Azula was grounded - again. Her mother had decided, as usual, that something completely harmless she had done had actually been something horrible, serious and concerning. She wasn't even sure what she had done to 'deserve' being punished, which only made it worse. Was it because she burned that ridiculous doll her uncle gave her? Or because she had picked on Zuko? Had it been something she said? Had Ursa somehow found out about a prank she and her friends had played on some servants a few days prior?
Whatever it was, it meant she'd have to spend the whole afternoon by herself AND not get any dessert after dinner. She couldn't even ask her dad to talk some sense into her mother, even though she knew he would agree with her that whatever it was she had done had not been that big a deal. That would involve making Ozai deal a problem that was not his and that he would not care about - which was not something Azula could get away with, even though he preferred her to her stupid brother.
A knock on her door pulled her away from her thoughts.
"Zula, can I come in?"
Speak of the dum-dum.
"Go away, Zuko! I wanna be alone!"
"Please, it's important"
She sighed, got out of bed and let him into her room. Her curiosity was instantly picked as noticed the small, wooden box he had in hand.
"What's that?" she asked, closing the door.
"A gift. I hope you like it" he offered it to her, but she didn't grab it.
"Why are you giving me a gift?" Zuko had never been the type to try playing tricks on her, but this was a very strange situation. They didn't give each other gifts without having somebody, usually Ursa, force them to, and Azula doubted the woman was behind this.
"Because I got a gift I actually liked while you got a stupid doll that is now just a pile of ash. It didn't seem fair, especially not now that you're grounded"
Hesitantly, Azula reached for the box, then opened it. Inside it was, to her shock, the knife their uncle had sent especially to Zuko.
"Why are you giving me this? "
"Because you wanted it and I wanted to do something nice for you"
"Okay, you're starting to freak me out here. Since when do either of us want to be nice to each other?"
He shrugged "Since now"
Azula didn't know what to say. She just stood there staring at him like he had gone crazy.
"Look, I know we're probably always going to have our problems, but I'm sick of all of our arguments, and of us constantly having to have some kind of advantage over the other or to win something while the other gets nothing, and of how everyone just acts like this is the way it has always been. We were friends not that long ago. We could be close again. I want us to be close again"
"I don't believe you" she said, more to herself than to him.
"I don't care" he said before leaving "I'm tired of fighting you, Azula"
Of course he doesn't want to fight anymore; he always loses, the young princess couldn't help but think to herself, and she knew her father would agree with her. She knew he would praise her if she simply took the knife and didn't change her ways, just to teach Zuko a lesson. He deserved it for being such a fool.
Yet she couldn't. She kept thinking about that what he did, about what he said... she kept the gift underneath her pillow, and would randomly reach for it during that night for no apparent reason, her mind not letting her rest no matter how many times she tossed and turned in bed.
Not until she thought of a to return the favor.
The next morning, she decided to give him a little help with his studies. To her surprise, Zuko wasn't all that stupid; he did manage to understand things a little better when she explained it - she should have known that she was better than his tutors, after all, she learned mostly on her own and not with the people her father was so sure were the best of the best.
His firebending skills, however, were a bit harder to improve on, at least at first. Azula had not even been planning on helping with that, since she felt a simple lesson on the history of their nation, something other people should have made more of an effort to make him understand since he was a royal, was more than enough to put them on even ground after he gave her his knife. But Zuko had brought their little study session up during dinner, and their mother had actually seemed proud of her for once. She tried to act like it wasn't a big deal, and it really had not been all that important for her until that moment. And since their father didn't seem to mind it, she assumed no harm could come of it.
So she continued helping her dum-dum. He wasn't bad, but he was impatient and too emotional, making his flames harder to control. And it took a little more time than Azula was proud to admit for her to realize that she was the source behind a lot of his frustration and, therefore, his failure. She had to watch him train with other people, without letting him know she was there, and it became very clear that he was much more relaxed when he was away from her, and that just hearing people so much as saying her name seemed to make him lose his cool. In a weird way, it was flattering to know that she had such an effect on him.
Zuko, however, was not happy when she brought that up to his attention.
"The world doesn't revolve around you, Azula!"
"It's okay to be jealous, Zuzu" she couldn't help but tease "I would be too if I were in your position"
"I'm not jealous of you!" he tried to sound more confident, but as usual his unnecessarily serious tone only made him look silly.
"Zuko, I thought you said you didn't want to fight anymore"
"You're the one picking up a fight!"
