A/N: Written as part of the 2020 Atla Secret Santa for tryingtogettoyue. I'm the-cloud-whisperer on Tumblr; come chat with me!
Post canon, canon divergence from comics. The Ao3 version contains clickable footnotes, however, these are not available on FFN which prohibits links, so you will have to navigate to the appropriate endnote at the end of the story to read about various details in the text.
Fate lasts three lives, her mother once told them. Azula doesn't remember exactly when. It might have been after reading one of those trite classical romances that passed for literature in Fire Nation high society. Or maybe it was a banal attempt at reassurance after another of Zuko's awkward failures to impress Mai despite their painfully obvious mutual crush. Even if you don't get the girl in this life, you'll certainly snag her in the next? Something like that—whatever the case, it's utter nonsense.
Azula doesn't believe in fate. Most things in the world happen for identifiable, logical reasons. They may not always be good reasons, or ones that benefit her, but she knows that they are always present and accountable.
She becomes a bounty hunter in the Earth Kingdom after the war, her emotional stability having recovered with acceptance of the Fire Nation's defeat. Her firebending has not. Zuko lets her be because he knows there isn't much harm she can do. She accepts contracts from the highest bidders, whether these be local authorities or private individuals, and wanders the bursting cities and empty expanses of the kingdom alone. Sometimes her bounties are hardened criminals and unrepentant felons. Sometimes they are relatively innocent citizens who just happen to be the victims of someone's personal grudge, or in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Azula doesn't care. She has a name (well, and money) to make for herself; she can't afford to be picky. She gets to know the domains of the myriad established bounty hunters in the western Earth Kingdom, and the world is wide enough that she mostly manages to avoid encroaching on any competitors' territories, but not always. Her luck fails one day as she chases down a highly sought-after ex-brothel manager who's got blackmail material on some of the biggest names in Yu Dao.
She isn't at all sure what's going on when she wakes up in an infirmary, torso heavily wrapped in bandages and a throbbing headache threatening to split the seams of her skull. All she knows is that means she didn't manage to keep her mark out of some unscrupulous competitor's hands. She failed to finish the job.
The thought doesn't bother her as much as it should, she reflects as she stares up at a slanting ceiling, dark wooden beams so unlike the stately gilded halls back home in the palace. Her failure will not incur her father's wrath, or Zuko's pity, or Mai and Ty Lee's betrayal, or any of the innumerable hurts that other people have piled on her aching soul. It only means less coin lining her pockets, less food to be had in the coming weeks, less life to be lived, if she's lucky.
"Ah, you're awake!" A cheerful voice breaks through her dour internal monologue, and she looks up to see a young woman enter the room. She's simply dressed in faded pink and drab, hair bound in a long braid. She's carrying a tray with a teapot and a shallow bowl, which she sets down on the table beside Azula.
"Oooh, I wouldn't," she cautions as Azula attempts to get up, a quick hand resting on her shoulder and another on the blanket over her knees. A tender circuit of touch, and Azula startles. Her lifestyle doesn't abound in opportunity for physical contact outside of brawls and rough brushes.
"Oops, sorry." The hand is quickly withdrawn, but Azula finds she misses it almost as soon as it's gone.
"June brought you here, said you'd gotten into a nasty fight with some guy over a bounty you were both trying to collect. I didn't catch his name, but it looks like he did a fair number on you—there's a nice gash here over your right collarbone, just missed the great vein. It's small but deep." She indicates Azula's bandaged right shoulder.
She reconciles her blurry memory: so it was Wang Yue, a notorious swordsman, who bested her. "It's not the first time I've lost a mark to him," she says, mostly to herself.
"Oh no, June was the one who ended up snatching the fugitive. I saw her wrangling a sniveling old man on her steed when she dropped you off, quite literally, here. 'When the snipe and the clam fight, the fisherman stands to benefit,' isn't that how the proverb goes?" the girl recites knowingly (1). "I'm Song, by the way. Town doctor, herbalist, and local spinster."
