Part 2 - The Draw
The next time he comes, she's annoyed already. When the explosions started going off outside she'd leapt off her bed, hands up and ready to fight, but then she'd realized— fireworks. People celebrating.
It's New Year's Eve.
It is, without a doubt, the most depressing New Year's Eve she's ever had, and that's saying something. Alone, in a cold damp cell, while her people celebrate in the streets. She wonders what her brother is doing. No doubt the Fire Lord is at the center of the festivities, welcome anywhere, maybe even throwing a party of his own. A party for traitors and cowards.
She snarls and turns over hard to face the wall. Sleep won't come, the same way that it never comes, even when she doesn't have fireworks ringing in her ears. She tries to imagine the display, the glittering explosions of red and gold over Caldera City. She used to love fireworks when she was little, would beg her father to shoot them from his fingers. Then she realizes what she's thinking about and buries her head in the pillow. Her stomach throbs dully.
WHOOSH!
The door to the tower bangs against the wall, and she lays still at once. Who would be here on New Year's Eve?
"Azula!"
And she says nothing, because there are footsteps and she knows that walk, the same way she knows that voice, and for some reason, it sounds just like…
"Azula."
He's in front of her cell now. There's something different about the way he's speaking, but she can't put her finger on it; it's looser somehow, a little louder than usual. But it doesn't matter anyway, because she is not going to give him the satisfaction of rolling over and talking to him. Especially not when he's saying her name like that.
"Princess…"
His voice drops to a low, rough whisper, and she feels her eyes go wide. It's all she can do not to stiffen her shoulders. She hears a soft clink, and she knows that he's actually leaned right up against the bars. She can almost see him, with that cocky smirk and lazy posture. His voice is so close.
"Princess, I know you're not asleep…"
His voice is almost a growl, throaty and deep. It sends something through her body, hardening her nipples under her shirt and jolting between her legs. And, like a woman possessed, she turns over.
He smiles, leaning back. "Hello there, fire lily."
He's reverted to his normal voice, she notices. Then she gets angry at herself for noticing.
"What do you want?" She tries to spit it, but she's afraid it comes out sounding more curious than vicious. He raises an eyebrow.
"To wish you a happy New Year, obviously."
She narrows her eyes and props herself up on an elbow. "First you want to wish me a safe winter solstice, and now you want to wish me a happy New Year? Seems to me like you're starting to look for reasons to come here."
He leans forward again, his arms threading through the bars to rest on them, and she waits for his denial. But then he smiles, that stupid smile that says he's Agni's gift to the world.
"Maybe I am," he concedes. "But you're not looking for any reasons to stop talking to me."
They stare at each other again, the way they did on the solstice. His eyes are so bright, even across the ten feet between them. She thinks of the blue in the southern lights.
"Have a drink with me?"
He flops down to the floor, cross-legged, and she notices the bottle of saké in his hand. So he's drunk. Disappointment floods through her, and she bites the inside of her cheek in frustration. Get ahold of yourself! Your enemy is right in front of you. Use your brain!
A different part of her mind is racing, nervous, because she's never actually had alcohol before, but she doesn't want him to know that. She doesn't want him to know that he's done anything she hasn't. She settles for glaring at him.
"Come on, Azula." He drops his voice again, but this time he's staring straight into her eyes. "Just one drink, please?"
A tremble travels through her, and she can only hope that he doesn't see it. She tries to consider strategy, weigh her options, but the scales in her brain seem to be broken; her body's acting for her. So she pushes herself up slowly, letting the rough blanket fall off of her shoulders.
"I told you to stop calling me that."
She's wearing prison-order rags for pajamas, and she can feel the cold air through them — she knows that her nipples are showing, pushing hard against her shirt. When she steps out of bed she has to wonder if it's just her imagination, the way his eyes seem to follow her movements. It has to be.
She's cautious. He's sitting right up against the cell, his knees nearly touching the bars, the bottle of saké between his legs. He waits, his eyes never leaving her as she takes a step forward and pauses.
"Don't worry," he says, and leans back on his hands. "I'm not going to bite you."
The words are reassuring but his tone is anything but; she can't help but think that he sounds as though he'd very much like to bite her, and maybe more than that. The thought shocks her, but even as she dismisses it, she can feel her body waking up under his gaze. The predatory look in his eyes isn't helping.
This whole thing has gone off the rails already and her heart is pounding, but she's gotten out of bed now. So she walks slowly to the bars, her bare feet cold on the stone floor, and firmly reminds herself that she could absolutely pulverize him if she wanted to. There are still fireworks going off outside, but they seem far away now, distant in her ears.
When she sits down in front of him he smiles, like this is all incredibly normal.
"Here."
He reaches through the bars and sets the bottle in front of her. She looks at him a second longer before picking it up and unscrewing the cap. She sniffs it doubtfully; it's not encouraging.
"Go on," Sokka encourages, closing his eyes. "Take a sip. It's not too bad."
She does — it is. She swallows hard, a little gasp wrung from her burning throat, and his eyes snap back open. They fix her in their beam and darken.
"You okay?"
"Yes," she snaps. And, just to prove a point, she takes another swig, ignoring her searing tongue and daring him to make fun of her.
He doesn't. He just watches her, and she can't read the expression on his face — which is seriously alarming, considering how easy reading people has always been for her. She's beginning to worry that she's losing her touch for good.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" she demands.
He grins at her then, and reaches through the bars to pluck the bottle right out of her hand. Their fingers almost touch.
"Like what?"
"Like —like that," she crosses her arms. "Like you were just now."
He takes a sip and she finds her eyes on his lips, where he's tasting the place her mouth just left. "I don't know what you mean."
"Agni, you're impossible," she scowls. "Why aren't you out gallivanting with my darling brother, anyway?"
He takes another drink and offers her the bottle again before he answers. "Sometimes I get tired of playing diplomat."
She takes it with a roll of her eyes, but she's very careful to keep their fingers far apart. "I told you that you couldn't handle it, councilman."
"I already knew that it was going to be hard, I didn't need you to tell me," he gripes. "I'm the son of a chief. I grew up knowing that politics suck."
"The son of a chief?" she laughs. "That's not politics. You say it like you're royalty or something."
"Oh, what would you know?" he says in disgust. "It's got nothing to do with being royalty. But you've probably never bothered to learn about the Water Tribes, have you?"
