Hello! Here is my first attempt at fanfiction inspired by the universe of "Avatar, The Last Airbender."

The main characters are all taken from the anime of Michel Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.

This work doesn't take into account the events of the comics, although it may happen that some ideas come from them as the story progresses.

This story will be mainly focused on Azula and Zuko's characters and the main plot takes place almost 5 years after the events recounted in the show.

WARNING: Zucest.

Note: This is a translation of a fanfiction originally written in French, "Soleil noir ou Le Goût des cendres". I would like to point out that I am not an English speaker and that I use an online translator. I then check the translation and fix it, but it is probably not enough! There must be a lot of awkwardness and grammatical errors. Please be indulgent! I strongly advise French-speaking people to go see my story in French!

Chapter 1 – After the victory

It was late and everyone had been gone to bed for hours when the Fire Lord decided it was time to escort a slightly tipsy princess to her room.

Deaf to her protests, Zuko took her by the arm and led her across the room until they had passed through the huge double-leaf door that separated the reception room from the long hallway plunged into semi-darkness. With a quick movement of his hand, Zuko ignited some of the torches lined up along the wall to light their way. They might have grown up in this palace, but the drunken state they found themselves in did not give rise to confidence.

Loosening his grip, he slid his hand down Azula's arm to close it around her slender wrist. With a little cry that could express both surprise and amusement, she let herself be dragged down the hall, chuckling lightly.

He had never seen her like this. Azula was one of those still in control - if one excluded the terrible episodes of dementia that seemed to have finally spared her over the past year. The crises had started to lessen shortly before her return to the palace where Zuko had restored her to her status as Princess of the Fire Nation, giving her back the privileges accorded to her rank.

However, she still had to face several delusional episodes before regaining stability. He had not yet wished to formalize her return to the political scene, quite lucid about the wind of riot that would have started to roam the corridors of the palace and the streets of the Caldera. Not to mention the outraged reactions of the inhabitants of the other nations, if they had discovered that the new Fire Lord had given back all her power to the deranged and bloodthirsty princess who tried to annihilate them four years earlier. Even his friends would have tried to reason with him.

Yet Zuko had started to appreciate her presence and her wise advice on military and commercial strategy. Azula possessed an indisputable political intelligence and a sense of diplomacy that he still envied. She knew how to manipulate and appease the members of the Court who were always in search of new advantages. She was very good at making them believe that they had obtained satisfaction, even when they had not.

Zuko had to admit that he admired these Azula's abilities, even though he felt a wave of guilt at the idea, after all those years spent with friends like Aang, Katara or even his uncle who had taught him the virtues of honesty and transparency in politics as well as in friendship

Azula's return hadn't been easy, he reminded himself painfully. More than once he thought he had to have her interned again. Although her doctors had told him that she was now much more stable and that she could lead a normal life unless she regularly took the herbal teas and herbs they had prescribed for her, the young woman who had started to share his life again, eighteen months earlier, had turned out to be very different from the indomitable and sly little sister he had known in his youth.

This Azula had been a real nightmare in the past, but he had felt able to handle her now, aided by his new status as the Fire Lord which gave him rightful authority over her.

No. The new Azula was very different. Instead of walking the aisles of the palace terrorizing maids and guards or pursuing her brother to torment him, instead of practicing her firebending to exhaustion on the training ground - which Zuko had her, at first, forbidden access - she spent most of her time in her apartments, silent and withdrawn, prostrate in a ball on the mattress of her four-poster bed, or else sitting at the window, contemplating the Caldera from the Heights.

A contemplative, depressed Azula hadn't struck him as such a bad thing at first, compared to the maniacal, desperate teenager he'd seen on his rare visits to the asylum. The princess did not bother him, to say the least, but knowing that she was there, locked in this mysterious silence which he equated to a growing threat, had ended up exasperating him to the highest degree.

He had left her a few days to readjust of course, following the advice of the doctors who had told him that the return to normal would be gradual. Besides, what was the standard for Azula? Was this what he wanted? A sister who was more of a rival than a family supporter? A manipulative and haughty sister, destructive and cruel, who hated and despised him since childhood? Who had done everything to make life difficult for him?

So he had left her in peace for the first few days, occasionally sending a terrified maid to her door to make sure everything was okay. She had declined all his offers to join them for dinner. From the start, Mai had been reluctant to share moments of conviviality with her former friend whom she had not managed to forgive. But Zuko had insisted, with the help of Ty Lee who had come to stay at the palace for a few days on the occasion of Azula's return - supposedly in order to use her skills as a Kyoshi Warrior to keep an eye on her, but Zuko suspected that her presence was motivated more by a secret desire to reconnect with the fallen princess.

