t/w: panic attack, graphic violence, PTSD. I don't recommend reading this chapter if you struggle with these and have yet to receive treatment.

There is a description of a real therapy technique used to treat those who suffer from panic/anxiety and PTSD. Google "Envivo Training" and/or Exposure Therapy—it is lifesaving.

CH 31 | Azula's Downfall [Part 2]/ Zuko's Uprising

AZULA'S DOWNFALL

Azula laid on her apartment floor, stretching tensed muscles and sweating. Aching bruises and swollen eyes were no excuse for missing a workout. Now as she laid, blinking the brocaded ceiling into being, she settled in for the mild meditation recommended by her longtime frienemy.

The most powerful benders are liberated of their fears. I have no fear, she attempted to lie to herself—and then acknowledged. Don't be stupid. Articulate your fears and let them flow down the river. I am afraid I've made a mistake. Too many mistakes. I am afraid I don't know which is which. She wasn't aware yet, but her first chakra was so deeply polluted, it was akin to releasing poison into her body.

She envisioned herself becoming Firelord, watching her nation slip into chaos under her rule. The islands are so difficult to protect. I'm going to fail, I'm going to fail, I'M GOING TO FAIL. Suddenly she was trembling uncontrollably and writhing her limbs now aching with restlessness. She realized the quick, shallow breaths she'd been working through were not providing any type of relief—no amount of gasping could slow her body's need for air. She tried to sit up with a whimper and her apartment swam in her vision as though she were viewing it from the end of a tunnel.

Something is wrong. That bitch did something to me. Something is wrong, this isn't…normal. Azula's heart rate exploded. It felt simultaneously like a runaway hum and heavy, wet thumps. She could imagine that the impact of the muscle on her fiery aortas inside the organ chewing each other apart. Azula wretched and closed her eyes, still whimpering, alone on her floor. She was convinced this was death and part of her welcomed it.

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At some point in the night, she'd succumbed to exhaustion and found herself still curled achingly against hardwood when the bell stirred her. When Azula dragged the door half open, the face of a short, ruddy-faced servant swam into her vision. "What?" she growled haggardly.

"Princess Azula, your transport has arrived." He regarded with a deep bow.

"I didn't order a transport. What time is it?" She wheeled around but wasn't sure where she'd placed her phone.

"No princess, it's…a government transport. I have no other information, just to inform you it's here" he replied, bowing again.

Azula sighed with irritation and hugged her arms against her chest as she stormed into the cold, barefoot, to regard the vehicle with contempt. A black limousine idled further down, away from the streetlight. Bending down to the blacked windows, she rapped, but received no response.

"This had better be good, do you have any idea what t—" she began to rail as she opened the door, only to find herself peering in at a shadowy figure whose crisp suit and polluting cigar smell had been unmistakable since youth. Azula swallowed her stomach and her words all in one gulp. "We'll be going to the drop-off, Lee." Ozai's silky voice informed the driver before sliding up the privacy window. Azula prostrated herself on the floor of the limo as it rumbled away. As for what the drop-off was, the princess had no idea.

"My father, my Firelord. I fall on my back seven times and seven times over…" Azula began to recite only to be cut off by Ozai's alarmingly quiet introduction. The times for niceties with his only daughter was over. "Tell me what this is" was his soft, but inimitable demand.

Azula lifted her head from her father's feet and grasped the glossy prints he now held in front of her nose. The air of the cab was stifling, and the cigar smoke made her head ache. The prints were from the pages of Yu Dao Yammer and a number of other media outlets that had shared the stories of Azula, Aang, and Katara. None of the headlines or photos were particularly flattering, but Azula knew immediately which ones needed to be answered for. The photo of Katara clearly winning their fight, fist colliding with her pained face, and Aang airbending them apart.

"I was attacked" the princess lied flatly and watched Ozai's cigar light up in the darkness. The burn of it illuminated his eyes and she knew immediately he saw through it. Azula's heart began to contort into wet flops again—she hadn't had time to make a plan, she hadn't thought to censure the papers. Why haven't I been thinking about this, preparing for this moment? She panicked internally.

"The airbender. He's the one you ran with, isn't he?" Ozai asked simply. Azula was frozen and had no time to recover before her father had seized a fistful of hair. The princess steeled herself, but made no reply. No tears, no fear. She reminded herself. Emotional reactions to her father's aggression were as dangerous as a face-to-face with Koh himself.

"ISN'T HE."

She could smell hair burning in his fist as he pulled her up to meet his eyeline. Azula's breath shuddered and she squirmed against the painful hold for a moment, but met his eye nonetheless. "He's just a stupid airbender" she managed to grit. Ozai made no response other than to pull harder until the princess let out an almost imperceptible whimper.

"THERE ARE NO AIRBENDERS. My own daughter. My flesh and blood, my HEIR. A traitor to her nation." Ozai had begun pressing down against her head so that her weight eventually bowled her back to the floor.

