Azula opened her eyes to blackness. Blood pounded between her ears. Once sharp and fluid thoughts moved like tar. Everything below her chin felt stifled.
Each shaky breath echoed, rebounding off something. Struggling did nothing to budge her cold confines. She could not curl a finger.
Unsettling darkness and silence disturbed only by her uneven breathing and haunted thoughts. On impulse, Azula screamed to banish the darkness, then recoiled as her lungs filled with smoke. The princess thrashed to get away, hair whipping her face.
There was nowhere to go.
When she'd blinked away moisture in her eyes, her mind focused on what she had seen in that moment of illumination. The smooth surface of blue tinted rock around and above her.
Azula stilled, not even her heart beating.
It rushed back to her in painful snippets.
Chasing the Avatar. Abandoned town. Suffocating. Explosion. Defeat. Zuko arrived. Another chance.
Her grinding teeth drowned out the throbbing.
A battle. Zuko, tenacious but ineffective, a pest. The Avatar, slippery, skilled, untouchable. Grey eyes, arrow nestled above them. House exploded.
Fighting. Almost falling. Avatar's smiling face. Striking. Avatar's pained face. Wet taste of victory flooding her mouth, like biting into a perfectly ripened fruit.
Water peasant. Warrior peasant. Earthbender. Bouncing off Uncle's stomach.
Facing them all as they stood side by side. Back against the wall. Impossible to win head on. False surrender. Chance to escape. Strike on her inhale.
And then…
Defeat. They picked her apart. Every hastily crafted contingency countered, each of the four elements assaulting her one after the other.
Azula trembled as the rock tomb curled like a serpent as if to squeeze away every trace of life. Her lungs wouldn't hold air as she commanded.
Captured like a common foot soldier. Bound by the Avatar's command.
Total defeat. Complete failure.
All her training, the finely honed prodigious talent that Father, Fire Lord Ozai personally nurtured. His perfect weapon dispatched to turn his enemies into fading ashes. Thwarted by the child Avatar she'd known as weak.
Father would not tolerate this. Not at all. Azula had disgraced her divine bloodline. Disgraced Him with her pitiful performance. Even Zuko had not been captured and ransomed back to the Nation.
Azula's teeth sliced into her lip, keeping the shame from bubbling up into a screeching fire. She could not face the scorn smoldering in His eyes, replacing the pride that sustained her.
Her father was everything to her. Everything she wanted to be. He embodied the drive and pride of the Fire Nation and Azula strove to serve Him faithfully. He rewarded her excellence with a higher authority than white-haired generals who had served Azulon.
Unlike her brother, she knew how to wield power, decisively and without sentimental platitudes of weak mentalities. Azula guided troop movement by Father's side, taking advantage of terrain to orchestrate ambushes. Constructing tactics and policies to domiciliate conquered territories, snuff out rebellion. People were quite unwilling to take up arms after witnessing neighboring towns burned to their foundations.
Any griping about Father's rule or effects of the war, Azula crushed preemptively. The most powerful noble houses had grown to fear her surprise visits, but smiled and nodded as the princess helpfully reminded them of their duty to support and obey the Fire Lord.
Father trusted her to keep a knife from being planted in his back.
Now what could he trust her with? What would be left for her?
Azula observed for years how He rewarded failure. Learned from it. Emulated it. She knew what He would do if the princess were delivered in chains.
Ozai did not need an incapable heir.
How could she redeem herself?
Redemption. The word shut out noisy thoughts.
Azula calmed. Controlled her breathing. Stress melted from her muscles.
She had failed. It was useless to deny it. Mistakes, however, were made to be corrected. She wasn't Zuko. Azula studied history to learn from blunders, avoiding the missteps of history. This time she would learn from her own.
The princess would recover her honor.
Father could not have heard of this yet. A ransom or news of her capture would take days to reach his ears. She had time. To free herself and everything afterward.
