a cold sweat. It took every ounce of her self-control to keep from shaking. What did he want? She hadn't even been listening…

Her father knelt beside her chair on one knee, his grip forcing her to stoop to meet his gaze. He smiled up at her, but it stopped short of his eyes. These were narrowed, shrewd. Calculating.

"I asked, how would you like to learn to bend lightning?"

---

Ursa had never been much good at navigating anything more literal than social intricacies. But like so much else in her exile, she'd had to learn quickly. When where you laid your head made the difference between life and death, you learned.

That was how she knew, despite Azula's multiple river crossings and evasive maneuvers yesterday, that they were going the wrong way.

Not long after sunset, Azula started falling asleep in the saddle again, like she did the night before. It was worrying, as late as she slept today. But it was also the opportunity Ursa had been watching for. She held tighter around Azula's thick waist, and spoke into her ear, "I think we should stop for the night."

Azula started awake and murmured in protest, "We've only been riding … a few hours."

"I know that, but —" You're going to fall off the rhino, Ursa thought. She said, "— I've been awake longer than you have. I'm tired, and we'll still need to make camp —"

"Alright," Azula spoke shortly, and Ursa hid a smile when she urged the Komodo Rhino to a stop beside a muddy little creek wending its way through the trees. Then Azula slid down from the saddle, and Ursa winced at how hard she hit the leaf-strewn ground. Four moons gone, and she acted like she wasn't even pregnant…

Ursa dismounted, and accepted an armful of saddle bags from her daughter, who led the beast to a sturdy tree to secure it for the night. Ursa was happy enough to clear some ground and lay out their pillows and sleeping bags while Azula did this, after that comment about Komodo Rhinos eating their riders "if they got half a chance." Knowing Azula, it was just as likely her idea of a joke, but Ursa wasn't taking any chances.

No sooner had Azula turned back than Ursa met her halfway and held out the oil lamp in silent request. Azula lit the wick with a dagger of blue flame from the tips of her fingers, which settled to a warm orange when she withdrew her hand. "Don't forget to cover it," she sighed, and didn't even glance at Ursa before she sat tailor-style on one of the sleeping bags to start yanking off her boots.

"Azula…" Ursa tried at last, and her daughter hummed disinterestedly. I think we're lost. "I — I couldn't help but notice we've been riding east, or northeast. I thought we were going to the colonies," she added, when Azula showed no sign of replying.

Azula held her head in her hands, her hair hanging like a dark curtain to either side of her face, and closed her eyes for so long that Ursa began to wonder if she fell asleep sitting like that. Then she spoke, slowly, "I told you back at the encampment: I'm taking you to Uncle Iroh."

Looking up to see her confusion, Azula explained, "I don't know where to find Zuko, but he will."

"And where is your uncle?" Ursa prompted, uneasy.

"I don't know that either," Azula admitted. "Probably with Zuko. Iroh basically adopted him after you left," she spoke casually, and didn't remark it when Ursa flinched. "You should probably thank him for that."

But Ursa only felt more lost. "Then —"

"Iroh makes his permanent residence in Ba Sing Se," Azula interrupted, apparently bored with Ursa's ignorance about her own family. "He opened a tea shop there, of all things." Azula snorted lightly, though whether with disdain or amusement, Ursa couldn't guess. "He'll come back for the shop, and find you there. He'll deliver you to Zuko."

Ursa could think of several objections to that plan, but one stood out clearly above the others. "Deliver … me?" Her implication was clear, but Ursa couldn't — "Where will you go?"

Azula just looked away, the shadows on her face cast into sharp relief by the oil lamp Ursa held. She looked tired, so very tired, and Ursa's hands shook. "How — how will I contact you?"

Her daughter briefly closed her eyes, and spoke with an awful finality, "You won't."

And panic bubbled up in Ursa's chest. "Is this about this morning?" she demanded, voice tight.

"No," Azula flatly denied, holding her head again. But she still wouldn't look at Ursa.

"Is this about — last night?" she stumbled. Maybe Azula didn't want to be hugged, or comforted, Ursa worried too late. She had always been a prickly girl, sullen and prone to strange moods. Maybe Ursa had pushed too far, too fast…

"You shouldn't take things so personally," her daughter spoke to the ground. "This might have nothing to do with you."

"I should—" Ursa echoed in disbelief, and finally burst out, "What is wrong with you?!"

Azula lifted her head at last, and something that might be anger stirred faintly behind her eyes. But like so much else about her right now, it was distant. Why was she being like this? Ursa would almost rather her daughter blow up at her than be this chilly, apathetic stranger. Ursa knew if she kept pushing, Azula would…

"My own daughter doesn't want to see or speak to me," Ursa gestured sharply to herself, "and I'm not supposed to take that personally?"

"It could be worse," Azula spoke coldly, gathered herself and pushed unsteadily to her feet. Ursa reached out to support her, but was arrested by a scathing glance. "I could abandon you in the middle of this godsforsaken wilderness right now," her daughter threatened, and Ursa repressed a shiver. "But I'm doing right by you. You should be grateful."

