Hikari of Honoiro

Honoiro, Capital of the Fire Nation, 95 AG

"Would you happen to have tea for an old man?"

I freeze in the middle of setting the teapot down.

I know that voice. I know that voice, but he can't be-

"Uncle Iroh."

Azula's eyes are focused behind me, narrowed in the defensive glare she always presents when she's hurt, surprised, vulnerable. Her voice is the same whip snap of pain as she tilts her head, her sharp gold eyes unwavering. She should look fierce, like a bird of prey, but all I can think of is how fragile birds are.

I glance for a moment at the guards scattered throughout the grounds, catching the tail end of Fuyuko's dress as she walks out of the garden with another guard, probably on their way to inform the Fire Lord. I don't doubt that (Prince? General?) Iroh noticed them - even a prince wouldn't have become a front line general if their situational awareness was that bad - but the promise of backup makes my breathing easier.

Azula's fingers tap on the table to between us, giving the illusion of thought, but I can tell from the way she's settled back that she already knows how she's going to answer the question. Then she nods to me, her eyes never leaving the man behind me.

"Pour the man some tea, Hikari."

I quickly set another place at the table with the extra cups and plates I'd brought on the off chance that one of Azula's suitors decided to take tea with her, then carefully pour tea. My ears are attuned to every step the man makes, to the shuffle of his feet on the ground, the whisper of cloth.

His clothes, when I finally dare look at him, are threadbare and so much like Kiran's that it takes me a moment to recognise the familiar face over them.

I can see Azula's tension in the tilt of her cup, in her eyes. I can't blame her. Iroh, like everyone other than her father favoured her brother. I freeze for a moment, guilty as I remember that I've favoured her brother just as much as every other person around Azula has.

"Thank you," Iroh says to me as he picks up his cup. He closes his eyes as he talks a sip. "Mm."

"Uncle. Where have you been?" Azula asks as Iroh sets down his cup. There's genuine interest in the way she's leaving forwards subtly, and caution in the way she brings her cup to her lips.

"I would say, but I don't you'd believe me," Iroh says gently to her. "Now, where's your brother?"

Dismissal. Asking after her brother. I carefully don't wince. Azula shifts, a subtle movement that could be mistaken for relaxation if you don't know her.

"He's gone," Azula says. "Disappeared the night of Father's coronation."

I can't read Iroh as well as I can read Azula, but they must have learned some features from the same people because the way he picks up his cup is eerily familiar.

"And how have you been?"

Changing tactics won't help. I glance over at the sundial and have to restrain myself from a sigh of relief.

"Princess," I say softly, bringing both sharp gazes to me. "It's time for your lessons."

Iroh's eyes flicker to her, but Azula just stands, smoothing out the wrinkles in her pants without a glance at her uncle.

"Of course."

I leave the tea set out for one of the other servants to handle as Azula walks calmly, confidently out of the garden.

We pass the Fire Lord on the way out of the garden, and Azula bows to him with a murmured, "Father."

Fuyuko, behind him, halts at the sight of Azula. Once the Fire Lord has swept away, she falls into step with me behind Azula.

"Hikari," Azula murmurs as we follow a twisting path through this section of the palace, "Do I have any plans for dinner tonight?"

"No," I reply quickly. "All of your suitors have other plans tonight, and you had breakfast with the Fire Lord this morning."

"Hmm." Azula stops and turns back to me. "Please see if Mai and Ty Lee are available. And make sure that there's breakfast waiting for me after my lesson."

"Of course, my lady," I reply, bowing my head. "Will that be all?"

Azula hesitates, chewing her lip in a way that would have her etiquette teacher smacking her with a fan, true hesitation shadowing her features for a moment. Then slowly, "Aoi was planning to have dinner alone tonight. Change that."

She turns on her heel and continues on her way to her bending lessons, Fuyuko following quietly in her wake.

I hesitate in the main hallway for a moment, then walk over to the wall. Shifting aside a tapestry portraying some act of valor by one of the past Fire Lords, I quickly find the catch for the hidden door, and slip into the dimly lit servant's passage. I hurry towards the scribe's room, only pausing to grab a page to tell the cooks to send Azula's dinner to her quarters tonight.

it's always an honor to receive an invitation to the palace, so I have no doubt that Mai and Ty Lee will be allowed to visit, but considering that nobles usually want at least a day to prepare, I'm glad that Azula didn't ask me to deliver the invitations in person. I dictate the letters to the scribes from memory, the words familiar after many repetitions, then send them on their way by way of another page outside the scribe's room.

