notes: so, yeah... this was my personal headcanon before the search came out. (i am not an optimist. i am also obsessed with death/grief.)


The grave is silent, damning.

It doesn't even bear her true name— Baozhai, it says, what he wishes was some other Earth Kingdom woman dead in obscurity. If Ozai hadn't directed him to her final resting place, he would have never guessed that a (former) princess lay there.

"Dysentery," Azula says quietly to no one in particular, tilting her head skyward. It's raining. "Filthy peasants. You burn diseased bodies, you don't stick them in the dirt and let them contaminate the groundwater."

"That's what bothers you?" Zuko asks, but there is no real incredulity in his voice. It bothers him, too, that a woman as remarkable as their mother was left to rot here, a festering corpse under a pseudonym. "We can't exactly dig it up now."

There are tears on his face. He is ashamed of them— Fire Lords do not cry, and he would rather break down wailing in front of his father than before Azula. But she does not mock him like she did when they were children, a lifetime ago, and he slowly realizes that's because her shoulders are shaking.

The outburst startles him— Azula never cries, and she was not close to Ursa. The rain always gives his old lightning wound a pulse of its own, but he puts a hesitant arm around her. She stiffens, then allows herself to lean into him.

"Let's go," she commands at last in a shuddery, weak voice, scrubbing at her wet eyes. Putting herself back together. "There's nothing left for us here."

"She loved you."

"I know," she says, and he can tell that for once she means it. "Come on, Zuzu. It's pouring."