Azula peers suspiciously at Song's back as she turns away to open the windows. She's learned the hard way that people are not always as they seem. Does Song's vaguely sweet nonchalance hide a more sinister agenda? Do proud ambitions and grasping greed lie behind that jovial self-denigration? She can't just be a simple young doctress who healed Azula's hurts, no questions asked.
"Drink it before it cools, else it'll be even more bitter," Song says of the medicine before slipping out of the room, as enigmatic as when she entered.
She eyes the medicinal tea guardedly. If Song wanted to poison her, she'd stick around to watch Azula gulp it down instead of throwing it out the window, wouldn't she?
It does taste bitterer after it cools, she concedes an hour later, finally having quashed her paranoia, tossing back cup after cold cup of disgusting but definitely not poisoned tea.
—
"You saved my life," Azula begrudges. Technically, June played her part, but she did the bare minimum in getting me to medical attention before flouncing off with my reward.
Why did she even bother? Should've left me to die; that'd be one less competitor to deal with in the future.
Song looks up from her work, her gaze expectant, and Azula realizes that she'd left her thoughts hanging.
"Surely I should repay you somehow?"
Song's long braid is piled on top of her head in a neat round bun secured by a plain bronze hairstick. The summer humidity would keep her hair sticking to her skin otherwise. Azula watches a few unkempt strands at the base of her head cling to her neck. The skin there would taste salty with sweat and unforgivingly human. She shudders.
"You sure can!" Song remarks briskly. "A life for a life, that sounds fair. I usually let my clients pay me in whatever way they see fit. I'm not picky, you know."
—
What a scintillating non-answer, Azula grumbles to herself as she mulls over what to do. She's got enough coins left to buy a couple roast pork buns and some fruit for breakfast, nothing close to the value of services rendered.
"I could just skip town right now, citing the value of my life to be null, making my fee zero," she explains to the sparrows that hop around her feet, hoping to scavenge some crumbs from her breakfast. "What could she even do about that?"
She bites into a juicy apricot, its tangy sweet flesh delighting her taste buds. It's odd how she doesn't seem to remember enjoying these simple pleasures in the time Before—before the war, and her humiliating defeat, and her grueling recovery. She lives in the moment now, not thinking more than a day ahead.
Not thinking more than a moment ahead, in some cases, she realizes as she takes an over-large bite and jams her teeth jarringly against the stone pit of the apricot. Spitting it out and glaring at it, she remembers a time when she banished a maid for leaving a pit in a cherry, something so inconsequential yet of paramount suspicion in her then-wavering mind. A lifetime ago, but fortunately she's more clear-minded now.
It occurs to her that she has found her answer. A life for a life, no? Well, Song never specified what kind of life must be paid up to negate Azula's debt. A tree's life should count, she reasons smugly, pettily pleased with her solution.
It is on this technicality that she returns triumphantly to Song's humble homestead, bearing aloft her prize, and buries the seed in the corner of the yard, just adjacent to the house. She marks the spot with a stake and waters it liberally. Song comes out as she finishes up and casts a quizzical gaze at her muddy hands.
"A life repaid," Azula states, in case her work could not speak for itself.
To her surprise, Song blushes brightly, the pale of her cheeks like apricot blossoms growing into the ruddy fruit of summer.
Maybe in another lifetime, Azula could stop to enjoy that enchanting bouquet. But fate has other ideas in store for her.
—
June really needs to train her fucking shirshu, Azula seethes as she coughs and gags, doubled over by the hitch post outside the tavern. The owner of the beast in question slouches nearby against her steed, watching with her usual lofty detachment. The accursed shirshu has just sprayed Azula in the face with a downpour of secretions from under its brush-like tail, something she had no idea it could do. She'd done nothing to provoke it besides walking outside with June after a friendly round of drinks.
"If I'd known your beast was going to force me to chug its foul urine, I wouldn't have let you waste your money on my drinks tonight," she rages impotently. "Tastes about the same as the swill they serve at the bar."