And with that, I find myself at loose ends for the next couple hours. Even with Azula's orders to have dinner with Aoi, there's now a large chunk of time that I have entirely to myself.

Or, well . . . the first time Azula gave me unaccounted for time was the first day she attended the academy. Normally, personal servants are assigned elsewhere when they aren't needed - and that had always been the case previously - but on her first day of school, Azula had locked eyes with me as she took a folder out from the locked box under her bed, locked the box again, handed me the folder and the key, and told me she wanted a copy of the key.

Going to the locksmith to have a key copied, even in person, doesn't take the six hours that she had given me. Understandably curious, I'd opened the file Azula handed me as I waited for the smith to copy the key. I'd promptly slammed it shut as soon as I realized that I was reading the notes from her private history lessons.

The first couple lines I skimmed over were enough to convince me that reading them could get me killed. I waited for the locksmith to finish the key, heart beating, feeling like I couldn't breathe, scared I'd drop the folder and someone would realize just what I was holding. I locked the notes away again as soon as I got back to Azula's room.

I'd tried to hand her both keys when she arrived back from school, but she'd only accepted one.

"How did the Fire Nation first unite?" she asked as she wrapped my fingers around the key the locksmith had made.

"I - I don't know," I stammered, frightened because I did know, the answer had been in the first line of Azula's notes.

"A spirit storm of the dead ravaged the battle field, and those who wanted to fight were killed or frightened into peace," Azula said, eyes sharp. "Who was the first Fire Lord?"

"Ryuunosuke," I reply after a moment, and Azula leaned forwards, a smile pulling at the corners of her lips.

"There is no second key."

Then she turned away and left my fingers wrapped around the key as she asked what her dinner plans were.

I'm still not sure what possessed her to do it, or why she has kept giving me more time than I need for simple tasks, but after that, she never gave any indication anything was happening - other hours of extra time. I don't know why she trusts me with this information, page upon page of proof of the Fire Nation's dirty deeds that pile up until it's obvious that the Fire Lord wasn't even paving the road to hell with good intentions, no matter what he said. She's seen me waver from her side for her brother, and if there's one thing she hates most of all, it's people who choose her brother over her.

I shake my head to pull myself out of my thoughts as I quietly enter Azula's bedchamber and lock the door behind me.

I pull out my keyring as I approach the bed and kneel beside it, the key to the lock box just one of the dozens I keep.

()

"I hope I'm not interrupting," I say from the door of the small outdoor garden in the center of Aoi's suite.

"Hikari!" Aoi exclaims, already waving me in. "You're not interrupting at all."

"Aoi was just telling me about all of the books he got his hands on that he could never find back in the colonies," Gouro says, somehow managing to sound perfectly polite even as his unexpressed exasperation comes through loud and clear.

"You like the critical analysis too!"

"I'm not the one trying to figure out how to write, thank you."

"You said you liked my writing!"

"I said I was glad for the break from it."

"Hikari, you like my writing, don't you? You'll miss it when I leave next week, right?"

"You're going home?" I ask, as if the topic hadn't been the topic of gossip for the past week.

Both Aoi and Gouro give me identical looks of disbelief, and I manage to hold my serious expression for a moment more before I break into laughter.

"I'm kidding, kidding," I say, waving a hand in their direction.

"Good," Aoi says. "I'd be rather worried if you weren't because for the past week, it's all that people have been able to talk about." He pauses to take a bite of the mostly forgotten food in front of him before continuing in a falsetto. "Oh, did you hear? One of the princess's suitors is leaving, even though she's not engaged yet. Hmph. Embarrassing - for them. Do they not have lives of their own?"

"Why talk about their lives when ours are infinitely more entertaining?" I asks, sympathetic to his grumbling even though I'm mostly immune to the rumors after so many years of them. "But I didn't come to talk to you about rumors. I was wondering if you would keep sending drafts of your writing after you left."

Aoi pauses momentarily, his chopsticks between his mouth and his bowl, a strange expression on his face as he finishes and chews. He'd asked me to read his works in the past, and while they weren't the worst writing I'd ever encountered, I'd told him rather frankly that they were very low on the list of things if want to waste my time on.

Gouro had lowered his chopsticks and was now staring at me. He'd been there when Aoi had asked what I really thought.

