Chapter 37

Chilled winter air blew off the ocean and into her room through large open windows. She could see the bay down below from either of them if she wanted, but just then she couldn't be bothered. The sun had called to her the moment it split the horizon. Even without access to her bending Agni still pulled her from sleep every morning, an irritating reminder of all that she had lost. No, today was not a day for enjoying ocean views and beautiful weather. Today, Azula ignored the call of the sun and refused to leave her bed. The warm flannel sheets like armor, protecting her from the hideousness of what her life was now.

Yun Sui had skipped his daily visit for what must have been weeks. She'd stopped keeping track of the days long before the thrice damned comet had bled across the sky. If she thought hard enough, Azula remembered the old man saying something about going away for a while. His reasoning was completely lost to her however. Not that she cared. It wasn't as though she was alone. Azula hadn't been alone in months. Ursa, her mother, wouldn't leave her alone.

She was there in the reflection of the small mirror that hung above her desk. When Azula walked passed any of the window panes, Ursa followed just behind, always there, always whispering. The first time she had seen her mother, it had driven Azula to madness. All of the anger she had held for her mother all these years had erupted, snapping the tenuous hold she had over her sanity. She knew now, thanks to her many conversations with Yun Sui and the mind healers here that Ozai had been largely to blame for that. So they said anyway. Personally Azula found it easier to blame the phantom that stalked her room.

After all, she reasoned, it hadn't been Ozai that had treated her like a monster from the moment she learned how to bend. It hadn't been Ozai that had favored Zuko, lavishing him with love and affection. It hadn't been Ozai that had abandoned her to the cold pressures of the Fire Nation royal court without any kind of social skill. No, that had all been Ursa.

Azula didn't see why she should blame her father for anything. All he had ever done was push her to be the best. Better than her peers, better than their enemies, and especially better than her pathetic brother. So what if he had been cold and unyielding. So what if he had purposely kept her from her mother and encouraged her cruelty. What did it matter that he had never given her the love and affection she so craved? For all of his faults Ozai had been there. Even if Yun Sui was right about how he had manipulated and warped her until she was nothing but a tool in his hand, none of it mattered because it was all too late anyway. She was broken and even if her father knew she was alive he wouldn't want her either.

There was a commotion outside her door in the hall. Why couldn't those fools just let her wallow in peace? She tossed and kicked at the sheets until she faced away from the door, once again cocooned in red sheets. A sharp tapping at her door told her she would not avoid this interruption. Growling her frustration, Azula sat up and bid whomever it was enter. Having expected one of the nurses, she was only mildly surprised to see Yun Sui.

Flopping back down on her bed, Azula huffed a greeting.

"Oh joy, your back. Did you bring me anything?"

The old man laughed shortly but came no farther into her room.

"I did, after a fashion. Ah… but before I tell you what it is I think we should talk. If you're feeling up to it that is?"

A dark laugh came from beneath the pile of red sheets. As if she had a choice.

"Why Yun Sui, I thought you'd never ask. I can't think of anything I'd love more than one of our little chats."

Kicking at the sheets now tangled around her legs, Azula sat up and turned to face her guest. Pasting a serene smile on her face, she gestured to the bench beneath the closer of her windows.

"I hope you were alright while I was away. You were not.. er yourself when I spoke to you before I left. Do you remember where I told you I was going?"

Azula rolled her eyes and dropped the fake smile at his condescending tone. Honestly she wasn't a child.

"Not really. I'm assuming it was important since you're bringing it up again?" At his hesitation she grew frustrated. "Well? If it's so important don't keep me guessing. Where did you go?"

Yun Sui seemed uncharacteristically nervous. She was used to people acting that way around her. Azula had always been rather explosive and frequently treated others as her whims directed. The old man never acted afraid of her though. Always so calm and unintentionally patronizing. His obvious anxiety now set her on edge.

"I have been thinking, meditating, asking Agni every day what I can do to help you Princess. You are tormented by your past, haunted by memories. Especially by the parent you believe wronged you the most." He was talking about her mother, she knew. This line of conversation always made Azula anxious. She looked past Yun Sui to glance nervously at the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. "I know your father told you she was dead. He lied to you." Her attention snapped back to him, gold eyes wide and furious.

"No! You're wrong, Ursa is dead and now she haunts me day and night!" Yun Sui hung his head as he patiently waited for her to calm.

"Princess, as I have said before, what you see is not a spirit but a delusion conjured by a broken mind. Your mother lives, and I have found her. I brought her back with me. I thought, I believe, that confronting your past relationship and building a new one might help you."

Azula turned out everything else after that, balling her fists and twisting away from him where she sat on her bed. The panic in her head grew and her breaths were shallow and fast. No, Ursa couldn't be here. She was dead! She had abandoned her and been killed for it. Her father had said so, Ozai wouldn't lie to her. He wouldn't…

"Princess Azula!" The fire sages voice was firm as it cut through the fog of panic, his hand gentle on her shoulder. "I am sorry that I have upset you, I promise she isn't waiting on the other side of the door to surprise you. I won't bring her to visit until you're ready to see her. I just wanted to tell you so you could get used to the idea. She is just as nervous to see you as you are to see her." With that, he turned towards the door and shuffled out.

