About five days passed before the familiar outline of Ember Island became visible on the horizon. Azula stood at the bow of the small fishing boat her accomplice, Katzu, had commandeered to aid her in her escape. She'd grown fairly annoyed with the middle-aged man during the short time she'd been forced to spend with him; he was nervous and fidgety and bore a striking resemblance to a weasel. She couldn't shrug the notion that he was some sort of flake and secretly questioned her father's decision to hire him. She supposed she shouldn't, however. If Ozai was willing to put his trust in the man, then so was she… For the time being, at least.
"Katzu," she called without taking her eyes off of the land mass in the distance. "How much longer until we reach our destination? I'm starting to feel restless."
"Four hours approximately, Miss," he replied from the tiny cabin.
"Are we sailing at maximum speed?"
"Uh- No, Miss."
She narrowed her eyes. "Sail faster."
Three-and-a-half hours later, Azula was kneeling at a table in her father's study, her eyes flickering in all directions the instant she heard even the slightest creak of wood or rustle of leaves outside the window. Nobody knew she was there, save for Katzu. Her father could only assume she had made it and the plan had worked. Whenever she arrived on the island and made her way to his isolated (and heavily guarded) home, there had been no sign that he was even there. All she could do was take to the tree tops, sneak in through the open window, and wait. She grew more antsy and twitchy as the minutes passed.
A sudden noise outside the door jolted her out of her seat and into a fighting stance. There was no time to scan the room for a hiding place, which was what she should have been doing instead of just staring off into space like some dopey sloth. She mentally slapped herself for being so stupid. Clearly, she was going to have to work on disciplining herself.
As the sliding partition was pushed to the side, Azula dropped her stance and bowed. There stood- or rather, sat- her father. He'd managed to come alone, without any of the many guards her brother had ordered to moniter him 24/7 as collateral for his request to live the remainder of his days on the island. She hadn't been lucky enough to recieve such a privelage, having been declared mentally unstable and forced to spend an undisclosed amount of time in the dank and dirty psychiatric ward of the Boiling Rock. Her hatred for her brother grew impossibly larger every time she thought about it.
Ozai wheeled himself into the room so that he was seated directly across from where his daughter had previously been waiting for him. After his defeat at the hands of the Avatar, he'd been left crippled, weak, and completely stripped of his ability to bend. He had tried his very best to learn to walk again, but after the first few months of no results, he at long last realized his attempts were futile. It wasn't as if he was a threat. He didn't need to be guarded day and night, with very limited privacy or time alone.
Or maybe he does, Azula thought after a moment's realization. He did help me escape, after all.
She smirked and kneeled before him as she waited for him to speak.
"As I am sure you know, time is not on our side, daughter. This meeting must be short, direct, and to the point. I will give you the briefing on what you must do during your mission, and then you will be off. Understood?"
Her face slightly fell. There was no "Welcome back, Azula, I've missed you" or "I've long awaited your return." Just the same practical, detached, military-style instruction a General would use with his charge whilst training.
And you shouldn't expect anything different, she reminded herself. This is no time to get sentimental. You may be his daughter, but you are the top-rank warrior who holds the key to regaining the throne above all else.
"Yes, Father."
He nodded. "Good. Now, you already know that the prison containing the rest of the war supporters is located on the very western edge of the Earth Kingdom. I believe it sits on an island a few miles off shore. Do not think that this is a task you will be able to complete alone, Azula. You cannot simply ambush the fortress with a one-woman army. You will need to find others who are willing to help you, and they must be just as skilled as you, if not more so, in strategy, combat, and stealth. In fact, I have a group of individuals who fit these standards in mind already."
Her brow furrowed in curiosity. "Who, Father?"
"I trust you remember the band of rogue teenagers that almost flooded out one of our colonies in the Earth Kingdom a while back. The 'Freedom Fighters', they called themselves. They were headed by a young man called Jet, who eventually disbanded the group and tried to make a better life for himself in Ba Sing Se. My sources tell me he's grown tired of the city, and is attempting to stitch his former 'family' back together."