"NO, I—" Azula yelled, panicked.

"YOU'VE HAD THE AVATAR FOR SIX YEARS. YOU'VE ABETTED HIS PLANS TO ATTACK YU DAO. YOU'VE TRAINED HIM TO FULL REALIZATION. YOU DID THIS TO SUBVERT THE THRONE." Ozai roared and jammed his daughter's face into the ground under his boot. Azula broke into sobs and knew immediately that if there had been any possibility of salvage, it was now forfeit at the onset of tears.

Ozai's face was one of pure hatred when his voice stilled to barely a whisper. He bended the temperature against her face gradually, but ever rising as he looked down at her wracking form. "Oh, you're going to cry?" And then, a familiar sarcastic hiss:

Good. I like it when you cry.

He straightened, almost businesslike but for the foot that remained on his daughter's face, slowly rising to a boil. She hadn't begun to fight against it yet. "My children are my life's most shameful failure. But it is better to be heirless than to place a nation-traitor on the throne after I am gone."

"Azula, I un-name you.

I disinherit you.

I revoke my concern.

I surrender you to the spirits that will judge you for eternity.

You are no longer Fire Nation.

I re-name you Nation Traitor of the highest order."

Azula let out a bloodcurdling scream as he released her, plunging his hand to her face and searing it with the force of a hundred brands. Burning flesh and hair, stagnant cigar smoke, and the turn of the car as it moved through an intersection. These were the last things Azula remembered before her shattered world went dark.

ZUKO'S UPRISING

It was time. Katara had spent all day preparing. She had her raised, flattened "earth bed" courtesy of Toph, a roaring fire sponsored by Sokka, and an at-hand river pool irrigated by Aang. She took in calming breaths, waiting for the moon to rise.

This was not like healing Aang's bruises. This was not like dressing her broken fingers. Pulling a person back into their own consciousness—it wasn't something you could read in a textbook. She was almost certain it wouldn't be considered a sound or ethical medical practice.

Yet even as she worried her fingers against one another, she could feel the impulsive call to her element. The full moon had already begun to inspire that familiar, desperate itch inside her palms. Before Katara could open her eyes, she felt heavy weight situate next to her and an arm pressing around her shoulder.

Sokka's face was warm and confident. "Have I told you lately how proud I am of you?" Katara couldn't help but feel comforted at his words. Their family hadn't had an easy life and they'd laughed more than once that much of it was self-inflicted. But her brother always had her back, and she his. They would never be completely alone in this world.

"I just don't want to mess it up. I don't want to make anything worse." Katara explained. Sokka nodded sagely. "You know, the first time you did a waterbend, it gave me nightmares for weeks" Sokka confessed. "What?" Katara asked incredulously. "When I pulled water bubbles out of the tub? That's ridiculous."

Sokka shook his head. "No, that was the first time you did it while actually trying to. You were just a little baby and you had this terrible cough. Dad bundled you up and had us walking out to the harbor. "The winter air does a body good" Sokka imitated their father, and Katara rewarded him with an eye-roll.

"Anyways, you started to cry, because obviously that's ridiculous. Let's take a sick baby and throw her out in the cold! That'll make her feel better! I love Dad, but he can be an idiot…so yeah, you cried and it…it brought the rain Katara. It brought storm clouds like I've never seen since. It was such a bad snowstorm I can't even… There were these auroras bouncing off the glaciers, and this, this wind. It's like the air was crying with you…"

"Sorry 'bout that" Katara responded, shrugging.

"My point is—Katara, you haven't even realized the depths of your power. Your raw bending—it's….I think you could probably do anything you wanted with your powers. And sometimes thinking about that scares me for you. You could hurt someone…"

Katara tried not to flinch as her mother's face flashed behind her eyes.

"But tonight I'm zero percent worried. This isn't like Mom." Sokka forced her to lock eyes. She gasped a bit, surprised that Sokka seemed to know exactly what she was thinking.

"Tonight you get to save a life."

000000000 o0o0o oo 00000 ooo 000 ooo 000 o

Toph, Sokka, and Aang gathered Katara into a solid group hug before she got to work. "You're the man, Sweetness!" Toph exclaimed. Aang said nothing but didn't need to. His reassuring smile and the squeeze of his hand to hers told her that he had her back too.

"Thanks, guys. I got this." Katara agreed and rolled her shoulders back. Zuko laid on the earth bed, eyes closed. He was possibly sleeping—it was hard to tell with him. Katara started with her first handful of water, noting how in the strength of the full moon it shot to her and came to a glow effortlessly. She felt almost dangerously powerful—like she could stand in the sea and part it with a flex.

She started from the bottom up even though she suspected the work was inter-cranial. Starting at his head just felt too…familiar. The gang situated behind her as moral support but stayed silent. Still, knowing they were there helped her talk through the process.