Faced with this pressure, Mai gave in, on condition that Azula kept her distance and her scathing comments for herself. There had been no need to remonstrate with Azula about her sarcasm however: she had never deigned to accept his invitations. This further irritated Zuko who had worked hard to convince his fiancée to accept the presence of his unstable sister.

Ty Lee had advised him to be patient when he told her about his annoyance. "Azula is still fragile", she had told him. He wondered, not for the first time, if she had taken the measure of his sister's deteriorating state. Only he, his uncle, and a handful of trusted individuals including Aang and Katara, had been allowed to visit the princess in the first two years she was in the asylum. Zuko had been very clear on this. He didn't want people linked to her old life to disrupt her care path. Seeing one of the rare people Azula had trusted before she betrayed her, plunging her into a whirlwind of irremediable madness, could have caused a disproportionate reaction on her part. The nurses had told the doctor about the incoherent and angry words of the princess who spoke for hours with people she was the only one to see.

By dint of observation through the rectangular hole pierced in the armored door of her padded cell, the caregivers had ended up identifying the people to whom she was speaking and had noted nuances in the way in which Azula interacted with her different "visitors ".

When the hallucinations took the form of her mother - which apparently happened on a daily basis - Azula first expressed strong anger. Then she ended up collapsing in tears, moaning like a wounded animal. Zuko, who had witnessed one of these scenes, had a heartbreaking memory of it which, even today, three years later, left him feeling like someone was squeezing his heart in a vise.

When her hallucinations would take on their father's form, Azula appeared to shrivel in place and threw herself to the ground in an attitude of contrition, not even daring to look up at the man she thought she had betrayed. The man for whom she was just a disappointment, a failure. Zuko had not attended this strange exchange but he had been appalled by what these doctors had told him. He didn't know what to think about it. He had always thought that Azula worshiped the man who raised her and taught her everything. He wouldn't have thought he could terrorize her so much.

Sometimes she saw him, Zuko. He hadn't wished to know in what state his apparitions were putting her and the doctors hadn't insisted, perhaps for his own good.

According to them, she was also tormented by the frequent visits of her former friends, Mai and Ty Lee, whose "presence" put her in a mad rage. This is why Zuko had not wanted to introduce them to her, despite repeated requests from the young acrobat who had never really managed to blame the princess for what had happened on the Boiling Rock.

This arrangement suited Mai perfectly. Much more resentful, she refused to even hear about it.

In the year before her return to the palace, weekly reports claimed her state of mind had stabilized and the princess was only suffering from bouts of dementia and occasional hallucinations, thanks to miraculous treatment set up by Water Tribe healers who researched diseases of the mind. This treatment may have partially freed her from the voices and visions that tormented her, but she had become apathetic and it had become impossible to communicate with her. He did not know if this universe of loneliness in which she had taken refuge was due or not to this treatment. In any case, she no longer seemed to represent an imminent danger.

Zuko had therefore reluctantly allowed Ty Lee to visit Azula, not without having informed her doctors who had themselves duly warned the princess that she was going to receive a visit from her former friend. After all, Azula had been alone for years and he had to admit it would feel better to know that she could share the company of people other than himself. She always refused to speak to him when he visited her. She remained resolutely silent when he strolled with her in the gardens surrounding the asylum, her, seated in her wheelchair, wrapped in a straitjacket, without saying a word, her head thrown back on her shoulders, her face framed by two large locks of dark hair, ignoring him when he tried to draw her attention to details around them, like the song of a bird or the color of the leaves in autumn.

He felt very stupid to talk to her about such trivial things, but he was so embarrassed by this stubborn silence that he was reduced to such extremes. The walk ended in shared silence. Zuko brought Azula back to her cell where a caregiver was waiting for her and would take care of removing her straitjacket after his departure. At first, he left her by kissing her gently on the forehead but he had stopped by noticing the way her whole body tensed at this gesture. "Goodbye, Azula," he whispered without waiting for an answer and he watched her go with sadness.

He knew she would spend the rest of the day curled up in a fetal position in her single bed, where she would be left alone, unless her imaginary friends came to visit her ? This still happened sometimes according to the doctors.

After a while, seeing that this was going nowhere, and only causing him a dull pain, he had spaced his visits, not without feeling a deep guilt. So he had been rather relieved to pass the baton to another person when he learned that Azula had not shown any sign of madness for three months and that she could receive visitors in the room planned for this, without chains and without a straitjacket, after having received only a light sedative.

