Rewrite, Rewind
Chapter 39
Her mother was burning in green flame.
Yang wasn't moving and her head was bleeding.
Her mother wasn't moving and her body was turning to ashes.
The fire from her mother's body was going to spread to Yang soon.
I begged and pleaded all night long. Azula thought, staring at the women's bodies, ignoring the tears that fell down her face. Why could you not save them?
"Fire!" she felt the burst of fire explode from the men above her on solid ground. she reacted without thinking, ignoring Yang's stern voice to remain hidden no matter what. She screamed as she burst from the Dragon Tree's branches, a silent curse in her mind aimed at Agni. She moved with a fluid grace she never thought she'd achieve, ripping the green fire off her mother's body and sending up to the roots that surrounded the hidden place. The men above screamed, startled and afraid with the sudden burst of heat surrounding them. The balls of fire they sent down curved with her careless swing, crashing around her in a dangerous crescent.
"Is that her?" one of the men asked, "is that the princess that man was looking for?"
"Anyone else around here powerful enough to move green fire?!" One of the men bellowed, "she can't create it, that's our fortune. Get down there and grab her!"
"We'll get a fortune for this brat!" the men laughed as they leaped over the green fire, smirking as they saw it turn gold with its cooling temperature. It wouldn't be long before the fire was orange and they could use it against the brat.
"Never underestimate your opponent," Azula ordered, remembering the harsh lesson she received from Jeong-Jeong after they first met. She raised her hands, the orange flames around her grew, turning yellow-gold with her silent demand. Then she spun her arms, stepped forward and ordered the flames to follow her. the men screamed as they descended into a yellow-golden abyss of no return. Their burning corpses left to her to manipulate out of the air and away from her mother and Yang.
"Pay attention closely sweet girl," Yang giggled as she swept out onto the patio of the palace hall, dressed in servant robes but wearing a graceful ribbon twice as long as she was tall. "This is a dance I learned for my tenth birthday. When you turn ten, I will teach you the dance."
Azula never knew a dance could bring so much power to her flames. She spun and twisted, dipping low and rising fast. Her flames twisted and turned, taking shape before her eyes. A thousand tiny suns surrounded her, swirling through the small hole in the earth. As she spun, raising her arms and twisting her wrists, the tiny suns followed her and rose ever higher into the air. Before long the men above were trying to run away, but it was too late. The red-gold suns had reached the branches high overhead and began to spread. Azula continued her circular dance, spinning around her mother and nanny with carefully practiced steps.
Azula never saw the dragon carved from red-gold flame. She only continued her dance, wondering what it would be like to chase the men who hurt her family. To corner them against a dry tree, to rise above them and glare down before descending upon them with an unforgiving roar. She imagined what their distant faces she never got to see would look like then, would they still be smeared dark figures amongst her red-golden flames?
In the end, it didn't matter. She only repeated the steps she knew, twisting and turning, rising and lowering her arms, curling her fingers and spreading them wide. There was only one part of the dance Azula knew and she only had the first twenty steps down. The Lady Dragon Dance was a long exhausting routine with seven parts and each part containing fifty steps and movements.
It was difficult but Yang kept her word, teaching Azula the dance ten steps at a time.
If Azula had more time, maybe she would've mastered the dance before Yang died.
"haaaaa!" Azula was spinning around the feet of her mother and Yang when the terrified scream sounded overhead. She looked up as she spun, seeing only a flash of pink before a hammer of pain crashed into her skull and she collapsed to the burning silver stones unconscious.
She awoke in the warmth of the late afternoon sun, the steady heartbeat of a slumbering creature beneath her kept her drowsy. Her eyes opened slowly, feeling much too heavy for the time of day she instinctively knew. She kept her breathing steady and deep, staring out at her blurry surroundings, waiting for her vision to clear. She could see the black scorched stone, wooden stands half destroyed with still smoldering charcoal. Her hearing was slowly sharpening, like her vision, pushing the ringing aside to focus in on what was happening. There were voices, distant at first, slowly picking up in volume as her slumber slowly slithered away. The voices were panicked, cracking at odd moments as she tried to clear the fog from her mind.
She watched as familiar soldiers began walking past her as if she didn't exist, she watched them for a moment, looking at the sigils sown discreetly on their upper sleeves. A soldier passed her slowly, barely a step away from her sprawled out feet, giving her a perfect view of the strange symbol she previously had foggy vision on. It looked like two phoenix feathers; their ends twisted together into a sharp dagger. That was not a familiar soldier crest. It was not a crest of the Fire Nation Soldiers. It was not a crest of Place guards nor of the Imperial guards. As a princess of the Fire Nation, Azula took pride in knowing all the crests of every general and station of the Fire Nation Military. It was something both her grandfather and mother praised her for, not even Zuko knew all the Military crests like she did.
But she did not recognize that crest of a phoenix feathers twisting into a dagger.
All of a sudden Azula was fully awake, her golden eyes wide as her head turned to follow the soldier. as she stared she saw short gray hair and thick gray sideburns, thick hands tucked behind himself in confidence, and an evil smirk on his square face. Her head turned as he continued forward, watching him walk away from her and towards something else, something she could hardly hear over the pounding rushing blood in her veins. She looked beyond the marching man with the crest she didn't recognize, seeing what made him so happy with that evil grin of his.
There were soldiers marching towards a group of civilians, many of whom were young couples and children of her Hirahara Capital City. She recognized a few faces, despite the black stripes on their pale skin. She searched the faces, staring at them in desperation for someone familiar, one of her siblings or guardians or-or—she watched as the soldiers swept low before sending out a wall of orange flame.
Screams sounded through the heartbeats pounding through her ears.
These phoenix-dagger soldiers were killing her people.