It's more than you did for me, or Zuko, Azula didn't say. She didn't have to say it. Ursa thought it every day, and it shamed her.

Azula looked away from the hurt in her eyes, and stepped aside to snatch up her boots, her pillow and sleeping bag. "You're a liability, okay?" she grit out, annoyed, and held the bundled sleeping bag to her chest almost defensively. "I can't — I can't keep hauling you through some warzone."

Azula crossed the brown and brittle leaves in her stocking feet, to lay out her sleeping bag closer to where the Komodo Rhino was leashed, as if to ward off Ursa. She would prefer the company of some blood-thirsty beast to her own mother…

Ursa almost missed her whisper, "You almost got captured back at the camp…"

And she stopped in astonishment, while Azula knelt to set up her sleeping bag and looked anywhere but at Ursa. She would have said it was impossible once, but that was guilt Ursa just heard in her daughter's voice.

"Azula," she tried, while the girl scraped leaves out from under her sleeping bag, "that wasn't your fault. You couldn't have known what would happen —"

Her hands stilled. "You did," Azula contradicted quietly, and Ursa's heart swelled. She listened, Ursa realized. She ignored me then, but she listened.

Ursa knelt beside her, setting the lamp atop a knot on a tree root, and Azula tensed visibly. "Sweetheart, it's not your job to take care of me," Ursa gently reproved, looking sidelong at her daughter. "It's my job to take care of you."

Her throat closed with threatened tears. "And I can't do that if you're half a world away," she spoke thickly. "And I can't do that if you won't talk to me…"

Azula did not reply, just bent her head as if bowed beneath an immeasurable weight. Her hair hid her face, and Ursa had just begun to wonder if she would ever speak, when Azula whispered, "I don't understand you."

Her breath caught, and a bone-deep ache started from Ursa's core to hear the helplessness in her daughter's voice. Then Azula surprised her, "Why are you pretending to care now? Who are you trying to fool?" Azula wouldn't even look at Ursa when she put such awful questions to her, hands balled shaking into fists in her ever-shrinking lap.

"You never loved me," her voice shook ever so slightly. "You don't even like me."

"That's not true —" Ursa spoke reflexively.

"Isn't it?" Azula looked up at last, and Ursa saw to her horror that she was crying, her lovely face blotched red and streaked with tears. Ursa wanted so badly to wipe them away, even knowing that she was the cause.

"Do you think I don't know what you said?" her daughter demanded, so quietly. Ursa wished that she would scream at her; this was infinitely worse. "Better he had died, the day Zuko was born?"

Ursa felt as if all the blood drained from her body, to hear her last words to Ozai repeated back to her this way. "He told you?"

"Zuko. Not me," Azula ignored her pointless question. The accusation in her eyes was like the Sun's glare, and Ursa couldn't meet it. "Because it's not like you could have a thought for your daughter, is it?

"You never wanted me —" her voice caught, but Azula drew a deep breath and pushed on, "— me to be a part of this family either. So why would you want that now?"

Ursa reached for her on impulse, heart aching. "I do want th—"

"I've told you not to touch me," Azula hissed, her skin heating so quickly Ursa withdrew her hand before they ever made contact.

"I spoke in anger," Ursa tried to explain, increasingly desperate. She felt like she was on trial. She felt like she was losing. "I was so angry at — what your father planned to do to — to Zuko!" she all but pleaded, hands shaking. "That's why I thought of him. It doesn't mean — I didn't love you, too."

Azula just stared at her, and her eyes weren't like Ozai's or like Ursa's. Her eyes were like a stranger's. "Just saying it doesn't make it true," she spoke at last, without expression.

Her daughter knelt still as a statue, shoulders straight and hands folded primly in her lap, and Ursa felt sick. This wasn't her. "You had every day of eight years to show you loved me, if you did," Azula rejected. "And every day of eight years, you failed. Shall I count the ways?

"I remember every word you said, even the ones you didn't mean for my ears," her daughter spoke with the weight of a sentence passed. "I remember every word you didn't. I remember every lesson you ever taught me. Even the ones you didn't intend.

"I know you, better than you ever bothered to know me. I know you made your choice a long time ago. I know you learned to live with it. You'll learn to live with it again." But not with me, Azula didn't add.

She didn't have to, just wiped her eyes and clambered over the sleeping bag to stuff herself inside. She lay down with her back to Ursa and fluffed her pillow aggressively, clearly signaling the end of their discussion.

Ursa felt like she couldn't breathe, her heart racing with panic. It was foolish. At the pace they were going, it would be weeks before they reached Ba Sing Se. She was in no immediate danger of being separated from Azula, and she would have time to convince her…

But Ursa thought it would take more than time. She didn't know what it would take. And all she could keep thinking was, You will lose her forever if you don't do something!

