Birds of a Feather
New servants in the palace, aware that among Prince Ozai's many children there was indeed a pair of twins, often assumed Azula and Azar were that pair. It was an easy mistake to make, for they were nearly as close in age as brother and sister could be without being twins. And among all the children, they happened to resemble each other the most - both with amber eyes the exact shade of their mother's, jet black hair like their father, and matching features that looked slightly harsh for a girl on Azula and slightly delicate for a boy on Azar.
Yet Azula was always quick to correct anyone who made this error, and to point out that she had been there first by almost a full year.
Eleven months and one week, to be precise, Azar would then specify immediately afterwards.
The other reason, perhaps, that they were mistaken for twins, was that they seemed to go together as a pair so often, in spite of their differences.
Azula was the most prodigious firebender anyone could remember, and Azar was the first nonbender born into the royal family in generations. Azula was the apple of her father's eye, while Azar, like their older brother Zuko, had a tendency to cling to their mother's skirts. But whether because of their closeness in age, or some other affinity between them, when left to their own devices they were frequently inseparable.
But perhaps it should not have been so surprising that Azar was Azula's favorite brother. Her two closest school friends were also nonbenders, after all.
"Like this!" Ty Lee said brightly, and then demonstrated another flawless cartwheel. "Now you try, Mai."
Mai gave a reluctant sigh, but attempted to copy the other girl nonetheless. Her legs didn't reach as high into the air, and she came down in a graceless crouch.
"Hmm," Ty Lee said, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "Not a bad start, but maybe you should practice more handstands first." She reached down and helped Mai to her feet.
"My turn," Azula declared. She did a lot better than Mai - hers actually looked like a cartwheel - but she didn't stick the landing and wobbled, off-balance. Ty Lee helpfully showed her the correct way to do it again, only for Azula to abruptly push her over once she finished. Mai and Azula both laughed, and after a moment of blinking in confusion on the ground, Ty Lee joined in.
"Alright," Ty Lee said, springing back to her feet and dusting the grass off her clothes. "Your turn, Azar!"
Azar looked up from the feathers he was carefully trimming. His archery instructor, a retired captain of the Yu Yan archers, had him experimenting with different types of fletching - so far he had tried komodo chicken and pig hen feathers, and today he was working on the wing feathers he had talked the messenger hawk keepers into giving him. "I'm not doing cartwheels," he said, shaking his head.
"Aw, you have to at least try," Ty Lee argued, hands on her hips.
"Yeah, we all did it," Mai added, though she didn't sound as enthusiastic. She never did.
"What's the matter?" Azula taunted. "Are you afraid you're not good enough?"
Azar rolled his eyes at his sister. "If I do it wrong, you'll just laugh at me," he reasoned, pointing the feather in his hand in one direction. Then pointing the opposite direction with it, he went on, "If I do it right, you'll just knock me down."
Ty Lee and Mai glanced at each other, and both of them shrugged, as if to say he had a point.
"I promise," Azula said solemnly, placing one hand over her heart. "If you do it right, I will not knock you down."
Well, that was a lie, Azar thought. Still, Azula was being persistent. And when she got an idea in her head, there was usually no talking her out of it.
"Okay, fine," Azar relented, setting down the feather and getting to his feet. He took a few steps away from his work, into the same broad stretch of grass where the girls had done their cartwheels a moment ago.
He could flub it, he thought. If he just fell over on purpose, the girls would laugh and that would be the end of it. He might even genuinely fall - he wasn't that good at cartwheels. But if he deliberately messed up, and Azula figured it out, she'd just be mad at him. And she was already in the start of one of her moods.
So he did the cartwheel as best he could - nowhere near as well as Ty Lee, but at least as good as Azula. And sure enough, as soon as he was back on his feet, Azula was moving to knock him down. But unlike Ty Lee, Azar was prepared for it.
He ducked out of the way, and when Azula overbalanced, he pushed her instead. Azula dropped, rolled, and kicked at his legs. Azar kicked back, but she was already up on her feet again, one fist swinging for him - and grinning wildly. Azula loved a good fight. He batted the punch away, and swung back with one of his own, which she evaded, grabbing hold of his other arm and twisting. Azar tried to kick at her again, then...
"Azula! Azar!" their mother's angry voice sounded across the gardens.
Azula quickly let him go. "We were just playing, Mom!" she called out innocently.
"Really?" their mother asked skeptically as she strode across the grass towards them. Ty Lee and Mai half bowed as she approached, but her eyes were fixed on Azar.
"Really, Mom," Azar agreed, ignoring how the arm that Azula had twisted was throbbing. He'd had worse. "It was just a game, honest."
His mother seemed somewhat mollified by his reassurance, though she did glance at Ty Lee and Mai. They of course both nodded in agreement as well - they would never contradict Azula to her mother, certainly not when Azar backed her up.
"Well I don't like the look of that game," their mother finally said. "You shouldn't play so rough with each other."
Azula and Azar both nodded obediently and agreed they wouldn't do it again.
