She avoids Mohi's if only to avoid distressing Kaz any further. She pretends like she is busy and overwhelmed by her very first job. That she needs to focus on it so she doesn't mess it up lie the last few jobs she's had.
Mohi and Zenyul trust her whole heartedly.
It hurts terribly. She doesn't deserve that kind of trust.
She knows it.
Kaz knows it.
And so she spends most of her time at the palace and with Mai, hoping that Mohi doesn't resent her fro growing distant. She thinks that maybe it is some sort of defense. To create that distance. To show herself out before they can show her out.
Working with Mai and tending to the flowers is a welcome distraction. Mostly she doesn't think too much about Kaz.
Mostly she doesn't think about him until he enters the shop. She is at the back of the shop, poking seeds into soil when Mai calls, "your brother is here."
For one small moment she thinks that Mai is referring to Zuko and her heart gives an anxious leap. She finishes patting the soil over the seed and wanders up to the front.
"Oh. Hi Kaz." She can't even manage to feel slightly enthusiastic to see him.
"Did you guys have a fight or something?" Mai asks in a whisper.
"I think."
"How can you not tell? Either you had a fight or you didn't."
But she isn't good with feelings, isn't good at understanding them. "I'm not mad at him." She replies.
"But he's mad at you?"
Snapdragon nods.
"I can finish planting the seeds if you two need a minute or you can step outside."
Snapdragon nods again.
Mai finishes handing her last customer his flowers and disappears into the back of the shop. Snapdragon brushes her fingers over nearby petals. "I made a bouquet for Mohi's birthday."
"And?"
"I want to come home for Mohi's birthday."
"Is that a demand or a question, princess." He sneers.
"A...request?" Snapdragon replies. "I made an arrangement with her favorite flowers." She holds up a bouquet of fake jasmine, daisy, clover, and yarrow. She will replace those with genuine flowers on Mohi's birthday.
Around the boy she has tied a few yellow and white painted beads and brown and white bird feathers that she had found in her hoard. "Can you give it to her?"
"Give it to her yourself when you visit on her birthday." The way that he extends the invitation is anything but kind.
It makes her think that, maybe, a silly bouquet might not be good enough. That maybe a pouch of gold coins would be a better gift. Mohi could start reclaiming the life she had sacrificed for Snapdragon.
For the woman that shouldn't exist.
She watches Kaz sulk away.
She never finds out what he had come there to tell her.
.oOo.
With the passing of several days, her mind has mostly sorted itself out. Snapdragon and Azula coexist well enough with Azula-as per usual-taking dominance. She attributes this mostly to the stresses and sorrows that Azula is prone to coming back in full force. They stir about in her mind until Snapdragon's joy and enthusiasm is swept away.
But Azula finds that she rather enjoys the freedoms that Snapdragon has found for her. The ability to speak as she will and do what she will without the fear of tarnishing an immaculate reputation.
She still very much enjoys being around Mohi. Mohi who ruffles her hair and gives her the affection she wishes that her own mother would afford her.
Her own mother who she has seen about the palace several times now. Her own mother who loves Snapdragon more than she could ever love Azula. She is just one more reason to feign ignorance and keep up her facade.
Really, it isn't too hard. She thinks that Snapdragon is everything and all of the freedom that she had yearned for. And now she has it. Maybe all along Snapdragon, minus eating flowers and rolling in dirt, has been the real her. The real her that she has buried so deeply.
The real her that has been hindered and bogged down by crushing expectations and loneliness.
She is terrified that this loneliness will come creeping back in. Kaz hasn't warmed up to her any and Zenyul always sides with his brother.
She is more desperate to keep their affection that she would like to admit. Desperate to keep the family she has found and the little joys.
She supposes that she wasn't thinking clearly.
Had she been thinking clearly, she wouldn't have gotten caught.
Had her mind not been so fixated on salvaging her relationship with Kaz. Fixated on keeping everything from falling apart completely.
.oOo.
It is Kaz who opens the door and he tries to shut it in her face. But she didn't walk all of that distance just to be shut out. "I said you can come for Mohi's birthday, no other day." Kaz grumbles, he gives the door another heave. Azula holds her ground.
"Just let 'er in, Kaz." Zenyul sighs.
He releases his hold so suddenly that she nearly loses her footing.
"What's goin' on 'tween you two anyways?"
Azula shrugs while Kaz grumbles, "don't worry about it."
Mohi makes her way into the foyer, apron tied tightly around her waist, face smeared with flour and dough. Azula mood lifts if only slightly. "Where ya be at chil'." She frowns. "Ya git yerself a job 'n we don't never see ya."
"Kaz doesn't want me here anymore." She doesn't particularly want to cause problems for him but she also doesn't want Mohi to think that she has forgotten about her. "He was here first so I've been staying with Mai."
Zenyul scoffs, "you're talkin' like one'a them nobles."
Her tummy flutters, how is it that he can manage to make the extravagance of palace life sound so ugly and foul? "I brought a souvenir." She slips her hand into her pocket and draws out a small coin pouch. She holds it out to Mohi. "It's enough to buy a place in the…uh, in the less rough area of Caldera."
Mohi's eyes go wide and she clamps her hand around Azula's wrist.
"Oh chil' no. Ya didn't steal this did ya?"
Technically she didn't. It belongs to her whether or not the palace guard recognizes her. But it doesn't belong to Snapdragon and right now she is Snapdragon. "They won't know." She thinks that they have so much wealth anyways that a couple of coins would go completely unnoticed.
