Chapter One
Azula's father used to tell her stories about the dragons. She always asked to hear about them, always asked to hear about the legends of the royal family's status as deities; they were born from dragons, and Azula hoped so much that it was true. That they used dragons for conquest, because it was so much more desirable than the idea of machines and grunt soldiers.
But she was a foolish little girl who learned with age how to be cold, jaded and clinical in her actions, and never hope. Hope is always a mistake. Always.
Furthermore than just Ozai's bedtime stories to his daughter, the Fire Nation history books claim that the world was made from dragon's fire.
That is, of course, a quite dubious claim, since the Earth Kingdom history books proclaim badgermoles carved the continents, and humans were crafted from rock and clay. Or perhaps that the Water Tribes tell stories about Tui and La, and how they bestowed the gift of life and water to humans who lost their tails and rose from the sea.
Perhaps the only thing that legitimized the ravings of the Fire Nation is that their dragons are a force to be reckoned with. The ability to burn down entire forests, to eat towns alive, it showed the inherent superiority of fire. Sozin was a fool to have them hunted down, when they had been used for intimidation in the past, a living, breathing, invincible symbol of what the Fire Nation stands for.
The only reason why Azula is thinking about dragons, is because she has been hallucinating them bursting from her body, coating her in blood and burning her, ripping at her skin with their scales. She is now pinned against a tree sinking down and burying her face between her knees, squeezing her eyes shut in hopes that it will bring her back to reality.
Something rustles behind her and she knows that it is whatever beast that has been stalking her throughout this entire forsaken forest. Azula has put herself into the mind of surviving, and that has helped keep her head clear, but now she thinks she is too tired, too dizzy and too plagued with the dragons and gushing wounds to keep running from whatever the stalking shadow is.
She surrenders, even though Azula cannot bear to do that most of the time. Surrendering is impossible for her; she has fought until the very end. And she had intended to keep fighting. Fighting Zuko, fighting doctors, fighting everyone until she could no longer draw breath. But now... now she thinks she has at last truly broken beyond repair.
And no one will find her here, for better or for worse. Her skeleton will wind up between these trees for the rest of eternity, most likely. The thought of her decaying corpse makes her choke and gag on the contents of her stomach before she manages to breathe in deeply and control herself.
Maybe it does not feel so bad to cave in.
She feels her body become both cold and warm, as her fuzzy head drifts far away.
###
Azula wakes gasping, and is unsure how she is breathing if she is dead. At first she feels suffocation, the tightening of her throat as she tries to push herself onto her knees, but finds her body uncooperative.
Her golden eyes flicker around, trying to figure out where she is. It is certainly not the canopies of trees that cast shadows over her dying body. It is cold, red and black, built of stone, reminding Azula vaguely of dull, boring ruins she was forced to visit for history classes in school. But she has certainly never been here before.
The cold floor feels like the softest pillow Azula has ever been on, but perhaps that is just because her body is so numb. She squints, and sees someone lingering, a shadow that she cannot describe. She tries to call out, to dare them to show their face, but she cannot.
Lips moving, yet no sound coming out sends her heart into a rapid panic. All Azula has is her clever words, when it comes down to it. Losing her speech has always been her greatest fear, and the most enraging thing to her is not being heard or listened to.
And now her terror is rising. Please be more hallucinations, please be more hallucinations, please be more hallucinations...
She hears feet clicking on the cold stone, and, at last, someone is standing above her. Azula's lips are ajar, her breath faint, as she genuinely cannot describe the figure.
Spirit, comes to Azula's mind. She probably should have taken this into account after getting lost in a known entrance to the Spirit World. Perhaps that explains her loss of voice, or the numbness in her body. The fact that she feels heated but cannot sweat or express it.
The shadowy figure does not speak, but moves away again after examining her for a moment.
Azula tries to calm herself and look for a means to escape. There has to be something, some way to make it out alive. Unless she is already dead... Is this the afterlife? Is this what it feels like to be erased from the Earth.