"Oh sorry, am I the one who is screaming? I didn't realize it" she mocked, and, despite still being visibly furious, her brother kept his mouth shut. She enjoyed that small moment of victory, then tried to turn their little argument back into an actual conversation "Look, Zuzu, I really am trying to help you, I swear I am. You're not a bad firebender, in fact you're almost decent, and once you're our dad's age you'll probably pretty good. But we both know that you want to be good, you want to be great. Just like me"
He refused to say a word and still looked bitter, but he was listening to her, so Azula went on.
"But if you want to get there, you're gonna have to be patient, and understand that some things just naturally come easier to me, in a way they never have and probably never will happen for you. But that doesn't mean there's nothing that you excel at. I've seen you with those stupid swords you love so much, and it was more impressive than I thought it would be" she paused for a second as she noticed he seemed actually shocked that she had praised him "There's no doubt in my mind that I could someday be on your level if I ever decided I wanted to try sword-fighting, but that would take me a lot more practice and time than it ever would for you. So if you want to get better at your firebending, you need to find what works for you. You can look up to me, but you can't keep trying to be me"
"That's easy for you to say" he scoffed "Dad doesn't want you to be like me"
Mom does, she thought, but didn't say it.
"Dad isn't right all the time" seven though the words were true, they still felt wrong to say and she was sure that, to Zuko, they felt wrong to hear "Can you try to trust me? To really believe that I am helping you, not competing against you?"
He thought it over for a few instants, then nodded "Yeah, I think we can make this work"
Azula smirked "Good. Now your training can really begin"
Despite how well things had been going for him the past weeks, and how his sister had seemed to react positively to his attempt at salvaging their friendship, Zuko was still really surprised that Azula had allowed him to play with her and friends. Usually, she only tried to include her in whatever it was she had been doing either to show off how superior she was or to somehow trick him into humiliating situations. If she was in a really good mood, she'd ask him to play some game just to even out the teams, and he'd have to pair up with either Mai or Ty Lee, depending on which girl his sister thought would be less likely to help him actually win. Because of that, he rarely asked to join them.
But he did it anyway, and this time Azula had seemed genuinely happy, and even asked him to be on her side. Weirdly enough, his sister seemed to be even more aggressive when she was in a good mood than when she was angry, and he could not understand how her friends were not absolutely terrified, but instead seemed to actually have a good time - and that made it easier for Zuko not to feel too guilty for being ruthless; he knew that going easy on 'their enemies' wasn't the way to make his sister put on the effort of continuing trying to see eye to eye with him.
Still, he was pretty sure that almost murdering the girls was not as necessary as she seemed to believe.
He had a lot more fun at night, since it was just the two of them. Their mother had even allowed them to stay up way past their bedtime, mostly because Zuko had made sure to tell her just how great their day had been and how happy he was to have been spending more time with his sister - Ursa had always had a hard time telling him 'no' to things that meant a lot to him. But the real reason he had done it, was because he knew it would mean the world to Azula. While he could tell she had genuinely liked spending time with him and helping with his lessons and with his bending, he had also noticed just how touched she was whenever their mother praised her for it. If the way to win back Azula's friendship was to help her get along with their mom, then that was what he was going to do.
This whole thing was showing him that he really did like doing things that pleased Azula. He felt proud of himself once he noticed she was truly enjoying his company instead of just giving him that odd, polite indifference she offered to most people. The young prince liked the thought that he wasn't like everybody else in her eyes, that he was, in some way, important and special enough for her. He had felt so much joy seeing her eyes widen and light up when he gave her that knife, felt so proud whenever she congratulated him on his progress during training or studying, and her huge smile while they were 'attacking' her friends was so beautiful (despite being a little disturbing) that he couldn't help but smile back at her. Even her concentrated face and smug little grins when they played Pai-sho after dinner and she managed to beat him a dozen times had made him oddly happy, to the point that he was upset when their mother finally told them to go to bed.
"Can't we stay up just a little more? Please?" he begged.
"You can play with your sister again tomorrow or literally any other day you want. Right now you two need to sleep."
"But..."
"Don't be a baby" Azula said, but her voice lacked it's usual cruelty, sounding more like normal teasing "I don't even know why you want to keep playing. You'd just lose again"
"I let you win" he lied.
"Of course you did" she rolled her eyes and got up "Good night, Zuzu. Goodnight, mom"
"Good night, honey" Ursa said, kissing Azula's forehead, making her eyes widen "I'm glad you two are getting along."
His sister just nodded, still stunned, and went to her bedroom with a smile on her face.
Zuko definitively liked making her happy.