She rolls her tongue around her mouth, trying to sweep away the lingering taste. Out of the corner of her eye, June shakes her head, looking wanly amused. "What? I've already conceded my next mark to you, very generously I might add, considering how technically he originates in my territory."
"Your territory," June snorts. "Don't make me laugh. But since you ask, I'll tell you. Nyla only does this when she senses that someone actively intends to deceive me. A shirshu's sixth sense, perhaps. I'm guessing you were planning on reneging on your promise."
Oh, for fuck's sake… Azula doesn't bother to deny it. There's no shame in swindling another crook.
"Unfortunately, what you swallowed wasn't piss, but a lethally toxic compound that has no antidote," June says casually. "The effects should be kicking in soon."
What… "You've got to be joking."
It seems she is not, as Azula is suddenly wracked by a strong bout of dry heaving, her throat spasming wretchedly, but in vain. Nothing comes up, and as the moments ebb by, a tingling sets into her extremities, the numbness clouding her thoughts as well. She hears June as if from a distance.
"Remember that time I took you to Song for healing after our last fight?" Her tone is neutral, almost blithe, as if Azula's life is an ant's, easily stomped out underfoot.
Is it not?
"You must have wondered why. Did I secretly have a compassionate bone in my body after all?"
Doubt it. Azula collapses to her knees, hanging limply onto the fencepost next to her. So this is how it ends? I might have guessed.
"It was all down to your saintly brother," June muses. "He acts like he doesn't care about his sister running wild on the mainland, but I rather think he'd have some choice words for me if he found out I'd let you bleed to death on the side of the road. And more importantly, I'd lose my business as the Fire Lord's personal bloodhound. You know he hired me years ago to track down your mother? Didn't work, obviously; the scent sample was too outdated for even Nyla to track."
Azula listens to June prattle on as a rival dies at her feet. She imagines the shirshu owner (they should be banned, she fumes, the ghastly creatures) disinterestedly inspecting her nails and straightening her hair, cold and passionless throughout her monologue, not unlike Azula when she was still in control of her life.
Do the tides control this ship?
It's not Azula's fate to die here today—she doesn't believe in fathomless fate. She dies for no other reason than that the tides of life caught up to her at last, the turbulent waters churning her into quiescence.
I could really use some water, she thinks numbly, face pressed to the ground, too weak to get up. She feels more than hears June's footsteps and the shirshu's strides leading away, so there's no help to be found there. She sucks in one last shaky breath through her paralyzed, dry throat.
Water…
—
"You're just in time for the first fruit from the apricot tree!" Song greets her as if they'd last seen each other yesterday and not six years ago. It's oddly familial, but if Azula dwells on it for too long, she will want things that Song cannot possibly give her.
A home, not just a house.
A hearth, not just a warm fire.
The tree in question distracts her from further wandering, futile thoughts. "Here." Song hands an apricot to Azula, dropping another handful into her basket. "There's nothing better than fresh fruit."
Brown eyes blink up at her, cajoling and sweet, and she takes a bite, teeth piercing the fuzzy skin with ease. She really did come just in time—the fruit is bursting with flavor, a precisely delightful balance of juicy and starchy, sugary paradise. She watches Song's sleeves roll down past her elbows as she raises her thin arms overhead to pick more.
A labor of love.
You reap what you sow, however unintentionally, and Azula joins Song under the tree. That afternoon, another handful of apricot pits are sown, and Azula notes that same summer blush on Song's invernal complexion.
"Last time I was here…" she begins haltingly over dinner, then trails off.
Song makes adorably querying eyebrows at her over the rim of her bowl of soup. Azula nearly forgets where her train of thought was going.
"Last time I was here, you gave me a glass pendant full of something that looked very much like water but wasn't." She settles for going about this in the most oblique way possible, in case all is not as she thought.
