This is a translation of a text originally written in French. If some readers are interested in the French version, please let me know, I will publish it.
Note :
A few days ago, I came across an image of "Tristan and Iseult" drinking their love filter on the boat bringing them back to King Marcus. I thus thought of thwarted, forbidden loves, and my mind immediately made the connection with Zucest. I then said to myself that it would be funny to rewrite this story by diverting it into the Avatar universe. Then, I thought of all the myths featuring stories of murders, incest and other horrors that I love to read and write!
So I asked myself: "Why not rewrite some great Greek myths and adapt them to our favorite siblings?" The story of Electra asking her brother Orestes to kill their mother to avenge their father's murder seemed obvious to me. So here is the prologue to this story in which I am starting without certainty.
Hope this intrigues you enough to want to read more. Of course, it's better to know the myth to understand my choices, but this story can be read without having a good knowledge of it. I am going to take a lot of freedom both from the myth and from ATLA. I therefore classify it in "Alternate Universe" Ba Sing replaces Troy in my story and the Fire Nation embodies the Achaeans.
Here the text begins:
Prologue
Ba Sing Se is burning tonight.
Thick black smoke rises from rooftops ravaged by giant, devouring flames. A great clamor resounds as the inhabitants of the legendary city expire under the iron and collapse in the purifying fire which grabs their bodies like the shark pounces on its prey.
In the distance, we can see the imperial palace and its blackened walls. Huge stones poke on the ground, in an inaudible thunder covered by cries of agony. The terrified people have already forgotten their king and all are running, desperately trying to flee the city, once their refuge, now their hell. The citadel of Ba Sing Se that was said to be impregnable is dying and its inhabitants are trapped, like rats fleeing a sinking ship, surrounded by its glorious ramparts which have shown its pride throughout the world.
A crimson sky has descended on the world. Tongues of fire tear on the horizon. The star of the day is dying in the west, a gigantic scarlet disc fleeing the violence of that fatal day marked like a brand for the Earth people.
From the heights of the city, the Prince and the Princess of the Fire Nation are contemplating the sight.
She stands proud and beautiful with her feet firmly planted on the ground, delighted with the pungent smell of smoke and burning flesh. A breeze waves through the flaps of her crimson tunic and the long dark locks that frame her beautiful face. A cruel smirk stretches her lips as red as the blood their enemies are shedding tonight.
Her brother stands a step behind her. A shadow hides half of his face, only showing the lower part. His thin lips are frozen in a serious and indecipherable expression. His nostrils quiver as the scents of destruction and thousands of dying victims penetrate them. Everyone: men, women, children die under a deluge of red and azure flames crawling in the alleys of the city and devouring everything in their path.
His eyes, golden as the sun, wander from the city below to the silhouette of his sister whose confidence he is admiring. One can see he is waiting.
He's not the one making the decisions here. He is governed by her orders, her desires. By his desire.
He can no longer deny her anything, he never could.
He was unable to say no the first time she slipped herself under his sheets. Nor the following times.
He couldn't say no either when she handed him the sharp blade that would make him a murderer of the worst kind. Of the kind whom spirits and gods never forgive.
He will always be pursued by his demons. He hears them yelping behind him, the fire girls, the demonic lassies who have been stalking him since he left the palace with his sister.
Sometimes he wonders if his sibling does see them too. Something about the way she brutally closes her eyelids at times, her lips curling in a painful grimace, gives him this curious sense that he's not the only one haunted by their crimes.
But still, Azula gets up, dresses her face in her usual sly grin and speaks in a confident voice full of pride.
He feels deprived of his own pride.
He will always be a marked man, recognizable among all. The murderer who killed his flesh, the man who slept with his sister. The appalling scar that disfigures the left half of his face once earned him mockery and exclusion. Now it identifies him, not just as the banished prince, fleeing the violence of a father who hated him. It designates him as the incestuous brother. It shouts his crime out to the world.
The banished and hated son. The guilty brother.
The Matricide.
And now he's contemplating the walls of the palace which are finally collapsing, like gigantic tears falling from a stone giant's face. Now he's hearing the screams of those who die below, by his soldiers' hands, by those of his sister who smiles quietly one a step ahead of him. By his own hand, already soiled with the blood of so many people...
The infernal blaze reflects in his golden irises, and he wins a new title.
The butcher of Ba Sing Se.
His sister suddenly turns to him and he is struck, as always by the unpleasant sensation that she can read him like an open book. Without losing her smile, she holds out her hand to him.
He takes it.
She pulls him towards her and when they are side by side, she grabs his arm and presses a kiss on his intact cheek.
"Look, my brother, we have succeeded."
It's always strange to stand near her like this, to feel her toned body relaxing against his. He always felt like he was the younger brother. However, he is taller than her by a head, his arms closing around her slender figure remind him that he is the strongest, the oldest. It gives him a little confidence.
But she is always the one who leads the dance.
It will always be that way.
He doesn't know if he feels better or even more miserable when he gently inhales her hair's scent and the desire washes over him.
He knows that, this night again, behind closed doors, under the cover of darkness, she will offer herself, that he will be greatly rewarded for having lent her his arm, his blade and his flame.
For having helped her to reclaim the city their nation lost after their father's tragic death.
He knows that the moment she falls asleep next to him, in his arms, all those cries, all that blood, all this pain won't matter anymore.
Azula stands on her tiptoes and places a new kiss on the back of his neck. Indifferent to the guard that is waiting close behind them. He shivers.
He knows that soon he won't have to worry about what the world thinks about them. She promised him that after taking Ba Sing Se, she would be his, entirely. Tonight again she will be his wife, even if she is not in the eyes of the law. Sister the day, wife the night. And by now his wife for ever.
They will rule the world and reinvent the laws, those of the city but also those of men. They will build from the ashes of their crimes a powerful dynasty that nothing and no one will dare to challenge. Not even the Avatar whose trampled body lies below the city walls, dragged through the dust, still tied by the ankles to Zuko's chariot.
His biggest victory. The one that will earn him scalding caresses and passionate kisses when he is alone with her in his room tonight. They will secretly love each other one last time.
Below, the furnace is igniting. It looks like a lake of fire.
Thousands of innocent people are losing their lives tonight, because of them.
His sister's hand slips into his and he squeezes it.
Ba Sing Se is burning tonight.
NB:
The next chapters will be a flashback that leads to understand the events told in the prologue.
In this story, Ozai has already taken Ba Sing Se once but the Fire Nation lost the city after the murder of its ruler. Azula and Zuko, years later, therefore take it upon themselves.