Azula woke to someone shaking her shoulder. She blinked and peered out the window to see the sky still dark.
"Azula, I have to get out of here," Teo whispered from beside her.
"Then go, you didn't have to wake me up," she lay back down.
"I need help. You burned me, remember?"
She turned again to see him sitting on the edge of the bed. She had torn off his shirt the night before to tend to the burns and his back was facing her now, the stark white bandages clashing with his tanned skin. "What do you need me to do?"
"Help me over to my chair," he gestured to the wooden device that was too large to turn maneuver in such a small room.
She stood in front of him, unsure of what she was supposed to do. He reached up and grabbed her arm and hauled himself up to his feet. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder, hissing as the movement pulled at the burnt and blistered skin.
Azula wrapped her arm around his back and half drug him over to the chair. It was a short distance away, but he was heavier than he looked. "Stop being such dead weight."
"This is the best I can do," he practically growled at her, his face twisted with pain and frustration. He moved his legs sluggishly, dragging each one forward with effort as he leaned on her shoulder. By the time she dropped him into the chair, he was panting with exhaustion.
She hastily grabbed her traveling cloak and draped it over Teo's shoulders, then pushed him out of the room. "Where am I going? This place is a maze of corridors that look exactly the same this time of night."
"Go right, then left to the large corridor. We'll take the steam lift up," he whispered to her. Once they got to the lift, he reached forward to set the controls. The lift was an unsettling experience, no matter how many times she stepped on the platform, she always fell like her stomach was going to drop down onto the floor when shook to a halt.
She pushed his chair down the drafty hallway towards his room. Once inside, she flicked her wrist and lit the stove and the lamps.
"There's a switch for that," Teo mumbled and pushed his chair the rest of the way to his bed.
She watched as he rolled gracelessly onto the bed and laid there, his eyes closed. "What's wrong with you? Other than the burns, of course. I obviously know where those came from." She moved over to the bed and pulled her cloak off of him. She checked his burns again.
"When I was a small child, our village flooded and our house collapsed. I was injured and my mother was killed," he recited as if he gave that answer out to every single new person he met.
"I didn't ask how it happened, I asked what is wrong with you." She sat down on the edge of the bed, leaving some distance between the two of them.
He was so quiet that she thought he fell asleep, until he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "My legs and back was broken. As I got older, my legs didn't grow properly because the bones weren't set right the first time."
She looked down at his legs, even covered in the material of his pants; she could see they were too thin to be able to support him properly. "Do you have feeling?" She reached down and pulled off his shoes and set them on the floor.
"Some. It's almost like when you sleep on your arm and your arm goes numb."
She looked at his foot for a moment and then stood up to put the kettle on the stove. She could feel the pull of the sun on her inner fire. "It is morning, you will have to get up and do… whatever it is that you usually do all day."
"I do a lot more than you think, but I can't do anything if I can't move my chair," he turned his head so she could see his annoyed and pained expression.
"I'm surprised you can move that monstrosity along at all. If you're such a genius, why don't you build one that's lighter and easier to move?" She had been confined to a wheelchair before, though it was in the asylum and only because she'd been chi blocked, but she knew the one from the asylum wasn't nearly as heavy as Teo's chair.
"I've been working on one. I just keep getting distracted. Too many other things going on and I can't find the time to work on such a big project."
"What are you going to do?" She set the kettle on the stove to heat and watched him, making sure that he didn't fall back to sleep while she was still talking to him.
"I'll tell them that I hurt my back while I was in the workshop. That I was doing something I shouldn't have. It happens more often than I'd like. That will buy us some time. I should be okay by the time the Earth Kingdom delegates get here."
"What am I supposed to do while you lay in bed?" she glanced over at him again.
"What do you want to do here? All I know is that you don't want anyone else to know you're here." He watched her bring over the hot kettle.
"All I've ever wanted was to be Fire Lord and to not die. If I became Fire Lord now, I would probably be killed or worse by the Avatar. So now, my only goal is to live free, even if it is just to spite my brother." She set the kettle down, then started peeling off the bandages on his shoulders.
"Well, you're not a bad healer, where did you learn it from?"
"Tending my own wounds after training. Though I did get my hands on my mother's scrolls before father destroyed them. She was a herbalist and wrote down many things about poisons, poultices and remedies. I find that many of them are useful to me now that I'm a fugitive." She picked up Teo's medical kit and poked through the remaining herbs.