The thought of leaving things like this with her daughter, of being a stranger to her own grandchild — It was intolerable. She had to convince her…

Do you think she would go anywhere with you? Ozai's cruel jibe echoed from the depths of her memory, and Ursa's ire stirred. Even locked up in prison where he belonged, that man and his scheming still poisoned their family.

"I can't believe he told you," Ursa murmured, as much to herself as to Azula's turned back. Her shoulders tensed instantly, a warning Ursa didn't heed. "He never should have told you…"

Azula turned over and quickly tried to sit up in her sleeping bag, only to fall back with a little shudder and push herself up on her arms instead. "Told me what?" she demanded, with eyes flashing in the light of the oil lamp. "The truth about this family? He's the only one who ever did."

"You were a child!" Ursa protested, incredulous. "A child who just lost her mother thanks to his scheming, and he told you that? What kind of monster would want that to be your last memory of your mother?"

Azula looked at her with eyes bright and dangerous as a stalking cat's, and purred, "That is an excellent question. Here's one for you: Did that have to be my last memory of my mother?" Ursa blinked confusion, and Azula clarified, "You said goodbye to Zuko. You couldn't say goodbye to me?"

It was true. An awful truth, but there it was. Ursa spoke in a small voice, "I regretted it." She thought that she had never felt so small. "Every day I wished — I wished I had opened the door. But by the time I did, when I realized what I'd done… It was already too late.

"Azula?" she questioned fearfully, when her daughter paled and laid a hand on the curve of her belly beneath the blanket. Azula looked like her mother had slapped her.

"You chose t—" Azula dropped back onto her elbow and looked away, eyes shining. "You know, if you told me you tried to come back," she said at length, "that the guards prevented you, or some—" She bit her lip hard against the words. "You could have even told me you forgot. I would have believed you."

"Can that really be what you want?" Ursa whispered in hurt amazement. "For me to lie to you?"

"It doesn't matter," Azula dismissed, voice empty when she turned away and lay back down. "You'll never change."

"It matters to me," Ursa insisted. She laid a hand on her shoulder only for Azula to throw off her grip. And frustration got the better of Ursa. "You say your father was the only one to tell you the truth?" she accused. "Well, if you don't want the truth from me, what do you want?"

"For you to stop talking and stop touching me, for a start," Azula bit out, running hands through her hair and shivering with what Ursa could only guess was rage. Azula was refusing to look at her again.

"You want your father, is that it?" Ursa demanded of that turned back, for surely he was the only parent Azula ever cared for when she was young. Ursa couldn't believe Azula hadn't tried to free him from prison already, or something equally ill-advised. Maybe that was just what she intended when they parted ways…

"Azula, the way he treated your brother, even you — That isn't love," Ursa warned her sternly. "Your father doesn't love anyone but himself. He's just using you…"

"Everyone uses everyone," was her cynical reply. "At least he wanted for me what I wanted for myself.

"Are you supposed to be the better choice?" Azula demanded of the dark, gripping her pillow like she wanted to throttle it. "Like you wouldn't use me to a different end, if you could?" she fumed. "Like Zuko wouldn't?"

Her casual slander was a step too far, and Ursa chided, "How can you speak about your brother that way?"

"How can you speak about your husband that way?" Azula demanded in turn, voice cracking hysterically. She was shaking. She still wouldn't look at her mother. "I'll tell you. Because his abuses were too many to be borne!"

"What 'abuses'?" Ursa bit out, pushing to her feet in irritation. "Azula, what are you talking about?"

Azula made no move to rise from her sleeping bag. She was breathing like a bellows, but somehow managed to get her shaking under control.

"That is not for you to know," her daughter denied her. Ursa thought her breath should emerge as frost, so coldly she spoke. She always ran so hot and cold… "And you're a fool if you think I'll justify myself to you."

"If something's wrong, you need to tell me," Ursa tried to argue, peering down at the princess bundled in her sleeping bag. "You could talk to me once —"

"When could I ever talk to you?"

Ursa took a swift step back when Azula screamed at her (no, not at her, into the dark) and gripped her own elbows defensively. "You can't just say something like that and not explain," she reproached her. Just saying it doesn't make it true.

"Why don't you ask your precious son?" Azula deflected, of course. But Ursa didn't remember her to be this clumsy when caught in a lie. "See if you can believe him…"

"He's not the liar in this family, Azula," Ursa gently reproved her. She got no further than "liar" before Azula snatched up her pillow and flung it at the lamp. Her aim was deadly accurate as always, and hot oil spilled onto the fallen leaves, igniting them.

"Azula!" she chided on reflex, but her daughter just threw the sleeping bag over her head, covering herself completely and ignoring the fire at her back.

"Azula, put out the fire!" Ursa cried in desperation, but her daughter balled up like a boar-q-pine baring its spines instead, and it was left to Ursa to act. She snatched up the pillow before it could catch fire too, and swung it in wild circles, trying to stamp out the flames before they could spread.

It was a wonder they didn't, when at last Ursa wound down, red-faced and sweating, to realize she smothered the fire. There was no light now but the pale silver of a crescent moon above the barren trees, no sound but her own heavy breathing. Her pillow was badly singed, but Azula still lay curled up in a quivering ball not far away, and Ursa dared not approach her.