"Wait, is this the same man who was helping the Avatar? If he was so against us, then why would he help us now?"
"Patience, Azula. I have reasons behind the decisions I make."
She cast her eyes downwards and her shoulders sank ever so slightly out of embarrassment at her outburst. He was right. She was getting too ahead of herself.
"In order to gain the boy's trust," her father continued. "You'll need to do something quite contradictory, something you've always been very good at."
She lifted her head and met his eyes. "And that is?"
A small smile that was anything but loving spread across his face. "Lie."
It took nearly a month to reach Earth Kingdom shores after the former Fire Princess and that pesky Katzu finally left Ember Island. They'd been able to procure a somewhat larger vessel to sail on, though there still was not very much elbow room. She couldn't believe her father had made him go with her. She understood that his aid had been necessary in her escape from the Boiling Rock and that she would need help to break the war supporters out, but for Agni's sake, she could travel on her own! She wasn't a child. Though, she supposed she shouldn't defy her father. He knew what was best, after all, and he was right when he said it would arouse less suspicion if Katzu were the one to go get more food and supplies whenever they docked at ports along the way.
She hadn't ventured out at any of their various pit-stops, for she knew that word had to have spread by now that she was missing. There were bound to be posters bearing her face plastered on every wall in sight, and she wasn't about to take the chance of being recognized.
She glanced at the small, grimy mirror that was hung haphazardly beside the bottom bunk of the cabin and took in her reflection. She didn't look much different than she did before her days as a prisoner. Her face wasn't sunken in and she hadn't lost much weight, as they had fed her well. Her muslces weren't as firm as they used to be, however, and her control of her bending had slacked, but all of that would be back up to par again soon enough.
She kept her hair pulled back tightly into the traditional top knot, as she always had. The jet-black strands were thick and naturally straight, and hardly ever held to curls. When she was a little girl, people would always tell her it was her hair that made her look so much like her mother. She took it as a compliment then, but she never would now. Nobody knew the neglect she had felt because of the Fire Lady's favoritism for her son...
"Mama, tell me another one! Tell me one about how I'll be the Fire Lord one day!"
Azula, who had been playfully chasing her six-tailed monkey lizard throughout the corridors of the palace, stopped dead in her tracks outside of her parents' room. She quietly tiptoed to the door and slid it open so that she could peer in through the tiniest of cracks. There, on the bed, sat her brother and her mother, both curled up with a cup of tea. She felt a sharp pang of jealousy at how Zuko was nestled up under her chin, her eyes gazing down at him lovingly in a way that she'd never looked at her daughter.
The young Fire Princess narrowed her eyes as they continued speaking.
"Another one? Hmm... Okay. When you are Fire Lord, Zuko, the whole world will be at your feet. Thousands will cheer at your coronation, and you will be adored by all. You will be a leader, one of best there's ever been. You'll have lots of important parties to go to with lots of important people. All the pretty girls will fawn over you and fight for your affections. But you'll have responsibilities, too, you know. If and when your father conquers the four nations, or what's left of them, power over these vast lands will fall unto you."
"Really?" Zuko's eyes widened in fascination. "It'll all be mine?"
"Well, technically speaking, yes," their mother replied with a hint of what Azula presumed to be disapproval. "But do not forget that these lands have once belonged to someone else. Though our great country may be well on its way to claiming them all, the foreign races who have dwelled in these other nations for centuries must be treated kindly, and with respect. They were there first, after all."
"But Father said that they're all species of vermin, with no true purpose in life other than to serve us."
Ursa sighed. It was a heavy sigh, like she'd been carrying a weight on her shoulders for far too long and exhaling was the only way to relieve it. "Believe what you wish, Zuko. But keep my words in the back of your head as you grow into the bright young man I know you will one day become. Remember that not even the mightiest dragon has more reason to live than a tiny butterfly in a meadow."
Azula was confused. What was her mother saying? Did she not want her father to win the war? That was what it sounded like. But why not? Daddy was doing a good thing. He was gonna kill all those nasty, foreign peasants so they could make the Fire Nation bigger and better than ever. Didn't Mommy want that too?