She snorts. "There's not much to learn. Fire melts snow, and iron battleships are more effective than canoes."
"And yet you're in there," he snarks. "And I'm out here. So you must have missed something, huh?"
She can't immediately think of a response to this logic, so she takes another drink. She wonders if it's her imagination, the way she can taste him on the mouth of the bottle. "I may be in here, but you're the one that decided to come be in here with me."
"Hmm, yeah," he agrees. "I must be seriously hating my job right now to prefer you over Zuko." She shoots him another poisonous glare and he laughs outright again. "Don't look at me like that, fire lily."
"Stop calling me that!"
"Then don't look at me like that, Azula."
She clenches her fists. Oh man, is he asking to get vaporized. "Like what?"
"Like you want to rip me limb-from-limb."
"I do want to rip you limb-from-limb!"
"No, you don't," he grins. "'Cause if you really wanted to, you would've done it by now."
She's forced into silence again by this admittedly solid argument, and he takes the opportunity to grab the saké back. She's feeling the effects of alcohol for the first time: her body is warm, her throat burns, and her stomach's unsettled. She's sure her cheeks must be flushed, because they're hot on her face, and her whole body thrums under her cotton pajamas.
"Man, listen to those fireworks," he says, setting the bottle aside. "Are you gonna be able to sleep tonight?"
"I can never sleep," she says without thinking. "Tonight's no different."
He frowns, leaning forward a little bit. "You can never sleep?"
She hates the way he looks right now, all engaged and concerned for her. It's fake and they both know it, so why doesn't she just send him on his way?
"No," she answers, and now she feels like her mouth is moving before her brain gives it permission. "I lay awake and stare at the ceiling. And when I do sleep, I have… bad dreams."
She waits for him to smirk at her, to laugh at this bit of ammunition. Princess Azula, admitting that she's afraid of bad dreams. But he doesn't. Instead, he just keeps frowning and pulls his ever-present boomerang off his back, fiddling with it and running his thumb down the side.
"Yeah. I get bad dreams, too. So does Zuko. But I think he's been having them for a lot longer than me."
She expects to feel the normal surge of superiority, the familiar sense of contempt that's reserved for her brother's suffering. It doesn't come. Instead, there's a frightening hollowness, tinged with something even more terrifying that might be sympathy. No, no, no, no, no. She will not feel bad for him. She doesn't feel bad for anyone, and especially not for Zuko. Unlike her, all of his damage has been completely self-inflicted.
She reaches through the bars and grabs the bottle again. "What do you dream about?"
He eyes her suspiciously, and she can't blame him. It feels strange to ask him anything at all, let alone something so personal. She wonders for a second if he's going to get up and leave — and good riddance, if he does — but then he just sighs and scratches his back with his boomerang.
"It depends. Sometimes the day of the eclipse, or the day that Ba Sing Se fell. Sometimes Sozin's comet. And sometimes I see Yue, or my, um… my mother."
She's definitely feeling the saké now, and somewhere in the back of her fuzzy brain there are alarm bells ringing. You're incapacitating yourself. Be careful. It's strange to think that she was there, right there, for so many of the failures that haunt him. Gods, she was the cause of several of them. He was never hard to beat — not on his own, at least. She wonders if he ever has nightmares about her. Then she pushes the thought away.
"Who's Yue?"
His face closes up, and she knows that this is a touchy subject. "An old friend of mine from the Northern Water Tribe. She died in the war."
She doesn't quite know what to say. She's not going to say that she's sorry, because she's not sorry for him. That's the nature of war, that's the price paid for civilization.
"Just a friend, huh?"
He glances at her sharply. "A girlfriend, actually, as if it was any of your business."
Interesting. This is obviously a wound that still stings. She knows she should pounce on the weakness, but the look on his face stops her: fierce distrust, and the saddest eyes imaginable. She settles for asking her next question.
"And your mother?"
He picks at the edge of the boomerang. "Kya, wife of Hakoda. Killed in a Fire Nation raid eight years ago."
Again, she doesn't quite know what to say, so she just stares at him. His dark skin glows in the torchlight, like oil on water. There's another faint BANG! from outside, and a cheer goes up from the crowd.
"What do you dream about?"
If she's uncomfortable learning about him, it pales in comparison to how she feels about being asked to reciprocate. If she wasn't well on her way to being drunk she'd probably blast his head right off his shoulders for being so impertinent, but…
"Sozin's comet. The Boiling Rock. My… parents."
He nods. "Do you miss your father?"
It's an unexpected question, and it catches her off guard. He looks so genuine, sitting right in front of her and looking at her with those bright blue eyes, like he's actually curious.
"I don't know." She's answering before she's even realized what she's doing. "I don't know if I miss him or not. Mostly, I… I think about how ashamed he must be of me."
His eyebrows quirk. "Do you think so?"
"I know he is. I failed him." She doesn't want to hold his eyes like this, so she turns her gaze to his hands. She feels her voice fall to a whisper. "Sometimes, I… I think that I don't even know myself, anymore."
Maybe she's drunker than she thought.
"Okay, so you failed him," Sokka murmurs. His hands are beautiful, large and strong with clever fingers. "I failed my dad on the day of the eclipse. It's done. All you can do now is hope for forgiveness."
"You don't understand," she has to use all of her self-control not to bury her face in her hands. "It's not like that. Forgiveness… that doesn't exist."
"No?"
"Not for me," she snaps. "Not for my father. Forgiveness is for fools. He's no fool, and neither am I."
"Are you sure about that?" he asks quietly. "Aang is the most powerful person alive, and he forgives more than anyone."
Her head feels heavy, and it's hard to fully appreciate how annoying he's being. "It's not our way. You know what happened to Zuko. There's no hope for me."
"Then maybe it's time to realize that you don't need your dad's forgiveness."
"Don't need it?" she laughs, a little hysterically. "This isn't some trivial mistake. This is a country we're talking about. Our country. And I lost it. I could have helped him, taken it back for both of us, if I'd just been..."
Faster. Stronger. Smarter. Better. It could be anything.
Sokka lets her trail off, watches her for a moment before he answers. "I know that. And when I failed my dad, it was a country we were talking about, too. And I didn't just fail my dad, or the Fire Nation. I failed my sister, my friends, the world. And he still forgave me. Forgiveness is powerful."
