A/N: After so many chapters of Zuko getting pwned by Azula, I wanted to do one where they had a genuine Sibling Bonding Moment.
Once again, it was time for the royal family's summer trip to Ember Island. The good news was that the annoying Avatar and his annoying friends did not accompany them this time; instead, Kiyi and Zoren joined them with their two small children. Azula found the couple, who were oddly both her half-siblings yet only distantly related to each other, to be much more tolerable company. However, the bad news was that Ursa and Ikem were also along for the trip. This meant one thing: a mandatory viewing of Love Amongst the Dragons.
Why? Why did their mother continue to insist on torturing them so? Azula hadn't liked Love Amongst the Dragons since she was five! Okay, maybe six. In any case, she was thirty-six now, and had seen this stupid play so many times that she knew every single scene and line by heart.
To make matters even worse, this was the Ember Island Players version. This play had been running for decades, since well before Azula was born, yet the actors had not improved one bit since her childhood. At least the Hira'a troupe had made some effort to put the proper emotion into their readings, so far as Azula remembered; she had admittedly been a little distracted at the time. Here, the actors either melodramatically screamed their lines, or sounded like they were reading aloud from the drier sections of Fire Nation property law. There was very little in-between. To keep her sanity, Azula found herself picking up her old habit of mockingly mouthing along to the lines that were particularly egregious in their delivery, with exaggerated facial expressions to match. Whenever she did this, Zuko tried his best to keep a straight face and continue to look regal and dignified, in case any commoners happened to be looking up at the royal box.
But as the play dragged on, even that couldn't keep Azula entertained for long. They were stuck here, and all she could do was count down the minutes until intermission. By the time it finally rolled around, she was feeling on the verge of gouging her eyes out and poking holes in her eardrums.
"Shall we stretch our legs and get some fresh air?" she asked Tom-Tom and Kazuo as the other occupants of the box rose to do the same. Her husband needed no further encouragement to shoot out of his seat, but her son didn't respond at all. Now that Azula was thinking about it, Kazuo had been surprisingly well-behaved and quiet during the first act, sitting completely still on her lap the entire time. This was uncharacteristic of her energetic boy; normally he'd have spent much of his time fidgeting and running around the royal box like his cousin Rinko. Azula felt a twinge of worry, and wondered if he was sick. Then she looked down and immediately saw the reason for his good behavior: he was fast asleep.
"Well," she commented in a low voice to Zuko, "He's certainly the smartest person here." At long last, her brother lost his valiant battle with dignity. Shoulders shaking, he let out a loud and extended snort of stifled laughter, quickly converting it into a coughing fit when Ursa looked their way.
"You're awful, Azula!" he whispered back once their mother had left.
"Of course I am," she replied. "Did you expect anything else?" Then, as Tom-Tom poked his head in the box to and inquired if everything was okay, she carefully shifted Kazuo into her arms so as not to wake him and stood up, saying, "Yes, dear husband, we're coming."
