The Avatar; the man who had once defeated her father, was moping.

His normally fleet feet had become laden with morose repetition in their training sessions. At first, Azula took it as an personal insult. A subtle way to show her that her airbending was not up to par. She had taken to filling her nights with training exercises and her days with catnaps until she finally, finally, turned the wind against him and knocked him off his feet. It was a small victory and a shallow one at that, throwing him off balance was hardly a finishing blow, but it was a victory nonetheless. Then he took a second too long to recover. A second to show that her meager victory was not only small and shallow, but hollow as well. He wasn't even trying.

Did he forget who she was? Did he mistake her for her soft hearted Zuko? Or had she fallen so far from grace that the Avatar no longer considered her a threat?

The mere thought was enough to make her spit fire.

She had taken to sharpening her chi, focusing her flames, and venting her frustration out with fire onto the stubborn, immovable, rocks dotting the subalpine landscape; pretending the melting mounds were the Avatar's bald head.

To top it all off, the Avatar was oblivious to her anger. While his feet were grounded his head more often than not was lost in the clouds. Azula had caught him staring off-centered when the nonbender tried to discuss strategy. That very same night, Azula had, on whim, snuck a rock into the Avatar's dinner bowl only to watch in mild horror as he chewed and swallowed.

It was beyond ridiculous. They were going up against her father and who knew who, or what, else. Something was wrong in the spirit world and this wrongness had spread in echoes across the four nations but not even the Avatar knew anything more than a vague warning; an unsettling feeling in ones gut— like a rock — that the world was ending, and a crescendo of chaotic, corrupted, spirits. He should be terrified. Not brimming with childlike optimism.

The Avatar is a mess of contradictions, thinks Azula. For she could never quite see the Avatar as a child. He would display wisdom in one moment and naivety in another. A prodigy and a simpleton. As mercurial as a crosswind.

Unfortunately for him, Azula was not going to patiently wait out this temperamental storm. She needed the Avatar at his best and so she could not, would not, put up with his moping any longer.


"Where's the Avatar?"

It's a testament to his moping that the waterbender answers her without theatrics, merely pointing towards a rocky outcropping. Azula marches onwards, not giving the gathered peasants a second thought.


Azula had killed the Avatar the last time he turned his back on her, and yet, here he was, sitting with his back towards her once again.

Meditating. As if. It was a form of mockery. No survivor of genocide could be this nonchalant around a firebender. Perhaps around Zuko, sure, but never around Azula. She was the monster. Was the Avatar once again mistaking her for Zuko?

With that bitter thought, Azula approaches the Avatar and trails two fingers up his spine, stopping at her scar. A reminder.

"Good morning, Azula."

"Princess Azula," she corrects.

The corners of his lips turn. She digs her nails in, turning the reminder into a warning.

"Good morning, Princess Azula," he amends, his lips and voice devoid of the amusement she can so easily see scattered across his eyes like stars.

Azula brushes her two fingers upwards along his tattoo until she reaches his shoulder. She rests her hand there, in a mockery of a friendly gesture, and smiles internally when she feels him shiver.

"You've been moping, Avatar."

"I have?" The Avatar cranes his neck back, searching her face.

"I could keep time by your sighs," says Azula. She makes no move to assist his line of sight. "It's irritating and I won't stand for it. Explain yourself."

The Avatar sighs and drops his head. "You wouldn't understand— ow!" He rubs his ear and pouts as though she mortally wounded him.

Cute.

"I thought you didn't care," says the Avatar, turning to face her.

Azula crosses her arms. "I don't. Now talk."

"It's hard to explain…" he says warily, but when Azula makes no move to interrupt him or flick his other ear, he continues in a somber tone. "I used bloodbending to free the missing villagers."

"From the corrupted spirit?" clarifies Azula.

"It wasn't a corrupted spirit. It was a fish."

Avatar. Nonsense.

"A regular fish swallowed an entire village?" asks Azula, not bothering to hide her disbelief.

The Avatar shrugs good naturally. "Maybe it was imbued with a corrupted spirit but it was still just a fish in the end. It didn't know what it was doing or that it was wrong. It was innocent."