The lamp that was her daughter's gift to her lay shattered in the ashes of the leaves. It was impossible to know which one of them had broken it. But there it lay, in pieces.

---

Aang turned the new staff over in his hands and gave it an experimental twirl, testing the heft and balance. He gave a small smile. "It's perfect, Teo," he approved, deploying the gliders with a quick tap against the flagstones of the Northern Air Temple's landing platform. "I'd never know it from the old one."

"My dad kept the designs on record," Teo cracked a grin, brown eyes glinting up at Aang, "knowing your talent for trouble."

Aang faltered a bit at the memory, and chastened at seeing this, Teo wheeled closer. "Sorry, Aang," he tried, awkwardly patting his arm. "I know none of this was your fault. I'm sure your friend was grateful you were there."

"Momo died," Aang admitted, looking to the sooty limestone of the temple's towers, stained a dull pink in the light of the rising sun, and away from Teo's sympathy. He had laid his friend's bones in the ossuary pit before he stopped here.

Would it be too much to ask you to make a new one of him? Aang wondered, and felt disgusted with himself. He thought of the island of lemurs in his vision, but pushed the image away.

"Gosh, Aang, that's —" Teo shook his head, at a momentary loss for words. Then he brightened at a fresh thought. "Hey, why don't you stick around a while?" he offered instead. "There's something I wanted to show you anyway. It might help."

Aang looked at him a little skeptically, but Teo just signaled three of his attendants, who attached the glider wings to his chair. He wheeled to the edge of the platform, calling behind him, "Why don't you come with me? You can test out your new glider."

Aang shrugged and followed him into the air, and felt his heart lift a little just to be gliding again. Appa raised his head where he munched on hay below, when Aang followed Teo over the otherwise abandoned stables. His faithful mount gave a hearty bellow of greeting before getting back to his snack.

Then Teo circled lower, down past a cloud layer that parted to reveal a field of uneven stone pillars that thrust up from the mountainside. They were like the rock formations where he fought Ozai on the day of Sozin's Comet, in miniature.

"Stalagmites!" Teo cheerfully explained, banking over them to shave some speed off his dive. "They were exposed when Sokka blew the caves leaking natural gas. He saw these last time he visited, told us it reminded him of —"

"— an airball court!" Aang exclaimed, when he spotted the familiar goalposts loom closer.

"Yeah!" Teo folded the wings of his glider with a lever on his chair to dart through the goalpost, then unfolded them to glide back toward Aang. "Though it's more like rockball right now, the way our earthbenders play it. But Dad's working on a trifoil —"

"Wait, you have earthbenders?" Aang interrupted, almost crashing into Teo in his shock. Teo had to bank hard upward, loosing the some of the compressed air in the bladder beneath his chair to gain altitude. Aang landed clumsily on a nearby incline before he slid to a stop and snapped his glider closed.

Teo had to look for flatter ground, so landed across the court from him. Aang hopped across the stalagmites, boosted by his airbending, to join him there. He waved his staff to call out, "Sorry!"

"Uh, it's okay." Teo looked taken aback when Aang lighted beside him. "And yeah, we have earthbenders. How do you think we do half the new construction at this temple? It's not easy building on a mountainside."

"Were any of them born here?" Aang spoke urgently.

"Some, yeah, but they're all younger than me." Teo scratched his messy head. "Too young to be working construction, or probably even to play down here."

Aang swallowed hard, already knowing the answer to this question, still feeling compelled to ask. "But no airbenders?"

And the tan oval of Teo's face softened with understanding. "Not yet," he spoke gently. "We've lived here less than twenty years. Maybe one day…"

"Yeah," Aang spoke doubtfully. His shoulders slumped a bit when he looked into the clouds that obscured the temple above them from view, that cast a shadow on his heart. "Maybe."

---

Her heart constricted painfully in her chest, where Azula lay bruised, singed, and smoking on her back on the tiles of the Agni Kai court. The sun beat down oppressively, making her sweat in no more than her pants and breast bindings. She couldn't breathe.

She failed. She failed, and she dared not even look at her father, just scrambled to her feet and ignored the ache in her back and the trembling of her hands to move through the kata again, slower this time.

They had practiced it for what felt like hours before Father let her try. He had praised her form, and not spoken a word of criticism when he made adjustments to her stance. It was like when he first trained her to bend…

Sparks formed at her fingertips, snaking along her bare arms while Azula separated the energies the way he taught her. But when she tried to bring them back together, she felt them slipping out of her control and —

She thrust a hand out, two fingers pointed at a pillar in the shadowed recesses of the court that was to be her target. No lightning issued forth, but only a concussive burst, more smoke than fire, that knocked her on her behind. It wasn't even as strong as the first. She had somehow managed to fail worse.

It was the first time he'd touched her in months without her wanting to be sick, Azula thought, tears starting to her eyes. And she ruined it.