That thought wounds. Azula cannot bear the thought of being forgotten. She cannot stand the idea of being a footnote in history scrolls. She wanted them all to remember her name. She exhales slowly and squeezes her eyes shut.
"You're crying," says a voice after Azula is long into a fit of silent tears. It is not easy to pin as male or female, old or young, human or beast. But it certainly is coming from the shadow that has been uneasily watching over her. "Get up."
Azula narrows her eyes, her lip curling into a snarl. But then the limitless invisible bonds seem to be lifted, and she forces herself to stand. She then tries to speak, but there is still nothing. It is still futile, and she hides her fear with a clenched jaw.
"There is someone very important for you to meet," says the formless and blurry shadow. "Come quickly, because there are enemies looking for you."
While Azula is not going to trust a shadow while she cannot trust people she has known since her toddler years, she does not doubt that there are enemies.
There is always someone who wants Azula dead.
###
Politics can make strange things happen in personal relationships. They can make allies from enemies, lovers from acquaintances, and a lot of messes that no one knows how to clean up. Zuko is currently rubbing his temples as Ty Lee paces incessantly in front of him.
He wants to ask her to stop, but he has to admit she is taking it better than he thought she would.
"It's not your fault." And then Zuko hesitates. "It's my fault, pretty much entirely. You had nothing to do with any of this."
Ty Lee's fingers twitch for reasons Zuko is unsure of, as her face contorts into varying levels of anger. "It's my fault she wound up this way in the first place."
"That's ridiculous," Zuko says earnestly, with a little too much passion in his voice.
"No, it's not. She would be fine if it wasn't for me. I shouldn't have ever come here, because then I wouldn't have to look my... what I did... in her eyes... her eyes..." Ty Lee drifts off slightly before rapidly shaking her head and keeping herself focused on the Fire Lord. He looks defeated too, his eyes puffy and purplish. Maybe Ty Lee should stop being so selfish.
"I spent so much time with my anger placed on the wrong people and the wrong things. And I blamed myself for a lot of things that I shouldn't have. It was bad for me." Zuko swallows as Ty Lee scowls at him, looking disgusted by his attempt at helping her. "I blamed myself too, but I had to stop. That's no way to live."
"If you hadn't ─ If I hadn't ─ If..." Ty Lee yanks her hair out of her face, making Zuko wince, while she does not show any signs of pain. "She's dead, isn't she?"
"That's too presumptuous." But Zuko's voice quavers slightly. Ty Lee closes her eyes and breathes in and out slowly.
Maybe she is better off...
No, don't think that way...
You knew she was never coming back regardless...
Ty Lee composes herself and examines Zuko. "I need to leave. This place is horrible and dusty and really ugly and... reminds me of how ugly I am inside."
She turns on her heel and leaves just as Zuko opens his mouth to protest.
The Fire Lord frowns, wondering if there is anything he can do. That seems to be all he thinks about at this point.
Why, even though he constantly tries to do the right thing, he sometimes fucks up so badly.
It almost makes things seem futile.
###
Meanwhile, in the Spirit World, Azula is ushered into a strange room, glancing between a variety of people she does not recognize. Most of them are somewhat monstrous, yet close enough to human forms to make them recognizable as her kind.
She does not think she has ever been so scared in her life. The helplessness she feels is something she has never encountered before. Even in the darkest depths of her illness, she did not feel helpless. Because she is not helpless.
But now, Azula is at the mercy of monsters. And not the type that she is.
With a swallow, she looks around.
"No greeting for the council?" asks the first shadow, and Azula is unnerved by how those seated in front of her do not move. She is forced into a chair, and remains there, not stupid enough to move. "Not being able to speak is really no excuse for rude behavior. Weren't you trained to be a princess?" demands the shadow and Azula leans back slowly, removing herself from a power position. She realizes that her best chance now is to play weak and compliant.