"The Fire Nation? You think you were helping the Fire Nation when you attacked our capital city and tried to kill the Fire Lord?"
"Yes," he says evenly, still looking straight at her. "I do."
She sits back. "You're insane."
"Hey, I haven't made this into a stability contest," he says, a little cheekily, and she bristles. "Relax, Azula."
"The next time you call me that I'm going to burn your tongue off."
"And what a great loss that would be to all of womankind," he sighs dramatically. Instantly, her face is on fire.
"What? I—you— "
He laughs and she leaps up, which proves to be a little more challenging than she'd expected. Her legs are wobbly when she points at him.
"You've got some fucking nerve!"
"Maybe I do," he concludes, still chuckling at his own joke as he gets to his feet. They're so close, face-to-face with only bars between them, and she has to lift her chin to look him in the eye. "But you like it, don't you?"
She's momentarily lost for words, gaping at him. "Get out!"
"I'm going, I'm going," he chuckles, slinging his boomerang onto his back and walking towards the door. "Happy New Year. And princess?"
She glares at him. He's looking back at her with his hand on the doorknob.
"Maybe if you don't know yourself anymore, you should try and get to know whoever it is you're becoming."
Then he walks through the door before she can answer. Not that she knows what she would have said, anyway.
She wonders if he actually thinks she's beautiful.
Her head is still swimming when she gets into bed, and it doesn't stop when she lays down. In fact, her stomach starts to rise and fall, and her thoughts blur together until she has to force herself to sit up and drink some water. It's a strange feeling, not being in complete control. For half a second she wonders if he's poisoned her, but then she remembers they were drinking out of the same bottle. The thought makes her stomach twitch.
She hopes that rest will help, but before she closes her eyes there's something she wants to try. She listens to the noises of the festival outside, raises one finger, and concentrates.
ka-FWOOM!
The firework arcs up, bursting against the ceiling into shards of blue sparkles. They rain down, glittering as the explosion echoes, and, just for a second, she smiles.
A month passes. The weather stays cool, and she has to use her own fire more than once to ward off the chill at night. At first, she thinks of her brother, snug and warm in the Fire Lord's chambers, without a care in the world. Then she thinks of her uncle, who surely suffered August's heat in this same tower.
The days drift by, and gradually, without really thinking about it, she realizes that she's begun to keep track. She doesn't scratch tally marks into the wall — gods forbid — but she keeps count in her head. First, a week. Then two weeks. Then three. And then, unconsciously, she starts to expect him.
"I wonder what I will be, when I come home again…"
She's firebending, shooting glittering sparks from her fingers, trying to see how precise she can get. She's already mastered fireworks, but the sparks are too inconsistent — she wants them to crackle continuously. She concentrates.
"I will be a white fox, and run through the icy land…"
She pauses, listening. Someone is singing outside — a man.
"Seals slide below the water, the buntings circle high…"
The sound is getting closer; whoever it is is walking towards the tower. She doesn't recognize the song — it's certainly not Fire Nation. The tune is plaintive, haunting; it fills her with a kind of ache, and she stills. His voice is dark and deep.
"And snow falls in summer, as at the moon I cry…"
The tower door swings open.
"...as at the moon I cry," Sokka finishes, latching the door behind him. Then he turns, his eyes landing on her, and he smirks. "What's up, princess?"
She stares at him. His voice is still reverberating through her.
"What are you doing here?"
"You'd think you'd be tired of asking me that," he says, scratching his cheek as he strolls over to her cell. "For your information, I forgot my saké the last time I was here, and I'd like it back, thank you very much."
She keeps staring at him. His hair is shaggier than ever, and he looks shamelessly cheerful. "Your saké."
"Yes, princess, my saké," he says, grinning. "Or did you forget about New Year's? I didn't think you were that drunk. But I guess you're probably a lightweight—"
"I wasn't drunk!" she says indignantly, sitting up a little straighter. "I just think you're full of it."
"Oh?" Sokka examines his nails, supremely unconcerned. "Well, be that as it may, I still want my saké back."
"You're lucky I didn't drink it."
"Ahhh, I knew you wouldn't."
"No, you didn't. You didn't know."
"Yes I did. Hey, I've got my Pai Sho board here. You wanna play?"
She's dug the sake out from under her bed, and looks up to make a face at him. He's already settled himself onto the ground in front of her cell. "No."
"What, you don't like Pai Sho?" he asks, rattling the tiles. "Afraid you'll get beat?"
She snorts. "Don't make me laugh."
"Oh, I will eventually."
She reaches out through the bars to set the saké by his knee, and then straightens up, eyeing him. He's busy arranging pieces on the board.
"You sure you don't want to play? I'll give you a run for your money," he says, wiggling his eyebrows up at her. "We can gamble for saké possession."
"I am not going to play you in Pai Sho," she says, putting as much disgust into her voice as she can. "Or anything else, for that matter. Besides, you'd lose your saké, and that would defeat the whole point of you being here, wouldn't it?"
"Don't be so sure about that," he warns her. "I'm a master of strategy."
"Oh really?" she folds her arms. "Then why are you arranging those pieces in the wrong order?"
He squints down at the board. "Am I?"
She rolls her eyes, and can't resist bending down again to fix his mistake. "Idiot."
He just shrugs. "Fine. But I've got three hours until I have to catch the ferry, and I am not walking anywhere else today."
And so he starts to practice, playing solitaire, and she finds herself leaning against the bars to watch him. He's awful, even just against himself, and she can't help but correct his especially stupid mistakes.
"No, you can't do that! That move's illegal. Gods, do you even know the rules?"
"Rules, schmules," Sokka grins. "Who needs 'em?"
"Never gamble," she advises him, and he laughs, so loud and full that, for a second, she forgets to frown at him.
"You wanna teach me?"
"What I want," she says, "is for you to go away and leave me alone."
"You make it too easy to antagonize you," he tells her, and executes another illegal move on the Pai Sho board.
"Okay, that's it," she declares, and drops into a cross-legged position. "Give me my pieces."
She's anticipating a quick thrashing, a sixty-second domination, so when he blocks her first move, she squints at him.
"What, that's not illegal too, is it?"
"No."
She moves again, and he blocks her again. When she moves a different piece, he hops it. Her eyes dart up to his face — he's clearly trying not to laugh.