She glanced up at Father at last, shrinking inside, to find him watching her. He didn't look angry. He didn't look disappointed or even surprised. He looked thoughtful, arms folded against his bare chest and his bearded chin gripped in one hand.

With her excitement soured, she was suddenly, painfully aware of their state of undress, and panic bloomed like a noxious weed in her chest. She had to bend lightning. She had to. If she couldn't do this, he would want to resume her other training, and she couldn't do it anymore she couldn't any more than she could ask him to stop.

She almost died, and he wasn't going to stop…

She jumped up and took her stance a third time. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't bend fire like this, let alone lightning.

She couldn't speak. Her mind was screaming at her to run. There was nowhere to run. She made herself speak anyway. His silence was terrifying.

"Father," she gasped between breaths, nearly hyperventilating. Her heart pounded in her ears, eyes swimming with tears, "I can —"

"That's enough," he spoke with an awful finality, and she kowtowed to him in automatic submission. She was shaking so hard she wondered if some of the lightning stayed trapped in her body. Her shoulders tensed and her face pressed into the tiles while she waited for the blow to fall.

Was she as worthless as Zuko now? Would he give her a scar to match? Would he still take her to bed if she had a scar? Would anyone?

"Stand up," he commanded at last, and she obeyed. "Look at me." Azula lifted her head.

A flaming fist did not connect with her face. He studied her closely, with a look she had never seen on him before. That scared her more than anything. She had to be able to read him. She had to know what he meant, what he wanted, or she might as well invite him to —

"Do you know why you failed?" he finally asked her, bringing her racing thoughts to a halt.

She didn't. To admit as much would be as unacceptable as not knowing. Not knowing was as unacceptable as failing. Unacceptable, unacceptable, unaccept—

"I did something wrong," she tried, injecting as much confidence as she could into a meaningless truism. That wasn't much.

"No," her father contradicted simply, his voice level. The corner of his mouth turned up in that almost-smile, but Azula was not reassured. She didn't understand him. She didn't understand him, and that could be deadly.

"Your kata was flawless. You practiced it enough," he added lightly. "But lightningbending, is more than the form." He tapped two fingers to his temple.

"Tell me, Azula," he prefaced his question, and she snapped to attention. This she knew. "Why is lightning called the cold-blooded fire?"

"To bend lightning requires absence of emotion," she recited what she'd read in the scrolls, "and peace of mind." Her heart sank even as she said it. If she couldn't even sleep in her own bed, of course she couldn't bend lightning.

"That is the accepted wisdom," her father acknowledged, without heat, "and old fools like your uncle love to parrot it. But they are wrong."

She blinked once in surprise, and he explained, "Firebending comes from the will." He ignited a flame in his right hand. "Lightningbending is no different." He snapped the fingers of his left, and sparks jumped between them.

"Emotion has never impaired me from bending lightning. I can summon the cold-blooded fire in a killing rage as easily as in the depths of meditation. To bend lightning requires nothing more nor less than singleness of purpose."

What does that mean? Her shoulders slumped in despair. She felt no closer to bending lightning than when she lay on her back with the wind knocked out of her.

Seeing her reaction, Father closed his fist on the flame and told her simply, "Your mind is divided, my dear."

"By what?" Azula asked helplessly, then cursed her own weakness. By some miracle, her father didn't seem to notice.

His eyes narrowed, considering her. "I don't know," he admitted slowly, "but … I have an idea how you may succeed."

She stepped closer without conscious decision. His eyes lit, and he gripped her chin in his hand. Azula froze, hardly daring to breathe.

"You must follow my instructions without question," Father warned her. "Do you understand?"

"Yes, Father," she answered immediately. He smiled, and this time it reached his eyes.

"Then let us begin."

---

Ursa cried through much of the night, and it took a long time for Azula to get to sleep. It's just a lamp, she remembered thinking. I can buy you another in the next town. She would never know why her mother was so foolishly sentimental. Or maybe she was still afraid of the dark, Azula considered with an unwelcome pang of conscience, quickly squashed.

Azula woke with the sunrise the next morning, a good sign. She didn't even dream, or if she did, she didn't remember it. She woke with her face wet and her heart hammering. She took a long moment and some deep breaths to acclimate to the claustrophobia of waking up to a sleeping bag pulled over her head.

But she could feel Agni's fire in her veins. And she woke free, if in considerable discomfort from her pregnancy and another night spent on the ground. Azula ran a hand over her bump and felt the reassuring flutter of the baby moving.

So, an early riser like her. She smiled at the thought, wiped her face clean, and scurried free of her sleeping bag. She stopped when she saw that Ursa had not moved from the leaves charred by her fire the night before, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest and her back to Azula. She faced outward toward the barren trees that ringed their muddy little clearing.

Azula stood and approached her with caution, walking round Ursa to the crunch of fallen leaves, only to find that her mother's face was still blotched and her eyes red with fresh tears. So she kept crying after Azula fell asleep. That was … unexpected. It was something else too, but she couldn't put a word to it, so Azula tried something she could articulate.

