Chapter 34
Hello all! Sorry for making you wait. Happy Lunar New Year! We are close to the end...but not as close as you might think.
Content warning: drug use.
Azula stands on top of a grassy knoll overlooking the Fire Nation Capital. Built in the hollow of an extinct volcano, the city is lush and sleepy under a grey dawn sky. Pale sunshine lightens the horizon and paints the bottom of clouds a fiery rose. The capital's two lakes reflect the orange-pink clouds like mirrors inlaid in a sundial. Even though Azula knows this is just a vision, her throat clenches with longing.
"Why did you bring me here?" she asks Guru Pathik. The guru stands to the side, left foot forward in a deep lunge and both arms raised to the sky. Breathing in deeply, he stretches upwards before lowering to a plank position.
"To your left!" Pathik instructs her. He drops his hips and lifts his chest to the rising sun.
Azula turns. And suddenly, where before there was only orange-dappled grass, a small family camps on the hill. Her family. Ozai sits cross-legged with a two-year-old Zuko squirming in his lap, and Ursa carefully sets a baby on her stomach on a rich scarlet blanket. Azula. Azula watches her infant self struggle to lift her head, all four limbs kicking.
The sun breaks over the top of the volcano. Zuko squeals in delight, flails his chubby arms, and nearly punches their father in his excitement.
"Use your words, Zuko," Ursa says gently. On the blanket, baby Azula finally lifts her neck to gaze at the orange clouds and brilliant sun.
"Look at how she responds to the sun," Ozai smiles. "She's a firebender for sure." Ozai rubs Azula's back, gazing at her fondly.
"Do you know what chakra is next?" Pathik now stands next to Azula, balancing on one leg.
"No." Azula doesn't take her eyes off her parents. Only Ursa is alive and can remember this day.
"Your next chakra lies in your heart. It deals with love and is blocked…by grief."
"Grief?"
Azula focuses on her father. So caring, if not to Ursa at least to his children. Ozai looks so young without his beard and his crown, face glowing in the morning sunlight. With a sudden pang, Azula wishes she could go back in time to this moment, where a young family enjoyed the yawning sunlight. Before Zuko got his scar, before Ursa was exiled, before Ozai escalated the war. When she was just a Princess, innocent and secure in her parents' love.
The last time Azula saw her father, she watched her half-brother drive a spear through his chest.
"My father…did many things I now know are wrong," Azula says without looking at Pathik. "But—"
Ozai picks up his daughter and cradles her in his arms. Gently, unbelievably, he kisses her forehead.
"You loved him," Guru Pathik says.
"Yes. And he's dead," Azula sinks to her knees and clutches her side. "Oh spirits, he's dead."
She cries as the sun rises, spilling golden light into the city streets.
"You have lost much, Azula," Pathik says quietly. "Not only your father, but also your place in the Fire Nation. Your identity as a Princess and a member of the Royal Family.
"You are right to grieve. To mourn these losses. But you also must recognize that when a forest is burned down, new growth rises in its place. Your love for Zuko. New love in the form of your friends: Temurin, Jirou, your student Wakaba. And many more to come."
"I know," Azula says, and realizes it's true. New love will come; it's come already. With difficulty, she stands and walks over to the memory of her family, then kneels so she can see Ozai's unlined face. He smiles in pride.
"Goodbye, Father," she says.
The sun crests the volcano top in full, and everything melts in bright light.
Reluctantly, Temurin approaches the double doors he's avoided all day. An iron bolt lays across the outside of the carved wooden door; Temurin doesn't know what Mayor Sota used this room for when she was still Mayor of Qima, but he doesn't really want to imagine. She was a bizarre old woman, and it's just as well that she fled to the Fire Nation after the battle.
Temurin lifts the bar and tosses it on the floor. There is no guard and no need to lock the door behind him. With a sorrowful sinking in his stomach, Temurin pulls both doors towards himself. The wood creaks as the panels part to reveal a spacious bedroom.
Sitting by the barred window is Jirou. Snow falls quickly in the white world outside, rendering Jirou into a black silhouette. The boy turns his head sharply when Temurin enters, but doesn't move. Temurin lets the doors fall closed behind him. As he approaches his nephew, he grabs the back of a velvet-upholstered chair and drags it to face Jirou by the window.