Azula for a moment thinks she might be on trial. Again, thoughts of the afterlife spring into her mind. Then thoughts of being drugged into hallucinations and silence, while she is actually before her enemies. Perhaps she is on the verge of death, and her subconscious is fighting and tearing at her, judging the fact that she has let herself lose.
She did not fully believe in the Spirit World until what she saw recently.
And maybe she still does not.
"Her gifts were so wasted," says a voice that Azula tries desperately to identify. But she can swear that the lips of no one on the council moved. "So wasted. Perhaps she needs a second chance."
Someone scoffs and Azula still has no idea where the voices are coming from. She tries not to show her panic, not to show fear. She is so much better than that.
"It would be as much of a waste. Her potential clearly was misleading, and a mistake was made," insists the new voice and Azula shakes her head, despite wanting to scream that she has the potential to bring down the walls of Ba Sing Se and how dare they presume that because she sleepwalks and hallucinates and has panic attacks means she is any less of a deity!
"Her brother is just as good of a leader."
"He has not done anything to regain the importance of tradition. He may have made efforts and alliances, but the Fire Nation has still lost its way just as much as it did when Sozin erased its past."
"She is not the answer to that."
Again, Azula shakes her head, but she does not think they even see her at this point.
"The world has forgotten more things than just old traditions. How many people even live in the mortal world who remember a time before?"
There is a chatter of speech that Azula cannot make out, and she does not know what is happening. She cannot quite comprehend what they mean by old traditions. Of course Zuko obliterated those, because he wanted the Fire Nation to be the pet of everyone else. Their traditions are built on strength, machismo and the will to dominate.
Whatever these... things are talking about does not sound much like that.
One, louder, clearer voice clears his throat. "Keep her locked up until we can test the potential we deemed upon her conception."
Upon her conception? If Azula were not on the verge of vomiting all over herself, she would find that laughable. Destiny is not real, and spirits are not known to intervene in mortal affairs.
Azula closes her eyes as she suddenly feels a thousand needles driving into her skin, and when she wakes, she is in a cold, dark box. She gasps, and gasps, and gasps and tries to distinguish if this is reality or not.
But Azula has not been able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy in a long time.
She does not let herself cry again. She will not show weakness, not even for a second.
Their words about potential confuse her. Azula's father and grandfather told her that she had the potential to claim the world in her fist, which she almost fulfilled if it were not for misfortune. She had the potential to be the greatest firebender in history, and so she bent lightning before she started puberty and could bend so fiercely and brightly that her flames were blue.
Azula's potential was stolen from her by her brother and his friends.
Whatever they speak of is clearly misguided and foolish, and Azula refuses to relent to her captors, even if they are not human. She does not look for a way out of her prison now, feeling too exhausted to try. She wonders how long it has been since she was dying against that tree, imagining dragons ripping her to shreds from the inside out.
Potential, potential, pointless...
Pointless.
Maybe Azula does not care what her trial here decides, because she now remembers her last thoughts... that she had no reason to go on anymore.
She could not take the pain, and she could not bear anyone seeing how weak she was.
Her eyes gently close, and she fades away yet again.
###
Azula is taken from her cell as she is waking and it feels oh so familiar.
She is again struck with that sickening feeling that she could be imagining this all. What if this is a trial before the Earth Kingdom and she just doesn't know? Even more troubling to her thoughts is the idea that she might not even have been drugged. She might have just at last completely, irreversibly lost her mind.
"The Council has been in talks," says the shadow leading her, the same one that guided her before. She wonders if there is a way to fight it, but she does not even know what the figure is. "They have decided that you are to be tested and, if you pass the test, they will release you from the Spirit World into the Fire Nation once more. If you fail, well, I'll let them explain."
What if I don't want to take your test? Azula attempts to say before realizing she cannot even make a sound. This is probably the most horrifying thing she has ever endured, and that is saying something.
She is seated, yet again, in front of the same, distorted, horrific, grotesque council.
"Do you remember the first test of character you were given?" inquires a disembodied judge that does not seem to remember that Azula has no voice. "When asked your reasoning, you blamed only your mother."