"Did you m—" she started, but stopped when those bloodshot eyes fixed on her like a reproach she never earned. "Did you want me to make breakfast?" she offered stiffly instead, fidgeting before she could stop herself. "I don't think you want me to make breakfast," Azula muttered, only half-joking.

Ursa didn't respond, just looked at her with those big, expressive eyes. Azula scowled. "Are you giving me the silent treatment?" she asked uselessly, to no answer. How juvenile. "Ba Sing Se is a long way to keep that up," she challenged, crossing her arms over her chest, but her mother didn't rise to the bait.

Azula let out a long breath, practiced patience. She turned away and cleared a space for their cook fire, setting up the tripod and pans as noisily as possible. But her show of incompetence did not prompt Ursa's intervention. I guess that only works for Zuko then, she resigned herself.

She burnt the sausages and undercooked the runny eggs, which was particularly galling since she hadn't meant to. She made her mother a plate and brought it to her.

"Breakfast is ready," she said rather obviously, holding out the plate to Ursa. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

The silence stretched. Her mother didn't speak. Azula didn't move. I can do this all day, she thought. It took less than a minute before Ursa cracked. "I'm not hungry."

"It's still edible, Mother," she sighed. "I'm not that bad a cook."

"I'm not hungry," her mother repeated, sounding like she had a bad head-cold.

"Is this how it's going to be all the way to Ba Sing Se?" Azula remembered how she woke screaming yesterday. "Only one of us can be functional at a time?"

Her mother didn't seem to appreciate her attempt at humor, just watched her fearfully. What else is new? And Azula's already limited patience was exhausted. "Fine," she bit out. "I'll eat your share, too."

Ursa didn't object to this. She didn't say another word, and Azula crossed to the other side of the cookfire to sit down to a lonely breakfast. I was never lonely when I traveled alone, Azula resented, stabbing at the slippery eggs with her chopsticks and sneaking glances at her mother, who still hadn't moved. Who would ever have guessed her silence would be a punishment?

She finished both their plates and still found herself hungry. You have a firebender's appetite, that's certain, she thought at the baby. Finding Ursa still unresponsive, Azula went to refill their waterskins farther up the stream, where the water was clearer. She practiced her firebending for a while, stumbling once or twice when her loose joints protested the more rigorous katas.

Even so, she returned to camp with their waterskins in a better mood than she had left it, only to find Ursa up and ambling about, her hands moving in nervous little gestures that looked unconscious. Her eyes lighted on Azula immediately, and she demanded, "Where were you?"

Azula arched a brow at her. "Refilling our waterskins?" she dropped them at her mother's feet, but Ursa wasn't satisfied.

"For an hour?" she reproached Azula, her voice cracking, hands twitching toward the trees from whence she came. "You've been gone over an hour!"

"I had to train," Azula evenly replied. "And you're talking to me now?"

"I thought you left," Ursa hissed, blushing visibly at the reminder. "I thought —"

Azula gave her a withering look. "— I just walked off into enemy territory without my supplies or my mount?" She jerked her head toward the Komodo Rhino leashed to a leafless tree, which watched them argue impassively.

Ursa burst into tears again without warning, sinking to her knees in the mud, and Azula took a step back in alarm.

"Um, look," Azula tried, reaching out a hand without conscious decision before she thought better of it. "I didn't — I'll pack our things, and we can get moving. Zuko is waiting for you," she tried to reassure. If Uncle delivered the message.

"Zuko…" Ursa whispered brokenly, but couldn't seem to say more.

Her mother hugged herself and bowed her head, and Azula took refuge from the overwhelming awkwardness by packing their gear away in the saddlebags and securing these to the Komodo Rhino. She reflected a little resentfully that she should have just lied when Ursa pried into her intentions, if she knew it would prove this much trouble for so little satisfaction. Really none; she felt sick to her stomach for reasons that she suspected (but would never admit) had little to do with her subpar breakfast…

Azula eventually forced herself to stop sneaking glances at her mother. So she was surprised when she climbed into the saddle and looked back to find that Ursa had pulled herself together, and wiped her face clean. Her mother still hugged her arms in unconscious defense where she sat in the leaves, but looked up when Azula urged her, "Let's go."

Her gaze was steely, though her mouth shook ever so slightly. "We're not going anywhere until we talk about this," Ursa insisted. Azula thought she didn't need to ask what this was.

She stared Ursa down, aided by the advantage in height for once, mounted as she was. But her mother didn't flinch, just climbed to her feet and lifted her chin in what Azula supposed was an unspoken challenge. "I said everything I needed to say last night," Azula dismissed her, but Ursa was undeterred.

"And what if I have something to say about it?"

"Do you?" Azula humored her, crossing her arms to tilt her head inquisitively. "Then speak."

Her mother seemed taken aback, then blurted with none of her accustomed grace, "You can't do this. We're family. Family don't just —"

"— walk out? Give up on each other?" Azula supplied when Ursa stopped short, no doubt remembering the same things Azula was. "They do. You know they do."