She scowls. "Oh, it's on."
He grins infuriatingly back at her. "Bring it on, princess."
It turns into the longest game of Pai Sho she's ever played. She gets engrossed in it without meaning to: the joy of actually having something to do, something to think about, is kind of intoxicating. It's maddening too, though — while she studies the board and plans her next five moves, Sokka rambles on about Earth Kingdom warrants and yesterday's bad experience with fire flakes. She has to try hard not to huff in frustration. Agni, it seems like he's not even trying, and yet he keeps blocking her!
"I am going to make you regret this," she swears, and hops one of his pieces.
"Me?" he exclaims. "You're regretting this enough right now for both of us."
"Hardly. I'm going to enjoy crushing you."
He grins at her, almost fondly. "There's that good ol' sadism."
"Shut up."
He leans forward, his blue eyes sparkling with challenge. "Why don't you make me?"
Heat blooms instantly across the back of her neck, and she distracts him by hopping another one of his tiles. She sweeps it into her pile of pieces, and prays that her blush isn't visible on her face.
"There. Now shut up."
"Shit! The arctic wolf is my favorite… okay, hmm…"
They're still going strong an hour later, and when the tower door creaks open, they both jump.
"Councilman?" the guard asks, looking astounded. Azula's dinner steams in his hands. "Don't you need to catch the ferry?"
"Fuck, it's dinnertime already?" Sokka leaps to his feet, his pieces scattering. "I'm gonna be late!"
The guard hovers around the door, looking uncomfortable under Azula's glare as Sokka scrambles around.
"Guess we're gonna have to cut it short, Azula," Sokka says apologetically, sweeping tiles back into his bag. "I'll destroy you next time."
"You wish."
He grins at her, folding up the board. "That's a promise, not a wish."
"Sure." She hesitates. "But who won today?"
He thinks about it, then shrugs. "It's a draw."
"A draw?" she says, horrified.
"Yeah. We almost played to a standstill, anyway."
"There are no draws in Pai Sho!"
"Yes, there are," Sokka says, swinging his bag onto his shoulder. "There are four ways, and you're three moves away from one of them right now."
She sits back, breathing hard out her nose. "You're the worst."
"Whatever you say," he chuckles, and salutes her. "Wish me luck on my mad dash to the docks."
And then he's gone.
She just stares after him. The guard, who's swathed nearly head-to-foot in fireproof fabric, edges towards her cell.
"Is that true?" she demands, her eyes falling onto him. "Are there four ways to draw in Pai Sho?"
He jumps at being addressed, and slides her dinner towards her as fast as he can. "I don't know, princess."
She scoffs. "A draw."
"If anyone would know," he ventures cautiously, "it would probably be Sokka. He knows the rules inside-out. He's beaten everyone in court except General Iroh."
She digests this disgusting piece of information as the guard slides out, looking extremely relieved at her preoccupation.
She eats, barely noticing the pasty consistency of the food. A draw. The audacity of him…
Next time, she vows, scraping the bowl. Next time, she'll get him.
Time continues to pass in seven-day intervals. Sleeping gets a little easier, although the dreams don't let up — what's worse, they start to change, with a pair of blue eyes beginning to crop up everywhere. She tries not to think about it, but she has to admit it's better than dreaming of her father burning her hair to the scalp over, and over, and over.
It's beginning to warm; the nights are thawing, and she can hear the wet breezes outside, even if she can't feel them. She's not expecting him, she tells herself — she's certainly not looking forward to it. She's just noticing a pattern. His visits have become one of the only reliable ways to tell how much time is passing.
She actually eats the lunch when it's brought, and she's resting, just beginning to drift out of a doze, when she becomes aware that there's someone else in the prison tower. She wakes up silently and suddenly and lies still, listening, her senses tingling. She keeps her eyes closed. It sounds like they're just outside her cell, and they're obviously making an effort to be quiet—definitely not a guard, then, and no one else ever comes in here. It's too early for them to bring dinner, anyway. There's a rustle, then silence. Then there's the snap-whoosh! of fire igniting and she leaps up, spinning to send a column of blue flames at her would-be attacker.
"OW!" Sokka yells, dropping a pair of spark rocks and a folder of scrolls, clutching his hand. "What the fuck was that for?"
She claps her hands over her mouth, horrified. "Shit, Sokka, I'm sorry!" She's running over to the bars before she's even thought about what she's doing. "Are you okay?"
He winces and uncurls his hand, examining it. The skin is red and shiny — it's already beginning to blister. "Yeah. I'm okay."
"I'm sorry, I didn't know it was you," she groans. "I heard the spark rocks, and I thought—" she breaks off, staring at him. "Wait, why are you here?"
"To see you, genius!" he snaps. "I didn't know this was the welcome I was going to get!" He sticks a finger in his mouth, sucking on the angry skin.
"Don't do that," she says impatiently. "You'll make it worse. You need cold water and some ointment. And I told you, I didn't know it was you, I didn't mean to burn you."
"Yeah, whatever," he mutters, kicking at the crumpled scrolls around his feet. "And now these are all mixed up…"
"Sokka—"
"...and you singed my bag, too…"
"Stop sucking on it!"
He frowns at her, ready to retort, but then she sees something dawn on his face and he starts to smile.
She stares at him. "What?"
He's still sucking on his finger but he's grinning now. "You said you were sorry."
She huffs. "What?"
"You said you were sorry," he repeats. "You said you didn't mean to burn me, and that you were sorry."
She crosses her arms. For once, she's at a loss.
"No, I didn't."
"Yes, you did. Just now."
"I did not."
"Did too."
She glares at him. "You can't prove it."
Then he laughs, and she realizes that she's kind of missed that sound. "Maybe not," he taps his head, "but it'll live in my memory forever."
She's trying to keep up the glare, but it's proving rather difficult. "Well, you just admitted that you're here to see me."
He freezes, looking like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Well, uh—"
She can't help it — she makes a noise that can only be described as a giggle. He stares at her, and she immediately redoubles her glaring efforts. "Don't look at me like that!"
"I made you laugh. Go on, admit it."
"You did not," she says stiffly. "I was just laughing at your dumb expression. And don't try to change the subject!"
"I didn't," he replies, dropping his injured hand and picking up his spark rocks.
"You did! You said you were here to see me! Go on, admit it."