"Chil' ya swiping hands is gon' git ya in trouble." She looks terrified. "Why ya go 'n do this?"
She shrugs. "You were supposed to live well. You were doing fine until I got here." She notices Kaz grimace.
Mohi cuffs Kaz on the back of the head. Kaz and Zenyul both. "I oughtta give ya a good swat too, girl! Ya should know betta then takin' from the royal family!" She slaps the coins back into Azula's palm. "Ya go 'n take this back."
"But you need it."
"Not as much as we need ya here 'n safe."
Azula's lower lip quivers. Even when she tries to do something good, she hurts people. She is beginning to recall more vividly why she had sought out the Mother of Faces to extract her memories, her face, her essence-everything that made her Azula.
"Kaz!"
The boy goes rigid.
"Why'd ya go 'n say them thin's to 'er? Don' tell me ya don' wan' 'er around?"
Kaz seems to chew on his lips. "I were mad, okay?"
The imperial firebenders don't knock. They just enter. Just as they have been trained to do. Azula feels absolutely sick. She thinks that one of the servants, likely Ami, had seen her slip out of the treasury. She wasn't careful.
She was foolish and impulsive.
She has made things worse.
"I don' think it's okay." Mohi shakes her head. She squeezes Azula's hand. "Oh chil', ya didn't have ta do that."
.oOo.
They handle her roughly. More roughly than even Snapdragon is used to. Snapdragon may have been lower class filth but she was never a criminal. She is a criminal now though and they have very little regard for her comfort. Her wrists are bruised from their grip and her knees are bruised and scraped from having been shoved to the floor of her new cell.
"I'll admit, it takes nerves, a certain fire, to steal from the royal family." One of the guards sneers.
"Never liked that one." Says the other. "Never liked the glum one either."
And she is left in darkness, with metal clamped around her hands and feet. It weighs them down so heavily that she thinks they may break. She lays with her cheek pressed against the chilly dirty floor.
She can tell them who she is, but she can't imagine that they would believe her. They won't let her show them her fire.
She believes that two or three days pass before she sees anyone aside from the guard delivering her sorry excuse for a meal. It is so terribly lonely and so dreadfully cold. She misses her freedom. At night she dreams of her factory, of making it to the very top.
She misses the wind in her hair as she leaps from building to building. It dawns on her that she hasn't done parkour in a good long while. She had taken the simple life for granted. And now she is more restricted than she has ever been.
She feels horrible for thinking so, but she wishes that she had never run into Mai again.
At one point she hears Mai arguing for them to let her see her girlfriend and she feels guilty twice over. "Wait until Zuko gets back, wait until he hears about this!" She had vowed. Azula can't name another instance where Mai had been this passionate. It earns her no prize. No prize save for, "oh I'm sure he'll be thrilled to hear that you brought a thief into the palace."
Her stomach is rumbling softly by day five. They have neglected to feed her for the past few days. She begins to wonder if they plan on leaving her to die. She doesn't remember any laws that punish thieves so steeply, but then she hadn't really paid attention to exactly what penalties thieves, traitors, and murderers received.
The door to her cell opens. She doesn't move. Even if she wanted to, the shackles keep her tethered to the floor. The light that spills onto her face is blinding after nearly a week without any light at all.
She doesn't try to get up, even when the shackles clunk to the floor and away from her wrists and ankles. When she doesn't move at all, the figure comes closer. She flinches as hands pull her to her feet. These hands are very gentle. Very caring. Those hands pull her into a little hug. "The coins were returned, I don't see the point in keeping you in here." Speaks a very familiar voice. "And treating you like this." She detects a scowl in the woman's voice. The same sternness that she usually addresses Azula with. But Snapdragon, as far as Ursa knows, is not Azula. And so her voice becomes light again, "let's get you cleaned up and something to eat."
Azula winces with each step. But she is very intent on simply walking it off. Walking it off, at least until her ankle twist and she buckles to the floor.
Her mother catches her and gives a wince of her own. "We'll get you to the infirmary and then get you something to eat. We can get you cleaned up later."
She scoops Azula up and Azula shakes her head. "I'm fine, I can walk myself." She insists.
Ursa purses her lips. "Your ankles are very swollen, I shouldn't have let you walk so soon."
"I can walk, I'm not weak. I can…"
"Maybe you can." Ursa smiles. "But you don't have to. The sooner we get you to the infirmary, the sooner you will get to see Mai and-what was her name-Mohi?"
Azula nods, "Mohi isn't in trouble, is she?"
"Mohi and her sons are safe." Ursa replies as she lays Azula upon a vacant infirmary bed. She beckons for a doctor. "Why did you steal from the treasury, Snapdragon?"
"Mohi needed the coins." She replies.
"Zuko is a generous Fire Lord, you could have asked him. You could have asked me."
Maybe if Azula hadn't resurfaced, she would have considered those to be options. Maybe if she didn't forget that Zuko doesn't have anything against Snapdragon…
Maybe if Azula didn't exist at all.
She closes her eyes.
Ursa sighs, "you like your independence, don't you?"
She nods, supposing that, that is a part of it. Even if it is a small part.
And Ursa gives a small laugh. "I guess that, that's a firebender's curse. We can never just ask for help or talk about how we feel." She takes Azula's hand.
"I don't know how to ask for help." Azula admits. She knows that she needs it so badly and for so many reasons. But she doesn't know how to request it. Even Snapdragon didn't really know how to reach out…
Ursa gives her head a sad and small shake. "You're quite different than her, but you remind me of my daughter."