She looked like Azula had hit her. She looked like she might start crying again. Azula remembered how this woman had walked right by her door and never said goodbye, and gave her nothing. "Get on the rhino, Mother."

Ursa hesitated, looked like she wanted to say more but didn't, before she climbed up behind her daughter. She sat side-saddle behind Azula, who waited a few moments before her patience ebbed.

"It's not contagious, you know," she joked and glanced over her shoulder at Ursa, who eyed her doubtfully. "You need to hold on," she clarified.

"You don't like to be touched," her mother protested weakly, and Azula's temper flared. What I said was, don't touch me. And since when do you care what I like?

"I've been touched by worse than you," she countered, falsely sweet, and felt a viscous satisfaction when her mother flinched. "So unless you want —" your brains dashed on the rocks, she thought, and grit her teeth, "— to lose your seat, maybe you should hold on."

That did it. Ursa shifted up against her back and hugged Azula round her growing waist. "We're not done talking about this," she warned gravely, and Azula rolled her eyes before she tugged the reins to urge their mount from the dead and dried out little clearing, charred by her fire.

---

They were, it seemed, done talking about it. The next several days saw Ursa persist in her silence and her tears, and continue to wordlessly refuse food until Azula stopped offering.

Do you think I'm trying to poison you? Azula almost jibed, before she thought better of it. You wouldn't have to worry if you could be bothered to cook. This was probably some little melodrama on her mother's part, and acknowledging it was beneath her dignity.

She didn't have the words anyway. What was there left to say about it?

She knew Ursa was sneaking food while Azula slept because she continued to cook for herself, and there was no other way to account for the depletion of their supplies. They would have to stop at the next village to restock instead of going around, or Azula would be stuck foraging or hunting again. Something at which she had already proved less than adept.

It seemed that too — like the cooking, the fetching of firewood and water, the care of their Komodo Rhino, and the pitching and packing up of their camp — would be left to Azula alone. The weather grew steadily colder, and the skies opened up in frequent rains as they progressed northeast along the river. When Azula couldn't find an unoccupied cave for them to make their fire, they were stuck sharing the same tent and a cold dinner — eaten separately — of a night. They slept back-to-back and never said a word to each other.

She knew logically why the soldiers at the encampment had packed only one tent, to make room for more needful supplies in a limited number of saddlebags. It didn't make sharing an enclosed space with the near-catatonic Ursa any more bearable though, especially when the downpours and uneven ground prevented Azula from safely practicing her firebending.

So when the sun finally shone itself one morning, Azula greeted it as an act of providence. She hoped this meant they might be nearing the desert, the shortest stretch of which they would have to cross to reach Full-Moon Bay and the ferry to Ba Sing Se. Of course, they would have to cross the mountains whose glaciers fed this river first, but still: The end was in sight, metaphorically speaking.

Azula even found a hot spring when she went to refill their waterskins and to wash up. It would mean a hot bath, the first she would enjoy since they left the encampment.

She didn't know why she went back to camp to tell her mother first, except that Ursa had been neglecting her appearance and all but the most basic personal hygeine since their last argument. She hadn't changed her clothes or even run a brush through her hair, and she smelled like an unwashed peasant in the close confines of their tent.

It offended Azula. That was definitely the only feeling she felt, offended.

She returned to the clearing where she had made camp, to find Ursa knelt huddled by the smoking embers of the cookfire, lank brown hair obscuring her face. Azula announced, "I found a hot spring."

Her mother jumped, dropping something that Azula had not seen her holding only to stoop and snatch it up again. It looked like a flat stone suitable for writing and a piece of paper. Azula had found that same paper and lead squirreled in among their supplies, but didn't know to whom she would write. Any code she tried to use would be indecipherable to Ty Lee anyway.

Azula lifted an eyebrow, and told her mother pointedly, "You could take a hot bath and wash your clothes. I'll stay here and watch our supplies."

"I — I don't —" Ursa actually spoke, or tried to, cringing. She kept trying to hide the paper in her lap, and Azula frowned at her.

"Who are you writing? Zuko?" she lightly demanded, and snatched the letter before Ursa could prevent her. Her mother looked stricken. "You don't know where to find him any more than —"

She stopped when she realized it was not a letter she held. A paraphrase of Azula's own words leapt off the page at her…

You only ever told me no and I'm the one who came for you and don't tell me how to feel and don't hug me, don't touch me and you're not my mother and you don't love me, you don't care and I'll never believe it and I don't owe you anything and that's not why I brought you here and you would abandon me for Zuko and you failed as a mother and you never wanted me, just want to use me and I can't talk to you and —

"What is this?" Azula whispered. Her voice shook, hands shook, and Ursa looked up at her in breathless horror. "You — you're taking notes on me?" she bit out, incensed. "What, are you going to psychoanalyze me now too?" Her voice climbed hysterically only to crack at the end, and Ursa flinched.