Silence all who knew of this by whatever means possible. Snatch Zuko's pearl knife and cut his tongue out before he told Father anything. Then the Avatar and his ilk. Gut Iroh like a moo-sow.
They would all have to die were she to bury this shame. Azula would rise from the ashes of her humiliation, stronger than ever.
First came escape. Evaluate the situation. Use every advantage.
From the simmering in her chi, the sun had set hours ago. It would be some time before it rose to set her energy boiling with its radiance.
The earth barrier cut her off from direct sunlight, the most powerful source of firebending. No matter. She would feel it even beneath the rock, even dampened.
Breath of fire could burn a hole in the dome. Open sky would allow her to melt and explode the earth around her.
Failure to breath a sufficient blast would result in suffocation.
Noon. When the sun reached its apex, bringing her power to its peak. The earliest she could make her move.
Nearly half a day's wait. Would her captors not approach her by then? Surely they did not want her to perish from dehydration.
It occurred that she may have been left to rot, but Azula quickly scoffed at the notion. She was the Fire Princess. An invaluable hostage and source of information. Not that they could pry anything of use from her. In fact, while held captive, she'd take the opportunity to spoonfeed them misinformation.
Another unaccounted factor that would improve her odds. Mai and Ty Lee would be looking for her. They would follow the Avatar's trail of fur when they realized she wouldn't return.
What opposition would they face?
She had the utmost confidence in their skills. Otherwise she'd have never bothered to select them for her mission.
But would they be able to counter without her? Worst possible scenario, Zuzu had kept his temper in check and managed to see the benefit in maintaining the alliance that had succeeded where he alone would have failed spectacularly. Capturing the Avatar would no longer earn him a welcome home anyhow.
She imagined Mai and Ty Lee pitted against the Avatar. Iroh. Two skilled benders. A warrior. And Zuko.
In every scenario they suffered an overwhelming defeat. No force of two could defeat that.
An impossible task… if victory was their priority.
Their only focus should be to free her. Every soul loyal to the Fire Nation considered it their duty and privilege to die for Azula when necessary. To fall for such a noble cause would bring great honor on their families. As decreed by the royal family's divine edict.
And yet… they weren't faceless soldiers. Friends. A lofty term to which weak people clung for security, huddling together in hopes of alleviating the shared misery of their lowly stations.
But if anyone in her life qualified, it would be Mai and Ty Lee. She'd picked them out from the gaggle of plain girls at the academy. Snatching them up as allies before anyone else could make use of their unique skills.
Ty Lee she'd been forced to swoop down on like a raven-eagle. The girl made friends easily and everywhere. It was irritating.
Mai she'd taken her time with, gauging the quiet, gloomy girl before interacting. She'd been more difficult to read than most anyone she'd encountered and that intrigued Azula as a child. Persuading Mai to join her clique had been easy though. No one else could see her value.
There had been others, but they proved themselves too weak and were phased out. Only two had withstood all her tests of loyalty and ability.
Azula could afford to lower her guard around them in a way impossible for others, even and especially Father, who accepted only perfection. They understood her moods, the rare moments she was vulnerable.
In the recesses of her consciousness, Azula admitted that such a loss would leave her quite... out of sorts.
At that moment her sharp mind catapulted a visual: the worry lines carved in the faces of Mai's parents as they fret for their infant son.
And somehow their distress lead them to handing over the strange but powerful earthbending king. It baffled and enraged Azula.
It wasn't as if they couldn't make another one. Probably a better one! Assuming they learned from their mistakes.
Mai, however, was irreplaceable. Perhaps they would require an extra large stipend in compensation.
Hmph. It would suit them. They didn't truly care. She was just an asset to her father's political ambitions. He didn't really care for her wellbeing beyond her use to him. He'd never cared for her happiness, so long as she did as told.
And Ty Lee's parents might not even notice her passing, with six identical daughters to fill the space. They probably weren't aware she'd run off to the circus. It always took them days to realize when Ty Lee would run away as a child.