Jirou has spoken little since Jinlian brought him out of the forest. As always, when Temurin sees his nephew's pinched face, he's filled with guilt. How could he not have seen that Jirou and Altan were in contact with Zhao's rebels? Why did he assume that Zhao would just leave him and his family alone? Jirou has not only done but seen terrible, terrible things. All under Temurin's watch. Temurin sent his sister Aliya a letter yesterday as soon it became clear that Jirou would have to answer for what he'd done.
"Grandma visited earlier," Jirou volunteers.
With a start, Temurin realizes he's been silent too long. He smiles quickly. "Then you've seen her more recently than I have. How is our new mayor?"
"She says that since we're part of the United Republic now, my fate will be decided by the Council in Yu Dao," Jirou says solemnly.
"She said that?" Temurin leans back in his chair.
From their conversations over the past few days, it's become clear that Jirou still believes the Earth Kingdom ought to rule. But the shock he suffered during the battle and the news of Altan's death has left Jirou quiet. Shaken. And regretful about his actions if not his motivations.
Jirou's actions have brought ruin, death, and misery to this small town.
Yet he's just a child.
"No matter what Yu Dao decides…I won't let you be harmed," Temurin tells Jirou. "You were under my care. And even though you went behind my back, I should have noticed. I should have protected you."
"It's not your fault, Uncle." Jirou twists his lips into a smile. "I lied to you."
"That's the worst part, Jirou."
"The fifth chakra resides in your throat, and deals with truth. It is blocked by lies. When have you lied, Princess?"
Azula laughs shortly. Her legs are crossed, and she and Pathik sit under a blooming cherry tree by a river.
"A better question is 'when have I told the truth'?" she says bitterly. "I always lie. It's necessary to survive."
"Only if you assume the worst of people," Pathik corrects her. "Can you think of a time that your lies hurt someone?"
Azula thinks hard. Lies come so easily to her. When she tries to reconstruct her past and separate lies from truth, it's like she bumps against a thick fog, or a path blocked by thickets of thorns and twisting falsehoods. Her lies are impossible to entangle, laced through her narrative like veins through flesh.
A cherry blossom floats into the air and tumbles into her lap, and with it, a memory.
She stands before Zuko in a mountain retreat. Full cherry trees blossom outside the window and blow in the spring breeze. With two sharp fingernails, she shatters a seashell.
"I've come with a message from home. Father regrets your banishment. He wants you home," Azula lies.
Zuko turns to the window so that Azula can only see the unblemished side of his face.
"Father regrets? He…wants me back?" his voice trembles.
Sentimental fool, Azula thinks.
Azula surfaces. Now that she knows what it's like to be in exile, knows what it's like to yearn for home, she can't believe that she was so cruel. No. She believes it. It sickens her.
"I lied to my brother and told him he could come home," Azula tells Pathik. "But the whole time, I planned to betray him."
Guru Pathik nods. "Lies are a betrayal, Azula. When you return to the world, you must rid yourself of lies as much as you can."
"But if I tell the truth about who I am, people will try to kill me," Azula counters.
"And who are you?"
It's an impossible question. Against her will, Azula feels herself growing angry, but she controls it.
"I don't know. Someone looking for a fresh start. Someone who doesn't want her friends to die."
"Then tell the truth about that." Pathik catches a falling blossom and tucks it in his beard. Pleased with the effect, he snatches another one out of the air and nestles it next to the first. Soon his off-white beard is positively infested with pink flowers. What a freakish old man.
Even so, he hasn't proved to be false.
"I'm sorry for my lies, and I will tell the truth as best I can," Azula says. There.
"Now, that wasn't so hard!" Pathik grins. "Flower?"
Azula shooks him a crippling glare.
"I think we'll stay here for the next chakra," Pathik gets up and wades thigh-deep into the river.
"Next, you must unblock your light chakra. It deals with insight and is blocked by illusion."
Rolling her eyes, Azula wades into the water with the guru. Insight? She's the most insightful person she knows. Pathik plunges his hands into the water, grabbing at the river bottom, and comes up with handfuls of mud and riverweed. Pathik wiggles his fingers gleefully.
"What do you see, Azula?" he asks.
"The fabric of the universe," Azula says snidely. To her consternation, Pathik's eyes widen in delight.
"Yes! Yes precisely! In my hands I hold water, earth, and air. And this weed can only grow with the firelight of the sun! This mud is the universe. You see, the greatest illusion is that the four elements are separate, when in truth, they are one."
"That's fairly obvious," Azula remarks.
