It was easy for them to make their way to the lower circles of Ba Sing Se. With their travel-stained cloaks, their dirty faces, and their limp hair, they looked like they belonged there.

They showed their sketch of Ursa to people trying to sell their stale food and twice-used wares. They shook their heads, their hands pushing them away once they realized they were not there to trade. Some said they might remember if they had a little incentive. One grasped at Ty Lee's braid, offering a hot meal if she allowed her to cut it off that she might make a fine wig for the nobles in the upper ring. "Thank you for the lovely compliment, but I don't think so," Ty Lee had said, twitching herself free and flitting away.

"This is useless," Mai said. "Nobody knows anything. If we offered them soup they'd say they saw her here or they saw her there." She sniffed miserably, then coughed. "And what is that smell?"

"Are you giving up?" Azula said, her voice petulant. Ba Sing Se sprawled over many miles, and the largest part was reserved for the poor people, the refugees from the war, all crammed together like salted meats packed on a ship, ready to be consumed by people who weren't even hungry. Even now she recognized women hard at work weaving cloth that would drape over the shoulders of the girls in the middle ring, and there was a man painting the brightly painted parasols they'd giggle under in the summer.

"I'm saying that we'll never find her at this rate."

Azula scoffed. "You're giving up, like you always do. Honestly, I don't know how I managed to get anything done with you around."

"Azula," Suki said. "Stop."

She would have challenged Suki to make her, but then she remembered how she had pulled her hair, and stopped her from stealing the ostrich-horses. She lapsed into silence, and they wandered the heart of the district even though their feet were sore, until they came to what could only be a gathering place. It was a fountain that gurgled, flowing with clean water. Small hard coins—blue Water Tribe money, brassy Earth Kingdom currency, and the red shine of Fire Nation gold—flashed in the water. Circling the fountain stood wicks waiting to be lit, waiting for nightfall. Azula's eyes narrowed as she followed the angle of the wood, imagining the light of the flame, and how it would hit the water.

Many would probably call it beautiful if they had come upon this place at night, with all the lanterns lit.

A young woman stood there, hands folded across her chest, fingers resting on the jutting edge of her collarbones. Her brown hair was in two braids that hung down her back. Hunger pinched her face.

"Excuse me," Ty Lee called out. "Have you seen this woman?" She waved the painting under her nose until the girl gripped her wrist, holding her still.

She looked for a long time, until Azula began to fear that maybe she had seen the woman before.

"No," the girl said. She raised her eyes, looking at their faces for the first time. "Who was she?"

"She's a refugee from the Fire Nation. We think she might have come here to Ba Sing Se for, well, refuge," Ty Lee explained.

The young woman laughed a hard bitter sound. "She has a Fire Nation look about her."

The four girls exchanged a glance. "She was," Suki said, finally.

The girl laughed again, then kicked a stone so that it skittered down the path.

"Is that a problem?" Azula asked.

"It kind of is. The Fire Nation made war on the Earth Kingdom for a hundred years, causing so many of us to become homeless, to try to find a new home in Ba Sing Se when there is only poverty. And then the Fire Nation exiles its own and where do they come? They come here when yesterday they had been enjoying the profits of our spilled blood and broken homes." Her mouth twisted, and she turned away. "I knew such a one. He bore a scar on his face, called himself Lee. I didn't know he was Fire Nation, but then it turns out he was Prince Zuko, and he was only here to conquer Ba Sing Se." Her voice started to break. "I showed him this place. My favorite spot. This jewel of Ba Sing Se, proof that even we poor citizens of the lower ring had something beautiful and ours, and they still managed to take it away."

"Did you love him?" Mai said, voice rigid.

The young woman flushed. "It doesn't matter. He betrayed us." She turned slowly, stepping beyond Ty Lee towards Azula, leaning in close. "Betrayed us to you."

"Excuse me?" Azula said.

"I recognize you. You come disguised as you did before—dressed as our poor even though you're the one that caused all this. What's the big plan? To conquer us all over again?" She spat at Azula's feet, and Azula raised her hand to strike, but Ty Lee caught her wrist, gently, and Azula froze at her touch.

"I'm a Kyoshi Warrior," Suki said. "I swear on my honor that we are not here on a mission of war."

The girl looked at Suki. "And that's supposed to make me trust you? Even if you do speak the truth, what does it matter? The Dai Li were supposed to protect us, but they betrayed us. You're no better than the Fire Nation, probably, just like them."

Azula forced herself to relax in Ty Lee's touch, forced herself to acknowledge that she didn't need to fight back and show that this stupid girl was getting under her skin. "If you must know," she said, keeping her voice bored like Mai's, "she's my mother."

