AN: To answer Sombrage I touched a little on why Azula (in this fic) has no care for Mai in this chapter. However, I would argue Azula never respected Mai for being fearless of her. In fact, Azula in canon counted on Mai being afraid to control her. It broke Azula to see fear failed in favour of love for Zuko at the Boiling Rock, when Azula had been taught love was weakness.
(XII)
Azula's eyes felt welded shut. Her skull thrummed, beating like a gong, echoes of the ache scattered along her nerves and caused her muscles to tighten.
She was alive, then, a fact reinforced by her forceful cough. A stabbing pain jostled her lungs. It was all she could do to remain still without passing out again. She couldn't hold her groan, or the ensuing sickness that thrust itself from stomach into a conveniently placed bucket in a series of harsh retches.
Convenient? Or intended?
Before she could ponder the ramifications of the mysterious bucket, her mind swam again. Pulled through a grey haze. Azula couldn't remember anything since the second day in this Agni-damned forest... But she knew this wasn't the second day. Gaps in her mind parted like trees in the wind. As if peering through the arc dividing distant mountains. Her uneasy thoughts were pulled by the crackling of firewood, the scent of cooked meat rolling from the pyre with succulent promises.
"You are safe." A voice replied, a deep baritone and gravelly throat betrayed him as an elder.
"Don't touch me!" Eyes hardened with growing fury as Azula grit her teeth, forcing through the pain. Blue fire spat from her palms and the stranger stepped back and swept the flames away. She tried to raise up to attack the man further, but a fierce pain in her side chained her to her makeshift cot.
Then she remembered the earthbenders who'd attacked... She killed one with lightning.
The arrow that found her waist.
"I mean you no harm. I am not even near you." He replied, voice level, stern, hands raised in surrender.
She almost believed it to sound honest. But honesty was a lie: Zuko was a liar, father was a liar, Mai was a liar, Ty Lee was a liar and her mother was the biggest liar of them all. All liars, she guessed she was a liar, too. Fragmented truths were all her life was built upon.
Falsehoods and treason.
Her chest was heavy under the ragged rising of her breaths, a wild inferno brewed behind her gaze, barely kept in check by his pacifism.
She moved her hand to the now bandaged wound with a wince.
He'd healed her... What gave him the right to lay a finger on her?! She would've lashed out further if the ability to do so was there. Instead, she glared through her own nausea, ignoring just how pathetic she must truly look.
Azula must've made for a sorry sight indeed: half her face wrapped in bandages to hide burns, her upper arm, chest and shoulder scorched and blistered, an angry pink handprint still clung to her wrist, skin drained by dehydration and dark circles pulling her eyes into a droop. To say nothing of her undoubtedly disgraceful hygiene.
She felt more shame in herself than the defeated Agni Kai could ever instil. She'd neglected her hygiene in those empty memories, then? What beast took control of her mind in that time, to neglect such proper routine tradition as hygiene?!
Whatever visual frustrations she wanted to vent would have to wait. Everything ached. No doubt the earthbenders left her sporting a new assortment of purple bruises to decorate her noble status, atop the ones she could already feel. What more was a piercing arrow wound to the waist, and the cauterized burn above, to an extensive list of weaknesses? Scorched, half-blind, wounded, utterly filthy.
This was no life to live, Azula concluded with a mirthless stare into the distant dark. She'd always been strong. Now, for the first time ever, Azula did not feel strong. Without direction and feeling half-dead, the future painted a grim picture. She felt weak.
Her father was right. Wretched indeed.
Death was a more dignified end than this.
"You should've just let me die." Azula turned on her side, still facing the man, and stated the words like fact. There was no self-loathing there to be found. "Because I should kill you for having the audacity to bring me wherever here is."
Don't touch me. Not Zuko, not father-not even mother had that right.
"Maybe I should have." He entertained, "Many would agree with you. Many more would take pleasure in being the ones to do it."
Azula raised her chin and struggled to pierce the haze of fog clouding her mind. She guessed his location with her glare. "You know who I am?"
He nodded, bringing a cup to his lips and sipping.
"So, why did you rob me of death?" Azula grimaced as she propped herself up further against the protest of her stinging waist. "More valuable as a prisoner. Is that it?"