Iroh had already visited her twice during this time and made sure of it. He had even managed to chat a little with Azula who had agreed to give few answers when he asked her about her health or her activities within the institution. Ty Lee was more optimistic than Zuko, she might be able to handle the situation better and get in touch with Azula. The Kyoshi Warrior had jumped for joy when he told her that she henceforth would be one of the rare persons authorized to visit the princess.

Ty Lee returned quite upset from this visit.

She had found a seemingly calm Azula standing, back hunched, over a simple wooden chair in the visiting room, a curtain of black hair falling over her face, separated from her by a metal table. Ty Lee was relieved not to have found her in a straitjacket, as had often been necessary according to Zuko. She had smiled shyly at her and greeted her warmly. "I'm happy to see you again Azula, it's been so long!"

Azula hadn't bothered to answer, hadn't even looked up at her and had only sniffed disdainfully, showing that she had noticed the presence of her former best friend. Ty Lee had tried to make conversation with her, to ask her questions about her daily life, to make her smile by reminding her of memories of their travels… but Azula had not reacted.

"How about you take the princess for a walk in the garden, sweetie?" had suggested a caregiver with a solid maternal build and a benevolent face, "That will make her breathe! It's not often that a friend comes to see her. Isn't that right, princess? Would you like to go see the cherry trees with your friend? It's flowering time! It is really beautiful!"

Ty Lee was about to accept enthusiastically but her excitement died down when she laid eyes on Azula's face. The princess was clenching her teeth and frowning furiously, indicating the rage she was probably feeling inside, hearing herself talk like that, as if she were a little girl or a very old person for whom walks in the dingy grounds of a madhouse were the only source of distraction.

"Do you want, Azula ?" Ty Lee shyly suggested, putting a hand on her shoulder.

It was a mistake.

The instant Ty Lee's hand touched her, a shadow passed over Azula's face who slowly lifted her head, looked at the hand resting on her shoulder, and glared at Ty Lee before spitting out a stream of dazzling blue flames. Ty Lee luckily had excellent defensive reflexes and threw herself aside before the fire could graze her. The two guards watching the visiting room were on Azula in an instant and pinned her to the ground, one of them holding her with one knee firmly pressed against her back. Azula was screaming and smoke continued to escape from her nostrils and the corners of her mouth. "Get out! Get out of here, you filthy traitor! I don't want to see you anymore! Leave me! Leave me! … Don't touch me, you bunch of degenerate peasants! My father is going to kill you! I'm going to kill you, kill…, kill… you all... " The sounds she was making became more and more inarticulate as her breath was shortening, crushed by the weight of the male nurse who held her to the ground.

"LEAVE HER ALONE ! You are hurting her!" Ty Lee yelled desperately.

A doctor, who had come from nowhere, appeared in the room flanked by several guards and a huge orderly while the nurses tried to reassure the terrorized visitors and to handle the other patients, totally panicked by the violence of the scene that had just taken place.

He crouched down next to the psychotic girl who had once been the elegant and fascinating Princess of the Fire Nation, a charismatic young woman whom everyone worshiped. He grabbed her arm and stuck the needle of a syringe which probably contained a powerful sedative, into her white skin.

Ten minutes later, Azula was back in her cell, deeply sedated, confined in a straitjacket, muzzled. Stunned, tears in her eyes, Ty Lee gazed through the hole cut in the door her frail figure, thrown to the ground like a rag doll. Only a steady movement of her back indicated that she was still breathing.

"This constitutes a sad regression regarding the progress made in recent months. She hadn't reacted so violently to a visit for at least a year. It might be better to avoid coming to see her. I'm sure of your good intentions, Lady Ty Lee, but the princess is obviously not yet able to deal with her feelings for you", explained the doctor who was standing behind her in the anteroom of Azula's cell, rubbing his fogged glasses on a piece of rag with an air of indifference that he undoubtedly wanted professional but which contrasted heavily with the content of his words.

" Does she have a chance to recover one day?" Ty Lee asked painfully.

"It's impossible to say My Lady. She suffers from a complex illness that our current knowledge does not allow us to understand. But we are doing everything in our power, with the help of her brother, the Fire Lord, who spends lavishly to take care of her. And we have the good advices of Master Katara who does not fail to keep us informed of the research carried out by the Water Tribe healers who are apparently getting encouraging results in the field of psychiatry. Praise our new Fire Lord and the Avatar, who restored communication between the Nations. Now, we will be able to advance medicine!"