"Well," he settles himself on the floor, "if that was true, which it's not, you would then have to explain why you're happy about it."
"What? I'm not happy!"
"Of course you're not," he answers, smoothing out a document over his knee. "Because I never said that."
She throws her hands up, and two curls of fire crackle against the ceiling. "Gods, you're impossible!"
"So you keep telling me."
They have another one of those moments where they just stare at each other. She wonders if it's just her imagination that they keep getting longer and longer.
"You should go up to the palace and get that bandaged."
"Nah," he says, dropping his eyes to examine his hand. "That'll fuck with my schedule."
"Your schedule," she repeats.
"Yeah, my schedule." He pulls some linen out of his bag and rips off a strip with his teeth. She wrinkles her nose. "I'm here now, then I have to be in the war room for a meeting at three, and then I have to catch the boat back to the Shu-Jing village at six."
"What are you talking about?"
"Aren't you the one always making fun of me for being a councilman?" he rolls his eyes, now expertly binding up his hand. "Why do you think I'm in Caldera City every month?"
"Oh, I see." She's trying not to stare at his quick-moving fingers. "So you've decided to stick your nose into the rest of the world's business, now."
"Something like that."
He ties off the bandage, and another thought occurs to her. "Why do you even have those spark rocks?"
"Incense," he says, like this is the most obvious thing in the world, and waves a fallen stick of it.
"Why didn't you just ask me to light it?"
He looks at her as though this would have never occurred to him. "Well, you were asleep, and I, uh — I didn't really think that you— "
"What?" she demands. "You didn't think I would do it?"
"Uh, no, not really."
She turns away and he rolls his eyes again. "Come on, Azula, you've got to be joking. You can't blame me for that."
"If I have to tell you to stop calling me that one more fucking time—"
"You'll what?" he interrupts. "Burn me? You've already done that. So just keep me company while I work on this, would you?"
She wants to retort, but she loses her train of thought as she watches him start to re-alphabetize his papers. A lock of dark brown hair has come loose from his ponytail, and it flops into his eyes when he bends his head to fiddle with the calligraphy set. She doesn't say anything, but she leans her elbows against the bars, watching him. He glances up to see if she's still there and their eyes meet; they share something like a smile, cautious and curious.
"What is it?"
"A proposition for Li Wei," he says, and spreads out a scroll dense and black with characters, many of them scratched out. "He's a huge landowner in the Earth Kingdom, and he's been required for years to give a high quota of his produce and grain to the Fire Nation. Now that the war's over, he doesn't want to do it anymore, but a lot of the soldiers depend on it. Several colony towns, too."
"I remember that name," she says slowly. "So, what's your plan?"
"Well, I don't know," he says pensively, staring down at the mess of ink in front of him. "We've tried and failed several times already to come to an agreement, but a month of the new quarter's gone by already and he hasn't provided anything. It's going to mean serious overextension of resources unless we can figure something out soon."
She crouches in front of him and holds out her hand. He gives her a confused look and she clicks her fingers impatiently. "The incense."
He hands it to her through the bars and she pinches the ends of it, sticking it into her own burning tray. The fragrant smoke begins to curl up at once — it's fresh, something like lime verbena and cherries. She approves of his taste.
"So, tell me," she says, settling herself into a cross-legged position, "what it is that you've tried already."
He looks at her for a second, surprised, and then turns his gaze to the scroll. She watches his eyes move, two brilliant chips of ice in his dark face, sliding easily down the characters as he explains. She listens as best she can; it's been a long time since she was involved in anything like this.
"You're being too nice," she says finally. He rolls his eyes for the third time that day.
"Oh, please. You would say that if we fireballed him and took the tomatoes by force."
"Well, that sounds like a perfectly fine strategy to me," she sniffs. "But since you don't want to do that, you need to keep the idea of equivalent retaliation in mind."
He raises an eyebrow. "And that is?"
"Always cooperate, until provoked. If provoked, always retaliate with equal force." She shakes her head. "You're not doing a good job using equal force."
"Well it's not like we've just let him off the hook completely—"
"I know that," she says. "But he ignored your deadline of the first quarter. You can't let him box you in by following his deadline."
"But if no one's following deadlines everything'll just fall into chaos!"
He looks so genuinely distressed by this idea that she has to laugh. "It's about control, not chaos. You're a councilman. Zuko is the Fire Lord, for Agni's sake. This is a farmer. Even if he is important in his own little world, you can't let him push you around. You need to remind him who's boss."
"Yeah, and then he'll get offended and refuse to agree to anything."
"Not so," she counters. "Try it. Build golden bridges. Give him some wins in the deal but make it sound like he doesn't have a choice, like this is your final offer before you really do just fireball him and take the tomatoes."
He narrows his eyes, grinning slyly with his paintbrush between his teeth. "I didn't know you had a sense of humor."
"I don't," she says primly. "Don't be silly."
He laughs, and warmth surges through her middle. "Please. I'm never silly."
A moment passes and she realizes that they're almost smiling at each other again. She drops her eyes and clears her throat.
"So, what are you going to do?"
He taps the brush against his cheek. "I'm thinking… something to do with the taxes. Maybe offer to take off a percentage of the taxes he pays to import the goods? I'm sure he's making more money in the Fire Nation than he is in the Earth Kingdom, anyway, seeing as most fresh produce is already marked up here."
"So he probably doesn't even really want to ax the deal," she agrees. "He just wants a better one. But how are you going to make up for that loss of revenue?"
"I can ask Zuko to do some fiddling with the bookkeeping, rearrange some numbers. He's going to cut military funding, so maybe that can be where it comes out of."
She scowls. "He's going to what?"
"I know it might be hard to get used to the idea," he says quietly, "but he wants to invest more of that money into domestic schools and technology. We don't need cutting-edge war machines anymore."
"But that's going to threaten national security!"
"No, it's not," Sokka says impatiently. "Think! Do you really think the Water Tribes are eager to attack the Fire Nation? Do you really think the Earth Kingdom wants to have you knocking at their door all day and night again? Of course not. There'll still be national security, there's just going to be less national aggression."
"You sound awfully ignorant."
"And you sound awfully set in your ways."
She scowls.
"Anyways," he says, ignoring her and dipping his brush into the ink, "you're probably right, we have been too nice. It's time to repent, not time to grovel."