The white-haired man let out a slow exhale as he regarded her. "Do you want the answer that you want to hear, or the truth that you may not like?"
Azula scoffed and glared daggers into one of his pairs of eyes. It was hard to tell with how blurry her half-sighted gaze was. It would've been hard to tell without the nausea as is.
"I'm feeling adventurous today, let's go with the truth." She demanded venomously.
He sat his cup upon a tree stump and closed his eyes. "I gave up being a fighter, a warrior. I gave up teaching... Any involvement with the world... All ashes of my past. And I vowed I would never return to the fire." He raised his chin and met her true eyes (revealing to Azula she'd been looking past him the whole time) "I returned to it today. I broke my vow." He trailed off, hard eyes carrying lifetimes covered his sorrow. "I see myself in you. When I was just a boy. I felt if I let you die; I would be letting myself die."
Azula rolled her eyes, decidedly uninterested in philosophical spiel. "I'm not your key to some peaceful death, old fool. Whatever you see, it's delusion."
He quirked a brow up and smirked; Azula despised him all the more. This filthy peasant hermit stranger. Was this amusing? Did she amuse? She'd kill him now if she could but stand.
"Yes." He agreed flatly, "I would have said that, too. I didn't save you out of some noble goodness. I did it to make myself feel better. Nothing more."
Azula felt her ire growing and fixed her arms into fists at her side. "Don't flatter yourself, whoever you were could never compare to what I am."
He slid the pitcher of water forward and offered Azula a cup. "You may be surprised." He challenged with a confident hum.
She floundered further, angling daggers from him to the cup. She was parched and if he'd meant to kill her he would've let her die or done the deed himself. Poison was unlikely. "I doubt it." She bit back, seizing the water testily and taking a large gulp. Her swollen throat struggled to adjust and she ignored the indignity of how it pooled down her chin.
"Don't look at me!"
He raised an eyebrow, but nodded lowly as if to concede. "Rest." He muttered and marched away, sitting himself beside the simmering of a small fire upon an oaken tree stump.
Hateful as her perilous situation was, Azula's plans for escape were diluted by the overwhelming weight of her eyelids. Try as she did, and try she most certainly did, even she could only resist slipping back into unconsciousness for a small time. Her wounds were many. Exhaustion unbound.
Azula would not rest. Not ever.
Not willingly whilst danger neared. He was a threat, traitorous and cruel like every other person alive.
She couldn't trust. Not ever.
The mortality of her condition was just another failure to add to the growing list. Another weakness.
She couldn't trust herself or anyone. Not ever.
Azula was taken by dreams of the past, terrible and taunting as they were, by force.
Consciousness did not stream through the mind's haze with softness. Azula rocked from her rest spewing fire and rage. "I TOLD YOU NOT TO-" She squinted her eyes and clutched her face. She'd jumped up on both feet through the wailing protest of every nerve she had, not that it mattered, pain she could trust. Pain wouldn't stop her. She clenched her teeth and swallowed hard.
"I have not moved from my small stump chair, Princess. Use your renowned perception to see my truths for yourself."
"Truths." Azula choked a laugh, "You're a liar!"
"If you want to believe so, you may. But I obliged your demand. I have remained here. Facing away. You could kill me right now for any perceived slight you may have."
She faltered, eyes and cheeks straining to find a glare through forming cracks of confusion. "W-what?" Her confusion became a hiss that melted against her stoic captor's unmoving back.
"Insurance." He hummed, "An offer of peace." He stood from his crouched meditation, but did not turn. "My life in your hands. All I ask is you humble an old man with conversation."
Azula felt herself stagger on uneven feet, hands tightening, wrenching, grasping for fire. Her want to lash out was, barely, supplanted by the resurgent mind of the true Azula. Cunning strategist. Calculating. A mask that was harder to find after so much treason and failure in such a short time... Wearing it felt hollow now.
"...Fine." She folded her arms, though slowly resigned herself to sitting under the intense pressure of nausea and pain. "You're a firebender. You diverted my attack." She noted, she did not ask, his silence was his answer.
"Yes," He finally turned to face her. Azula visibly tensed, muscles hard like stone, no matter how much such a motion hurt.