She was about to step away and head back to her room, when, "Mama? What's going to happen to Azula when I become Fire Lord? I mean, what will that make her?"
She turned back to the door and peeked in, both nervous and eager to hear the answer herself. Would she get to help her brother rule? Would she take her mother's place as Fire Lady? Was that how it worked?
"Well, my dear, your sister will be then exactly what she is now- a princess. At least until your son or daughter is born, in which case there will be a new heir to the throne and Azula will become a Noblewoman. She will most likely be married off to a wealthy political family with high influence in your court. But these days are very far off, and you shouldn't fret over them at this age."
Azula huffed and her hands curled into fists at her sides. What if she didn't want to marry someone? What if she wanted to be Fire Lord? How come Zuko just automatically got picked to be the heir to the throne?! They should have at least had a contest for it! She was the better bender anyway! It wasn't fair.
Zuko seemed to hesitate for a moment before emitting a small giggle. "Don't tell her I said this," he whispered. "But I don't think she'd make a very good Fire Lord anyway."
Azula's jaw dropped and her eyes quickly flickered to her mother to see how she'd react. She was severely disappointed when Ursa let out her own little chuckle and said, "I won't tell if you don't tell anyone that I agree with you."
She snapped herself out of her reverie and snarled at the mirror. To anyone else, it would have seemed like she was upset with herself, but it wasn't her own reflection she saw in the glass. No, it was the smirking face of her mother.
"You always were a traitor," Azula growled, her upper lip starting to twitch out of fury. "You never supported your husband the way a good Fire Lady should. You never supported your country. You were weak, and your false sense of righteousness has plagued your own damn son!"
"You are right, Azula," her mother's reflection stated calmly. "I did not support my husband's war, the war that he forced upon you and is still trying to wage. I did not support the spread of the Fire Nation to other countries, as it would disrupt the balance of things. I am a traitor to your father's agenda of death and poverty, and though it took a long while, your brother has finally realized that aiding the Avatar in his quest for world peace instead of chasing him all over the globe is the right thing to do."
"You're wrong!" Azula's voice became a shrill, piercing shriek. "Zuko is not the one who should be sitting on that throne, I am! Fire was meant to be the dominant element in this world, and that fact will be known to all once I reclaim my rightful position as Fire Lord! Our country was meant to expand its empire to the farthest corners of the world! Only I have what it takes to accomplish such a feat. Only I have what it takes to be Fire Lord! Zuko does not make a good Fire Lord!"
Ursa simply stared at her daughter as a small smile bloomed on her face. "You would have what it takes to be Fire Lord if you were this passionate about the greater good. You could be so much more than a villain, Azula. Don't you realize that?"
"Shut up!" The distressed teenager collapsed to her knees, her hands pulling at her hair in an attempt to make the hallucination go away. "Stop trying to turn me into a replication of yourself! I refuse to back down from my destiny as a ruler. I refuse to be a spineless leech with absolutely no allegiance to my country! I refuse to become any likeness of you!"
Before the ghost of her mother could say anything else that would drive her off the deep end, she lunged for the scissors on the nightstand, pulled her top knot straight up, and-
Snip...
Her mother disappeared immediately as her newly-shoulder-length hair drifted down around her face.
A/N: Like I said- slow moving. Not entirely sure how I feel about this chapter, but I guess it will do for now. For about a week after I posted chapter 1, I could absolutely not think of any way to start off this one, so I had to walk away from it for a while. I wrote the majority of it late- very late- last night and finished it up today. Let me know what you guys think of it so far. I'm not going to cling to your leg like a koala bear and beg for reviews, but how else will I know if anyone likes it? How will I know to continue? That being said, I hope you all had a splendid Easter, for those of you who celebrate it. Oh, and Happy April Fools Day, for those of you who celebrate that too. I have the whole week off from school, so I should be able to get a fair amount of the next few chapters written. Can't gaurantee when they'll be posted though. I've been suffering from some sort of writer's block lately. Well, au revoir!