Chapter 6

Content warning for reference to past sexual assault.

Enough wallowing. Enough indecision, Azula told herself firmly, as her hangover dissipated. She canceled her meeting with her spymaster and focused inward instead. She needed to make her own brilliant strategy, and in order to do that, she needed information. She decided to investigate Aang's room for clues on his state of mind, or his plans.

The first thing she saw when she entered the room were his wedding clothes, hung ready for him to don in the morning. She had not yet seen this suit; it was meant to be a surprise. The embroidery matched the gown in her own room: patterns of dragons, phoenixes, and flames. She spread her fingers wide over the chest of the mannequin, imagining how glorious Aang would have looked in this outfit. She lay her head on the wooden shoulder, and pulled the empty sleeves around her back, imagining a tender embrace. We would have been the perfect prince and princess.

"Isn't this cute?" Mai snickered.

"Shut up," Azula told her. She felt thoroughly pathetic for indulging in this fantasy, even for a moment. Disgusted with herself, she hid the mannequin in the closet.

On his dresser, she found an ugly necklace that had been given to her as a wedding gift, with piglet charms for fertility. She had ripped several of them off, resenting the image of herself as a breeding sow. Did that bother him, or something? She wondered, recalling his silent, abstracted manner for the rest of the night. He must have been planning to leave even then.

She rifled through his drawers, finding only underclothes, papers and a stash of snacks: fire flakes and fire gummies. She opened the gummies and ate them as she continued her search, but found nothing interesting or unexpected. Everything was in its place, scrupulously neat and tidy. The room could have belonged to anyone; there was very little here that gave any sense of Aang's identity or personality.

What she really wanted to find was his private hiding place, the things he kept from everyone else. Usually people conceal things in loose floorboards, but if you can fly…..She looked up and examined the ceiling tiles.

She ordered a ladder and began tapping on the overhead panels methodically, until one moved. She pulled it aside and found an old tin box, big enough for a pair of boots. She brought it down and sat on the bed to examine its contents.

An old lesson book. She flipped through the pages of Aang's writing, skimming his summaries of history and literature lectures from their tutors. But then she saw a drawing of a city of towers on a mountain high in the clouds. The next page seemed to be a recipe for a fruit pie. More drawings: faces, clothes, swirling patterns, strange contraptions that might be wind instruments. Descriptions of airbending forms. A long list of names, ones she had never heard. Then paragraphs and paragraphs in that language, the one he had whispered defiantly as Father had whipped him the night he left…..

"Ungrateful brat," Father muttered at her shoulder. "I should have punished him more harshly."

"The poor thing, missing his family," Mother murmured.

All of these memories of the life he had led before he had come to the Fire Nation—he had been ordered to forget such things, they had been beaten out of him! There was a part of Azula that felt betrayed by all the secrets Aang had kept. She remembered warning him never to bring up his old life, shushing him when he whispered a prayer in that language, so that he wouldn't draw Father's ire. But Father was gone now.

And now she regretted shushing Aang. Instead, she could have invited him to confide those things in her: that would have won his affection. But she had been too terrified, herself. She would have done almost anything to avoid having to watch him get disciplined, and advising him to repress his memories, the way she repressed her own discontentment, seemed wisest. Now she wished she could read that language, and know what it was he had clung to, to survive Father's cruelty. She longed to understand that part of him, and feared she had missed her chance.

At the bottom of the box she found a scroll covered in notes about waterbending principles, in a different, feminine handwriting. There was also a hair tie, and a blue bead. He had cherished these mementos of the peasant alongside his most precious childhood recollections. He had kept them and hidden them even as he had prepared to marry her. To vent her humiliated anger at the slight, Azula burned the wooden bead to ash in her palm.

Azula decided she needed to know more about her rival. She went to the room that the waterbender had occupied, until she had been taken to the dungeon.

She realized she was not only searching for a clue to help her find Aang. She was looking for an answer to the despairing question she'd asked the waterbender on that terrible night: What is it about you that bewitches the Avatar?