He spoke briskly and Ty Lee sensed a kind of crazy elation in the expression on his face when he mentioned Zuko and Aang. Then she remembered that Zuko had told her about a certain doctor which he had rehabilitated after a several years exile. He was not lacking in enthusiasm, but his fervor made him a little uncomfortable. She guessed it must be the same man. But Zuko had also asserted to her that he was the best in his field and she could only approve of his progressive views on the relationships between the four nations. Such ideas were rare among the scholars of the Fire Nation who had always viewed with contempt the practices of other nations, less advanced technologically, industrially and medically.

"Is she ... Has she always had this illness or has she become like this after, well... what happened?" she asked him.

The doctor clearly heard the concern hidden in the words of the young warrior. He was well aware of the incident at the Boiling Rock which seemed to have been, after Zuko's betrayal, the catalyst for Azula's descent into madness.

"In the current state of our knowledge, it's rather difficult to say. But don't worry, my dear. The princess was ill the moment you turned your back on her. Sooner or later she would have hurt you and Lady Mai. Today the princess has noted that you have come to see her. She knows you've done the first step. Despite her mental state, she has still a considerable intelligence and she will not fail to notice this kind of detail. Impossible to say how she will appreciate it however… She also got into terrible anger when her brother came to see her here during the first months of her stay. She couldn't even distinguish her hallucinations from reality then and she was tied up or in a straitjacket most of the time. Things have calmed down and she no longer tries to attack him. It seems that she has developed a kind of trust in him, although it doesn't fully satisfy our Fire Lord. If you give her time, it will probably be the same for you."

Thereupon, Ty Lee had sadly acquiesced, had thanked the doctor before taking her leave and had returned to the ship bringing her back to the capital where Zuko was waiting for her. She painfully gave him this report, interspersed with tears and sobs, while Mai, wearily, handed her pastries that Ty Lee gulped down mechanically, sitting in a sea of tissues soaked in tears.

That evening, Mai, despite the indifferent air she had displayed in front of her friend, had sharply reproached Zuko for his lack of discernment and sensitivity and forbade him to send the young warrior back to Azula.

"Her mere presence is toxic! Your sister corrupts everything that approaches her! When are you going to figure it out? "

Zuko nodded, and although the words hurt him, he didn't know how to contradict her. He himself had too often been the plaything of Azula's manipulations and vileness. She had tried to kill him, more than once, had wanted to kill Mai and Katara, had left their uncle to rot in prison. She had almost killed Aang, thus putting an end to the last hope for peace in the world.

Sure, she was sick, but could he really forgive her for her crimes? Was there any interest in letting her recover? And each time he was about to convince himself that it was better to let her rot in this asylum - it was already much more than what she deserved in view of her actions - a heartbreaking memory would come back to him. Invariably the same. That of a tiny, moaning Azula, collapsed in a corner of her padded cell, lacerating her face with the fingernails of her tied hands. They had fortunately taken the precaution of cutting her nails when she arrived. Her body was shaking by violent spasms, her terrified eyes was clouded with tears. Breathless, her voice broken with sobs, she was trying to say something to him -or was she talking to someone else? He couldn't have said.

It was in this state of absolute distress that he had found her on his third visit, nearly six months after their Agni Kai.

Three visits in six months was not enough, he knew it, but until then, the guilt he felt had been largely alleviated by the post-war euphoria, the relief of being alive, the unexpected reunion with Mai. But also by the amount of work and responsibilities that befalled him as the leader of a nation whose trust was to be won. By negotiations with the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes who demanded reparation for all the atrocities and losses caused by the armies of three generations of megalomaniacal Fire Lords.

He would reassure by telling himself that Azula's defeat, tragic as it was, had been a necessary evil. The regime of terror she would have established as Fire Lord would have bogged down the world in permanent conflict, provided Ozai had left something other than a world of ashes to rule, after carrying out their doomed plan to raze the Earth Kingdom.

Zuko didn't dare to think about what would have happened if Aang hadn't managed to neutralize his father. He often thought about this fight that Toph, Sokka and Suki had enthusiastically related to him and often wondered what he would have done in Aang's place. Katara, to whom he had confided his doubts, reassured him, reminding him that he too had been able to show mercy by leaving Azula's life safe.

The question arose of withdrawing her bending. Azula had become unmanageable.

She would spat and threw searing flames at anyone who approached her. So she must have been left chained to the grid Katara had tied her to, for two days, screaming and delirious until she fell from exhaustion.