The man summoned a small ball of fire in his hand, earning her reluctant attention. "You think you're the only firebending prodigy to ever be born?" He didn't smile, but Azula noted he strained himself to avoid it. "Your father and uncle, powerful firebenders today. But they were not prodigies. Not like I was."
Azula merely scoffed. There was no denying the crisp power of his simple fireball, it may not have been blue as befitted her mastery, but it was more vibrant and brilliant than Zuko's – and Zuko was a powerful firebender and her hate didn't change that. Even if he was a pale flame compared to her blazing greatness. Even if he was a traitor and a bully and an uncaring brute.
"I've heard tales of the prodigious Princess and her genius." He allowed the fire to die in his hand. "I was called a genius, too, though I doubt such claims."
"As do I." She regarded him coolly, "If you have to inform me you were called a genius, I have little reason to believe you. Let others brand you genius. The world knows of mine: The Conqueror of Ba Sing Se." An awkwardly familiar glaze took her eye causing Azula to shift, some part of her regal bearing returned in all its sapphire arrogance.
He paled as if watching a ghost. "You have a sharp wit, don't you, girl?"
"And you don't." Azula narrowed her eyes further, "Tell me something I don't know."
His mind was unreadable beneath the stoic mask he wore. A mask like the many Azula herself possessed. He wore his with practiced mastery.
"I am Jeong Jeong." He stated, voice flat and empty.
"Admiral Jeong Jeong?" Azula stiffened again and pulled herself more upright, her body's protests unrepentant against her curiosity. "The Deserter?"
He nodded again, "I told you something you did not know."
The exile was silent for a long moment as she felt herself relax the slightest bit. Jeong Jeong moved very slow, each movement methodical. Her eyes never left him. They dared for an excuse to turn this encounter into a lethal one. But his cautious movements only saw him fill up a cup with water and, more slowly, walk the cup to her and lower it a safe distance away.
It was a strange thing... To learn she was in the company of the Fire Nation's most wanted and most hunted criminal, and to then feel safer for the knowledge. Or, she supposed, it wasn't a strange thing. She was the most wanted now. The Deserter had been usurped; she chuckled at the thought. A month ago, she would've passed through the spirit world to murder this man in the Fire Nation's name. Now she felt as if he was the only person alive who didn't want her head on a spike.
Times Change.
It wasn't trust she felt towards him. Azula already held trust close to her chest, after how it was shattered by all who attained it, she knew she could never trust again. But The Deserter was better than anyone else living to meet. Which made the odds of this meeting highly curious and equally questionable.
"I've studied your military records rather extensively." Azula inched forward and lifted the cup he'd supplied, gaze cast to the water that swayed within, a sharp reflection of herself stared back. I really do look like mother with my hair down... "You were a great man, once." She looked up with equal parts admiration and accusation, "Before you went soft. Before you got weak."
"I never got weak, girl. I can assure you of that." He countered swiftly, "I found new outlets for my bending. I learned restraint. I learned to temper my power with control."
"You got weak."
Jeong Jeong raised a brow, "This is why I saved you." He stated, "I was just like this. Hard as it may be to believe. I want to help you. You may reject my help, but I offer it freely."
"There's nothing you could teach me." Azula rejected with an indignant scoff, "I'm better than you. I can show you just how much better once I'm healed."
"Perhaps." The old man whistled a silent tune between his words, "I haven't taught firebending in many years, nor do I train often. But you don't need my form teachings. You need to learn control."
Azula snorted now, taking another gulp of cleansing water (which almost missed her mouth) before she fixed him with a leer of raw amusement. "You must be senile in your old age." Her words snapped with force, "There isn't a single aspect of firebending you can beat me at. My control supersedes yours!"
"There, we must disagree." Jeong Jeong pressed softly, he knelt on his knees across from her, a far distance, but equal to her height. "We possess the burning curse; fire is destructive. It consumes. It twists and corrupts. Your blue fire is a perversion of the sun's light, but even I do not reject the purity of its raw power. But power is not the same as control."
Jeong Jeong flared his hand at the nearby campfire, causing it to burn a little hotter, to shine a little brighter. "You have mastered all the firebending forms. But your idea of control is an illusion," Azula glowered at him, but the man was undeterred, "You can manipulate the size of your flames. Point them where you wish them to go. You can even exert your will to prevent a flame from achieving its own purpose: destruction."