The girl from Ba Sing Se laughed so hard she held her belly as she doubled over. "You must be truly desperate if you're searching for her here. I hope you never find her. What is a queen doing here?" She left them there, then, and when she was safely out of reach, Ty Lee let Azula go.

"There's no need to be rude," Azula called after the girl's retreating back as she rubbed life back into her arm. "It's not like she was ever a real queen anyway." Azula turned away, her shoulders hunched as she looked at the fountain. Ursa would have found it beautiful. She imagined Zuko and Ursa sitting at this place, and scowled.

"We should keep going," Ty Lee said. "We've barely even searched the lower levels. We'll be here for weeks!"

Azula remembered the view of the vast city from the train. Her heart sagged. She was tired. She was tired of all this. What was the use. Everyone told her she had been sent on a task that could not be finished. Why keep the charade going when there was no reason? She would never get her bending back. She would never find her mother.

Mai was looking at her, as if she could read her thoughts. As if she knew.

Azula straightened. "Yes. Let's keep going."

She turned away from the fountain and stopped. Men garbed in Earth Kingdom regalia blocked her way. Her eyes shifted as she looked at them, as she noted their stance, their rigid muscles. They were preparing for a fight, a fight against her. Once they had been under her command. Once they would have fought the her enemies. She raised her head high as she stared them down.

Beside her, Mai and Ty Lee flanked her. Ty Lee's knuckles crooked as her braid swayed. Mai stood tall and huffy, her arms folded in that false casual way of predators lounging in the sun. Her black hair shone.

"Your journey ends here," their leader said.

Azula flexed her hands, willing for her bending to return, but they only felt cold and clammy. She found the young woman they had been speaking to earlier, lingering in the shadows. She'd gone and turned them in. Smart move. Something Azula should have been expecting, but her brain had been too focused on the uselessness of this journey, of how hungry she was, of how tired she was. She looked for a way out, but she didn't see one.

The captain of the guard motioned with his fist, and manacles of stone shaped like fists flung towards her, binding her wrists behind her. "Princess Azula of the Fire Nation, you are under arrest for your conquest against the Earth Kingdom, the attack against Ba Sing Se, and the usurpation of the Earth King's throne. Do you deny these charges?"

"We are here on Earth Kingdom authority!" Suki said, waving her passport.

"That was before we knew who she was," the Captain said. "Do you think we would have ever allowed Princess Azula to return? You tried to pull one on us before. Not again."

Azula struggled only momentarily against the manacles. They were strong, and she knew when she had been beaten. A cold sweat slicked her skin, but she sighed. "I don't deny anything. To be honest, I'd do it again if I could."

"Azula, are you crazy!" Ty Lee shouted, her voiced pitched high in a petulant whine, while Suki went to speak to their captain. Mai stood between them, her hands folded in her sleeves, her eyes wandering lazily between them without saying anything.

Two guards gripped Azula by her elbows and escorted her away. "Don't worry about me, Ty Lee!" Azula called over her shoulder. "Just go on home back to Kyoshi Island."

The young woman they had met at the fountain trailed after them. "What's your name," Azula said, as she shifted her weight so she went dead and limp and boneless in the guards' hands.

The young woman said nothing as the guards struggled to make her walk.

"I guess it's easier to fight back when you have an entire army behind you," Azula said. "I don't remember you standing up against me. Why, you were probably one of the girls cowering in their doorways as the Fire Nation marched down your street. Not so brave then but now? Everything's different."

The woman stepped forward, away from the shadows. "You're right. It is." She turned away and stepped back towards the fountain, her thin shoulders hunched over as she looked into the water.

Azula never stopped dragging her feet as the guards took them away. She pretended her father was watching her. Show nothing. Show no weakness.

She lifted her head higher, chin jutting forward as a line of sweat followed the curve of her spine.

A princess always knew when she'd been beaten.

They didn't walk her through the streets of Ba Sing Se—not because they wanted to spare her the humiliation but because it would be too dangerous. They stashed her in a vehicle with no windows, something made of iron. Azula put her palm, slick with sweat from the heat, against it. Maybe she would have been able to burn through this, melt it all around her until she was splattered with molten metal, but there was nothing she could do.

She wasn't like the blind girl who could bend metal. She wondered what they would do when more earth benders began to try, and discovered that they too could bend metal.

What would this cage do for them then?

When they arrived at the upper ring, they brought her to where the Dai Li had once dragged her to see Long Feng. They threw her in a cell of her own and left without a word.