She approves of this, even though she won't open her mouth to tell him.
They're both quiet for a while. She knows she should work over the latest problem of Zuko's idiocy, but she gets preoccupied watching Sokka write. She rests her chin on top of a bar, studying the scene — she likes the way he looks right now, focusing hard with his eyebrows furrowed. The smoke from the incense is making her feel warm and distracted, and she finds herself studying his mouth. He catches his bottom lip between his teeth, worries it back and forth a bit, then releases it. It's full, curved and soft-looking, and the pink tip of his tongue pokes out just above it in concentration. That mouth… he's always shooting it off, always talking back… if losing his tongue would be a loss to all of womankind, she wonders what there is to be gained by leaving it in his head.
She shifts. He's almost certainly involved with someone — as annoying as he is, he's not completely hideous. She doesn't like this thought, of Sokka getting on the Shu-Jing ferry and sailing back to some loser who's not half as smart as he is. A memory comes back to her as if across an ocean, hazy and half-forgotten, of the pain in his face when she'd taunted him about that girl. She'd lied, of course, made it all up just to provoke him, and it had worked. It'd been easy, even though he'd realized it was a trap... He'd been so close to her then, just inches from her face, anguished and angry… but she'd been the one in control then. Now, she's not so sure.
"You okay?"
She blinks. "Hm?"
"I said, are you okay?" He's paused, looking at her with his dripping brush raised. "You look upset."
"I'm fine."
"If you say so," he says skeptically. When he turns his attention back to what he's doing, she notices for the first time that he's writing with his left hand, the burned and bandaged right curled gingerly in his lap.
"I didn't know you were ambidextrous."
Now it's his turn to look confused. "What?"
"You're ambidextrous. When you showed me that statement of war crimes you were writing with your right hand."
She had no idea this piece of information was even in her memory banks. She almost kicks herself for allowing it to come to the surface, but he just grins at her roguishly.
"Yeah. What, you didn't expect me to be good with my hands?"
He winks at her, and she blushes immediately. Now she really wants to kick herself.
"Oh — you're disgusting!"
"Whatever you say, princess," he shrugs, and rolls out a blank scroll next to the old one. She scoots a little closer to the bars in spite of herself, cheeks still burning, and peers at the rough draft.
"Did you come up with something?"
"Uh huh," he grunts, brush held between his teeth again as he tidies up. "And I'm done after this, he can take it or leave it. This is my final word on the whole fucking thing."
"That's the spirit."
He flashes her a smile, and even she can't come up with an excuse for the backflip that her stomach performs.
CREEEAAAK!
The door swings open and she jumps from the ground, hands up, just as her brother walks through it. He stops dead at the end of the hallway, eyes widening at the scene in front of him, then continues forward. Sokka just glances up before turning his attention back to his scroll, carefully painting a title across the top.
"Hey, Zuko."
"Uh, hey," he answers, confusion written all over his face. He glances at his sister. "Azula."
"What do you want?" she snarls, fire flaring to life above her hands. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Sokka glance up at her, looking surprised, but she doesn't care. She's filled with a sudden and violent anger that her stupid brother is here, that he's interrupting.
"Cool it," Zuko says, crossing his arms. "I'm just looking for my Water Tribe councilman, who's been missing in action for nearly three hours."
"You found me," Sokka says, now writing a header underneath his title. "What do you win?"
"Well, I'm hoping for a Li Wei proposition so we're not empty-handed this afternoon."
And now Sokka's attention is going to be occupied with explaining the tediums of diplomacy to Zuko, who's apparently too dense to study them even though he's the Fire Lord. Something caves inside her chest and she throws the flames to the ground in disgust.
FWOOOOOM!
They explode against the stones, sending searing heat over all of them and adding a dozen more scorch marks. Sokka yelps, protecting his papers, and Zuko drops into a bending stance.
"Don't bother," she spits at him. "Just go play politics somewhere else and stop disturbing me."
He looks at her warily and then glances at Sokka, who's busy batting out a spark threatening his mobile library. She watches her brother's eyes and feels her heart drop when they center on the bandaged hand. She knows what's coming next, and—
"What happened there?" Zuko points.
"Grabbed a hot poker in my room last night," Sokka says, picking his brush back up. "I was just being dumb, falling asleep over this stupid document and not paying attention."
Zuko frowns, and a profoundly unfamiliar emotion floods through her. She glances at Sokka — he's continuing to write out characters, not even bothering to look up at either one of them. Agni, he lied to the Fire Lord, and he lied for her sake. Is this the same man who wanted her killed five months ago?
"Well, okay, but you should probably let them look at it up at the palace."
"Yeah, I will before I leave tonight."
There's silence, broken only by the swish of Sokka's brush. She's still standing in the center of her cell, the floor smoking at her feet, unable to decide where to look or what to think. Zuko clears his throat, glancing between the two of them again.
"Well… okay. Meeting starts in half an hour, Sokka, so you better save time for the walk back to the palace."
"Yeah, I will."
Zuko waits, like he's hoping for some kind of explanation, but none is offered.
"Oh-kay. I guess I'll see you later."
He turns and walks down the hall, stopping one more time before he opens the door. She watches his eyes trace over both of them, a frown etched into his features, and she knows that Sokka's going to get an interrogation later. What surprises her is her confidence that he'll be able to handle it.
"See you, hotman."
Zuko rolls his eyes so hard she's sure they're going to stick up in his head and huffs out of the tower. She almost wants to laugh at her brother's dramatics, but she's too distracted to fully appreciate them.
Sokka doesn't say anything once Zuko's gone, so neither does she. Instead, she walks over to her bed and sinks onto it. Whereas before the silence between them was comfortable, companionable, now it's been charged up with unsaid things and unasked questions. She feels the weight of it, pressing down on her and tensing her muscles, but he seems unbothered: he just keeps writing, checking his rough draft or a library scroll from time to time and humming that haunting melody. She can almost hear the minutes ticking towards when he'll have to leave again, and she's dreading it. She wishes that she was still right in front of him, close enough to examine the curve of his lips and the color of his eyelashes, but it's too late now — the silence is too great and the stillness too established for her to get up and break it.
When he finally sits back from the scroll, he sighs with satisfaction. "There. Done."
