once, she toppled giants
This is what it means to be Azula, Crown Princess of the Fire Nation.
You are fourteen years old. The entire world has forgotten this.
Your brother sits above you. He is only sixteen, and you think that you are the only one that remembers this.
Today, he is going to sentence you to death. You do not know if you deserve this.
He speaks of crimes you only remember through the fractured, frazzled haze of memories that feel too distant to be yours.
You think that if you have done even half of what Zuko says you have done, then you most certainly deserve to die. And you think that you have, in fact, done all of it because Zuko is telling you, you have, and Zuko never lies. Zuko never lies.
When he asks you what you will say in your defense, you do not speak. The manacles they have placed you in bind only your hands and your feet, but you feel now as if they have screwed your mouth shut. Zuko does not wait for you to break your silence, and you think that it would not matter if you did.
You are Azula, and as you have so often been told, no one cares about you.
You are still not sure exactly how you came to be where you are.
You still half-believe the memory of the Avatar standing in your defense is nothing but a dream.
You are absolutely certain that your exile to the Southern Air Temple is an impossible hallucination.
But if you are dreaming, you are conjuring images more beautiful than any you have ever seen. If you are hallucinating, you do not know why you have decided to make it so uncomfortable.
You are cold. Your back aches. Your fingers are practically numb. Ahead of you, the Avatar is gliding on featherlight feet across cobblestones that seem to cherish him and loathe you. You want nothing more than to burn the subtle amusement off his face.
"Do we not have anything better to do with our day?" you growl at him.
"Define better," he tells you with a glib smile and a tone that sets your teeth on edge.
The Avatar seems unaffected by his own boxy burden, unbothered by the cold temperatures of the mountain, unimpressed by your foul mood.
"This is important," he tells you. He has set his box down upon the frozen, untilled patch of dirt near the base of the Temple, and you take this as your cue to do the same.
"How?" you grouse to him.
"It's a good foundation." The Avatar's 'foundation' is a couple of boxes of dirt, garden tools and flower buds.
You have always believed this boy to be entirely inferior to you in strength and intellect, but you did not expect this. "Flowers?"
"The Air Nomads had a saying. 'A well-tended garden is a well-tended soul'."
You are quite certain you don't believe him, but you kneel and dust your hands with dirt all the same.
You are surprised the first time the Avatar leaves you. It has been many months since the beginning of your sentence here, and you still greet his smiles with sneers, his waves with rude gestures, his words with grumbles. You are not a model prisoner, and you wonder why he is acting as if you are. Surely, you think, he is playing me for a fool, waiting for my escape so that he can return me to Zuzu's prisons.
You do not know how to feel when the days pass into weeks and the weeks into months without any evidence of his proximity. Once, you feigned a trip down the mountain, but neither he nor any of his lackeys appeared to stop you. You do not know if this is because he trusts you enough not to leave or if he thinks you too weak to try. Neither do you know whether or not you are too weak to try, because, for some reason, the thought to actually do so never comes to your head.
When he returns, he dines with you, and you ask him between mouthfuls of rice, "Why did you leave? Didn't you think I would try to escape?"
His hand pauses between the bowl and his mouth, and he laughs. "You know, I never really thought about it." He tells you this as if it is the most humorous thing he has ever heard.
When next he leaves, you give his absence no thought, and you fill your days with menial tasks that are repetitive, boring, unchallenging and mindless.
You have never been more relaxed in your entire life.
The days have faded into weeks, the weeks into months and the months into years. You are content.
In this new home, you have come to know a deep, abiding peace. The monster of your youth slumbers deep within the depths of your memories, and you have learned to face the day's rising sun with hope.
This is what it means to be Azula, Crown Princess of the Fire Nation.
Upon the mountain of your old enemy's birth, you wear simple, thickly woven clothes to keep out the chill of the mountain you have also come to call home. They are entirely utilitarian, and you remember with distaste the way the rich fabrics of your youth had suffocated.
Your skin has not lost its tawny perfection, but there are callouses on your formerly perfect fingers and the beginnings of wrinkles around your eyes.
Try as you might – and you have tried, tried, tried – you have never lost the predatory prowl of your movements, and your muscles still move like taught wires underneath stone-like skin. But you walk less carefully now, less attuned to the fall of every step and the twitch of every muscle.
Your eyes are still the color of bubbling, molten gold, and they glow in the dim light, but you make every effort to soften them now.
You keep your nails blunted and short, because you remember how it used to feel to have others' warm, sticky blood dripping from them.
You keep your hair short, shaved tight to the sides and only barely falling past your ears on the top, because the sight of it falling past your shoulders can still cause you to panic.
You never wear red.
You abhor any type of hair ornament.
You always and only use spark rocks to light the fire for your tea.
And when you smile, you only use your lips, because you know the memory of your bared teeth still gives some people nightmares.
Once – not even very long ago – you toppled giants and brought gods to heel.
Today, you are tending the gardens of the people your forefathers destroyed.
Today, you are happy.