For what felt like hours or minutes, Azula sat on her bed staring at the wall. Her mother was alive and her father had lied to her. Those two facts were upending her reality. Everything she was, everything she had done relied on her knowing without a doubt that despite all of her father's flaws he had never lied to her, never manipulated her. Yun Sui had been trying to show her how he had done just that her whole life but not until now did he have actual proof. It wasn't just a small lie either, this was the single most defining event of her childhood.

Zuko had always been the emotional one, the one that loved their mother best. After she had supposedly died he had been the one everyone thought suffered the most. A fact that Azula herself had ridiculed him for. Not once did she drop her mask of cool indifference. She hadn't needed their mother anyway, she had her father. He wasn't loving and affectionate the way Ursa had been with Zuko but she knew he favored her and she trusted him.

She had suffered too though. In her own way. Even though her relationship with her mother was strained it still pained her to lose her. Azula had always assumed their relationship would get better when she was a woman. With her gone she'd never get the chance to find out.

Following in her father's path had been a dark and lonely existence but she had relished his near constant approval. Something her idiot brother would never have. It had been fun for her to torment him over this. Now they had only one parent between them and he was clear about who he preferred. It felt like she'd won something when he had been banished and from that point on she had done everything her father had asked. It had felt like loyalty and power at the time.

Now she saw how easily he had used her and it was breaking her all over again. Fat tears slid unchecked down her cheeks as she came to the devastating realization that no one had ever truly cared about her.

Eventually the sky outside her windows darkened and another knock at her door drew her from her daze. One of the nurses had brought her dinner and she did a double take when she saw the food. Rather than the usual bland porridge she was served, the tray was heaped with all of her favorite things. Spicy noodles and komodo sausages, mochi and ice cream. Perhaps the most telling, loco moco, her mother's favorite and a dish from her home village. Her eyes filled with tears all over again.

Yun Sui must have been telling the truth after all. He had brought her mother here. Why though? Shouldn't she be off wherever Zuko had gone? Surely she would have gone to him instead. For that matter, why hadn't she tried to find him when he'd first been banished? It hadn't exactly been a state secret.

Wiping the tears from her face, Azula ignored the food and buried herself in her bed again. She wasn't hungry. She wasn't anything but exhausted. Tonight she would try to sleep and when she was ready she would ask her mother why she had come for her instead.

oOoOoOoOoOoOo

When Azula woke the next morning, the food was still on the tray beside her bed. It hadn't been a dream then. She sat up quickly and decided to do something she hadn't done in years. Firebenders were taught to meditate before they ever even made a flame. Fire was such a wild and uncontrollable element it was important to master oneself in order to better master the fire within. Or that was what all of her masters had always said. She had never taken it seriously. Mastering her element had come so easy to her it felt foolish to need to do anything else. Today though, she felt tempestuous and unbalanced. Perhaps her old masters had been right after all.

By the time the nurse came with her breakfast however, all she'd accomplished was to further frustrate herself. The sight of her obviously specially chosen breakfast only upset her more. In that moment Azula missed her fire more than ever. She wanted to burn the food to ash. She wanted to burn her curtains and carpets and sheets. Angry tears dampened her tunic as she stood and stalked to her small balcony. Miles below the bay was a calm foil to her mood, reflecting the sunrise as she imagined it boiling.

Not for the first time, Azula wished her balcony was close to the ground instead of over a cliff. She desperately wanted to run away to somewhere without mirrors and nurses and estranged mothers. Gripping the railing until her knuckles were white, the heartbroken princess screamed at the empty sky. Her anguished cry disturbed a flock of birds nesting in the trees below and the sudden rush of wings and bird call sent her stumbling back.

On her knees between the glass paneled doors, a movement caught out of the corner of her eye stole her breath. She ducked her head, curling into herself and covering her ears with her hands. It didn't help, it never helped.

"Azula, what are you doing? Get off this floor and clean yourself up. You want me to love you this time, don't you? Your whole life you have been so unlovable. How could I love a dirty, tear stained monster like you?"

Azula was crying harder and gasping for air as she turned and crawled toward her bed.

"Shut up! You're not real and I'm not a...I'm not a…"

"Not a monster? But of course you are. Look at your life and all the things you've done. Only a monster could torment her brother as you have. Only a monster could make her mother fear her. You led soldiers and hardened men and even they feared your unbalanced wrath."

Trying to block out the voice, she threw her breakfast dish at the nearest window. Ursa frowned down at her through the cracked glass as she tugged the bedsheets around her.

"Stop it! Please! Why wont you just leave me alone?"

"Do you think I will be able to be able to love you this time? I did try so hard when you were young. Agni knows I did. Zuko was just so much easier to love."

Finally burrowed under pillows and blankets, Azula wept until her mother's voice faded and darkness claimed her.