She doesn't say anything. When he looks up, their eyes meet across the room, and she feels a jolting shiver travel through her. She can almost hear the crackle of it, the energy that hangs between them, that pressing and pulling that leaves her breathless. Now he's not saying anything, just looking at her, and the air is darkening with the rapidity of a monsoon. She knows she can't look away first, but gods it's difficult, and her body is coiled so tightly that she feels like each passing second is the one where she'll explode—
"Thank you."
Such a simple thing, just two words, but he's looking straight into her eyes and saying it in that low rough way that makes her shiver all over again.
"For what?"
"For your help."
She's struck mute as she watches him gather his papers up, stretching his back and slinging his bag onto his shoulder. The air is still heavy between them and she knows she should say something, but her senses seem to have short-circuited — all she can see is his hand wrapped in linen, and all she can smell is the burnt-out incense. He looks at her like he's waiting for something, but when she doesn't give it, he just rolls up his finished manuscript and walks towards the door. She knows what she needs to say, but it's so hard to choke it out, so hard to form words that she's only said a handful of times in her entire life—
"Thank you."
He stops. Turns around.
"For what?"
She bites her lip. "For… for your help."
He smiles. "No problem. I've got your back, fire lily."
She thinks she almost smiles back, and he winks at her one more time before the door thuds shut behind him.
It's only after he's gone that she remembers she's not supposed to let him call her that.
It's nighttime when she's woken up again, this time by someone who isn't trying to be quiet at all.
"Azula!"
The door slams, and this voice is nothing like the one from her dreams. She rolls over.
"What do you want, Zuzu?"
She watches as her brother strides over to her cell and grips the bars, obviously fuming. She yawns.
"I want to know what you think you're playing at!"
She stretches. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Bullshit," Zuko snaps. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. Why was he in here with you? What did you do to him?"
"I didn't do anything," she smirks. "If you want to know why he was in here, you'll have to ask him. It's not like I forced him to come. I'm powerless in here, remember?"
Zuko exhales hard, fire flaring from his nostrils. "When are you going to realize that you can't do this stuff anymore?"
"When it snows in summer, Zuko."
He scowls mightily. "And that burn on his hand, you expect me to believe he got that from a poker and not from you? You've attacked anyone and everyone I've put near you, and Sokka's not exactly a pacifist."
"No. He's very impertinent."
He lowers his chin.. "I swear to the gods, Azula… if you hurt him, it'll be the Boiling Rock, and you'll be on your way there the second I find out."
She laughs. "You couldn't find anything out if you sat on it, Zuko. Don't flatter yourself."
She waits for him to yell at her, but he just grits his teeth. "I'm not kidding, Azula. That's my brother. You wouldn't deserve him if you repented for a hundred lifetimes, and I'm not going to let you manipulate him."
She feels a crack in her chest, and before she knows it she's leapt out of bed. A white-hot tunnel of flames spirals towards Zuko, who swipes it aside with both hands.
"What would you know?" she snarls. "I suppose he's just forgiven everything you've ever done to him? All the times you tried to shoot him down, all the times you tried to capture him?"
Zuko seems surprised by this sudden explosion of anger. "I— "
"You what?" she shrieks, punctuating each word with bolts of fire. He dodges, sends up a wall of yellow flames to block her, but she doesn't let up. "You what, exactly? Have you repented for a hundred lifetimes, Zuko? Have you been locked in a dark tower for a year and a half? Tell me more about how much you've suffered! Tell me more about how I'll never be good enough!"
"It has nothing to do with that!" he yells back, looking astounded even as he ducks and rolls to avoid her fire. "I just don't want you hurting my friend!"
She laughs, and even to her ears it's an insane sound. "Oh, what a saint!"
The door to the tower crashes open, and the soldiers that keep guard outside burst into the hall.
"Fire Lord Zuko— "
She sends a wave of fire towards them without thinking twice about it; this is a private affair. She realizes that her cheeks are wet.
"Out!" Zuko yells as they all duck. "Get out! I can handle her myself!"
"Oh, you can, can you?"
The door slams. The room is blurry to her eyes, the air heavy and hot. Zuko's epaulet is smoking. "I wouldn't be so sure, if I were you!"
"Save it!" He leaps backwards and then off the wall, somersaulting to kick a huge curl of flames at her. She's forced to defend, and she backs up until she's against the wall. She knows that she needs to attack, aggress, but she can barely see through the tears now rolling down her face. She can feel it all slipping, feel it all fracturing apart again, and she shoots wave after wave of fire until she starts missing him by feet.
"Azula."
He's noticed her tears. The orange wall in front of her sinks into the ground. One last tendril of blue lashes against the floor near his feet and dies. The fire stops coming from both of them, and the silence is deafening.
Her brother walks slowly forward. He's smoldering profusely; she's burned off the hem of his robe. She, on the other hand, hasn't been touched — years ago, she would have taken this as another example of her own prowess, but now she's sure that he's not even trying to hurt her. The thought just makes her angrier, and she sucks in a shuddering breath.
"Azula?" He grips the bars again, but now he looks confused, awed, worried. "Azula, what is it?"
She wants to laugh in his face, taunt him, but she can't. There's probably a way for her to take advantage here, to think strategically and bend him to her will, but she just can't focus long enough to do it.
"Azula. Talk to me."
"Why should I?"
"Because I'm asking you to," he says gently, and he sounds so much like their mother in that moment that she almost sobs. "I want to know why you're upset. What's going on with you and Sokka?"
She turns away. "I don't know." She hates how small her voice sounds.
"You don't know?"
"No, I— I…"
"You can tell me."
She scowls wetly at him then, over her shoulder. "Oh, can I, Zuko? What reason have you ever given me to trust you?"
"Well, what reason have you ever given me to care about you?" It's a brutal statement, but he says it mildly. "Not much, but I try to anyway. I know you don't trust me. But maybe you could… try."
They're both quiet for a second.
"He was just visiting me." The words spill out of her mouth, unbidden. "He does every once in a while. That's it."
Zuko frowns. "He does? I thought he hated you."
She wants to get angry, but it seems that she's cried it all out. "Well… I did too."
"Huh." He looks so stumped, so dumb and so very like himself that she smiles a tiny smile through her tears. "I wonder why."
"You didn't ask him this afternoon?"
"Well… kind of," he shifts from foot to foot. "I tried. But the meeting went long and he was late to catch the boat, so he had to run to the docks. I didn't get much of a chance to grill him."