Escorted by a vigilant Katara, several guards, and by the Court physician who had given her a forceful sedative, Zuko carried her himself to the dungeons where he laid her gently on a mattress placed on the floor, gazing with sadness at the beautiful face ravaged by tears that had left long black streaks on her cheeks, where the makeup had dripped; the black and matted hair, summarily cut in a moment of madness just before her coronation, it seemed.

She had been there for several days in a state of extreme delirium, speaking to invisible people, screaming and crying for hours, muttering incoherent words in her quietest moments, suddenly bursting into maniacal laughter that made her guardians jump.

Even her sleep was restless according to the guards who remained by her side, a good distance from her jets of flame, in the blind spots. She had refused all food, content to drink the water that the guards hurriedly dropped her through a trapdoor before quickly withdrawing their hands, as if they feared she would bite them. Although most of the time, she did not even notice their presence.

Finally, Aang had appeared, accompanied by Iroh, Toph, Sokka and Suki and after hearing in disbelief their tale of Ozai's defeat, Zuko told them about Azula. Considering her condition, he did not feel the heart to throw her in prison, where her detractors would have liked to see her roast.

"Did it occur to you," Sokka asked suspiciously, voluntarily amplifying the sound of his voice, "that she was perhaps playing the act precisely to escape prison?"

Everyone else nodded fiercely, all except Katara, who knew, and Iroh, who was looking at his nephew strangely, as if he was waiting to find out more.

So Zuko led them to the dungeons. Rather than tell them, he had preferred to show them. The five minutes they spent in Azula's presence were enough to get the idea out of their minds. No one could act like that. The half-wild, disheveled creature they gazed at with a mixture of dismay, disgust, and pity was nothing like the cold, calculating, magnetic teenage girl who had conquered Ba Sing Se months before.

She now looked like a disjointed puppet whose threads had been cut and who sobbed, kneeling, her head against the dirt floor of the cell, still wearing the armor she had worn during her duel with Zuko. She didn't even notice their presence as she rolled over onto her back and writhed on the floor in an almost obscene attitude that made Zuko blush with shame.

After a while, she seemed to see or hear something. She stopped, straightened up slightly on her elbows, sat down, raised her head, her eyes widened in panic. She began to pant painfully. She fell back on her hands, screaming, and backed up to her mattress, her face contorted with a grimace that expressed unimaginable terror, her body twisted in painful spasms. She raised an arm in front of her, as if to protect herself from an invisible attack.

"No! No! Please, don't!". Her large pleading eyes seemed ready to pop out of their sockets. The horror they expressed was unspeakable.

For once, Sokka couldn't think of anything funny to say. Aang lowered his head, his eyelids closed, his face expressing deep sadness. Toph, her feet firmly planted on the ground, was also at a loss for words. She detected no malice, no duplicity in Azula.

For once, she wasn't lying.

Suki watched the princess who was now squirming on the ground with wide eyes and a terrified expression. How could it be the same girl who had defeated her and her loyal Kyoshi Warriors and who had come to torment her in prison? Katara and Zuko stood back. The young girl had placed her hand on the shoulder of the new Fire Lord to affirm her support. Iroh, meanwhile, was looking at his niece with an expression that mixed disbelief and sadness and Zuko thought he saw something akin to… guilt on his face?

They had returned to the palace and after a long moment of awkward silence, Aang spoke quietly :

"You're right Zuko, we can't let her go to jail. It doesn't seem ... fair."

"But we can't leave her like that in this dungeon either." Katara added.

"Tell me you don't plan to release her?" Sokka added incredulously. "Remember everything she did to us! She's worse than Zuko! Don't take offense, buddy, but you was a nightmare before you turned nice!"

Zuko smirked at the mention of his disastrous attempt to join the Avatar team, and he raised a hand to interrupt them.

"I told the best doctors in the Caldera about it. One of them told me about a structure on Ember Island that takes care of people who… well, people like her. Apparently this establishment studies diseases of the mind and they are at the forefront of scientific research. I have already written to them. They could take her and who knows, maybe they can... fix her?"

"Do you really want her to go back to how she was before?" Sokka interjected, skeptical, "For her to try to kill us all and usurp the throne?"

"No, no of course… But, she's my sister, I can't leave her. Imagine if it was Katara..."

"Don't try to compare Katara to your crazy sister!"

"Don't talk about her like that!" Immediately ignited Zuko whose whole face suddenly took on a deep crimson hue that matched the burnt part of his face.

