Chapter 1: There's always more to lose
She gave up everything in that one gesture, sliding prostrate before her uncle. What was left of Azula's pride stung bitterly, but she'd give up more to return to her nation. She'd give up everything. And she did.
Iroh had always been an honest man, but she was still surprised when he fulfilled his promise. Not fifteen minutes after he'd placed his teacup in her beggar hands, she stepped out into the open air chainless and walked to a carriage that would take them to the capital. Or, for all she knew, to an executioner's block.
The sun hurt her eyes and skin. She was dizzy from seeing so much openness around her in the wide desert. Sounds and scents and sight burst forth like new life. Even if she were being led straight to a hanging block, she would not regret accepting Iroh's offer. With every step from that awful place, Azula felt weight both shift off of her and press back onto her shoulders: one step away from one madness…one step towards another.
Ursa was back. Real tangible Ursa, likely indistinguishable from the nightmare vision that was testament to Azula's insanity. She was afraid that the large, lonely palace would coax back the madness that had left her weak and stupid that day of the most important battle of her life. The first battle that she'd lost.
She sneered at her uncle when he tried to help her into the carriage, and he gave a rueful smile and let her pull herself up. After she was settled on the bench, Iroh came up behind her. He knocked on the carriage support, and they were on their way.
Iroh sat silent across from her. It was strange to see this man who was always stupidly relaxed so ill at ease.
Azula's mind turned over and over, wondering what would be expected of her, what Zuko wished, what gilded cage she would be chained to next.
What did it matter? Nothing did, not anymore. The only thing she'd ever cared about was gone, lost from her certain grasp.
Soon enough, the carriage began its ascent up repetitious switchbacks along the outer edge of the volcano that surrounded Capital City, mirrored by a shorter set of descending switchbacks along the inner edge. Sounds of the city reached them from inside the carriage. Azula finally turned her eyes from the small spot of light she'd watched for the ride and considered the faint outlines she could see beyond the linen curtains of the carriage. They were in Capital City.
She was frightened despite herself.
At last, the carriage rolled between the massive walls that protected the palace. They continued past the buildings and grounds that she knew by heart. It used to be her home. Now she felt a stranger to this foreboding place.
The carriage stopped, and Iroh got out. He reached out to her as she hovered at the lip of the carriage. She eschewed his hand and stepped down herself—shamed by her own weak body but refusing his condescending help.
"Azula!"
The cry made her flinch, as did the embrace. It was her mother, Ursa, arms wrapped tight around her shoulders. Ursa squeezed her uncomfortably close and breathed against Azula's shoulder. Azula closed her eyes, caught between being stunned by the emotional connection she felt in that moment—her mother's scent: the smell of safety, of love, and of disapproval—and discomfort because of the intrusion into her body space.
Ursa drew back to exclaim over her fingernails; they'd grown barely a centimeter since they'd been taken from her months before. They were ugly, twisted, and the perfect symbol of everything Azula deserved.
She stared at this Ursa who was standing there in front of her. The woman seemed real—not like the apparition that had haunted her on the eve of Sozin's Comet. Azula reached out and placed her hands on Ursa's cheeks. She considered the tangible feeling of Ursa's body, the warmth of her skin, the human shifts and breaths that this woman had that the apparition hadn't. Azula considered how easy it would be to snap Ursa's neck and end her life—her real life.
Ursa must have read the thought in her face; she stilled and her eyes widened in fear. It was that emotion that clinched her reality. The apparition had known no fear in the face of Azula's rages.
She dropped her hands and walked away.
"Where are you going?"
She owed them no answers, not when she herself had no answers to give.
There was supposed to be peace in sleep, but Azula was plagued with dream after vivid dream for hours. Finally, she found herself fading into dark rest—black and deep and blessedly empty. When she awoke, Ursa was sitting on the edge of her bed, watching her in silent study.
Azula stared back at her mother, her breath coming heavy in animal terror. Ursa broke their frozen gazes and reached out with a strained smile to rub Azula's arm that rested over the sheets. "Good morning, sweetie."