"Anyway," their mother went on in a happier tone. "I was looking for you because we've had a letter from Uncle Iroh, and I wanted to read it with everyone together." By "everyone" she meant all the children - Azar knew his father never cared what Uncle Iroh wrote in his letters to the family, only what came in the official military reports.
They said goodbye to Mai and Ty Lee and followed their mother out of the garden. Behind her back, Azula gave him one last playful shove, grinning in triumph. But Azar did not retaliate, and only grinned back. After all, she hadn't knocked him down.
Uncle Iroh, of course, had sent gifts for all of them.
Azar did not know his uncle particularly well, for he had been away fighting in the Earth Kingdom for over two years now. But he always sent presents for birthdays and New Year's, and whenever else he felt like it. Some of the gifts were better than others, in Azar's opinion, but they always made it an exciting event when his letters arrived.
This time, Zuko got the best gift out of all of them - a ceremonial dagger surrendered by an Earth Kingdom general himself. Azar saw Azula eyeing it enviously, even before she received her own far less interesting gift of an Earth Kingdom fashion doll, and he couldn't blame her. Though he did wonder what either of them would need a knife for, since they both had their firebending.
Azar was about as underwhelmed with his present as Azula had been with hers - a book of Earth Kingdom fairy tales held little interest for him - but he didn't see the need to make such a fuss about it, and even if he could have, he wouldn't have done anything so dramatic as set it on fire. Shinzo received a puzzle box of black obsidian stone, which Uncle Iroh's letter said contained a treasure, probably candy by the sound of it. For Raizu and Denzu, their uncle had sent a pair of cuddly animal toys, one a moose lion and the other a badger mole. The twins, at least, seemed content.
"You'd better watch that knife closely," Azar warned Zuko as their mother left the room, and Li and Lo took Raizu and Denzu away for their nap. Zuko gave him a strange look, uncomprehending, but Azar didn't elaborate. If Zuko couldn't figure out that Azula wanted the knife even with that warning, he'd have to learn the hard way.
"What a waste of time," Azula scoffed, tossing aside the charred remains of her doll. Shinzo wrinkled his nose as the blackened silk and porcelain landed at his feet. "Uncle's never going to take Ba Sing Se."
"It sounds like he's getting really close," Zuko argued, holding up his new dagger as proof. "No one's ever made it through the outer wall before!"
"The outer wall is still miles from the city itself, Zuzu," Azula said with a superior tone, her hands planted on her hips. Zuko glared in response to the nickname, which only Azula ever dared to call him to his face. Shinzo, who had no interest in arguing military tactics, retreated to the couch, fiddling with his puzzle box.
"But it's mostly farmland within the outer wall," Azar pointed out, flipping idly through the pages of his book. The illustrations were cool, he supposed, depicting all sorts of mythical creatures like goblins and lion turtles, but the scrolls of Earth Kingdom geography he'd been reading with his tutor yesterday were more interesting. "The Earth Army will probably fall back to their next line of defenses on the inner walls without much of a fight."
"True," Azula admitted begrudgingly. She frowned, considering for a moment, then laughed. "But it took Uncle Fatso two years to get through the outer wall. I doubt he'll break into the city any faster."
"I'd like to see anyone else do better," Zuko defended their uncle. Azar, who was losing interest in this conversation now that it was going to degrade into another spat between Zuko and Azula, went and joined Shinzo on the couch.
"Dad could," Azula countered, and Azar knew she had him there. "And someday I will."
Zuko had his own retort to their sister's boast, but Azar merely scoffed to himself. Not without my help, he thought.
"Can't get it to open?" he said aloud to Shinzo instead.
"No," Shinzo admitted, turning the smooth black stone box over in his hands. It was very finely crafted, with the seams where the pieces met barely visible. Not at all an appropriate gift for a four-year-old, Azar thought. "Maybe it's broken?" his little brother ventured, shaking it so its contents rattled again.
"Well, this opens just fine," Azar replied, laying out the fairy tale book on his lap. He turned to the full-page illustration of the lion turtle, and Shinzo's eyes went wide.
"Woah," his little brother breathed. "What is that?"
"It's an ancient Earth Kingdom monster," Azar replied, leaning in conspiratorially. "This book is full of them…" But then, as if thinking better of it, he pulled back, closing the book. "I'd better not show you. I don't want you to have nightmares."
"Aw, come on!" Shinzo whined, grasping for the book, but Azar moved it carefully out of his reach. "I won't get scared, I promise!"
"It was my gift," Azar said, holding the book close to his chest protectively. "Uncle Iroh sent it to me because he knew I was old enough to handle it."
"I'm old enough, too!" Shinzo insisted, holding up all the fingers on one hand. "I'll be five soon!" Azar knew "soon" was an exaggeration - Shinzo's birthday was still months away - but he tilted his head to one side as if considering this point anyway.
"I guess you're not such a baby anymore," he said thoughtfully. He laid the book flat in his lap again, still closed, and went on in a regretful tone, "Still, it was my present…"
Shinzo gasped, a brilliant idea evidently having just occurred to him. "I'll trade you!" he offered, holding out the puzzle box with both hands.
"Are you sure?" Azar asked firmly.
"Yeah, come on!" Shinzo insisted, shaking the box again in his eagerness.