"Calm down both of you!" Toph suddenly intervened. "We're not going anywhere like this. Zuko, keep going, tell us what you're thinking!"

He had not escaped the young blind girl that Zuko had an idea in mind. An idea he dared not express.

Zuko then turned to Aang.

"I can't stand to see her like that. She's... she's only fifteen! We can't condemn her to spend her life in prison… you understand?"

Aang nodded gravely.

"So I asked myself", Zuko continued, "Should you not take her bending away? Like you did for my f... for Ozai? She would no longer be a danger to anyone and she could come home, once healed..."

Sokka and Suki were immediately in favor, but the others expressed more reservations.

Zuko assumed it made sense. After all, neither of them was a bender. But for Toph, Katara and Iroh, it was quite different. They were reluctant but admitted that the question deserved to be explored. Bending was not enough to define a person, but it was an unalterable part of whoever possessed it. All of them were aware of the significance of such a loss, especially for Azula who was the only person, in all of history, known to produce blue flames and whose talent for firebending was the greatest pride.

Zuko had to be honnest. He had always envied the beauty and ardor of the azure flames that emanated from his sister's mighty attacks. He also knew that taking it away would make her furious and depressed. A shameful part of him also wished to discover what a worl where he would not be surpassed by his little sister would look like. A world where she would not be a permanent threat to him, a world where he could finally be the older brother she had never let him become.

Desperate, he sought Iroh's gaze. He would have liked to benefit from his advice at this moment but did not dare to share his childish thoughts in the presence of others.

Everyone turned to Aang who had remained silent. Finally, when he saw all eyes on him, the young Avatar spoke:

"The lion turtle who showed me this power explained to me that only an honorable goal could allow me to use this power without risk to myself. I almost died when I took away the bending from Ozai and yet my intentions were pure. Removing such an ability from a human being is not an act to be taken lightly. I… I don't know if Azula deserves this punishment… I don't think it's really fair…"

So they gave up on this project. Zuko would never ask Aang to put himself in danger by asking him for this favor. Admittedly, he was less willing than Iroh or the Avatar to reconsider Azula's actions given her young age. He was not so accommodating. Even though she was only fifteen, she was a genius and a prodigy. Hadn't he heard about it enough his entire life? Shouldn't a person with such intelligence have perceived the ignominy of her actions? However, he was also unsure whether his thoughts were guided by honor or leniency. The jealousy he still felt when he thought of Azula clouded his judgment. He was aware of it.

And if Aang, whom she had almost killed, felt that she did not deserve this punishment, then who was he to decide?

A few days later, accompanied by Toph, Aang and Katara, he went to the dungeons where they found an Azula curled up, weakened and emaciated. There was no need to even neutralize her. It looked like Ty Lee had blocked her chi again.

Exhausted, she didn't react when Zuko took her in his arms, and bring her to the palace where she received a new sedative. There, Katara, under Toph's watchful eye, tended to the wounds Azula had inflicted on herself and maids came to wash and change her.

Azula was drugged until she arrived at the asylum. Zuko stayed with her in the cabin of the boat that brought them to Ember Island. Sometimes she mumbled unintelligible words or moaned in her lethargic sleep. He then approached her and stroked her forehead or took her hand in his. He wondered if Azula could feel it.

Arrived at destination, Zuko, and Iroh who had accompanied him, left Azula in the care of the healers before having a long conversation with the chief physician who explained to them his revolutionary theory on the role of humors in the disorders of the soul. According to him, Azula could suffer from a humoral confusion which explained her madness. Zuko wasn't sure he understood everything but Iroh listened intently to what the doctor was saying and undertook to answer his questions as Zuko's mind wandered elsewhere.

Through the window, he thought he could see the cove that their family home overlooked. The echo of the crystal-clear laughter of a little girl reached him from the depths of memory. A little girl with dark hair adorned with a three-pointed crown of the fire nation, a little girl being chased by an older boy on the small sandy beach. He massaged his eyelids and forehead to get rid of this image.

When it was time to leave Azula, guilt gripped his heart. Her little figure abandoned on the single bed of her cell, her naked face, without the makeup she usually wore… She suddenly seemed very young and very vulnerable. Seeing her like that, nobody could imagine how dangerous she was. He looked at her one last time and whispered: "Goodbye Azula, I'll be back to see you very soon" before leaving the room, heart in his throat, supported by his uncle.

When she awoke the next morning in the small padded cell that would become her new world for the next three years, she was alone.