Azula flinched from the touch, drawing a wince from Ursa. She sat up and slid out of bed on the opposite side. Her back ached from the soft mattress, and her joints cracked as she stood. Her hipbones protruded through the thin silk of her sleeping robe. Her breasts were non-existent. This body was the only one she'd ever known, but it was a stranger to her.
Ursa rose in a whisper of silk. She pulled Azula against her and pressed Azula's head to her shoulder. Odd, they were the same height. The apparition had been taller, hadn't it?
"What's happened to you, Azula?"
So many things she could say to that. I am the rightful heir of the throne, and I lost it. I threw it away. Dad abandoned me to launch a suicidal attack on the Earth Kingdom. I conquered the unconquerable Ba Sing Se without killing a single soldier or civilian. I was the most powerful firebender on the planet.
And yet, the only thing that mattered was:
"I'm crazy."
Ursa drew back. "What?"
Azula laughed in the face of her shock, continuing her thought. Ursa would flinch away, leave her in peace, give her that look of disdainful disappointment she remembered so vividly from childhood. "I'm nuts, insane, bonkers, cracked, kooky, a fruitcake, tou—"
Ursa shook her. "Stop it! You're not crazy, Azula!"
Laughter continued, though now it took a bitter edge. "The only way you could make that claim is if you were there, Mother, and if you were there on the eve of the comet, it's confirmation enough that I'm right."
Ursa's grip tightened on her shoulders. "If you opened your history books a little more, Azula, you would have read that Sozin's Comet causes hallucinations along with enhanced firebending in some people. You and your brother—I hope you were both suffering the effects to agree to Agni Kai against each other!"
Everything that had been screaming inside her stopped. Azula pulled away, placed her hand on the bedpost, and halted. "Sozin's Comet," she heard herself say from far away.
"Or maybe I just know because Roku warned my family of what would come."
"Roku," Azula parroted, uncomprehending. She turned on one heel. "Avatar Roku?"
Ursa cocked her head, watching her with concern. "My grandfather."
It was strange. The world tilted on its head. Azula sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands, unable to carry even that weight without support. "I saw you. I spoke to you. But you weren't there. Every time I tried to sleep, you started talking to me. I was crazy."
Ursa's weight shifted the bed. Azula looked at her mother, for a moment daring to believe that she was not broken. Ursa's expression was rueful but loving. "I'm working at a disadvantage, aren't I, sweetie? Not only did I abandon you, I drove you mad." Her hand gently rubbed up and down Azula's back. Azula stiffened, unused to intimate touches. "I love you, Azula."
"You never loved me," she muttered bitterly. "The only person you had room for in your heart was Zuko."
"That isn't true."
"I was the little monster, remember? No matter how much I excelled, I earned none of your love or praise. Only Zuko, who always failed…" She was shamed her voice had grown thick with tears and stopped speaking. Who had she become to be so weak?
Ursa squeezed the back of Azula's neck. It was a gentle touch, but Azula read possession and dominance in it. "I have always loved you; don't you dare suggest otherwise. But your brother needed me more. He always did."
Azula gave a quiet laugh. "I suppose I never did need. Save yourself the trouble now. I'll be fine without you. Go and be with Zuzu."
Ursa's fingernails gently scratched at the nape of Azula's neck. "His scar, Azula. Your father did that to him because I wasn't here to protect him."
No doubt Zuko had waxed lyrical about how awful it had been for him, how surprised he was that their father had stood against him. "He deserved it." Ursa jerked and her grip tightened, but Azula continued on before she could interject. "I told him to fight. I told him he had to."
"You told Zuko to fight?" Ursa's voice was tinged with concern and disbelief. "You knew your father would stand in that Agni Kai?"
"I guessed," Azula said definitively. "I told Zuko that he had to fight no matter what happened during the Agni Kai. Father commanded it of him, and he disobeyed. If he'd defended his honor, then Father would have defeated him and let him stay. Zuko needed to fight. He did nothing; he didn't take his classes seriously, he avoided war meetings, he neglected his bending. And then he shamed Father by not standing in honorable combat."
"He was just a boy, Azula."