"Oh? What was it, then?" Song asks innocently, as if she does not know what she has done. From any other person, Azula would consider it artless flirting, but Song makes it seem nothing short of natural and unquestionable.
"You're a better doctor than you let on." Azula narrows her eyes in suspicion. "A universal antidote to cure all poisons—how did a little backwoods herbalist like you come up with that recipe?"
Song remains tightlipped, tenser than she's been most of the evening, and ah, there you go again Azula, putting your foot in your mouth and putting off your friends.
A friend, not a doctor.
Salvage the situation; a little reciprocal flirting never hurt anyone. She never was much good at it, though; thinking of the beach party at Ember Island long ago, she winces.
"Or maybe that was actually spirit water and you happen to be an immortal descended from the heavens?" Zuko had told her how the Avatar survived, despite her lightning strike.
Song's laughter is like the trickle of cool spring bathing her hair and body, soothing and invigorating at once and altogether unworldly. "You're sweet, but no, I'm one hundred percent human, and I'm not even that great of a physician. I just do as I was taught. In fact, the reason I was so nonplussed when you planted the apricot tree stems from the story of the legendary doctor Dong Feng." (2)
Azula makes an interested noise, so she explains further. "When offered payment for medical services, he refused and instead asked patients to plant apricot trees around his house. Thus, 'apricot forest' became a classical term of address for exemplary doctors. The legend and form of address have fallen out of common use, and I know you couldn't have known. But it still tickled me to think of myself as a doctor on par with the greatest names of history."
There's a guardedness in Song's voice as she crosses her arms and sighs deeply, frowning out at the yard and the apricot tree, now almost as tall as the house. One day, its shade will be dense enough for lazy afternoon naps. Azula wonders if she will stick around long enough to experience some.
In the back of her mind, she notes that Song has not answered the question: how did she come to possess the means for making an antidote potent enough to save Azula's life a second time?
—
She visits more often after that, whenever she's in the area and not caught up with other business. As a royal princess, Azula's never had the chance to live among the people, to truly experience their day-to-day habits and niceties and routines. She fumbles along, feeling out of place amid Song's homely bustle, yet at the same time, utterly comfortable and at peace.
One summer, Song makes apricot jam. She puts Azula to work peeling the ripe fruits. The whole yard smells heavenly, and Azula's head throbs with overwhelming nostalgia. Freshly baked bread with apricot jam filling, a cup of cool water with a mint leaf floating on top, brought by Song as she tends to numerous boiling pots under the sweltering sun. The gentle undulations of her voice as she coos to the hog-chickens. The frightened squawk and a decisive crack of a narrow neck when she picks out the fattest one for the slaughter. Apricot cheeks, burnished orange-red as she works, ever cheerful, ever delighted despite the enormity of the world's woes. Azula doesn't know why, but something about Song always brings out the sensuous in her, makes her experience the world as it surrounds her, not as she wishes to affect her surroundings.
—
That autumn, she buys a pot of yellow orchids in town. They'll look nice on Song's kitchen table. The young doctress tosses her a curious glance as she sets them heavily down.
"Just thought you'd like a spot of sunshine around now that summer's over." She hovers awkwardly on the periphery of the room, wondering if she can perhaps escape through a window. Song looks at her like she'd hung the stars in the sky. It's… disconcerting.
"Oh, I've got more sunshine than I could possibly use," Song murmurs. "Come to clinic with me today; it's wrong of me not to share some with those who need it."
Bewildered, Azula accompanies her. Song leaves the orchids on the table, though, which doesn't quite make sense, but her smile only grows as Azula helps her bandage cuts and sprains and brew some awful herbal tea for the morning's patients. It stays that way even into the evening, which they spend under firelight mending blankets and pillowcases and other odd tasks that need doing, that Song typically manages by herself.
Azula's stabbed herself four times with the needle before Song finally looks up, amused. "Needlework not your forte?"