But Azula would notice. She had rescued them both from demanding, callous parents and the fate of squandering their talents on mediocre pursuits.
Now they had the opportunity to return the favor. Whatever the cost.
Azula blinked when she realized the heat bubbling around her face.
Being captured and vulnerable left her thoughts unbalanced. Unfocused and spiraling.
She centered herself with a deep breath. Azula looked at the situation with the cool detachment she learned from Father.
It would not come to that. Zuko wouldn't attack Mai. He would not allow others to attack her. That was partly why Azula had recruited her, a psychological advantage to control Zuko. He was a man, after all, despite how childishly he behaved. Easy to distract with infatuation.
Zuko also wouldn't leave her to the mercy of others. He had a grudge to settle, and would use the earliest possibility to gloat.
More than that, Zuko cared for her. No matter how she enjoyed making his life thoroughly miserable, he still carried some contrived notion of being her big brother. He was too weak. And the Avatar wouldn't…
Azula's mind screeched to a halt like an unoiled tank. Careful reassessment must be made with regards to the last airbender.
Private military records existed of airbending having such lethal potential. Soldiers blown from the mountaintops. Limbs severed. Generals coordinating the assaults were particularly startled by the gross number of casualties in the Southern Air Temple assault.
In Omashu, the Avatar had demonstrated unwillingness to use these techniques on her. Nothing but soft gusts. He only used destructive, slicing winds against infrastructure.
However, in the recent battle… Azula swallowed deeply to keep the memory from shutting her throat.
Airbending brutality on display for the first time in a hundred years, and Azula had been at the center of it. Floating helplessly. The faint tease of a full breath of air lingering around her.
She had pushed him, triggered something that backfired. It was difficult to tell what set him off after an onslaught of his every weakness. His friends, though, seemed both the Avatar's tender underbelly and strongest motivation.
Even at his most dangerous, his intent had clearly been escape. He hadn't been trying to kill her. Which galled her more, that without Zuko's intervention she would have lost earlier, or that even in her defeat, the Avatar had still been holding back?
Azula pondered this, licking her chapped lips.
The Avatar. Infinitely so. Zuko wouldn't have found them without following her. But the Avatar suffered from sleep deprivation as she had planned. And still he restrained his power.
It wouldn't have bothered if she had emerged victorious. Proving her superiority. Hunting the Avatar should have been a sport equal to dragon slaying.
Azula felt instead as though she had awakened a slumbering beast.
His speak of peace though... A stalling tactic for anyone else. The princess didn't need her people skills to know the monk believed what he said. Sickeningly earnest and honest. Wide, open, grey eyes. Like Ty Lee without the exposed midriff.
He'd been sincere. That made it so laughably foolish. As if the greatest civilization in history would halt their conquest because a monk asked them nicely. Ozai would tolerate nothing short of absolute Fire Nation supremacy.
Even if the throne lost its unmatched drive and abandoned the war effort, there would be no going backward.
Break off all engagements, release prisoners of war and evacuate every citizen from the colonies to the main island chain. It would end nothing. The world would fester with bitterness. Harness it. Build their forces and set sail for vengeance.
And if they surrendered. Azula smirked bloodily at the silly notion, but let the hypothetical scenario play out in her head. The other nations would not be satisfied with retreat. They would demand reparations until the Fire Nation was broken, poor and isolated as it had been before industrialization.
Retreat or surrender, only rolling royal heads would quell the desire for revenge.
Azula frowned in the darkness. It perplexed her more than anything. The one person who should be most honor-bound to seek revenge, and poised to reap it, preached peace. No wonder the Air Nomads died.
The child truly was a relic.
No. Never surrender. Never a step backward in any of her firebending forms. Forward. Dodge retaliation. Strike.
The Avatar did not understand that fire's purpose was to burn. He would learn this final lesson within the center of a blue inferno.
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