"No." Azula's anger at her brother bubbled up into a slew of words—more words than she'd spoken in months. "Not just a boy. He was the prince, heir apparent to the throne of the Fire Nation and that birthright means responsibility for the nation he would rule. Father gave him ample opportunity to prove himself by fighting back, and he never did.
"He only faced Father during the Black Sun, refused to stand and take what was his by right. He squandered everything! 'Father doesn't love me, he doesn't want me, I'm not worth it, I'll fail so I won't even try'," she imitated. She unclenched her fists in an exercise of self-control. "What kills me is that he has it all now after everything. And now he'll destroy the very nation he's supposed to protect."
"Azula, nothing excuses a man from fighting and disfiguring his own son—"
Azula interjected. "That's the way Father is, and for Zuko not to know is a testament to his oblivious stupidity. I sparred with Father every day. If I won, he had to hurt me to keep me humble. If I lost, I wasn't fighting well enough and that has serious consequences. Father may have marked Zuko the worst, but Zuko needed it to learn his station and his duties. I've been learning that lesson day by day since I was old enough to fight Father."
Ursa's head dropped to her shoulder, and Azula was stunned to hear her sob. Incensed, she snapped, "Don't cry! Not when you were part of the reason why! I'm better for it; it's shaped me to be who I am, so don't you dare pity me!"
"I am your mother!" Ursa shook her shoulders, anguished. "I never wanted you hurt; I never thought he would do that—"
Azula's rage was sharp, and she sat up so she could meet Ursa's gaze. Her face felt like stone from her cold anger. She felt no satisfaction when Ursa looked at her like a stranger. She said clearly, "You knew exactly what would happen. You knew Zuko would be treated the same if not worse, but you chose that he live over our safety and comfort. A moral dilemma. The choice has been made; it's worthless to regret it."
"Then why tell me?"
"Because I want you to know both sides. Don't pity Zuko any more than you blame him. He made his choices, just like I did. Whatever failures we suffered are our own. They shouldn't affect how easily you rest at night."
Ursa's hand fell to her face, gently cupping her cheek. "You're fifteen. You're a child. How are you so cold?"
Her face was hard. "Practice."
She thought of the reality of her situation and her own certainty of her insanity, and she began to laugh, frantic and terrified. The noise bubbled up from her belly and arched out. Ursa held her as her laughter broke into sobs that wracked her frail body. By the time she'd finished crying, she was weak with a migraine and Ursa's own face was wet with tears.
All that hatred and frustration and pain…and yet somehow putting it all into words stripped the power of those emotions over her. When she awoke the next time, she felt a dark weight had lifted from her mind. It was one part relief and one part frustration that she couldn't even hold onto her righteous rage anymore.
Azula had told herself in prison that she didn't deserve her bending. She'd done nothing there—chained though she was—to continue her training, not even the simple breathing meditation she'd completed every day since she was four. For half a year she hadn't touched her flame or felt for her chi.
She imagined the months it would take her to return to her full strength. She nearly turned around to walk back into the palace after standing on the training circle she'd used for many years. It was the perfect time: the light of the sun was strong but not direct enough to add heat to the day. But, as had always been, there would be tomorrow. It would be easy to put off.
This was the first step to the rest of her life, whatever that would be. She had no plans and no hopes. The reality that Ozai was alive was tempered with the realization that he would not be open to her now, not after she squandered the crown. She needed to work back to her previous power to figure out what she could do…and make nice in the meantime.
As afraid as she was to learn the extent of her decline, Azula thirsted for fire. She deserved to feel it now; she wasn't broken past the point of repair. She took a deep breath and sank down. Lotus position hurt her for the first time in her life, but she settled into it and relaxed by degrees. The sun warmed her skin, and Azula took her first meditative breath.
She felt nothing.
For the next quarter hour, her breaths became shallow in her growing panic. Nothing. No fire, no heat, no chi.
Her hands were open, palm up, fingertips curled so she could see the nailless tips. Azula couldn't feel her hands. She gasped, unable to find enough breath to sob. Was this her curse for losing her rightful place as Fire Lord to a foreigner? Was it a consequence of her bowing and giving in to Iroh?
