notes: in which the second royal sibling has a tea party with mai. this one doesn't turn out too great.


Her mother's grip is as tight as a vise around her wrist— almost as tight as the lace circling her neck and hips, the too-small shoes she has to wear because they're her best. She was supposed to behave like a proper little princess today, converse with her brother's nauseatingly obedient betrothed and make a good impression. Spilling hot tea in Mai's lap to see if she'd abandon her court training and cry out (to see if court training is reversible) was not part of that plan.

"I've never been so mortified in my life," Mother hisses, dragging Azula off to a semi-private corner behind the hibiscus bushes. "What possessed you to do such a thing? You could have burned Mai, and now you've ruined her robe. Do you want to totally disgrace our house?"

"Sorry I'm not your precious Mai," Azula sneers to cover up her secret shame. Too often, she derives a perverse glee from rattling her mother's artificial, fragile composure, but today she feels as though the upper hand is slipping from her reach. "I bet that's why you want Zuzu to marry her. Then you'll have a daughter who does stupid embroidery and calligraphy and flower arranging, and just sits there and takes it when someone dumps tea all over her—"

"What is wrong with you?" Mother demands hoarsely. "Why can't you ever be a good girl? Why do you have to be so much like your Agni-damned father?" She gives her a shake, and not a particularly gentle one.

"Let me go," Azula snarls, cheeks flushed with humiliation. "Or I'll tell Daddy. I'll tell him you're manhandling a princess of the blood." Appealing to her father can sometimes be a risky gambit— his temper is wild and unpredictable, and he, too, might judge her behavior inappropriate— but his loathing for her mother is usually enough to overshadow any disapproval of Azula. She's his special girl, after all, and Mother is just a trumped-up peasant who owes him for everything she has.

"I am your mother, young lady. You have no right to order me around," she says, and strikes the back of Azula's thighs ferociously. The crack rings out across the garden like a thunderclap; firebending training has dealt her far worse pain, but little compares to this humbling sting. "If you've damaged Zuko's betrothal contract— you are going to apologize to the Ayakuras right now—"

But she doesn't say anything else, because suddenly Azula's hands glow red-hot and there's a shriek and she can see the fingermarks on her arm because Mother has leapt backwards, clutching a crop of blisters on her skin. "You can't make me," Azula says shakily. Refuge in audacity. "Stay away from me. I'll do it again if you don't leave me alone."

Mother is silent for such a long moment; just stares at her, with tear-filled eyes. Liar eyes, her father calls them, weak and manipulative and feminine and all which Azula is not meant for. "I can't even look at you anymore," she admits in a whisper-quiet voice. "You're— you're a monster, Azula. All you ever do is hurt."

Her mother walks away, then. Azula bites her lip hard, until the taste of sun-bright blood in her mouth drowns out that of pu-erh bitter in the back.

(Later, she does tell her father. He calls her too great and terrible for her mother's reckoning, says she should go practice her katas instead of thinking about that worthless whore, but it does not heal the hollow place in her chest.)