"What you said — the other night," Ursa stammered, tried to explain. "It shocked me. I thought — I remembered some things — wrongly." She looked mortified. Tears started to her eyes, her hands reaching vainly. For the paper, for Azula? She couldn't guess.

"And if — if I could just write it down, I could remember, and — I could change. I want to change," her mother pleaded, eyes shining, and Azula took an involuntary step back, the paper falling from her limp hands, her pulse pounding in her ears.

"I'm sorry," Ursa spoke tearfully. "I'm so — I'm so sorry. I never meant to upset you." She climbed to her feet, the stone falling from her lap into the grass. "I never want to hurt you. Azula…"

"I don't understand you."

Ursa stopped and stared at her when she spoke, a look Azula couldn't decipher. Her vision blurred. Her eyes burned. All of her burned, and it was agony.

"I don't understand you," she whispered again. Azula shook her head in bewilderment, retreating.

And Ursa panicked. "Where are you going?"

"To train," Azula managed harshly, making a warding gesture with her hands that stopped her mother. "I need — I need to bend."

Her feet carried her away from the clearing, and her shamble became a run that left Ursa and her pleas behind. And when she stumbled, she pushed to her feet and kept running until she couldn't hear her mother anymore, hounded by what she let slip in a moment of anger, of weakness.

Stupid, you stupid, how could you tell her? Azula berated herself. She already thinks you're a monster, now she knows you're crazy too…

And in the tall grasses at the forest's end, Azula stumbled again. There, safely hidden from view, she cried a storm beneath the friendly sun until she could breathe again, and remembered…

"Why are you crying?" a voice spoke above her, where a four-year-old Azula sat huddled on the narrow back stairs used by the servants. They should know better by now than to use them when she needed a place to cry, and her temper flared.

"I'm not!" the words flew from her mouth before she had even identified the voice. So she was appropriately mortified when she glanced up to see her father standing over her instead. She quailed, but Ozai regarded her calmly.

"I told you you must never lie to me," he reminded her quietly, his bulky frame blocking the light from the corridor behind. Azula could barely make out his face. "That was a lie, and an obvious one. Try again."

She hesitated. She didn't know why she hesitated, except something about how his body blocked out the light, like a monster who stood between her and escape. But that was stupid. Her daddy wasn't a monster, even if she was afraid of him sometimes.

"I fell down training," she muttered. Also a lie. She didn't know why she lied either. He knew what her mother was like.

He didn't call her out on this one, maybe because it wasn't ov-bious. She thought he might have smiled. It was hard to tell, in the dark.

"How would you like to train with me?" he offered instead, and her heart leapt. Azula had a firebending tutor, but it was just Zuzu's tutor, and he seemed more annoyed to have her there than anything. (So did Zuzu.) This was the first time Father offered to teach her since she bent her first flame. She was afraid it might not matter, when Zuko beat her to it…

She took the hand her father offered, and he pulled her out of the dark. And at the end of that session, sweaty and achy and shaking with fatigue but still glowing with his praise, she told him the truth anyway.

Father wasn't here to tell, and he would despise her weakness besides. He taught her better. Azula came back to herself some indeterminate amount of time later, tears spent and aching and shaking with an excess of emotion, to find she didn't know what to do, or think.

I don't understand you, she told her mother not her mother. The awful thought occurred to her that she could still be hallucinating Ursa. The sisters at the Earth Avatar temple and the soldiers at the encampment could see Ursa and talk to her, Azula reminded herself, knelt shaking in the grass, cradling her bump. They even tried to capture her.

Her mother was here and alive. Azula had found her. But…

When she was kind to you? the familiar voice of doubt nagged at her. When she wanted you, tried to comfort you? You were alone. You were always alone. So how could you know…

She learned to tell the hallucinations in the asylum. She learned their tricks, and she banished them. All but one. But now that she knew what Ursa looked like, saw how the years had changed her, what if her mind just found new ways to betray her?

She bit down on the inside of her cheek so hard she drew blood, bit back a scream. She couldn't ask her mother. She already thinks you're a monster, now she knows you're crazy —

She gripped her head and moaned softly. There was no way to know for sure until they were parted. If she never saw Ursa again, she would know. Azula would know the hallucinations had stopped.

But they were weeks away from Ba Sing Se and her mother would be insufferable 'til then and she couldn't do it she couldn't she hated — she hated h-her —

She had to salvage this. Deliver Ursa to her brother, however little his thanks were worth (however uncertain), or it would all have been for nothing. Azula knew she was deep in the sunk cost fallacy by this point, but she was beyond caring. It could not have been for nothing. She would not let it be for nothing.

She had to return to camp. She couldn't return to camp. Her supplies and her mount were there. So was her mother. Ursa might die if she left. Azula might lose her mind again if she stayed.

She had to go back. She couldn't go back.

I need to bend, she told her mother. Also a lie. In that moment, what she needed was to get away.

I need to bend. A lie that told a deeper truth. Azula pushed to her feet, pushed on until she found shorter grass and flatter ground, and took her stance.

She took the lie, and made it true.