"This is so strange…" she murmured. "Normally you would work your way up the chi paths and branch out when you find disruptions, but…it's like…he has no chi paths at all. It's just….empty…." Empty, but full of blood. Moving waters into the thicker, more viscous organs of Zuko's body made Katara's bending compulsions flare. An inexplicable urge to bring her hands together, forcing blood vessels to collapse—it was equal parts intoxicating and disgusting. She wrinkled her nose and shook her head hard.

Aang watched her on bated breath. Since they'd returned from the cave, he almost felt as if they were emotionally and physically connected. He could practically experience the tremble in her gut and the crumpling itch in her palms as if they were his own. Contrastingly, he observed her as an outsider, watching a master waterbender at the height of her element. She spun and re-spun the element with ease. It was awe-inspiring.

As with her mother, there was no penetrating the thick cranial bone. As with her mother, Katara felt around a foreign mass from the outside in. Not a malignant tumor, but a mass of chi. It felt like a snapped muscle that had curled into a ball deep in his brain.

"Welp it's no use standing out here, let's go in." Katara said out loud, more to herself than the others. Pinching open Zuko's eyes for a moment, she let the glowing liquid slide in. It painted his eyes in glowing white for a moment before working in down the ocular nerves. It was at the moment that Katara went catatonic.

00000 o

It felt as though she'd stepped into an alternate universe. The edges of it were hazy, non-corporeal. It was a garden that only seemed to spread just beyond her peripheral in any given direction. She was sure if she reached out to touch anything, it would waft away as mist or air.

Then she saw him—a young boy of 13, maybe 14, sitting cross-legged under a tree with his elbows resting on his knees. He wore the trappings of the wealthy and the distinctive decorated topknot of the Fire Nation's ruling family. She wondered if choosing to remain an unaged child was a conscious defense mechanism, or if he had no idea that six years had passed.

Katara wasn't sure if she should approach him or not— was she observing a memory? Would her presence confuse his supra-chiasmatic nucleus? She decided to find out. Moving slowly as she continued to observe, young Zuko was tearing bread and tossing it to a family of turtle ducks in the pond. His smile cracked every time one of them would seize the bread and wiggle their heads around as they chewed.

"Hi there…are you Zuko?" Katara asked. The young boy startled, as she feared. "Who are you? Get back! I have Fire!" he warned her, scrambling back on his hands and knees. Katara held up both her hands in surrender. "I'm a friend, I'm not here to hurt you."

Zuko was breathing hard and had his hands out toward her too. "I'll firebend! Don't come any closer!" Katara listened, but also slowly lowered herself to the ground, keeping her hands where the boy could see them. "I came to help" she continued. "Your friends and family have been looking for you, Zuko. They miss you. The world needs you."

"No one needs me. I'm fine where I am." The boy Zuko manifestation returned stubbornly.

Katara wasn't sure what needed to be said to get through to him, but her gut told her that the only way to release the chi paths would be for Zuko to choose to do it himself. She decided to lower her hands and sit more comfortably, to disarm him. "So, you like turtle ducks?"

Boy Zuko still regarded her suspiciously but nodded. "That's cool. There weren't any where I grew up, it was too cold. But my favorite is penguins." He quirked an eyebrow but didn't respond so she decided to continue. Katara told him stories about how her mom loved to penguin sled with her, and how she and Sokka would make elaborate ice slides because the baby penguins liked to slide of their own. She told him about how penguins made friends and had special calls for each other "they name themselves!" Zuko replied, awed. Katara nodded.

"And when one leaves or can't be found, the other penguins all call its name. We always knew there would be no sledding when they called out like that—they simply couldn't do it knowing they were missing one of their own." Katara finished, finally homing in on her point.

"Do you have any family or friends that you miss?"

Little Zuko lowered his eyes and hugged his knees, nodding.

"I miss my sister. My mom. Mai. Are they okay? Do you know them?" He asked.

Katara put all her energy into a poker face. "I don't know your mom or Mai, but I do know your sister. She misses you a lot too, Zuko."

She let it sit for a few moments, then felt ready to play her hand. "So, here's what we're going to do. Let's stand up together, and I'm going to take you back to the real world, okay? Then we're going to take you to see her. How does that sound?"

Zuko made no move to stand but nodded. "That's great. I'm glad we can trust each other. Promise you won't firebend me?" Katara said, slightly smiling at the child. "I wasn't really gonna do that" he confessed. "My dad did that to me. It hurt more than anything. I couldn't do that to someone." Katara realized that the child Zuko before her did not have a burn scar.

"Just so you aren't scared…when we come back, I want you to know that some time has passed. You are with friends right now and I promise you that you are safe. But I think being back in the real world is going to take some getting used to. It's okay to be scared. I'll be there, and you can meet my friends. All you have to do is tell us what you're feeling and what you need, and we can help you, okay?"

"And then I get to see my sister?"

"Yes."

"Are there turtle ducks?"

"Where we are now? I don't know. I have a baby Lemur though. You wanna see?"

"Yes!"