"And just as the four elements are the same, the four nations are also the same. The Fire Nation and its people are no greater than the people of the Earth Kingdom or the Water Tribes."
Azula looks at Pathik blankly. "Yes. And?"
For the first time, the guru seems confused. He lets the mud plop back into the slow-moving river.
"This is not a revelation to you?" he asks. "I thought it would be."
"Even as a Princess of the Fire Nation, I knew I had to use everything at my disposal: firebenders and earthbenders, peasants and kings. I didn't limit myself to fire," Azula says proudly, then pauses.
"But I suppose…I only saw the others as people since I've been in the colonies. Instead of weapons. They are people, after all…and I shouldn't have attacked them just because I could."
"Are even peasants and princesses the same?"
Azula thinks of the raw, jagged hole that Altan's death tore in her lungs. His fate is a tragedy whether or not he had royal blood. It makes no sense. And she thinks of Temurin, just as wily as a Fire Nation commander or noble.
"Even them."
Pressure that Azula didn't know was there releases in her forehead.
"Then you are ready to unlock your final chakra," Pathik says solemnly.
The man blows away like a vapor in the wind, starting at his toes and ending at the crown of his head, and Azula finds herself floating amongst the stars. Below her is a blue planet, swirling with familiar green continents and creamy white clouds. Azula swallows her panic, but feels her heart beating rapidly. Can she fall in space? Even if she's just a spirit? Her breath hitches in and out.
"What can we do?" Wakaba asks, clutching Nekana's frail hand as Nekana's chest quickly rises and falls. Nekana's limbs twitch like she's been shocked by lightning.
"She's going through withdrawal," Temurin replies grimly. He reaches for the pouch of yapian powder at his waist, hoping Wakaba won't ask too many questions. He mixes the powder with water, then holds the cup to Nekana's lips.
"Hold her down," he orders Wakaba. Lifting Nekana's head, he tips the yapian mixture into her half-open mouth. She's still twitching, but most of the medicine seems to go down. Was this even the right dosage? He doesn't know.
When he glances at Wakaba, the girl looks confused, eyes darting from Nekana to Temurin's pouch. Only now putting everything together.
"It will be all right," Temurin lies. Wakaba looks skeptical.
At least the yapian will help with Nekana's pain. Nekana's suffering, twisted movements cut him to the quick.
"Hang in there, Kana," he whispers. He presses his lips to her icy fingers.
Guru Pathik's voice floats eerily all around Azula, making it even harder for her to control her fear.
"The final chakra you must unlock deals with pure cosmic energy. It is blocked by earthly attachments. In order for you to accept your place in the universe, you must let go of everything that ties you to the physical realm."
"What?" Azula yells. "That's bullshit."
Pathik laughs. "That's what the Avatar said. His meaning, if not his exact words."
"Forget the Avatar. The only reason I came here at all was to help my friends. I'm not going to 'let them go' for a foolish superstition!"
"You came here for them, Azula. But when you unblocked each chakra, who did you face?"
A pulsing ball of yellow light like a small sun coalesces above Azula's head. It throbs rhythmically, vibrations reverberating into Azula's pounding skull. She looks up. Flickering at the edges of the fiery energy, she sees a glimmer of lightning and the flash of blue fire. And then, emerging from the light, the golden silhouette of a woman.
"I've faced myself."
Azula feels like she's falling apart. Every inch of her is shivering, her heart clenching as her golden spirit-self approaches. Behind the apparition, faces appear: Zuko, crowned and happy. Temurin, green eyes flashing. Jirou, Wakaba, Hegane, Haojun, even Ursa, Mai, Ty Lee, and little Kazuto.
"You can't rely on Zuko or friends to be your sole reason for living, Azula," Pathik says. "They will fail you, as all humans do. You must choose life for yourself.
"You have before you life and death, peace and despair. So choose life! And live a happier one."
Azula shudders. Life? Life. It's so much harder to think now, perhaps it's the stars floating beneath her feet and all around her. She stares at the faces surrounding her in the black velvet sky.
She's confronted her fear, her guilt, her shame. She let go of her grief, her lies, and her illusions about others. She's been forgiven.
The golden figure of herself waits.
"I choose life," Azula chokes. "I choose life, and I let my friends go."
As soon as the words leave her mouth, the faces of all the people she loves dissipate into stars. And Azula falls, falls, falls towards the planet. She spreads her arms as if she could fly.
When Azula hits the clouds, she wakes.