Rats skittered on the edge of Azula's vision as she paced her cell. It wasn't as elaborate as the crystal catacombs she had used for Zuko and Katara. They were probably trying to show her she wasn't worth it. It was something made of metal, and it sweated in the heat. She smoothed the wetness against her fingertips, in soothing circles before running her fingers through her hair. Would they bring her a pair of scissors if she asked them? She wrapped her hair around her wrist, held it taut from her scalp until it pulled pleasantly.

She heard her mother's voice. Such beautiful hair, she was always telling her.

Azula needed a comb, and she thought about the one her mother used all the time, the one inlaid with jade. Her face twisted, and she wrenched another layer of hair around her hand. She sat down in the center of her cell, with her knees folded as she had once done in the bright sun on Ember Island. With her eyes closed, she combed her hair with her fingers. It was long work. She remembered when Li and Lo had gathered her hair with their warm, dry fingers spritzed in perfume.

But when footsteps echoed hollowly against the stone walls, she stood. Her hair fell around her face and in her eyes.

A guard appeared, and behind him, she saw her uncle's grey-bearded face. "You have a visitor."

She folded her arms and said nothing until the guard had left. "Have you come to laugh at my misfortunes, Uncle?" Her fingers trailed over the metal walls as she stepped toward the thick bars of her door. "Let me spare you the trouble." She threw her head back and laughed, finding it in the deep pit of her stomach. Her voice echoed harshly against the cell, and she stopped as she put her hands over her ears.

Uncle Iroh remained silent until the echoes of her laughter had stopped. He remained some distance from the bars, as if coming any closer than necessary disgusted him. "I've not come to mock you. I've come to help you."

Azula laughed again, a sharp sound that wrenched her belly in the wrong ways. She gripped the bars with both hands, her face pressed between them. "Now you're concerned about me? What has changed your mind?"

"This is no laughing matter, Azula! You are in prison and accused of some very serious crimes."

Azula tapped her chin. "Well, of course I am being accused of some very serious crimes. I stole the Dai Li, ousted the Earth King from his throne, and conquered the city in the name of my father. I just can't understand why you're concerned about them now, since you had some very unkind words to say when I was in your tea shop just a few hours ago." She smiled widely. "Feeling guilty, Uncle?"

She turned her back on him without waiting for an answer. Hunger gnawed her stomach, thirst swelled her throat. Her vision blurred and dizziness made the room spin. She blinked, her breath coming in shaky breaths. The walls closed around her, and her hands splayed against them to stop their progress. It was the earthbenders, bending the metal into a closer cage. Undernourished, no fire, she could do nothing.

"Azula," Uncle Iroh said, "I will do everything I can to help you."

"Do you think I want your help? Do you think I need your help? Do you think this scares me? That I who have lead battles at the age of fourteen would be frightened by a mere jail cell, of the threat of execution? You needn't concern yourself, Uncle. Besides, you shouldn't make promises you can't keep." She turned towards him then. "I know that you're nothing but a tea shop owner, here. They might do something nice for you as a favor for saving their city from the Fire Nation, but I don't think that courtesy would extend to the person who caused it to fall in the first place."

"It is true that I have no real power here. They let me stay because of their good graces. Please, let me help you. Don't say something foolish and jeopardize your chances of freedom. Besides, even though I can do little, I am sure that Zuko can do more."

Azula's eyes glared, her lip twisted around her teeth as she surged towards the barred door, slamming into it so hard it jarred her bones. "If you send word to Firelord Zuzu, I will kill you myself, Uncle, and you won't be able to stop me for all your power."

Uncle Iroh spread his hands. "He'll know soon enough. They couldn't capture you and keep you a secret. Think about this, Azula." He put his hand through the bars, letting his wrist rest limply between them. "What do you have to prove? Your father no longer sits the throne."

"I wouldn't be here if he did," Azula said. "Zuko and the rest of them would be in here instead. Where they would deserve to be for all their treachery."

"Who did they betray?"

"My father, who else? Aren't you listening?" She ran her palm down the bars on her door. They came way filmed in dust and dirt, and she brushed them against her tattered trousers. Her father would have filled these prisons to bursting.

"But surely it was your father who betrayed them? Who continued to betray the peace between us? Just as he betrayed me when I grieved for my son, killed our father, and stole the throne for himself?"

"You were weak," Azula said. "You were a failure."

"Or how about when he betrayed your mother, banishing the throne she had gained for him?"

Azula covered her face with her hands. "He didn't really banish her! He banished her like Zuko! She bore his marks, the scars he put on her, like he did on Zuko. How is that banishment when they carried him wherever they went? He was always with them, they were always home."