The thing is, while his writing isn't the most entertaining - he hasn't quite figured out plot - he is very good at describing settings, people, and the general attitude of a population, and everyone at this table knows it.

"I'd be happy to!" Aoi exclaims after a moment. "Tales of the Midnight Figure was your favorite work, right?"

That's his longest work - a collection of poems about the lives of various people in his city.

There's a wry twist to his smile as I nod, but he doesn't resist when I turn to other topics - such as which works of literary analysis had caught his eye.

The evening wears on as I talk about the literary works I know, and listen to Aoi wax passionate about the ones I don't, Gouro occasionally throwing in a dry comment and pulling Aoi into short arguments. The sun was down for hours when I finally make my way through the hallways and slip past Fuyuko into Azula's room.

I find Azula still awake, working on something at her desk by the light of a lantern.

"How was dinner?" she asks, sounding almost absent as I walk to her closet and start to pull out her bed clothes, but when I turn around, she's set down the brush and turned to watch me.

"It was nice," I say, moving to lay out the clothing on her bed. "Aoi promised to send me more drafts of his writing, so I've got those to look forward to, but otherwise, he's good at keeping the conversation going. How was your evening?"

"Alright," Azula says. When I look up, she's cleaning her brush and her inkwell is capped. "Mai and Ty Lee were interesting as always, but not much else seems to be happening right now."

She stands, leaving the paper she had been working on out to dry, then pauses thoughtfully. "It's been a year now, hadn't it?"

A year since her cousin died.

A year since her grandfather died.

A year since her father was crowned Fire Lord, and became even more distant.

A year since her mother disappeared, presumed dead.

A year since her uncle disappeared, presumed dead.

A year since her brother disappeared, presumed dead.

It's been a year since she lost every single one of her family members.

"Yes. A year," I say, because I don't know what else to do. Azula shakes her head and turns to walk towards me. She silently lets me help her out of her day clothes and into her night clothes, then sits on the edge of the bed so that I can brush her hair.

She seems almost lost.

When I finally tuck her in, she looks tiny and pale in the huge expanse of her crimson bed.

She doesn't look like the only heir to a genocidal dictatorship. She doesn't look like someone who is ready for marriage. She doesn't look like someone who has begun to build their own spy network.

She looks like a child.

"Good night, Princess," I say quietly as I pick up the lantern and make my way to the door that leads to my room.

"Goodnight, Hikari," Azula says, and I shut the door, leaving her in darkness.

()

(That night, when I run through the woods to meet with Kiran and Minato, the first thing they do is tell me I don't have to do anything.

It's an odd feeling to not have expectations placed on me. The Fire Nation seems to have forgotten just how young Azula is, and with every year they add to her in their mind, the more she relies on me. It's nice to be treated my own age for once.)

()

"Would you happen to have tea for your favorite niece?"

Azula's words are an echo of Iroh's words a month earlier, and I can't help but wonder if Iroh's smile is at the sight of her or at her echoing his words back to him.

"Azula! You left court so quickly, I thought that you had a lesson!" Iroh says. "Of course I have tea for you. It's a beautiful brewed jasmine from Yujin, if that's to your taste."

"It is," Azula says, ignoring Iroh's comment on the speed of her departure as she calmly moves into the glade. The comment implies many things about Iroh's skills of observation after a month in the palace and after looking at Azula, who is obviously no longer dolled up in the complex finery required of the princess at court. None of the things implied are complimentary. The statement is a retreat, a concession, and it makes me nervous because this is not how the royal family fights, this is not how the royal family has conversations. It may have been a year since there was more than Azula and Ozai, a year since there was more than silences and snubbing, but I know how the royal family talks, and they do not retreat before the fight starts.

Kaito - the boy who had been assigned as Iroh's personal servant upon his return to the palace in the absence of Iroh's old personal servant - quickly has two places set for Azula and me. Iroh commanders the teapot before Kaito can reach it, and there's a momentary battle of the wills between them - resigned amusement on Kaito's side, and passionate on Iroh's side - before Iroh pours tea for Azula and me.

I don't say anything, can't say anything, wouldn't dare because this gesture, too speaks on so many levels -

(Fire Nation nobility do not serve tea - to do so is to say that you are lower than the one you serve the tea to, is to say that you serve them, and the nobility will never say that. They don't even serve tea to the Fire Lord.

But I know that in the Earth Kingdoms, the host is the one who serves the tea. In the Earth Kingdoms, to serve another is to prove that you have money, to prove that you are better than them, that you can bear the cost of the meal.