Losing her fire meant losing everything.
She still remembered her first fire: waking from a dream to see her bed canopy burning. She remembered the first time she'd bent fire at will. She remembered the terrified triumph she'd felt when she manipulated the intensity of her flame, producing searing blue fire. She remembered the screaming pain and pride she'd felt tearing her poles apart to release lightning for the first time. What was she now that she couldn't find fire in her soul?
The answer was clear:
Nothing.
"You will dine with us." Ursa stood above her bed. Her voice was a sharp break to the monotony of silence. Azula stared at her mother's shadow on the wall. She'd been unable to do much else.
"Get up, Azula. We're eating dinner."
After standing there for a minute without getting a response, Ursa sat on the edge of her bed and touched her forehead. "The servants tell me you haven't gotten out of bed in over a day. This will stop now."
Azula stared past her mother, ignored her until she got up and left. She wished they'd left her in that prison cell. She wished they'd taken her to an executioner's block. She wished she were dead.
A shock of cold water splashed down on her face, burning as it went up her nose and down her throat. Azula sat up, sputtering, stunned by indignity of it. She coughed uncontrollably for a moment. As soon as she gained control over her lungs, she jerked her head around and met her mother's unsympathetic eyes. An empty water pitcher dangled from one of her hands.
Ursa spoke firmly. "Get up. Bathe. Get dressed. And meet your family for dinner. I will stand and watch if I need to."
In the end, it was Azula's anger that made her obey. The stupidity of it wasn't lost on her, especially as she sat down at a table with three people she wouldn't have deigned to share rice with a year before.
Iroh, acting consistently strange since he'd seen her at the prison, gave her a small, uncomfortable smile. "Good evening, Azula."
She ignored him.
Her eyes turned to her brother, who she hadn't spoken to since their Agni Kai. He was wearing the official robes and crest of the Fire Lord. The sight of him wearing the mantle of the ruler of this great country was twined bitter in her gut. He didn't deign to look at her.
The unspoken aggression at the table was palpable even to the servants, who walked as though on needles.
Ursa looked around the table and smiled brightly. "It's lovely to eat as a family again."
Azula accepted the bowl of rice and plate of spiced meat and vegetables that a servant placed at her elbow. She ignored the mood and finished her plate. She flicked her fingers for another serving before she realized she didn't want it. The food materialized just as she finished her tea—as she often planned her meals—and the servant refilled that as he replaced her food.
She had finished eating in less than ten minutes. Azula stood to excuse herself—silencing her mother's certain protest with a glare—and walked away from the table.
Bed beckoned, with it thoughtless oblivion. But now that she was up, Azula grasped at her mother's claim about Sozin's Comet and its psychological effects. Maybe it also had an impact on bending after the fact. It was a small hope, but it could be a reason and it could give her a way to fix herself. That small hope caused her to walk to the palace archives—and return every day for the next few days—to find answers.
Not a single scroll and book in the archives on Sozin's Comet mentioned insanity or hallucinations. Only one very old tome used the words "bad dreams" to describe negative effects the comet had on affected firebenders.
Perhaps it was no great surprise that historians were unwilling to mention the royal family could go out of its figurative mind during the event. Maybe a Fire Lord of the past had ordered such accounts destroyed. She would never know the difference.
When Azula was four, a historian had written about her father's blundering campaign to take a few of the trade cities nestled into the mountains of the west coast of the Earth Kingdom. Ozai was not a tactician. He'd never led a successful campaign. He'd managed to stage a miserable defeat in part because he'd not factored in the tides that had destroyed half of his naval fleet.
The historian had most likely written truth in his accounts, but Azulon gave his blessings to Ozai to challenge the historian to Agni Kai. Ozai had brought Azula along to the palace to watch him disintegrate the old scholar. It had taken weeks for the smell of charred human flesh to clear from the palace. It had taken longer for Azula to stop dreaming about the man's animal screams of pain.
She might have more luck with personal accounts. Azula used the family tree to pick out firebenders that likely lived around the time of the passing of the comet, particularly ladies of the court. It was common for noblewomen to write daily accounts of their lives, often with hidden innuendo and secrets. Noble families made it common practice to donate all of these accounts to the royal archives for their family's posterity.