But there were no beauty tricks here, not even a mirror. The waterbender had been allowed no perfumes or lotions. All she had were two spare blue dresses, some of the gray strips of cloth she used to wrap her wrists, and a handful of hair ribbons. Comparing this bare dresser to her own vanity full of pigments and creams made Azula despair at the wasted hours she spent arranging her hair and caring for her skin. It doesn't even matter that I'm prettier….

The blanket on top of the bed was much better quality than usually found in these quarters. It looked like the ones found in the royal family's own bedrooms. Under the pillow she found a pai sho tile, a cork, and a tuft of wool that she recognized as Aang's bison's.

She moved on to the desk, which had a small pile of scrolls and papers. Upon examination, most of them were illustrations of various waterbending forms, or treatises on waterbending techniques. They had probably come from the old man who came before her, the one who got executed for treason.

Folded inside one of the waterbending scrolls, she found a scrap of paper:

Hey Katfish,

Long time no see! Almost like being back from the dead, eh?

Didn't expect to find you here—wish you'd stayed away frankly. But when two fishhooks get stuck in the same thumb, what can you do but rip them out together? I'm kind of tied up at the moment, but I'm looking into what can be done.

Stay safe,

-S-

A clearly coded message, meant to look casual. Did it come from the Resistance? Someone named S calling the waterbender a childish nickname…..rip them out together — proposing an escape attempt? Two fishhooks…..Two references to the Water Tribe…..this was a note from one tribesman to another.

She needed to know more about where the peasant came from.

Azula swept into the dungeon where she had left Zhao, bringing a plate of komodo rhino steak.

"Tell me where you found the waterbender," she commanded.

"And why should I help you?" the unshaven man croaked in an unused voice.

"I'm your Fire Lord, and I can have you tortured, or fed." She held up the plate. "Your choice."

The man stood up, licking his lips. He approached the bars, but Azula held the plate out of his reach, raising an eyebrow.

Zhao huffed, then spoke. "We caught her trying to break into the servants' quarters. She froze five of my guys to a wall before she ran out of water and we surrounded her. The Avatar's old waterbending master had recently been executed and he needed a new teacher. I told her she could either train him, or rot in jail."

"Why was she breaking into the servants' quarters?" Azula wondered. Not the vault, or the armory? It seemed a strange choice.

Zhao shrugged, eyes glinting. "I questioned her about that, but she wouldn't talk." He looked at the steak. She sighed and passed it through the bars. She had not included any utensils, so he simply grabbed the meat in his fingers and bit off a chunk.

"Was she trying to rescue someone?" Azula asked. The letter had seemed to refer to a breakout.

"Maybe." The disgraced commander swallowed a mouthful. "But my price for that information would be more than a steak, princess."

She rolled her eyes and called his bluff. "Then I can wait until you're so hungry your price drops again. If the waterbender didn't tell you, then you figured it out for yourself. And I'm smarter than you are. Enjoy your cell, Zhao." She turned and started to walk away.

"My lord!" He called after her, his voice filled with an urgency that overrode his usual selfish bravado.

She paused without turning around.

"You have no idea what that waterbender can do! She can…..seize control of her opponent's own body! She tried to drown me with the liquids from my own stomach!"

That was a formidable ability indeed. Azula was glad to know about it. She couldn't help feeling chilled at the impossibility of countering such an attack. But she also respected any woman who could defend her honor so ably, and knew what a disgusting pig Zhao was with women, especially vulnerable ones. Though his high position had given him access to all the willing courtesans any man could want, he seemed to prefer to force young, helpless servant girls to yield to his desires. But the peasant was not helpless. She would remember that.

Nevertheless, if this rapist thought that a bit of welcome advice would win him his freedom, he was sorely mistaken. Father had protected him from the consequences of his actions, but Azula was Fire Lord now. Slowly, she turned to look the prisoner in the eye as she accused him. "And why would she do such a thing, Zhao? What could you possibly have done to threaten her, so that she would attack you like that?"

He sputtered and reddened, ashamed to admit what he'd attempted.

"Thank you for the warning, Counselor. Though I do appreciate the information, you know this is exactly where you deserve to stay."

Author's note: Thanks for reading! Please leave me a review! I update on Fridays. Follow the story to get an email link.