"Do you mean to bore me to death or are we nearing the point?" Azula cut in.
Jeong Jeong's voice seemed to raise as if to drown her complaints out. "True control is to allow fire to be an extension of not just the body, but the mind, the heart, and the very spirit."
"Even if I believed you - which I don't - why should I accept anything you offer? Why should you offer it at all? Last I heard from Zhao's reports, you were a grumpy old hermit who spat on our superior ways of bending. A rebel and a traitor."
Jeong Jeong nodded slowly, his eyes closing with the lowering of his breath. "Because you are the epitome of everything I've fought against!"
Azula raised a brow at that, curious that such a statement held accusation without animosity. "You are a herald of destruction and I fear you always will be. Your fire burns brighter and hotter than any other, but a fire so hot threatens to burn those who near it." He took a sharp breath and stared at her more intently. "And you too, are a traitor now."
She returned his glare more intently, only hers promised deliverance that was only denied by the state of her injuries.
"You think to attempt to temper me, then?" She asked, stepping by his accusation with rhetorical amusement.
Though she wasn't prepared for a 'Yes' to her rhetorical question.
"I do." Jeong Jeong affirmed, bluntly. "But not without incentive. I offer you power. My teachings will improve your bending. All you have to suffer is the words of an embittered old man."
Azula frowned, confusion taking her features by storm, the coursing of the river that designed his dialogue was a series of harsh turning rapids.
She couldn't understand him.
Had to be tricks...
…But for what purpose?
Azula grimaced. She'd found herself at his mercy yet she was still here. She refused to let paranoia and past failures rob her of common sense.
She spoke her next words hesitantly, "What do you get out of this?"
He finally cracked the mask with a smile. "I told you the truth before when I said I see blinks of my own past within you. Perhaps I am an fool as you say, but I want to help. We are both kindred spirits. We are both hunted and hated. Yet we are as different as the sun is from the moon. You may bear the weight of the world on your shoulders, but you are only a child."
Azula relented arguing the point. They could debate semantics the night through, she was young, yes, this mottled old thing before her was ancient. It was a balancing act. She'd called him an old fool and senile. He had his one pass to call her a child.
Jeong Jeong bid his smile fade into a small grimace. A darker, more distant look settled on those tiresome eyes. "I offer you this freely. I will teach you the meaning of true control. But only you can decide what to do with those gifts." Her eyes met his, she could hear the cogs clicking within his mind. "Perhaps you will remain unchanged. Perhaps you would go on to use my gifts to sow even greater destruction. But that is my burden to bear."
The exiled Princess was silent for the longest moment. Vision fixed upon the meandering flames that stretched into the breeze, soft tendrils grasping out, eating kindling and searching for further fuel.
She didn't understand The Deserter. She'd tried again and again to puzzle out his game. By all accounts, the man hated firebenders and firebending. Why was he warming to her as if they were friends? They weren't friends. They were destined to be grievous enemies just weeks past. In another lifetime, she would've struck him down where he knelt for his treason and disrespect.
Everyone had betrayed her and cast her out to the dogs to die. Wretched, she sucked in a harsh breath, Forgotten.
She thought abut how Zuko basked in her failure. How Mai coddled and stroked his stupid face and his stupid hair. The injustice of it was almost funny. Azula used Mai to bring Zuko back! She was the reason those sycophants were so entwined... Then father replaced her with him and Mai replaced her with him.
She wanted to cackle at the absurdity of it now.
She'd unknowingly engineered her own destruction.
Mai couldn't even be bothered to visit her. Not after she was disinherited. Not after she resigned herself to isolation... Ty Lee and mother betrayed her, too, but she hated them less... She wanted them back.
They weren't coming back.
Azula wanted to use that pain, the mistrust, the heartbreak, the betrayal and shattered loyalty; she wanted to sharpen those emotions into pointed daggers and skewer the old traitor until dead.
But as Jeong Jeong sat there, relaxed, his words washed over a grasping mind now fractured.
My life in your hands.
He surrendered the power dynamic to her. Submission.
You may reject my help, but I offer it freely.
She could refuse and he would not push, so he says, should she accept he expects nothing, so he says...
You seek to temper me, then? A question born of pride, for what idiot would deign to admit to such a stifling motive?