And what was she doing about it? Lazing against a giant furry creature with a steady heartbeat that threatened to lull her back to sleep. Three figures beyond the golden flames stood out, a nobleman's ghostly daughter was standing defiantly before two injured boys, a scarlet dagger in each hand.
Mai, Azula thought, her chest constricting in pain at the sight of her burned friend. Behind Mai, she watched as the two boys scrambled back onto their feet, the one with longer hair tugging his slightly taller friend onto his feet. Ruon-Jian… she recognized the shy soft-spoken boy, then her eyes turned to the boy Ruon-Jian was trying to hold up. Chan. The boy was heavily burned, his tunic shirt missing to reveal his patch-mark scorched skin. His left leg was bandaged and bleeding, his left shoulder was scraped and bruised, a messy knot from a carelessly wrapped bandage stood out most to her. She knew in that moment that Chan had gotten hurt trying to save someone, he always got hurt when he tried to save someone.
She watched as the man with gray hair stopped short at the edge of the golden wall between her friends and the soldiers. Smirking the man slowly raised his hand, a giant orange-yellow flame bursting forth like a great blade ready to slice them in half. It was another moment of Azula moving without thinking. She twisted and propelled herself forward, white-blue flames exploding from her feet and hands. She charged the man with gray hair, snarling as he turned to look at her in surprise.
Agni, Azula thought as she burst past and burnt several soldiers. Prove yourself living. Prove yourself to me. Prove you exist. Prove it by helping me protect them. She thrust both hands forward, sending a condensed blade of white-blue flame at the man with gray hair. He used a burst of orange-yellow fire at his feet to dodge the attack. She didn't think or hesitate as she twisted, smoothly sliding through the dance Yang taught her. The white-blue flames twisted and turned, consuming the orange-yellow and white-yellow flames that were eating her city and threatening her friends.
"RUN!" Azula screamed, twisting to send a whip of white-blue fire at a wall of soldiers. "I'll catch up, just RUN!"
"Azula!" Mai's voice cracked; the neutrality she normally spoke with breaking for the first time since they met five years ago. "No! we finally found you! I can't—" she stopped, choking on her words with a harsh cough.
"Mai!" Ruon-Jian's voice cracked about the same time as his best friend's.
"Azu no!" Chan's voice cracked simultaneously as Ruon-Jian's cry, "not you too!" She didn't know who Chan lost, she was scared of that answer but she had to keep fighting, her new flames would not hold out for long.
"I'll catch up, just go!" Azula ordered, "I am Princess Azula! Daughter of Princess Ursa and Prince Ikem! Granddaughter of Azulon! Niece to the dragon of the west!" Her friends didn't need the reminders; they knew all that well enough but it was working on the soldiers; they were sharing bewildered confused looks. "You dare to lay siege to my home!"
Prove yourself to me Agni. Prove to me you exist.
Azula didn't know it but her white-blue flames towered high over her, feeding on the fuel of weaker flames, it took the shape of a towering lizard-beast with white eyes and a muzzle bursting with white sparks.
"Prepare to pay the price!" Azula roared, copying the steep sweeping motion Yang had used to pull water from the air. However, Azula used the motion to grow her flames bigger before sending it forward with a screech she could not explain.
"Azu!" Chan's voice cracked behind her, "no! Azula!"
"Don't worry," Azula called out as her flames chased the soldier's away. "I'll catch up to you." She didn't look back, hearing Ruon-Jian pull Mai back too.
"No!" Mai suddenly screamed and lunged at Azula, "We can make it! Come with us!" Mai yanked on Azula's shoulders, forcing her friend to face her. her next words died in her throat, staring at Azula's ash-covered face.
"Its okay Mai," Azula smiled at Mai, ignoring the damp feeling on her cheeks. "My family was the target. So long as I stay, you should get away free."
"Your family," Mai repeated slowly. Azula turned and blocked an orange-yellow fireball, making it weave into her white-blue flame and sending out a flaming whip. "no," Mai's voice was a broken whisper, "no, no, not him. Zuko-he—he's not—"
"You know what happens when Zuzu Fire Bends," Azula said slow and soft. "I'm the last one. So get away while you still can. It's okay."
"No," Mai whimpered, "no, no, no, no! NO! NO! NO!"
"Shut up and go!" Azula's voice cracked out over Mai's distorted crying. Silencing the girl so that Azula could continue. "I said go damn it! I can't keep them back if you're still here! Don't make our life meaningless! Just get out of here!"
"Hurry! Over here!" Azula didn't look back at the new voice, a part of her recognized it but she ignored that dark sinking feeling. She turned her attention to the soldiers steadying moving towards her, poses ready and flames braced before themselves. She heard an animal behind her grunt with displeasure, then the sound of a whip and the beast took off. The ground rumbled with its bounds; the sounds of her crying friends faded into the loud echoing roar of her newfound white-blue flames.
Prove yourself Agni, Azula thought, she glanced down at her hands, her clothes had never been so torn and burnt before. She looked back up at the soldiers slowly approaching her. Prove to me you exist.
"Give up little girl!" the man with gray hair ordered, his smug smirk was replaced with an irritated scowl. "you're surrounded and outnumbered!" Azula set her stance in the same manner her grandfather taught her when she was trying to use spark rocks to start a fire. The difference was instead of encouraging a flame into life without using bending, she was summoning her inner fire to her throat so she could breathe it out like her uncle Iroh said in his many war stories.
"You're outclassed!" Azula snarled, she took a deep breath, feeling the fire inside her body grow eagerly, singing the little bit of cloth still touching her pale burnt skin.
"STOP HER!"
She breathed out a rotating wave of purple flame.
Help me burn this city to ash and bone.
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