"He came on my birthday," she says, and she wonders why her mouth keeps volunteering information.
"Well, that part I knew about. I didn't have time to come, and I asked him to deliver your gift. But I just assumed he'd leave it at the door with the guards, I didn't know that he actually came inside…"
They look at each other for a moment.
"So, what's the deal?" Zuko asks quietly, like he's deathly afraid of the answer. "What's your deal?"
She turns and walks the length of the cell. Now's the time, if she's going to weasel her way out of this one. Now's the time, if she's going to play the whole thing off, and then she and Zuko can go back to their usual hostility, she and Sokka can go back to… what?
"I guess I… sort of… care about him."
Zuko blinks. "You do?"
"Yes," she says defiantly. "I can care about people too, Zuzu."
"Um… okay." He rubs his eyes like he thinks he might be dreaming. "You... um, okay."
"Don't sound so surprised."
"It's hard not to."
She just sighs. "Whatever, Zuko."
He looks at her oddly, like she's freaking him out. "Okay. You care about Sokka. Uh… does he care about you, too?"
He's voiced the question that's been torturing her for months, and she squeezes her eyes shut, willing the world to fall away.
"Don't ask me that."
"You don't know," Zuko says, realization creeping into his voice. "You hope he does, but you don't know."
"Zuko!" she snaps. "Don't!"
"Okay, okay," he says, holding his hands up. "Sorry. I just… wow."
"You're not making me feel any better here!"
"Sorry," he says again, and laces his fingers together. "Do you want me to ask him for you?"
"No!" she chokes. "Don't you dare!"
"I could do it subtly. I wouldn't tell him we talked about it."
"Absolutely not," she says. Her heart is pounding in her throat at the very thought. "Don't, Zuko."
"Okay, I won't if you don't want me to. What do you want me to do?"
"Nothing!" she snarls. "The fact that you know at all is bad enough!"
"Fine, fine," he says, raising his hands again. "I'll stay out of it. I just don't understand how this happened, I guess. How did he even get near you without you hitting him with lightning?"
The next words tumble out before she can stop herself. "I can't shoot lightning anymore."
He looks at her like she's really insane now. "You what?"
Fuck. She leans against the wall and covers her face with her hands. What is happening to me?
"Woah. Azula. Is that true?"
"That's why I said it, idiot," she mumbles. "Gods, you're dense."
She waits for him to make fun of her, knowing that she won't be able to blame him, because it's what she would do. She's fallen, cracked up, and she's not even good enough to be better than him anymore. How many times did she mock him about his firebending? How often did she hold her own skill over his head? And now… she closes her eyes and waits for the blow to fall.
"I'm really sorry," he says softly. "That must be really hard."
She opens her eyes slowly and looks at him. He's still there, his hands around the bars now, looking at her like he can't believe it. She crosses her arms.
"I don't need your pity."
"It's not pity, it's empathy," he retorts. "I almost lost my firebending when I left to find Aang. It was one of the most devastating things I've ever been through."
"Almost?" she wrinkles her nose. "There wasn't a whole lot to lose in the first place."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he rolls his eyes. "You get my point." He eyes her suspiciously for a minute, like he's wondering if she's really telling the truth. "You really can't do it anymore? You've tried more than once? "
"Yes, Zuzu." She's beginning to realize how tired she feels. "Over and over and over."
"Well, shit." He puts his hand to his chin, the way he does when he's thinking hard. "I guess after Sozin's comet, and your…" he glances at her, and the unspoken word hangs in the air between them. Breakdown. "Well, I guess that that would have taken it away, since you lost your peace of mind. But if you still can't do it now, you must have permanently changed."
Her stomach flutters in panic. "Do you think I'll never be able to do it again?"
She can't even remember the last time she asked him something like this, genuinely and fearfully, with all of her hopes weighing on his opinion. Maybe never. Suddenly they're little kids in the garden again, and her big brother is showing her the wonders of fire for the first time.
"No," he says slowly, "no, I think you should be able to relearn. But it'll take work, and it'll take even more personal growth than you've already gone under."
"Personal growth? But I haven't changed. I don't want to change."
"I don't think you've had much choice in the matter, 'Zula."
She should fry him for that, but she's got bigger things to worry about. "But I want a choice. I need a choice."
Zuko shakes his head slowly. "Azula… I know you've always had a hard time letting go, but sometimes it's the best way to move forward. A pebble in a river doesn't get to decide where it goes, but by the time it gets there, it'll be smoother than when the journey began. Maybe this is that time of life for you."
She rolls her eyes at him. "Agni, you sound like Uncle."
"I kind of do, don't I?" He looks rather pleased with himself, then snaps his fingers so loudly that she jumps. "That's it! I'll ask Uncle about it! If anyone would know how you can get it back, it'd be him."
"No," she says immediately. "I don't want him to know."
"What? Why not?"
"Well, because— well, just because."
"Azula," Zuko says exasperatedly.
"Because he hates me!" she cries, throwing her hands up. "Because he hates me and I don't want him to know that I'm this weak, is that what you want me to say?"
"He doesn't hate you," Zuko says at once. "You're still his niece. And you're not weak. Being human doesn't make you weak, and neither does having feelings. If you're embarrassed about it, then okay, I get that. I won't tell him it's about you. I'll make it sound purely theoretical, alright?"
She doesn't say anything, scuffing at the edge of a cobblestone with her toe.
"Azula," he repeats. "Alright?"
"Alright," she says finally, scowling. "Fine. But if you tell anyone about this— and I mean any of it— "
"I won't," Zuko says. "I promise."
A bit of the heat inside her chest seems to have lessened. He looks at her a minute longer, but she's silent — the show's over. That's more than enough sharing for today.
"Okay, well, I guess I'm going to go." He glances around at the smoldering floor. "Agni, it's a mess in here. If I send someone in to scrub off the stones, do you think you could resist destroying them?"
"I guess," she mutters.
He almost cracks a smile, which, for her brother, is saying a lot. "Thanks. And Azula? Sokka's got a good heart. Don't use him, alright?"
He's gone before she answers, the door swinging shut behind him. Smoke curls up from the floor, a strange mix of lime verbena and ash filling the air.
"I wasn't planning on it."
It's a realization that surprises even her.