reflections on a family destroyed:
Ozai— didí hanging off your robes and teasing Lu Ten and begging for more candied violets after dinner, sneers down at you from atop his dais. Magnanimously, he allows his shattered wreck of a brother to haunt the palace, but his eyes spit something else altogether; look, look at what I can do, now that I've won the game of thrones. You don't know when his pride curdled like bad milk, and you so wish you could rouse yourself to give a damn, while the Earth Kingdom goes up in flames the same way your father's old will did.
Zuko— he slowly but surely begins to shadow you, so quiet and so pale that you fear he may soon fade into the tapestries. He lives in the spaces Ursa left behind and cringes as his father and sister spread themselves out, as Ozai dismisses him for a useless weakling and Azula taunts him from above. You grow to love this sullen, shellshocked child with a frightening intensity, feed him stories about the warfront and cups upon cups of chamomile tea, but sometimes Lu Ten comes too close to falling from your mouth.
Azula— the clever, fierce girl with a barbed tongue you sent dolls to is now a contemptuous half-woman, her flames a shield she never dares to lift. She burns her friends when they lose at hide and explode the same way she burns her opponents in Agni Kai. Luxuriating in her status as the apple of Ozai's eye, she volleys glancing blows at your abandonment of Ba Sing Se, torments the servants and her schoolmates with impunity. She plays the part of warrior princess to perfection— so well that you never ask her whether she misses her mother. Not even once.
(Ozai snarls in his chains, Zuko cannot meet your gaze as they lead you to prison, Azula tries to slit her wrists three times successively unsuccessfully howling for death. You are so sorry, so often.)