I don't know which level is worse, because I had thought that the rumors of Iroh serving all of his guests were just that - rumor - but if a prince of the Fire Nation serves its nobles, would it be better for him to say that he serves them, or for him to silently declare that he is Earth Kingdom, that their customs are better.

(The Fire Nation wasn't always like this, according to Azula's lessons. The Fire Lord used to serve tea to anyone because a leader's role is to serve their people. They don't mention when the custom twisted.))

Kaito offers me a lopsided smile from under his bangs as I settle myself onto the cushion across from him, but it slips down his face when he glances at Iroh.

My eyes catch on the brightly colored objects on the table when Iroh sets the pot down and his sleeves are no longer covering them, and my eyes flicker to Azula. This, too, is like a month ago - tension in the line of her hand as she takes her first sip in the not-quite-silence that is traditional.

Behind me, I can hear the crunch of Fuyuko's footsteps as she prowls across the courtyard. From beyond the wall that makes up one side of this small clearing, I can hear the chatter and splashing water of the laundry (Is he here to listen to them? I can make out Kyo's voice clearly as she talks with some of the other servants about Lady Ume's latest indescresssions with her husband's sister.)

Then Azula sets the cup down and smiles. "A lovely cup of tea. From Yujin you said?"

"Yes," the prince replies with a nod and a smile. "It was a great pleasure to find - so rare that Isamu put a ban on exports."

Another weakness revealed - if there's a ban on exports, then this tea shouldn't be here. I lift the cup to my lips again.

"You wouldn't have happened to get those dragon scales from Yujin as well?" Azla asks, leaning forward to nod at the colorful pile on the table. "I wasn't aware that Isamu's father had any scales left after he made that ridiculously gaudy armour."

Her words are an attack, a test of Iroh's defences. Yuuma, the former lord of Yujin, was certainly the last acknowledged person to kill a dragon, but the dragon he had killed was green shading towards yellow - nothing like the blue and red scales on the table. More than that, even though dragons are now considered just game to hunt down, dragon scales have never lost their lucky reputation. Iroh either stole the scales or killed the dragon, but either way something should have been announced and there wasn't a whisper of either.

Iroh picks up his cup, smiles, and I know that smile. That's the smile Azula gives when she twists truths into lies. It's the smile Azula uses every day now, manipulating expectations, misleading, redirecting.

"Of course I didn't get these from Yuuma," Iroh says, picking up one of the red scales and rubbing it with his thumb like a worry stone for a moment before presenting it to Azula. "I killed these dragons myself. Almost sad, really. They were last of their kind."

Azula doesn't take the scale. Her eyes narrow as she stares across the table at her uncle. I stare at the scale in front of me. It's the first time I've been this close to a dragon scale, and there's an interesting pattern on the surface, a shimmering iridescence that catches the light, and you don't just hand dragon scales out.

"What do you want?" Azula demands.

"Well," Iroh says, reaching out to take one of Azula's hands and gently uncurling her fingers so he can place the scale on her palm, "right now, you are the only candidate to inherit the throne."

I'm not looking at her, I'm looking at Kaito, sipping his tea with the resigned air he'd had when Iroh poured the tea, but I know Azula, and I know that her eyes will be flat if I look at her. No longer annoyed, no longer resigned, just flat.

She knows that she's the only candidate to inherit the throne, and she hates that fact. There's no one to prove herself against, no way to tell if she truly is the best candidate. She will be - has been - protected, coddled, and urged to provide more heirs, to marry and provide the nation that security, even though she's only nine.

"You are also my niece," Iroh continues, folding Azula's fingers around the dragon scale. "And I may have neglected my duties in the past, but I do care for you. This is the least I can do."

Azula's eyes narrow, but Iroh doesn't say anything else as he sits back, releasing her hand.

I absently note that he never did say what he wanted.

"Thank you for the tea, uncle. Fuyuko, Hikari, let's go."

There's still the afternoon and dinner to get through. There are still a hundred smiles Azula will have to give, still lies and false praise.

And Azula will smile. She will let sand pretend to be softer than she is, and she will leave early to go over Aoi's latest letter with me.

She's used to being second best, and after a year of it, she's used to being the only choice.

And when everything else is done, all papers locked away, her hair down, and all but one candle blown out, she will cry into my shoulder because I'm the only one who dares to hug her.

And even I haven't told her everything.