When she made her requests, the archive head, a pleasant portly man named Yanu, begged her forgiveness. "These accounts are delicate. We will have to copy out passages for you to read, Princess."
"Then what are you waiting around for?" she asked him sharply.
The archivers were quick. She was reading through inches of copied diaries the next day. It was under the pen of Lady Lina—a cousin to the Fire Lord during the twelfth recorded pass of Sozin's comet—that that Azula found confirmation of Ursa's claims.
The woman had written in the ancient, dead Fire Nation language. If not for her use of the phonetic script that many noblewomen had adopted to the universal language and still used today, Azula would not have been able to read the copied passages.
There was great excitement over the Comet. My family has left for the festivities at the royal palace. I could not go. There is a man sitting in the corner who commands me to stay. So I stay. And I sit under his gaze. This man died twelve years ago at the hands of my husband. He was my lover. I sit here, writing, in agonized terror, and wait for this visage to leave me in peace. Why is he here?
A second, older account existed from the pass prior.
Whatever fool that says firebenders become invincible with the comet should be fed to the dragons. Insanity is not invincible. I am currently carrying on a conversation with my great-grandfather and my father. My father is halfway across the world on a conquest. My great-grandfather is dead. And yet here we sit, chatting about this damn comet. I've locked myself into this room, yet I can hear the servants whispering about their mistress talking to herself. I fear they will turn on me. So I sit here and wait for this insanity to be over.
Two accounts, much like Azula's own experiences. She would need to dig deeper to find out if these women had lost their bending like she had. At least she knew she wasn't alone in her weakness. There might be hope.
Despite her fear that she wouldn't regain her fire, Azula found herself meditating and performing her katas day in and day out. It was fruitless, but she fell into a mentality of inevitability that was not quite hopelessness. Her katas were comfortable but empty with no bending to complete them. But the physical actions of controlling her breathing and performing the stances were enough to increase her strength.
She retrained her muscles and eventually called in servants to spar with her. It would be months before her muscle tone and endurance returned, but Azula already felt physically better for taking these steps.
When she got her bending back, she would flow into it easily.
She refused to think of the alternative.
Training certainly trumped most other mundane activities she could perform in the palace. Agni knew her mother requested she do the silliest things: flower arranging, tea ceremony, poetry writing. She'd had some reprieve by being purposefully awful at them all, but even in that, Azula would rather kick a hornet's nest and brave a swarm of five centimeter long insects than any of those useless things.
Putting up with her mother at first was 'until I regain my bending'. Then it turned into: 'for today'. Then she made no excuses at all.
Her days were filled despite herself. She regained some of her palace staff—who were loyal to her only because she was the sister of the Fire Lord—and once again had access to the rumors that circulated among the servants. They were the most informed people in the Fire Nation, which was a valuable lesson Lo and Li had taught her. She trained and poured over the royal archives, and occasionally, she entertained her mother's whims to see a play or listen to a musical performance.
She stopped avoiding Zuko after a few months of her pointless existence in the palace only to find that he was certainly avoiding her. They were never alone together, and he never spoke to her. It was just as well, she supposed. Let him take all the responsibility and see how it felt to carry the weight of a nation on his shoulders.
Azula's life was empty, full of meaningless nothings. She was aimless, like a leaf in the wind, desperately unhappy. The only difference between the palace and her jail cell was that she had a comfortable bed, ate good food, and had a working lavatory. She didn't know why she kept going. Inertia, perhaps.
Training, which used to be her one true pleasure in a day, was now just the reminder of her failures. But she continued every day out of pure habit.
One day Iroh sat down next to her in the training circle. Azula knew from the quiet murmurs among palace staff that reached her servants' ears that he meditated daily too—and that Ursa and Zuko occasionally joined him. This was the first time he'd deigned to sit with her.
"What do you want, Uncle?" She opened her eyes and regarded him with unveiled disgust.
Iroh's face went through a shocking range of emotion. Azula couldn't figure out what this man's problem with her was; it was easier when he thought she was a blight on the world. Now he seemed to want to like her and was surprised at himself for that. Was it possible he pitied her that much?
