Chapter Four
After her exile among spirits ended, Azula dug herself by her fingernails out of a ditch in a destroyed town.
She was bloody. She seemed like a corpse.
###
Ty Lee danced happily draped in gold at her wedding, and it was beautiful. That was one year ago, and she felt deep down that, on one hand, her old love was freshly burned and she was probably just trying to fill that gap with someone who had the same eyes. But on the other, she knew that she deserved happiness.
But, of course, stability was never something Ty Lee's life had offered her. And it is quickly upset in just one moment, due to one letter that her husband of one year receives.
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It has been a long two years since Azula vanished from this world without a trace, and Zuko is straining his eyes in the dim candlelight as he goes through endless stacks of mail. There have been rumors of spirit attacks in the rural Fire Nation, as if the New Ozai Society were not bad enough.
They have been growing in intensity, even in other nations, and they make so little sense. Aang says that the spirits are friendly, and that he is going to get into contact as soon as he can.
But Zuko sometimes wonders if he woke something up when he went to get his mother, but Aang assures him otherwise. Still, Zuko is not certain that the Avatar always knows what he is talking about. No one did teach him how to properly be the bridge between worlds, at least yet.
Zuko sometimes believes in ghosts. He never stops thinking he killed her, and he often thinks she is haunting him.
It has been two long years since Zuko heard anything from Azula, until a letter that got mixed in with mundane work, reports and occasional bad news makes his head spin. He thinks he would have fainted if he were not so used to news that comes out of nowhere and punches him in the gut.
Zuko rises immediately, his back cracking with the sudden motion, but he feels no pain. He knows that he has to do something about this mess, right?
It is a letter about Azula that has to be a joke. Because she is dead and Zuko has mourned her for so long, and has still not yet stopped suffering about it, even with his happy marriage and nearly stable life.
He still sometimes wakes up screaming about her, about her and he struggles to explain that to the woman in bed next to him. They both have felt like her blood is permanently stained on their hands for two long years.
And now? Now a small infirmary at a resort for the eternally wealthy says that they have her, unconscious and in a poor state. Zuko originally plans on sneaking out, but he cannot bring himself to do it. Because she has to know, and Zuko knows that she has to know even though there is this dark, slithering creature of jealousy that knows she always loved Azula more than him.
He knocks gently on the door of her bedroom. She gets up, not bothering to cover anything exposed on her slender body.
"Ty Lee, there's..." Zuko inhales through his teeth and her heart skips a beat. "There's somewhere I'm going and you might want to come too."
"What happened?" Ty Lee inquires and Zuko frowns, wringing his hands uncomfortably.
"She's...my sister has showed up. She's hurt and her condition is...abnormal, but she won't say anything except to me..." He stops talking, because she is suddenly getting dressed without her normal, careful way of selecting the perfect outfit.
This is alarming.
"Call Mai," Ty Lee says through the shirt she has in her mouth. "If something is actually wrong or anybody has to make bad decisions, she's not got the emotions we have."
Zuko just nods.
###
Azula woke roughly six hours ago, for a fleeting few minutes, only to learn that she has been unconscious for two years. She was able to speak lucidly to the healers in this hospital, but they did not tell her much about her condition, except asking her questions. But Azula could only give a few vague memories of pain, and lights and winces as they checked her wounds.
She fell asleep again. Azula drifts between sleep and wakefulness as she overhears whispers of the healers now and then.
"She should be on a pyre, not sitting there answering our questions."
"I don't know how she's alive, but she is."
"I don't know how that child is alive. But maybe it isn't even a..."
When Zuko arrives, however, the discomfort turns into warm smiles and friendly bows that make Azula want to scream and raze the place to ashes. She wants to burn a lot of things to ashes, to be honest, and she likes the idea of conquering the world with dragons very much.
Azula is half asleep still, as she has been, when Zuko, Mai and Ty Lee arrive. She begins feeling more like the healers think she should be every day. Like a person who was suspended between life and death for two years.