"Yes, yes, and you saved it and the village. Why are you moping?"

The Avatar sighs once more and Azula resists the urge to do the same. "I told you, you wouldn't understand—"

"Make me."

grey meets gold

Azula lifts her chin. "Unless explaining yourself is harder than defeating my father." She throws her words into the air as a challenge, and in the very same breath he catches them.

"Bloodbending feels wrong," he says quietly, the finality of his voice deep enough to bury mountains, "Katara told me it does, but I didn't know how it felt. I never bloodbended before. I didn't think I could." The Avatar hugs his knees to his chest and adds after a pause, "I could feel it struggling. It was torture. I never want to go through that again. I shouldn't have done it in the first place."

Azula twists the air around him, cutting off his breath.

The Avatar gets to his feet in an instant and Azula stops her attack.

He's getting taller, she thinks as they lock eyes. The thought stretches her mouth into a grin. Almost a man and yet he still thinks like a boy.

"Why did you do that?" asks the Avatar. He makes no move to retaliate. Instead, he keeps his arms to his sides and stares at her with open confusion.

Azula sighs. It's a pity. She had hoped to catch a glimpse of what her father faced.

"To prove a point," answers Azula, "that move I used on you was your very own air scooter." She pauses to see if his confusion will bleed into anger but it simmers in his face instead, giving rise to curiosity.

"The bender controls the element," continues Azula. "Not the other way around. I could torture you as easily with air as I could fire. Does that make airbending wrong? Or firebending? Did bloodbending somehow estrange itself from the elements to garner such a fear from the so called 'master' of all four elements?"

"No," the Avatar shakes his head and then, to her surprise, he laughs. "No, I hadn't thought of it that way. Thank you, Azula."

Across the battlefield, the Avatar was like the biting wind. But here, on the same side, he floated on merriment. The shift throws her off balance. His comfort weaving away her words until she is left gasping— like the fish. Gasping for air on dry land.

He thanked her for suffocating him.

Azula wants to take a step back, but that would be a concession. She casts a critical gaze on him instead and doubles her offensive.

"You shy away from firebending as well. Bad memories?"

"I don't think I'm afraid of fire."

"Who said anything about being afraid?" says Azula with a tilt of her head and a smile playing on her lips. "I was referring to you not letting your fire burn as hot as it could, and should. Beifong complained of you burning through an animal trap last week instead of letting her train with it, but your fire is normally nowhere near the intensity required to burn stone let alone metal."

"Oh, that. That wasn't me, that was you." Before she can respond, the Avatar holds out his hands and fills them with an eruption of blue flames. "See? Double bending."

Azula is struck speechless. There is something quite intimate about seeing her distinct blue fire in the hands of another. She fights the heat threatening to paint her face into a stalemate across her neck.

"Your fire feels different," continues the Avatar, oblivious to her battle, "what do you think about when you bend?"

"Nothing," Azula swallows. "Fire is an extension of myself. It is who I am." She tears her eyes away from his hands and into his warm gaze. "What did you think about when you first airbended?"

The Avatar loses himself in his memories, as Azula knew he would, but then he finds himself far too quickly, "I don't remember. I think I'm the same as you. Air is who I am— it's me."

Azula hasn't yet regained her balance in this dance of conversation. She motions for him to continue.

Push and pull. Where Azula lost her footing, the Avatar effortlessly regained; once more the nimble dancer he turns the conversation on its heel.

"When we were in the cave, you said being soulmates didn't mean anything aside from the double bending. But, if bending is a reflection of who we are then, at the very least, doesn't that mean we could be friends?"

Azula finds her footing. "We both have titles to bear, Avatar. Do not expect me to forsake mine any more than you would your own. I will always honor my nation above your charade of balance."

"It's not a charade," says the Avatar with a frown, "the four nations are better when they are united and living together in harmony. As equals."

"Ideals of children. You think you can unite the nations without fear or a power imbalance but, as you said," Azula dips away, distancing herself while maintaining his gaze, and says, with a final turn, "some things feel wrong."