"No, it never has been." She gives up, tossing the linens aside. "Not a huge fan of the three obediences and four virtues." (3)
"Ah, that explains the golden orchids." (4) Song nods sagely. "Give those here then. Bring me your riding jacket and saddle too. The stuffing was falling out when I saw you ride in this morning. It can't be too comfortable on ostrich-horseback for long distances."
Orchids? She puzzles as she surrenders her failed handiwork. Has she committed some social faux pas by bringing Song a botanical heresy? Gah, the woes of being an ex-Fire Nation princess without sufficient background knowledge of Earth Kingdom niceties.
No ills seem to come of her whimsical gift, though, and Song sends her on her way with a newly renovated riding kit. The sunshine warms her dark eyes into russet and stately mahogany, the colors of mild autumn, strong but tender.
—
That winter, Song unstoppers a bottle of apricot cordial after Azula dispatches the last patient of the day with a pouch of herbal tea leaves for his head cold.
"You're well-suited to this," Song remarks, passing her a shallow bowl of the sweet liqueur.
"There's not much to it," Azula shrugs. She doesn't need clarification on what this is. Living in a small town, interacting with the same faces day in and day out. Growing vegetables in the garden and trading them for sundry groceries. Buying flaky pork pastries from the baker first thing in the morning before Song wakes up so that she has a treat for breakfast. Helping treat a man's arthritic knee with a couple of choicely placed acupuncture needles. Trying and failing to graciously wave away the entire sack of rosy persimmons he insists on leaving them as payment. Working through the bounty until Song declares she'll make them into marmalade for later or they'll be sick of persimmons for years to come.
Living among the people.
And…
Years to come.
She drinks, savoring the smooth tang of apricot on her tongue, the mild burn as it slides down her throat. It's not fate, she tells herself firmly, logically. Fate is a series of inexplicable events that occur without reason. Everything about this situation is absolutely rife with reason. She's spent the first half of her life living sheltered in the palace, enjoying the power and pampering she received as a royal princess, until everything about that lifestyle backfired on her. There's no reason not to want to try something different, and indeed, to revel in it.
It's just for now, she tells herself. I don't have years to give her.
"I've always wondered, Azula." Song pauses, wondering how to phrase this. "Where are your scars?"
Azula luxuriates in the feeling of her name in Song's mouth, then processes what she'd actually said. She halts in the middle of refilling their cups.
"Scars?" she inquires pointedly, not venturing any further information. She needs to know where the conversation is going first.
"I've seen more than enough of you over the course of healing you—," Song gestures expansively at Azula's slender frame, "—to know that it's nothing physical. At least, nothing beyond routine wear and tear."
Azula thinks of all the ragtag cuts and scrapes, bruises and broken bones that are par for the course in her chosen profession. Routine wear and tear, as if her body were nothing more than a trusted sword, or an overused stone mill like the kind Song uses to mash up soybeans for tofu on a sultry spring day. She knows what depths remain to be plumbed by Song's innocent question. The Fire Nation has left no physical mark on her, despite years of her toiling to please her father, only for it to be worthless in the end.
She's unaware of Song reaching across the table until two delicate fingers settle over her wrist.
"It's here, isn't it?" Song whispers. "The deepest scar that doesn't heal."
She feigns lack of comprehension. "Hardly—I'm far from careless enough to let some swashbuckling vigilante swordsman slash me across the wrist."
The fingers dig deeper into her pulse as it rockets under Song's touch, emboldened. "The scars rest on your heart," Song says with finality. "They spread through your vessels, they paralyze your mind and soul and body." She takes Azula's other hand, interlacing their fingers tightly.
"The scar tissue stiffens your heart until it constricts and bows in upon itself, unable to beat, unable to live. And in those frantic last moments, you'll feel what I'm feeling now."
A mad drumbeat, the pulse of a relentless tide, then an insurmountable silence as an unintended heart breaks, a hand falling limp to the side.
Azula stands abruptly, unable to endure this any longer. She tosses back the last of her bowl of wine for good measure. "Don't presume to talk of what you don't understand," she hisses through the burn. "My scars are… immaterial. They do not bear discussion."