Ty Lee nearly upchucks all over her nice shoes when she sees Azula. It is definitely Azula, but at the same time, not her. Her hands are freshly cleaned, as is the rest of her body. Her hair is mostly combed, but certainly could use to be cut. The undersides of her nails are still stained with her own blood.
And her eyes are half open in her sleep, her breathing even, despite her cracked lips and pale, waxy skin.
She looks like a corpse somebody found decomposing in the woods. A sudden shock grabs Ty Lee and she chokes on the sensation in her throat. She remembers all of the horrifying, invented images that Ty Lee's mind tormented and taunted her with.
Of a corpse decomposing alone in the woods.
Agni.
Zuko emerges from the small, well decorated office of the healer with a grave expression.
"It's more serious," he says quietly.
"More serious than this? Look at her! Look at that husk of a person!" Ty Lee screams, not caring if the entire smug resort hears her shouting. Hears the future Fire Lady screaming like an enraged toddler.
"I'm awake, you know," Azula whispers and Ty Lee shrieks in fright. Zuko takes her in his arms and Mai's hand twitches towards a small flash of silver that Azula's eyes catch.
Azula extends her shaking hand, which is clean despite the light pink marks. It lingers there for a moment before Mai is the one to take it a help the princess up.
"Give me a mirror and tell me how the fuck I got here," Azula says, her lethargy beginning to pass.
She hears a healer whisper something about how the arrival of her friends and family must have triggered her lucidity. More like the adrenaline of hatred and refusal to let them kidnap her or control her, but she will take what she can get.
Mai supports her silently as a healer adjusts a mirror, one takes her hair, which is overgrown, the other carefully making sure bandages do not get displaced.
After taking a few deep breaths, Azula gazes intently at herself and no one of those traitors seems very surprised at all. How they could not be in complete and utter shock at what Azula is seeing in front of her baffles the princess to the core. She touches her face before touching her abdomen.
No, this is not right. There is no way that in any world that this could possibly be right. She has a sudden vivid memory of the last thing she was doing before she woke up in the hospital. There was painful, blinding light as she finally jumped through the endless hoops of challenges and was able to hatch the egg of a dragon that, by all means, should not exist.
It looked at her. Just briefly. A glimpse of sapphire and golden eyes, before Azula reached out to touch it and then she could barely stifle the fire that she saw washing over her and leaving her breathless.
"I'm... knocked up," is all Azula can manage to say and they seem to be baffled that she is so unaware.
Maybe it was all a nightmare, maybe she was just trying to convince herself that she wasn't in this state. But Azula cannot imagine herself winding up like this. She has only ever wanted to bed women, and she just cannot...
Not that any of this other resurrecting dragons and helping spirits business was what she had planned for her life either, but pulling herself out of a ditch was one thing, and dragging herself towards the nearest civilization was another, and realizing how crazy she would sound was pretty bad, but finding out that this was what the freaky spirit was talking about was another that she did not like at all.
That was the part about the distinctly disturbing thing inside of her. Which she is calling a baby because really there is only so much insanity a person can stomach.
She is trying not to be concerned about it, and focusing on how confused all of the healers are about her wounds. Unless this part is the dream. Azula hates the fact that she is never quite sure of what reality is. It pains her, but it is real, even if she does not believe it.
"Well, I look fine," Azula says hoarsely and she looks at Mai, and that at her brother, and then to Ty Lee. They definitely do not believe her, but she thinks that it is more incredulous that she wouldn't know about looking this pregnant. "Now the what the fuck happened to me?"
"The doctors said that you got hurt in a spirit attack," Zuko explains, gesturing loosely at the direction of the workers at the small infirmary. "There have been a lot of them in the rural Fire Nation lately. I'm not sure why, honestly."
Azula parts her lips to tell him what she now knows about the spirits, her fate and their design, but she decides to be quiet. She does not have the dragons that she was promised, and she has no idea what she is supposed to do with ─ "I had a pendant!" Azula shouts and everyone briefly movies into a fighting stance. "Who stole it?"
