They give her privileges, now— some because she's the Fire Lord's sister, still a princess of the blood, some because she's stabilized enough not to destroy every scrap of kindness in her path. He finds her in the winding gardens, meditating on a sunny patch of grass, her calm more than just the result of opium smoke.
She looks better than she did even a year ago, her figure more filled out now that she's stopped fearing poison in her meals; he doesn't know why she insists on keeping her hair cut short, but it's untangled and clean. Only the white asylum-issue tunic and pants she wears, and the livid scars on her wrists when her sleeves ride up, reveal the truth behind why she's really here.
He sits down beside her, tilts his head up so he can feel the heat on his face; he doesn't mind getting dirt on his robes, not during these visits. She never reacts to his presence until he makes the first move, like she's afraid he's a hallucination she'll reify. "Does this help you any?"
"No." She folds her hands in her lap like a paper crane. "I'm cold, I can't get warm." When she exhales, a puff of flame comes out, a child's first sparks. "No matter how long I sit here."
You've lost your inner fire, coils up inside his mouth, ready to strike, whatever was driving you to be the greatest bender in the world— you need a new motivation— but the three years he's been a monarch have taught him restraint and self-control like nothing else. He would never give her ideas she doesn't already have whirring in that massive brain of hers. "Are you doing all right?" he asks, following their usual script. "If they're not treating you well, you can tell me."
"I love it here," she says, some of her old haughtiness back in her voice. "I can do whatever I please. The orderlies wait on me hand and foot. I'm the princess of my own little island paradise."
"Azula..." He shreds a blade of grass between his fingers; it reminds him of when they were children, sitting around the turtleduck pond with their mother, but he knows better than to mention her in Azula's presence. "You're not my prisoner, you understand that, right? You're here because you're sick. When you get better, you can come home."
She doesn't say anything in response, her eyes big and bright like a hawk's, and he takes that as his cue to go on. "You're brilliant, nothing can that take that away from you... if you wanted to be my advisor, or a governor, or study anything like you studied firebending..." He trails off, all of his suggestions consolation prizes. "What would you want to do?"
She smiles the same way she did when Father quizzed them at dinner, his answers inevitably fumbled while hers were flawless. "I'd kill you, of course."
Of course.
His mouth falls open a little, and she laughs, the harsh sound incongruous with their pretty natural scene. "What'd you expect me to say, Zuzu?" She always manages to make the old nickname into a curse. "That I'd let you keep me chained up like a panther-hound, show off how you'd tamed me? Marry me out to whatever nobleman you thought could control me best? You've never been nearly smart enough for that throne."
"Yeah, you were always two steps ahead of me when we were kids," he can admit without shame or pain anymore. "But now you can't even figure out that if you want to kill someone, you probably shouldn't say that to their face."
Her lips, uncharacteristically pale without any red makeup, twist into a petulant moue. "Fuck you."
"I don't think you want to kill me at all."
"Fuck you."
He sweeps some hair off her cheekbone; she flinches, instinctively, but she doesn't quite pull away, either. "Father's going to be in prison for the rest of his life," he says. "He doesn't ask about you, he doesn't want anything to do with you." If he was expecting her to crumple with hurt, she doesn't give him the satisfaction, royal to the end. "That makes you free."