Azula just shrugs. Even if she could speak, she would say nothing. When doctors prodded her to discuss her mother, she would remain silent. And Azula would certainly not be in this horrible Spirit World prison if it were not for her mother. That is an actual fact, and not just her angered justifications as a confused young girl.
Another judge says, "Your test is very simple. You are to go to the Volcano across from this fortress. Inside you will find the very last of the dragons. Your family and nobles were very glad to wipe out the existence of an entire race. Didn't Sozin say something about them being an invasive threat to their masters? That they could not be trusted and would destroy you?"
That is true, but Azula is certain it is rhetorical. She always knew Sozin was wrong, just like she knew he was an idiot to wipe out the airbenders. Then Azulon, the equal fool, decided to try to finish the job wiping out the Water Tribe. What then? What then? It was not the most efficient way to do anything.
The genocide of the dragons was even more ridiculous.
"You may speak," says another warbled voice of a judge and Azula lifts an eyebrow before clearing her throat. It makes sound, thankfully.
"I think that the idea of wiping out an entire race is absurd, and was a horrible mistake. And I also think that most of it was just to cover up the fact that my father and his father and his father were obsessed with the idea of erasing the Fire Nation's culture and replacing it with their ideal. The dragons were overkill." And no one says anything. "I also think that my brother has only continued erasing the Fire Nation's history, just in another way that is more accepted by the other nations."
"Spirits do not claim one element," says one voice. "Even Tui and La, or Agni. But we do lament the loss of the gift we bestowed that three generations failed to uphold."
Azula shakes her head. "I don't know much outside of what I was allowed to be taught. I am clever, and I do want to know things. But I was deeply limited by my father and his desires."
They murmurs among themselves as Azula tries to contain her fidgeting and fluttering heart.
"You are to prove your strength and use to us by killing the dragon you will find there."
"I..." Azula wants to protest, but she also is not sure if she should.
"You will go now."
###
Azula hits the dirt and has no idea how it happened. Fuck you, Spirit World! is the only recurring thought in her head as she tries not to visible nurse her newfound scrapes and bruises. So the Spirits want brute strength?
She looks ahead of her and can feel stinging from heat in her eyes before she sees the volcano in front of her. Within is a dragon, and Azula will slay it.
If Iroh can do it, she certainly can. But... "How am I supposed to fight anything without any bending or weapons?" Azula shouts at the air as she turns in circles.
And then something heavy appears in her palm. Fuck you, Spirit World. It is a dagger, ornate and ceremonial. Azula thinks she may have seen similar ones somewhere before, but that is in the back of her mind.
She silently tucks the dagger she was given into her bra and starts walking towards the volcano jutting up into the dark, papery sky in front of her.
Azula can feel the volcanic ash whipping through her hair and stinging her eyes. She can remember once, when she was on Ember Island as a young girl, and her mother took she and her brother to see the sand dunes. They were famous and tall, stretching, reaching for the sky.
The sand was pitch black and incredibly sharp, like tiny daggers born of fire. And the dunes blocked out the sky like an eclipse, as the wind blew up the sand and made something of a small sandstorm with every forceful gust. It was impossible to breathe as she climbed them, and she dug her hands in and ran to the top, just to beat her brother in the race.
That memory brings a small twitch of a smile to her lips before she realizes what she is doing. She shakes her head, trying to rid herself of any distractions and get inside of this volcano as quickly as possible.
Azula starts running, as soon as she can will her limbs to do that. She is still in the Spirit World, and it is impossible for her to bend, which makes her heart pound. Fear is palpable, she knows she can get hurt if her sore limbs and scratches are not imagined, but she cannot do the one thing she is good at.
The worst thing for Azula is that which she does best. She again pushes those thoughts away as she finally reaches the entrance to whatever this temple is. The ruins are visible in better detail as she gets closer, and she wonders if it is some remnant of a lost and forgotten part of the Fire Nation, or this is just what the Spirit World looks like.