She is reaching around her body, not even bothering to avoid the small bump pressing against the soft red blankets. Azula cannot find a single trace of it; the charm that Azula was told would come into play once she realized her destiny and at last achieved her dreams.
"It's right here," says a very nervous, young and sweaty healer. Azula looks at Ty Lee, and how the traitor is so unafraid to gaze at the shimmering jewel, but will not look at Azula at all costs. Well, Azula's thoughts have remained complicated during however long her exile amongst the spirits was; she does not care what Ty Lee looks at. "You had it wrapped really tightly around your arm when they found you."
The healer bows and walks away after Azula nearly rips her arm off taking back what is hers.
"They found me harmed by spirits?" Azula says softly, pushing herself up in the bed and reacting in discomfort to what must have happened while she was treading beyond this corporeal realm.
"Well, they found you after you dug your way out of a ditch outside of a town that got destroyed in one of the weird attacks. Are you okay and being treated well?"
"I am doing just swimmingly. I have never felt better in my entire life," Azula breathes through bared, angry teeth.
"Do you want to come home with us?" Zuko asks and Azula knows the question is really if she wants to come willingly or if they are going to have to restrain her. She looks at silently, statuesque Mai, Ty Lee gazing at the boring painting on the drab wall, and Zuko trying to look calm.
"No," Azula states coldly.
Zuko recoils. "Is there, uh, anything you need?"
"To speak with you alone," she says with severity and Zuko nods.
"No, I want to talk to you alone," Azula says softly, because she has so much that she needs to work out before she is at all capable of finding her promised army of dragons.
After a quick glance, Mai very reluctantly leaves, needing to take Ty Lee by the arm in order to get her out of the room. She still looks so queasy and stunned that Mai pities her awfully, but not as much as she does Zuko. Or Azula, for that matter.
Zuko waits until he is with Azula, rubbing his hands together slowly, nervously, hoping she is not about to start a fight. She does look reserved, but far from relaxed, and he has no idea if she intends to strike or not. With her, it usually is the former.
"I need to speak to Uncle," Azula rasps and Zuko furrows his brow.
"No ─ I, I mean why?" he says, taking a deep breath. "I don't know what you want from him. You usually avoid him and he's in Ba Sing Se."
"I need to talk to him about Ran and Shaw," Azula says softly, trying to lock eyes with Zuko, but he keeps averting his gaze like a coward. But then, the minute she says those two unfamiliar words that she does not know the meaning of, he looks up and their golden eyes meet. They lock.
"How do you know about them?" Zuko hisses, his tone harsh, looking like a leader. Azula kind of likes that he has forgotten that she is insane, sick, covered in sores, emaciated and knocked up with something she does not think is human.
"How do you?" Azula replies sweetly, because even if he is Fire Lord and so much wiser now, ZuZu is ZuZu.
"There is no way you know anything about the last dragons," Zuko growls and he sees the flash in her eyes.
"I didn't until you just told me," she whispers. "But I need to talk to him about them. And something called kuzet. And get me out of this hospital as fast as you can. I hate places like this."
Zuko very slowly stands up and backs away a little bit. He realizes losing footing in front of her is foolish, but it is too late now. His pulse is rushing, his vision is fuzzy and the living dead girl on the hospital bed has just turned his calm life upside down.
"I don't...I'll ask him for you."
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Azula does not learn very much about the world at present as she journeys back to the palace. She has a headache, and body aches, and wounds. She is very preoccupied with the fact that there are apparently dragons still alive, and the fact that she spoke of them means that her dream was not just a dream.
The Spirit World is the only explanation for her being alive right now, in the first place.
Princess Azula learns only two things upon her return to the palace. Ty Lee has married Zuko and become Fire Lady, and there are unexplained spirit attacks that the Avatar is currently investigating.
And when they arrive, Iroh is already waiting, having received his nephew's letter.
There are many intriguing possibilities as of now.