Iroh leaned closer against the bars, his eyes hard, but his voice was gentle. His face was sad. "Azula-"

Perhaps he had finally run out of words of wisdom. But no, his eyes were wide. He had not known. He had not realized. That old fool. Azula ran her hands up her sleeves. "She wore long sleeves so that no one would see, but I saw. Even when we were at Ember Island she would wear her long sleeves, hiding how he had touched her." Azula slipped closer towards her barred door, towards Iroh. She put her finger to her lips as her other hand clenched around a prison bar. "It was their little secret, and I never told because I'm not a treacherous lech like you."

"Did Ozai touch you like that?"

Iroh put his hands around Azula's before she realized that was what he had intended. His hands were warm and dry. She wrenched herself away and he let her. "Azula, I have wronged you. I should have seen what your father was doing, how he played you against your brother as he was played against me, how he crafted you into a tool and a weapon for his own ends. But I didn't because you are a hard person to like, and I didn't like you. In fact, you scared me, even when you were a little girl, you scared me. I am sorry."

"I don't want your apologies, Uncle. They sicken me." She several steps back so she stood in the center of her cell. "And you should have been scared of me." There were things he didn't know that she had done, of course, and if they had known, they would be scared like they should be.

Iroh stretched out his arm even farther through the bars. "Take my hand, Azula." She didn't, but he kept it there, waiting for her to move towards him. "Your father has sent you on a mission that will fail. You will not find your firebending, and if you do, you will not want to free him anymore, I think."

"For someone so wise, you don't know very much."

"I know that your father does not expect you to find your bending. He sent you on a fool's errand, Azula, like he sent Zuko on one. He is throwing you away because you are of no use to him. It's a punishment, and look where your quest has found you. What are you to him without your fire? You're useless, something to be set aside now that you cannot be used. And he has set you aside."

"Shut up, Uncle!" Azula put her hands over her ears. "You will not poison me as you poisoned Zuko. You will not betray me anymore as you betrayed Zuko!"

"Azula," Uncle Iroh said, "please take my hand."

"Stop asking me!"

"I won't say I'm sorry that you lost your bending, because in truth I am not, but I do hope that one day you will be able to restore the balance within yourself and be at peace. But even if you do not, you will still be Azula, Princess of the Fire Nation. You will still be Azula, my niece. You will still be Azula, Zuko's sister. You are family, Azula. You will always be family, and you don't need to be a weapon anymore. You're so much more than that—with or without your firebending."

Azula struggled to breathe. She felt so weak, from hunger, and finally her legs weakened as she slid to her knees, fingers scrabbling at the wall as if she could force herself to stand.

She did not want to keep listening to her Uncle, but she could not shut him out.

"You said something to me, and I didn't think much of it because I didn't want to listen to you, because I thought you spoke lies. And maybe you were lying, trying to make us let you go. Do you remember what you said? That you carried the same legacy as Zuko, that you struggle with both sides of your nature, that Zuko alone is not the only one who can restore the honor of the Fire Nation. Maybe without intending to, you spoke the truth. It is time for you to choose, Azula."

She spread her arms wide to encompass the prison cell that held her. "What would you have me choose, Uncle?"

Iroh's face softened. "The same thing I wanted for Zuko. That you choose goodness. That you become the person I know you can be—to choose your own destiny instead of the one forced upon you by your father. I remember when you were children, when you were very, very young. Maybe no more than four years old. You and Zuko together—you were brother and sister, and you worked together, you were each other's strength. You can be that again, I think. Balance first yourself, and then the Fire Nation as you take your place at his side."

"Oh is that all?" Azula said, laughing, as she rocked back and forth with her arms curled around your stomach. "Father only asked that I regain my bending to release him. But you—you ask that I give up myself so that I can become another Zuko." Her head hung low, the matted fringe of her hair hiding Uncle from her sight.

Iroh sighed, and he lowered himself so that he sat on the dirt floor of the jail with her. "That is not what I ask. I don't want you to become like Zuko."

"That's not what it sounded like," Azula said.

"They intend to try you," Uncle said, "for your crimes. If you do not want to change to save your country, then at least put on a changed face to save yourself. I'm sure they'll believe you. Your bending may be gone, but your ability to lie is just fine."

"And what of your sense of justice, Uncle? How would lying about my change of heart as I groveled at the Earth King's feet fit into your sense of balance and justice?"

"Perhaps because I do not think it is fair that you, a fourteen year old girl, is being tried for the sins of your father."

Azula's eyes flashed as she remained very still. She had been stupid not to see this coming. They were not going to try her at all. They were going to use her to leverage Zuko in giving up his father. And he would say yes because he had no love for him anymore. Distantly, she heard herself say, "But I was the one who conquered Ba Sing Se. Me and Zuko did that."