—
She leaves Song amid a stunned silence but closes the door quietly behind herself. A broken heart is no excuse for disrespect.
It's not broken, she tells herself resolutely. There are no scars there. There is nothing to break.
—
She takes a sabbatical of sorts, the first one since she started this whole bounty hunting business. It's time for a break. She hates to admit it, but she needs an outsider's perspective on all this nonsense about hearts and fate and… whatnot.
Zuko welcomes her back to the palace with a minimum of fuss over her threadbare and abrupt appearance. He looks well, she observes grudgingly. He's updated the Fire Lord garb, gotten rid of the usual inane red-on-gold scheme and replaced it with a nice black base with red, gold, and azure embroidery—who would've thought Zuko had an eye for aesthetics? His hair is up in its customary topknot, encased by a plain bronze headpiece. She supposes that he only wears the golden flame crown for official occasions, which is much more practical, in any case.
"It's been a while," he remarks, showing her to the compound that used to house the Agni Kai chamber, which he seems to have repurposed and partitioned into space for guest quarters and sitting rooms.
"It certainly has been, Zuzu. I barely recognize anything in this place."
"Are you planning on staying here long?"
She can't. Even if this place no longer houses their father, it still holds his memories and all that is associated with them.
"Then it doesn't matter." He gestures her to a pair of plush cushions next to a low table laden with a tea set. She kneels across from him, and he pinches the crisp tea leaves into their cups, faithfully Uncle's protégé even though Iroh is far away in Ba Sing Se now.
"Do you have something to go back to?"
She hears the curiosity lacing his voice, the hungry urge to know this stranger that is his sister, and also the benign consideration that Zuko's always embodied. He doesn't say somebody, giving her the chance to deny her entanglement if she doesn't want to bare her soul to him. She has nothing to go back to, except…
"Yes," she says, brusque but honest. "She's pretty."
If he's surprised at her finding a woman pretty enough to compel her return to the lawless Earth Kingdom, he doesn't show it in the steady stream of boiling water he pours into her cup, nor in the way he pushes it over to her without spilling a drop. His silence says tell me more. She tries to irk him, drinking her tea leisurely to excuse herself from answering.
"I met a girl in the Earth Kingdom, too," Zuko muses, realizing that she's just going to plod along in her pettily newfound appreciation for tea and refuse to answer him. "Well, I met a few girls," he amends awkwardly under Azula's amused stare. "I think you know June, the one with the shirshu? And then I met someone in Ba Sing Se, while I was working in Uncle's teashop…"
She tunes out his nattering, something about a girl with a huge appetite and a firelight fountain (how quaint) and Mai teaching Zuko's erstwhile heartthrob to throw knives, much to his expense. (5) Gods above, how pedestrian, she sneers, tuning back in for politeness' sake.
"Actually, she wasn't the first. Remember how you put out wanted posters for Uncle and me? We had to go on the run after that, and let's just say, Uncle isn't the best at identifying non-toxic plants to eat. One thing led to another, and we ended up having to seek medical attention. The girl who treated him lured us home for roast duck as well; I think she must've known we were refugees, just not which side we were on."
Azula pauses mid-sip, mind moving faster than her tongue. "This girl… what else do you remember about her?"
—
Oh, for fuck's sake. For fate's sake. No, Azula doesn't believe in fate. Never has, not about to start.
—
"Here, this should be enough for two ostrich-horses."
"I don't need your money, and especially not to replace something that you stole." Some part of her is a little selfishly pleased at Zuko's lack of moral high ground here. "Out of us two siblings, you'd expect me to be the one to repay charity with larceny, and yet here we are."
That seems to shut him up, which is a relief. He follows her in silence to the gates of the palace. She can't be rid of this place soon enough.
"At least let me accompany you to the harbor," he pleads. "I had no idea fate would lead us all together. And the way I left things… wasn't ideal."
