Counsel
The Fire Lord found his sister in her suite, sitting on the bed between Toph and Iroh.
Azula was crying.
"What's going on? Why are all of you here?" He stared at each of them in turn and frowned at his sister. "This isn't another one of your sick party games, is it?"
She just sobbed louder. The sound made Zuko's teeth ache.
"Leave her alone, you meanie." Toph glared at him…which is to say she glared to the far right of him. "Why can't you ever be nice to your sister?"
The Fire Lord gaped. Nice? She wanted him to be nicer than not locking her up in the dungeon? Nicer than letting her live freely in the palace with her harem of moochers?
His uncle shook his head in warning. "Nephew, now is not a good time." Iroh's face and forehead was creased with more wrinkles than a decrepit old Shar Pei-elephant.
"Of course now is the time to talk," Zuko said dismissively. "Where have you all been, anyhow? The summit is going on as we speak, and Katara and I have been running around taking care of everything."
"We had business," Toph snapped.
"Family business," Iroh elaborated in a grave tone, trying to psychically channel the meaning to the young Fire Lord.
But Zuko was, as usual, of a one-track mind. "We're about to go to war again," he announced proudly, eyes alight.
"War?" Toph got to her feet. "With who?"
"Fadmon."
The Earthbender was about to protest—she loved the tabloid, after all. She opened her mouth wide, but whatever vituperation she had for Zuko died on her tongue. Anticlimactically, she shrugged. "Well…all right. If that's what you really want." And more quietly to herself, muttered, "Just say I didn't warn you."
"We have a campaign to plan. We're going to strike hard and fast, and we're going to do it within the next few months. I need you, Azula," Zuko said to his sister. "I want you to be my war tsar. The day we land on Kyoshi will be the decisive blow we'll need to topple the Fadmon empire. I've plotted every move of that day. That glorious day in Fire Nation history. And the only way we win is together."
Iroh rolled his eyes at Zuko's melodrama. Azula really was the only one who could get away with lines like that.
The princess looked up at him, red-eyed. "I…I can't…" she mewled.
Zuko startled.
"What do you mean 'can't'?" He threw his hands in the air. "Can't isn't in your vocabulary. You've never can'ted in your life!"
She wiped her tears away with the heel of her palm. "I don't wanna fight," she groused petulantly.
"Don't want to…?" Zuko blinked. "You don't want to grind someone under heel so they'll never rise from the ashes of their humiliation? You don't want to annihilate a weak, easy target that utterly deserves to be crushed?"
She shook her head sadly and blew her juicy nose.
Alarmed, Zuko cried, "Uncle, what the hell is wrong with her?"
"I'll tell you what's wrong," that pansy Haru growled from his spot by the window. Zuko hadn't even noticed him in the room. "We just came back from seeing a number of physicians in town. They confirmed Toph's and Iroh's suspicions."
Zuko stared nonplussed at the Earthbender peasant. He'd spoken steadily, without a trace of a whimper or a lisp.
("Which is more than Zuko could say about himself…Zing!" Toph quipped randomly to herself, and shook her head at the errant thought.)
"And…?" Zuko still didn't understand what was going on.
Haru just stared at him, his eyes two chips of the hardest, greenest jade, his granite jaw grinding.
"I think you should call Jet, Aang and Sokka in here," Toph interrupted, not wanting to have to explain everything more than once.
"Don't call Sokka!" Azula shrieked, and Haru's eyes snapped to her. Murder was plain in his stony features.
What the hell was going on here?
"There are more important things going on right now than…than whatever is going on with my sister." Zuko was more than a little upset. His grand scheme was starting to fall apart. He'd been counting on Azula's penchant for mayhem and destruction to fuel the summit delegates' fervor to take down Fadmon. But she didn't even want to come out to play. "Azula, I need you," he implored.
"Is there something you want me to tell Sokka for you?" Toph asked the princess, ignoring the Fire Lord.
Azula wrapped her arms around her middle. "No. Nothing."
Haru let out a noise of disgust. "I'm going for a walk," he snarled, and stomped out of the suite. Azula looked like she was about to stop him, but he slammed the door with such force, she could only wince and turn away.
"What's his problem?" Zuko asked.
Toph sighed. "You are so clueless, Zuzu."
"I told you he wouldn't understand," Iroh told her tiredly. "My nephew is confident and determined, yes, but he lacks in intuition."
Right then, Zuko's intuition was telling him someone was going to get a decreased allowance for his tea fetish.
Azula had started weeping quietly to herself again, the sound raising goose bumps all over his body. The bad, creeped-out kind of goose bumps. Impatience and anxiety swirled through Zuko, seeing his little sister—yes, she was that, above all else—in such distress. If only she'd stop making those snuffling, moaning noises…
"Okay, okay, look. Whatever…whatever this is about, can it wait?" Zuko pleaded. "Azula, I promise you on the crown of the nation, if you help me destroy Fadmon, I will do whatever it takes to help you with…whatever it is."
The princess sniffed and stared up at her brother with big, dark, watery eyes. "Really?"
Taken aback by the look of utter vulnerability on her pale, pointed face, he hedged, then said, "Yeah. Sure." And with a humorless laugh, added, "I'm your big brother, aren't I? Just tell me what you need."
Azula's mouth pursed, quavered. Huge tears flooded her eyes.
Oh, hell.
She flung herself at him then, tackling him around the middle. Huge sobs racked her chest.
"I need mom!" she bawled. "Please, Zuzu, call mom and dad home!" Snot ran from her nose and smeared across his front.
He looked to Iroh in askance, bewildered and just a wee bit terrified.
The old general sighed despondently. "We need to have a family meeting, Zuko." He got up. "I will write the letters."