"Oh, well, alright," Azar relented. Plucking the box from his brother's hands, he deposited the book in its place. Shinzo immediately opened it and began searching its pages for more monsters, but Azar was already sliding off the couch and stuffing the puzzle box into the front pocket of his tunic.
Zuko and Azula were still sniping at each other, but Azar grabbed Azula's hand as he made his escape. "Come on, let's go throw things at Ty Lee," he said, knowing Azula wouldn't say no to her favorite game. Ty Lee could dodge anything, whether it was knives, arrows, or fireballs.
Shinzo would figure out eventually that the book wasn't as exciting as Azar had made it out to be, but his disappointment would be Zuko's problem to deal with then.
Later that evening, after he'd gotten washed up but hadn't been called for dinner yet, Azar lay on his stomach across his bed and got to work on the puzzle box. It was rectangular in shape, smoothly polished, and had panels on both of the short sides that slid back and forth. Each of the sliding pieces raised or lowered the side marginally. Azar figured it was merely a matter of figuring out the right sequence to move the pieces in, and then the top of the box would be free to slide off - assuming there wasn't some secondary puzzle after that.
He'd been playing with the box for a good fifteen minutes when Azula came into his room without knocking.
"Hey, Zula," he greeted her absently, sliding another piece on the left side of the box. She got away with calling Zuko by her nickname, and he got away with calling her by his. It probably helped that he never did it in front of anyone else.
"You stole Shinzo's gift?" Azula asked, coming to stand in front of him. She sounded vaguely impressed.
"Of course I didn't steal it," Azar replied, rolling his eyes at her again. "He gave it to me." He moved another piece on the right side and pushed at the top of the box experimentally, but it still wouldn't budge.
"Oh," Azula said, sounding less impressed. She crossed her arms and leaned against the bedpost. "Gave it to you in exchange for what?"
"The fairytale book," Azar replied, sliding the lowest piece on each side of the box forwards simultaneously. Still no luck, but he felt sure he was getting close…
"I would have just stolen it if I were you," Azula said, examining her nails. Their mother wouldn't let her wear nail polish yet, but Azula was still careful to keep her nails otherwise perfectly manicured. "Then you'd have the book and the box."
"I didn't want the book, obviously," Azar shot back. He moved the same two pieces again, but this time the left one forwards and the right one backwards. He pushed at the lid again, and sat up with a cry of triumph as it slid free. "Got it!"
Azula leaned over, clearly interested in what "treasure" the box contained. As Azar had suspected, it turned out to be a handful of licorice candies. He unwrapped one and popped it in his mouth, then tossed another to Azula.
Azula caught the licorice easily, then held it up between two fingers. "Taking candy from a baby, brother?" she said ironically.
Azar shrugged. "I'll give him some later if he asks." It was the box itself he'd really wanted.
"You're so generous," Azula replied in the same ironic tone as she unwrapped her own candy. She chewed it slowly, savoring it - licorice wasn't her favorite, but Azula did have a sweet tooth. They would of course not be mentioning to their mother that they had been eating candy before dinner.
Azar slid the lid of the box back into place over the rest of the candies, and reset the puzzle. It looked just as smooth and impenetrable as ever, but now that he had cracked it once, he was confident he could open in again in a matter of seconds, when he wanted to.
Then he glanced over at Azula, who was now rolling the licorice wrapper between her fingers thoughtfully. "Don't try to take the knife from Zuko," he warned her impulsively.
Azula scoffed, and incinerated the wrapper. "Why do you care?" she said accusingly. "Do you think you can convince him to trade it to you for that stupid box?"
"No," Azar replied, rolling his own candy wrapper into a ball between his thumb and forefinger and flicking it at her. She shot a little jet of flame at it, incinerating that one as well. "But if you steal it, you know Zuko will just tell Mom, and she'll make you give it back." Picking up the puzzle box again, Azar turned it over once in his hands, considering where to put it, then settled for hiding it under his pillow for the time being. "Then you won't have the knife, and you'll have gotten in trouble for nothing."
Azula sighed, pushing herself off the bedpost. "You might be right," she admitted, pacing the length of his room. "I'll have to get the knife some other way."
Sitting up on his knees, Azar grinned. "When we conquer Ba Sing Se someday, I'm sure you can get another general to give you one of your own."
Azula laughed. "And you can have all the puzzle boxes you want, is that it?"
"Yeah, something like that," Azar replied with a shrug.
They were called for dinner just then, so they dropped the conversation. It might be a joke between them now, but Azar had every intention of one day leading a great military campaign in earnest - by his sister's side, of course, but it would be every bit his victory as it was hers, if not more. But puzzle boxes were not what he was hoping to win with his conquests.
They were the last two to enter the dining room, everyone else already having taken their seats, and their father was clearly not happy about having been kept waiting. "Azar," he said sternly as Azula took her place beside him, and Azar his own spot next to Zuko. "You will come promptly when called next time." Azula, who had been just as late as he was, got no such scolding.
"Sorry, Dad," Azar replied, dropping his eyes.
Without even acknowledging the apology, their father turned to Azula and asked her how her firebending lessons had gone that day.