The carriage ride is bumpy and steep, but that's not why she feels like her stomach is rolling with butterflies.
"My scar made me sympathetic," Zuko says. "One firebender could never hurt another firebender, right? Just like one Earthen refugee would never hurt another—until I made off with her family's livelihood, a slap in the face right after Uncle made me say thank you."
Azula wonders if Song remembered Zuko in that moment, if she felt Azula's invisible scars with her healer's touch the way she tried to touch his.
"I doubt Uncle and I would have survived if not for that ostrich-horse," Zuko muses. "We did have an inordinate amount of people trying to kill us as soon as we set foot on the mainland. For quite a while, you were the least of our worries."
She feels an odd, misplaced rush of affection. For the last few years, has she not been retracing his steps through the Earth Kingdom, lost and afraid, hunting all the wrong things? Him, the Avatar and consequently his honor; and herself, a smattering of petty criminals and also a single, homely heart spilling its joyous beat under an apricot tree.
"Fate," she mutters to herself. "Stupid fate."
He wrinkles his nose questioningly at her opacity. "Fate," she explains, "lasts three lives. Mother told us, remember?"
Song recouped her first life from a deep stab wound, after which she planted another life in return, the apricot tree. She saved Azula's life a second time from poisoning, cueing more seeds sown and more life returned. Arguably, she saved Azula's life the third time before any of this happened, with Zuko's investment of their stolen beast of burden. Much as she hates to admit it, Zuko gave her her life back when he helped take down their father. Life's web draws close, pulls them all together in this fathomless, unreasonable trap called fate.
Azula has exhausted fate's three lives. If she goes back to Song now, she goes of her own free will, under her own rational power and decision.
"That's not how it works," Zuko argues when she proudly lines this all up like a mathematical formula, well proven. "Three lives means three lifetimes, not three near-death experiences."
"Do you want me to go back or not?" she snaps. The harbor is in view, and any of these ships will take Azula where she needs to go, if the Fire Lord commands it.
He sighs, defeated. "Tell her…"
"…that you're so terribly sorry for what you did, but you're too embarrassed to face her yourself, so you've sent your sister instead to win her heart, yes, I hear you loud and clear," she substitutes flippantly for whatever bumbling apology he had planned, in an effort to head off any more heart-to-heart talks.
She's halfway across the docks when she hears him call her name.
"I'm glad for you, Azula. I really am."
… gross. "Yes, I think we've seen enough of each other to last the next decade, thank you and goodbye."
"Don't visit alone, next time."
—
The apricot tree is just starting to put out buds as Azula trudges through the light layer of snow blanketing Song's yard, and she stops to examine them. They're hopeful, too hopeful for an early, warm spring, and she hopes she won't be like those buds, crushed by a late winter frost.
"Azula?"
Oh, fuck. Should've stopped outside the gate and taken some time to gather my thoughts, fuck what do I do—
She turns with painful longing to look upon that much anticipated face, ripe apricot blush on pale blossom cheeks. Song is just the same as she left her, slight of bearing, hair impeccably braided, arms laden with strands of persimmons (it seems Mr. Shih has been back) strung up for drying in the brumal weather. All that charm encased in such a small space, and Azula feels any coherent words that she had prepared leave her. So much for gracious apologies and grand statements, might as well just leave now.
"I'm sorry."
"What?" That's my line. Azula frowns in confusion at the beauty standing before her, apologizing for nothing. "Why?"
"I upset you. I shouldn't have been so forward. I've always known you were a very private person, but I shouldn't have pushed you to disclose what you wanted to keep to yourself." Up this close, she can almost see snowflakes crystallizing on Song's eyelashes, and oh, no, please no tears, those shouldn't be allowed—
"None of that now," she dismisses briskly. "I shouldn't have tried to hide from you. I don't want to, anymore."
She takes Song's hand, its warmth devastating amid the chilled air, and leads her over to the apricot tree. There's a scar on the tree that she'd noticed before, leftover from when a branch, too heavy with mature fruit, split clean off the trunk.