"Would you like to learn how to redirect lightning, Azula?" He asked it like a man offering candy to a child.
She laughed and was pleased when Iroh's face stilled in shock. "Do you think I don't know, Uncle? I sparred with a talented lightningbender every day, and I'm still alive to talk about it. Do you think I'd have managed a day under him if I hadn't learned for myself?"
Iroh lost some pallor. His voice stalled as he spoke like he tasted the words for the first time. "Ozai bent lightning when he trained with you."
"How else would I learn how to protect myself from it in real battle?" She didn't understand his shock; the only way to prepare for the pain of battle was to feel it first.
"It saddens me," he finally said.
Azula laughed carelessly at his claim. "Don't pretend you ever cared about me."
Iroh winced. "That's unfair, Azula."
"You never cared to know me in the first place," she continued. "Even your presents were insulting. A doll from Earth Kingdom? When Zuko got a pearl knife?" How odd that that was what she thought of first. Maybe because it was the first insult she remembered. Her jealousy over Zuko's gift was still sharp in her mind. How stupid.
Iroh's beard bristled with his tight frown. "I never had a daughter. I assumed that was what all little girls wanted."
"As I said," Azula replied.
Iroh remained seated when she stood and walked away. She could feel his eyes on her back.
A week later, he sat down with her as she completed her cool-down breathing exercises. He removed a bundle from his robes and unwound the silk scarf that surrounded it. The item clicked as he set it on the stone next to Azula.
She continued her breathing exercises until her heart rate had returned to normal. Azula wiped sweaty strands of hair from her face—far too short to pull back still—and readjusted her clothing. Then she reached out without looking, and the knife settled into her hand.
As she walked away from the training grounds, she studied it. The sheath was hardened black komodo rhino leather, lined with golden stitching in the pattern of a dragon. The slender guard of the dagger was carved into two stylized dragon heads. Its blade was double-edged polished steel, about the length of her palm. It was balanced for throwing, but it fitted into her palm well enough that she knew she could use it traditionally.
Azula turned the knife over, slid it back into the sheath, and slipped it into her robes. She was irritated by her own satisfaction.
What one hemisphere of the planet considered winter was simply rainy season in the Fire Nation. At least one hurricane would hit Capital Island, gaining strength in the warm still waters of the sea that centered Fire Nation territories. Likely the entire week would be sunless with heavy rains and powerful winds.
Azula woke that morning knowing she wouldn't have the sun to bolster her training. She wandered down to the indoor dining room of the residential wing of the palace to take her breakfast. There Iroh consumed his morning gruel as he read a scroll. His bites were tempered by each line of script he read.
He smiled and bid her good morning. Possibly he meant it. They'd reached an impasse in the last few months. Azula didn't consider his presence insufferable anymore so long as he didn't speak to her. Breakfast was a silent—and because of that—comfortable affair.
As Azula finished her own breakfast, Ursa swept into the room and settled down to take her meal. "How did you sleep, sweetie?"
"Fine," Azula replied dourly.
"I was thinking we'd bring in an actor's troupe to perform Flight of the Dragons. How does that sound?"
"Perfectly dreadful." Azula got up in the attempt to escape any more questions.
"Sweetie, you know I hate it when you tie your sleeves up. It's just so masculine."
The familiar nag raised Azula's hackles. Never in her life had she not tied her sleeves. "I don't care if it makes me grow a cock, Mother. Tying my sleeves is practical."
Ursa gasped in shock that would likely turn to anger on short notice. Azula beat her retreat then before her mother could draw the argument out, but she wasn't fast enough miss Iroh's resulting guffaws.
The royal archives were in a different wing of the palace. Azula concentrated on her breathing: decreasing her breathing rate from every step to every other to every third and so on until she stepped through the massive double doors into the palace archives. It was usually bright with filtered sunlight, but today heavy water-treated curtains were closed against the storm.
It was a bit like a dungeon, reminding her of hiding behind the throne room curtains when she was small.