Inside of the volcano, it is hotter and the suffocation more evident. Azula's worst fear is having her breath stolen from her, or her voice, or her freedom. . . or her bending. It is almost as if this Spirit World journey is engineered specifically to terrify and traumatize her.
Maybe her father thought of it. Azula laughs quietly without thinking and then has to force herself to focus again.
In front of her is a long, rickety wooden bridge. The copious streams of orange magma are moving languidly, but Azula is certain that they will likely not remain that way for long. She does not trust that this task will be very easy.
She looks around for some other way, comes up short, and decides to run across the bridge as quickly as she can. Perhaps not the brightest of Azula's plans, but still, she is pretty desperate at this point.
After a lot of jumping, hopping, grabbing onto searing hot rocks and hoping she will not die, Azula manages to make it to the center of this stupid puzzle of platforms and pathways.
There is a hill, leading to a very evident nest. Azula can see a reptilian creature sleeping in it, and that must be her prey.
Then there is a shadow, this one a distinctly feminine form, but still indistinguishable, like the rest. It blocks her view of the dragon, and she squints as she walks closer to it.
"Do you understand the power in creation?" asks the figure in front of her. Azula is getting awfully tired of being surrounded by indistinguishable shadows. This one has an extremely familiar voice, but the intonation is off-putting. "The power in being a mother, or even growing a plant? The ability to watch something grow, to bend it to your will, to impart yourself onto it..."
"What?" Azula asks softly, trying to walk forward and finding herself barricaded. Fuck you, Spirit World.
"There would be far less wars and senseless pain if people like you or your father or your grandfather or his father knew what it was like to carry a life inside of you, to realize the importance..."
Azula feels the sudden ability to move and tries to run up the hill to figure out why the voice is so familiar, but she is knocked backwards, screaming, grasping at the air to catch herself, attempting to bend before harshly realizing she cannot.
From the feminine, shadowy figure has burst the smooth form of a fiery red dragon, roaring, its fangs in front of her. She collides with the obsidian beneath her and gasps as the winds are knocked out of her.
The dragon pulls back as Azula rolls away. She is supposed to slit its throat. The princess fumbles around herself, coughing, for the dagger she was given. Stumbling to her feet, she watches the dragon flying away from her, and she chases it.
And then she sees something she cannot explain or fathom. She has walked out of the volcano, to somewhere even hotter. A burning, burning place, destroyed. The same dragon, now looking so tender, and not trying to bite Azula in half.
It is curled around a man. Protection, Azula thinks. . .
She tightens her grip around the dagger, seeing quite clearly that she is definitely not running across an active volcanic surface. She turns around and tries to reenter the chamber she walked out of, and when she finds the door, she winds up in a very different room.
There it is. The baby dragon. Relief floods her as she walks to it, wiping the sweat from the handle of her knife. She stops and looks at it for a moment.
Her hand stays as it just looks at her. Looks at her and gently touches her wrist with its nose.
"Stop being cute. I have to kill you," Azula snarls, adjusting her grip again as if that will change things. It still looks at her. She makes the mistake of staring into its eyes and sees herself looking back at her, herself holding a dagger, about to. . . "All of you are dead," Azula notes. "All of you are dead and no one even cares."
It makes a vague mewing sound. Azula stares at it for a moment.
"I'm not going to kill it." She throws the dagger down and realizes she has probably just sealed her fate for death or condemnation to that fog they showed her. But Azula is not going to live by doing this. She may not have moral qualms about anything, but she also. . . She just clears her throat and turns, looking for someone to listen. "I'm not going to kill it. And you all can go fuck yourselves, because I am a leader and I do not do ridiculous things like walk across rickety, decayed bridges over lava and kill baby dragons because some stupid spirit council that aren't even brave or noble enough to show their faces tell me to!"
And as Azula predicted, she feels a sharp pain, and her vision becomes fuzzy.
But, "You have passed," echoes in her head right before she loses consciousness.