"What's mine is yours," Azula tells her sincerely. "And that includes what you can't see."
"Likewise," Song breathes.
Fate lasts three lives, and they have outlasted those three lives with glee. Now, it is time to love each other of their own accord, without any interference from the universe and its whimsies.
It's too frigid out for orchids, of the golden variety or not; it's too early in the year for apricot fruit and jam and desserts; it's altogether too cold for stiff fingers to take up needles and tame any sort of handiwork. But they don't need these symbols of their love when it is as apparent as it is now, threaded between soft lips and rough fingers, sown on frosted earth, etched on unscarred hearts bared to each other now and forever.
Footnotes:
1) 鷸蚌相爭，漁人得利 yùbàngxiāngzhēng, yúréndélì： 'When the snipe and the clam fight, the fisherman stands to benefit': One of the Chinese language's many idioms (成語），this phrase was first used in the context of two nation-states during the pre-Qin dynasty Warring States period, by an envoy of the nation of Yan trying to persuade the sovereign of Zhao not to go to war for fear of their common enemy, the nation of Qin, taking advantage of their turmoil. Essentially, 'when two parties fight, it is always a third party who wins.'
2) 董奉 Dong Feng: famous Han dynasty physician who as noted in the text, waived payment in lieu of planting apricot trees.
3) 三從四德 sāncóngsìdé：The three obediences and four virtues were a set of guiding principles for a woman's conduct dating from Confucian times. These mandated obedience to three men in her life: her father, before marriage; her husband, during marriage; and her son, after husband's death. The four virtues roughly translate to excellence in 'morality', 'speech', 'appearance', and 'work' (essentially all actions pertaining to a virtuous woman's conduct, including household skills, childbearing and childrearing, etc etc).
4) 金蘭會 jīnlánhùi：The Golden Orchid Society was a countercultural society founded in the Qing dynasty consisting of WLW who harbored other women trying to escape unwanted heterosexual marriages and enabled financial independence from men.
5) Mai teaching Jin to throw knives is portrayed in The Lost Adventures A:tla comic series "Going Home Again".
A/N: Thank you for reading! Azula/Song is a rarepair (can it be called that if it's literally nonexistent anywhere else in fandom? A nullpair, perhaps?) that I first wrote in my Avatar Zuko series, that later becomes part of an implied polyamorous triad. The ship makes a lot more sense in that context, I think, but lost a bit of credibility when I transferred it out. I still love them, but yeah, I'm going to be rowing my little dinghy down the river by myself for the foreseeable future. Originally, I wanted this fic to focus more on the Golden Orchid Society of badass WLW and maybe have Azula and Song be the founders of its equivalent in the A:tlaverse, but I discarded that idea as too ambitious. I did think it would be a nice floral-themed counterpart to the predominantly male Order of the White Lotus.
Further notes and references:
I can't find an official source for the fic's recurring motif, 'Fate lasts three lives,' outside of this one Chinese drama (Nirvana in Fire) where it's stated in the context of the MC going off to war knowing that he's going to die and promising his beloved that they'll have the next life to spend with each other at least. I twisted the idea a bit, making it more like, 'If someone saves your life three times, then it's clearly meant to be :3 '.
Inspiration for Song's daily milieu comes from famous Chinese YouTuber Li Ziqi. I'm not sure how to describe her channel; it's not just cooking videos, because she has some videos about making her own clothes and furniture, farming, gathering wild mushrooms and such, making wine, fixing things around the house, etc. Here's a small selection of vids that directly inspired this fic. I guess one way to describe her would be self-sufficient, all-natural, dedicated rural homesteader aesthetic, except it's not just her aesthetic, it's literally her way of life.
Inspiration for Zuko's updated Fire Lord robes comes from the drama Secret of the Three Kingdoms. I'm not a huge fan of the red, red, and more red thing that the Fire Nation has going on, so I like it when emperors in dramas have more of a black and gold accented outfit.