I do. Azula frowned at the simple words he chose. He had, without hesitance, admitted his intention. He wanted to mould her into something... else. The audacity, the disrespect.. the honesty.
Perhaps you will remain unchanged. Perhaps you would go on to use my gifts to sow even greater destruction. But that is my burden to bear.
He offered her agency. True agency. Agency without expectation.
Azula was... confused. No expectation? True freedom of choice? It was an inversion of her old life. Somewhere, deep within her spirit, her heart yearned for the freedom. To be free of her shackling expectations yet to be free of being alone, too. Abandoned.
She deliberated.
For a long time. Wordlessly swimming within her thoughts.
Hours passed through the twilight of dawn until the blanket of a new night covered the world in a cozy dark.
She did not move in that time. Jeong Jeong did not move in that time. In front of her, now on his stump, cross-legged, he sat the day through with his back bared for her to strike.
Azula's thoughts were far from unified, they were still as scattered as ever. A broken mind would not be so quickly pieced together after the loss of her entire life.
But... Azula felt strangely at ease with him. Not at all like she ever felt around her father or uncle. Perhaps it was as he said. They were kindred spirits now. Hunted and hated. Whatever her doubts towards his character were, The Deserter was a legendary firebender and an accomplished strategic genius. Like her. Did he then understand the pressures she had endured? The weight of the mounting expectations? The tolls they took?
Maybe you feel comfortable because he was like you; you've read the reports.
He'd offered her agency and self-efficacy in the pursuit of greater power. He promised no expectation for her actions. He told her his motive true.
Her frown deepened into a scowl. She interrupted the peace, a day of silence teetered on the edge of her now open lips, speaking to him again, "Even if I was willing to accept your philosophical drivel..." She took a sharp breath, "You've done nothing to convince me you offer power I don't already possess."
Jeong Jeong slowly turned and gave her a look that suggested he'd been waiting for her to claim as much. An easy observation. He waited the whole day. "For now, you will rest. You need reprieve from your injuries... Barbarians," He scoffed, "Attacking a young girl..."
"Deserter." Azula narrowed her eyes, a ball of blue sitting in her palm. A young girl greater than any grown man.
Jeong Jeong gave a mechanical nod, "You will recover. Then we will have competition to determine who has best mastered control."
Azula glowered through tight teeth. Only now did she notice the fact the Dai Li uniform was dry and free of muck. An entire day to herself, and she failed to notice so many things right beneath her nose... She supposed her eye was elsewhere, she was in her mind, not her body.
Control.
She pursed her lips in realization. He burned the muck away from every inch of green without so much as a simple tear in the gentle fabric. Not one string out of place.
Maybe there was something to this old man's claims after all.
"And why should I not kill you as you sleep and take off into the night?" Azula tested, curious and probing.
"I don't suppose you enjoyed being assailed by visions." Jeong Jeong's eyes did not discredit his knowledge, "The veil between our world and the spirit world is thin here. Those who lack true spirituality find the forest... disturbing."
Azula offered no response. Part of her was satisfied to have an answer for the madness of the past few days. Another was horrified she'd fallen victim to such devious tricks. Another knew his answer was tactical. He did not mention she couldn't if she tried given her state; he did not fall back on his own firebending pride.
"Come." Jeong Jeong stood and approached the cooking pyre.
Careful strokes of a fire dagger sliced through the turkey lamb's unwilling invitation, he shuffled the slices upon a small plate and returned to Azula, who took the food without so much as a word or glance in his direction. The food had cooked all day. Simmering at the exact temperature to keep it perfect. She figured out their stand off hours ago. He would not move until she broke the silence. The food did make an enticing reward, but he denied himself the pleasure as much as she had.
She suspected the lessons on control were already ongoing and she started them first. Though Azula remained grimacing through her pain with each bite, at least she had the luxury of proper food once again.
At least she wasn't dead... She resolved to live just to spite her father's banishment. She would work with The Deserter, at least for now.
Azula tried to deny herself the elation of no longer being alone.
Azula tried to deny herself the fear of being abandoned and betrayed again.
He was an enemy in-the-making...
…Yet his every word and action so far proved otherwise.
She didn't understand it.
She couldn't understand it.