Iroh turned away as he rose to his feet. "You are not making this easy, Azula."

"You sound like my mother. Am I supposed to make it easy for you? Go back to your teas, Uncle. I am sure your thirsty customers are wondering where they have gone."

She rose to her feet once she was sure he was gone, and began to pace. They said she was the liar—and they weren't wrong—but so was Uncle, coming in here as if he was doing her a favor when she was in no danger at all.

It was so obvious she was angry that she had not seen it coming before Uncle had visited her. It would be impossible to hide her capture from Zuko because diplomacy dictated that the Earth King send word immediately to the Firelord, informing him of her upcoming trial and the possibility of severe judgment.

Zuko, if he were wise, would not deny them for the sake of future diplomatic relations if nothing else. His speech about a new era of peace and kindness didn't have a place in the real world, where real people demanded justice.

Then Zuko, because he hated his father, would offer them someone else in exchange, someone so much better, because who would want a baby when they could have a king.

She gnawed her lip as she paced. Once he guaranteed they would have his father, they would immediately trade her for him, even though it had been her plan to conquer Ba Sing Se, even though her father hadn't even ordered her to lay siege to the city.

That had been her idea, and her plan, because she had seen the opportunity, and she had taken it without asking for permission.

If Zuko had ever seriously pursued the Avatar, he never would have taken the city. But she was different because she was her father's daughter, knowing his own mind before he shared it with her.

But they wouldn't see it that way—not Uncle and not Zuko and not the Earth Kingdom. They saw her as Ozai's weapon, his fist, his fury. Not his equal. Her stomach twisted, the last words her father had spoken before his failure ringing hollow in the fallow pit of her belly, telling her to stay behind, because he needed her to keep the Fire Nation safe.

Such an important mission that he could trust to no other.

No one had expected Zuko to attack. She had failed his last mission, something he had given her to appease her, so he wouldn't have to listen to her crying.

And she had failed.

She flexed her hands, crumpling them into fists as she struck the unyielding walls. Pain welled in her knuckles, and she struck again, over and over, and it stood tall and unyielding over her. Pain suffused her skin, and she sucked at her broken skin with her lips and teeth, hating that she felt the pain, hating the stale taste of copper as blood filled her mouth.

She was nothing, someone to shut up and box up and put away until someone more worthwhile would replace her.

They would trade her for her father, and he would receive whatever judgment they reckoned, and it would be one more thing that had been taken from her.

It soured in her mouth like bitter wine.

She would be sent away, released into Zuko's care, and this time he would not let her go.

Her knees ached as she bent against the stone floor. She cradled her bruised hand against her chest, aware of its every throb as it pounded in time with her heart.

"Why are you so cruel to your uncle, child?"

Azula's eyes flung open, her head jerked up as she recognized her mother's voice. She was inside the cell with her, leaning against the bars.

"Oh," Azula said, her voice shaking. "It's you again. I thought you left without so much as a goodbye like last time. I could say you hurt my feelings, but we all agree that I don't have any to hurt." She hung her head, her hair falling in curtains between her face. But still, she could not stop staring at her mother through her hair.

She knew she wasn't there, not really. But she looked real, she sounded real.

"I did say goodbye, Azula." Her mother moved through the bars so that she could crouch beside Azula, her hand reaching out to cup her cheek in her palm. "You were sleeping, and I did not want to wake you after asking so much of you."

Azula moved away from her mother's hand. "How convenient for you that I was asleep when you supposedly came to say goodbye."

Her mother smiled, not as widely as she did for Zuko. It was a small smile. A sad smile. "You looked at peace. I remember thinking that perhaps I had made you into what you are." She rose to her feet, her red silk robes flowing like water to her feet, the gilded hems shining in the dark. "I wish that things had been different between us."

Azula remained on her knees, her mouth twisting as scalding tears slid down her cheeks. "I'm a big girl. I've made my own choices."

"I'm so sorry, Azula. I hope you know I've always loved you."

Azula put her hands over her ears and shook her head. It wasn't fair that her mother could come and go as she pleased, whispering lies that weren't true but that Azula had once wanted to be true so badly when she had been a child. But she was grown up now. She didn't need any of those childish things anymore.

She raised her head to tell her mother this, but she was alone in her cell.

"You can't do this to me!" she said. "I am Azula, princess of the Fire Nation, daughter of Ursa and Ozai." Her voice broke over the words. "You can't just come and go as you please!" Her words echoed in her cell, clanging in her ears as she collapsed to her knees. She rocked back and forth in the center of her cell, her fingers twisting through her hair, as she sobbed.