"Our healer's name is Di. You should go down and speak with her."
"I'm sure it would be a wonderfully ironic tale that the evil killer Princess Azula became a healer's assistant. No. I would rather join the circus," she frowned as she pulled small leaves off the dried herb stem.
"If you could be anything you wanted in the entire world, what would it be?"
"I would be a warrior princess because I'm so good at it. But there are no job openings for such a position." She cleaned his burns carefully, then applied more herbs.
"So there's nothing… you would rather do?" He said through grit teeth.
"What about you? Would you rather be doing something else?" she redirected his question and reapplied the bandages.
"If I had my way, I would do what I'm doing now, without being in charge. I like inventing things. I love flying. I don't know if I'd ever be able to do anything else."
"But if you had to, what would it be?" She finished bandaging and helped him sit, stuffing pillows behind his back to prop him up.
"Perhaps a tinker. Or maybe a librarian," he watched her come at him with another pillow. "No more pillows, thanks, I'm fine now. And you avoided my question. So if you weren't a professional fugitive, what would you do?"
"Mercenary is always a good option, but that would attract too much attention to myself. I suppose I would be a good whore. Eventually I could own a brothel. Perhaps one of my wealthy clients would marry me to make me honest," she watched his face turn red and laughed. "What? Do you have anything against the oldest profession?"
"No, no, I just. Really? You would do that?" He didn't meet her eyes, which made her uncomfortable, though she didn't know why.
"Why not? I'm good at it." She turned and slid onto the bed, easily straddling him. She watched the panicked look in his eyes as she put her hands on his bare chest and slid them down the well-defined muscle. She leaned forward and captured his lips with her own and she slid forward on his lap until their hips touched. Her lips parted and her tongue darted to touch his lips. He brought his arms up and took hold of her wrists, like he had the night before, only this time there was no burning.
"Are you saving yourself for the woman you will marry? Or do you believe that you would die without knowing the touch of a woman?" She purred and watched his expression turn to shame. So she had guessed right.
"I don't need a demonstration of your skills. And I especially don't need you to do… that… because you feel sorry for me or think that I'd do it because it's the only option." He didn't meet her eyes, just held her away from him.
She pulled away from him and stood, her expression neutral. "I am going back to my room now." She turned and stalked down the unused stairway from Teo's tower to the ground floor.
"He must not like women," she said to the specter of Ursa that appeared at her side.
"That is not what I saw."
"No man ever refuses," she frowned and sat down on the filthy stairs.
"Why are you trying to seduce him? He is already doing what you asked of him. You injured him and still he has not turned you in."
"That means nothing until someone of higher authority comes around. I need him to trust me by the time those Earth Kingdom delegates get here. Burning him was an unfortunate mistake on my part. He should not have followed me from his workshop." She touched the scratch on her face gently. She still did not know what hit her. At least her face no longer stung.
"He is very pure hearted. He believes in love. And he has too much dignity or pride to pay for your body."
"Is that what you believe, Mother?" She looked over to see Ursa had moved to her other side.
"No. That's what you believe. And you are surprised he refused you because of his reaction."
"He desires me because I am close to him. But he still has power over me. I should just find some mountain and become a hermit. It is the only way I can be free of other people." She sighed and ran her fingers over the braids that were still pinned to her head. Sleep had mussed them a little, but her hairstyle was still intact.
"You would rather spend the rest of your life with me than with someone like Teo?"
"No! Teo is just like everyone else. He's already told me his agenda. Once the temple is no longer in danger, or the Mechanist returns, he will be done with me. He will leave me to the wolves, though I'm not sure what is worse… will he call ZuZu? Or perhaps he will use me as a bargaining chip with the delegates to keep the rights to the land. Or maybe the Avatar will get involved. My bending in exchange for the deed to the temple!" She laughed even though the thought of such things chilled her to the bone. Returning to her previous life was not an option. She will not be imprisoned again.
"It is okay to want to be loved, Azula."
Azula stood and brushed off the dust from her dress and went to the dining hall. It was still too early for the morning meal, so she found herself peeling sweet potatoes in the kitchen to keep her mind occupied. She was glad that Ursa had left her in the stairwell, she thought that if the subject of love came up again, she will take the peeling knife and rupture her eardrums and gouge out her own eyes.
Every time she loved, she was abandoned. And Azula promised herself a long time ago that she will never be abandoned again.