"Princess Azula, good morning." Yanu, the head of the order of the archivers, bowed his bald head to Azula. As always he smiled at her presence for some reason. "We've laid out scrolls pertaining to your research yesterday about the beginning skirmishes of the Hundred Year War. Is there another topic you would like to read about?"
"Something lighter this morning, Yanu. My mother wishes me to learn more of the arts. Perhaps something about the history of dragon painting."
Yanu's lips twitched but he made no comment. Dragon painting in all its history was bloody and brutal. The Fire Nation elite of old often fed foreign slaves and criminals to their dragons and captured the scenes in paintings to further immortalize their dragons' ferocious nature and the Fire Nation's domination of other peoples. There was always blood, often pain, and usually innards splashed across each famous painting.
Maybe she would try her hand at an imaginary scene and gift the scroll to her mother. Ursa would love it.
Azula decided on a table by the heavy drapes, enjoying the sound of the storm raging outside. Her bodyservant, Kota, swept forward and arranged the chair and lantern. Yanu laid a scroll and two books across the neighboring table. "I suggest starting with the scroll, Princess. It documents how the tradition of dragon painting began and has several examples copied within to illustrate it."
She accepted his suggestion. Yanu and his workers had always served her well from the start of her trips into the archives. She'd spent much of her life after Ozai took the throne split between the training grounds and this place, reading about military tactics, firebending strategies, and the enemies of the Fire Nation.
To what end is it now, she asked herself and could find no answer. Personal expansion was always a worthy pursuit, but she had nothing to show for it, no responsibilities. Zuko wouldn't let her touch her nation; that much was clear. Not that she wanted it anymore. Not that she deserved it. No fire, no rule. And without fire, she could do nothing for Ozai and had no hope of managing a coup, no matter how unstable the government currently was.
Sometime later, her servant interrupted her reading.
"Princess."
She lifted her eyes from the second book and regarded her bodyservant. Kota bowed respectfully. "It's midmorning, Princess."
Azula stood, motioning to Yanu to leave the texts as they were. She would return to them later that day.
Midmorning katas and meditation would last until lunch. As had become custom, Iroh settled—grunting, his knees popping—next to Azula in the indoor training room. "Quite the weather we're having. Do you think we'll get another hurricane this season?"
The weather was a safe topic.
"Likely." She paused to reply. "It's only the beginning of rainy season, and western Earth Kingdom has seen unseasonably warm weather. With the ocean currents, I would be surprised if it doesn't propagate another storm."
She realized, for one stunned moment, that she'd returned to the palace at least a year ago. The rainy season of last year had started not long after Iroh had removed her from prison, hadn't it? She'd been here a year, doing nothing. Azula opened her eyes and looked down at the rounded crescents of the tips of the fingernails that had finally grown back.
A year.
Iroh cleared his throat uncomfortably.
A year that this man had been skirting around her like a squirrel monkey, begging for scraps, too scared to get too close. "What is your problem with me, Uncle?"
Iroh started, turning his head. His mouth opened and closed. He cleared his throat. "I should tell you," he said quietly. He cleared his throat again. "It is surprisingly difficult to put into words."
"That's odd to hear from someone who has verbal diarrhea," she sneered.
His smile was rueful. "Then, I suppose I should just get this over with." He took a deep breath. "Azula, Ozai is not your father."
She cocked her head, unable to process those words. Why would Iroh make up such a lie? Azula laughed sharply. "Is this some sort of tactic to make me a good little girl?"
"I know who you are, child, and I'm only telling you this because it's the truth. Azula, your mother and I had an affair before your birth. You're my daughter."
Outside, the heavy winds of the hurricane battered the drapes. From somewhere in the room, a clock—newly invented by a Fire Nation engineer—ticked. Azula was only vaguely aware that her own breaths were coming sharp and shallow. She stared at Iroh, saw his apologetic expression, and she hated him.
She got up and took two strides away. "No!" She'd screamed. She whirled around to face him with her accusation. "Liar!"
"I'm not lying, Azula. I'm your father."
The sound that came from her was sharp: a scream of rage that should have spouted hot flames and tears. But there was nothing but pain.
-TBC-