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Chapter 19: Love
The days passed in a blur.
They went to the North Pole first—they all agreed that it was Water Tribe law that ought to deal with the waterbenders, in spite of their attack on the Fire Nation palace. Zuko bore them no ill will, they had likely all lost much to the Fire Nation, and Azula had made use of that. They all knew who Amka really was now—it hadn't taken much convincing, especially since, after returning to the clearing, Azula hadn't shown much interest in keeping up the charade.
Zuko remained largely unaware of the talks they were having with Chief Arnook, keeping instead to his provided room. Even though it could be considered a grevious insult for the Fire Lord to visit the Northern Tribe and not see its chief, Aang and Katara had explained as best they could on his behalf, and told Zuko later that the chief had only asked them to pass along his condolences and kindest wishes, that his pain be eased as soon as such a pain were possible to ease. The chief, Zuko remembered dimly, knew loss of his own—a wife passed on many years before, and a daughter who had given her life during the Fire Nation's siege on the city to protect it, or so he had been given to understand. Perhaps the only thing worse than what he felt now would be to have to go through it twice.
Part of the time Zuko distracted himself wondering how Katara must be feeling now. Explaining to the chief about bloodbending, as they tried to figure out what should be done with the waterbenders. There was no law against bloodbending, as it had not been generally known to exist, but such acts of aggression could not be ignored. However, should they be imprisoned indefinitely, or merely placed under house arrest? Should all involved be banned from ever speaking of bloodbending again, or should the public be warned?
Or so, this was what Zuko imagined they might be saying. When he had last seen Katara and Aang, he had not asked for any details of what was being discussed, and they had not offered any.
On the morning they were finally to leave—he felt like they had been there for weeks, but Katara mentioned in passing it had been just a little over three days—he found Katara standing out in the snow, staring out at one of the elaborate ice structures, one of several of the city's healing halls. Sokka had finally gotten his arm properly healed there, and now he and Aang were getting supplies ready. Toph was, as usual since they arrived, helping to guard Azula. Toph had been quieter than normal, almost brooding, and he wondered vaguely if, given his mother's escape from her, she felt partly responsible in some way. He hoped not, but he couldn't seem to quite form words to speak to any of them, beyond just the barest murmurs of politeness.
Zuko approached where Katara stood, coming to a stop just a few paces back. "Hey," he said. His voice was rough from lack of use, barely a breath of air on the chilling arctic breeze. "Everything… okay?"
The question sounded strange in his mouth. To ask someone else if they were okay—when he was plodding numbly along, trying not to feel like he was caving in from the inside out, old memories often striking at him like branding irons. But it felt good too—to be thinking about others, and not about the dark emptiness in his chest he was now never without.
Katara glanced back at him uncertainly. She smiled a little, though didn't quite meet his eyes. "Just thinking, I guess. About what I'm going to do next, once we have all this taken care of."
"Are you going to… try to find that girl?" he asked slowly.
She nodded. "Yeah. Nukka, her name is, I think. And… Hama, too." She paused. "Of course, the easiest way to do that would be…"
Her eyes wandered back toward the ice palace, where Toph and the guards would soon be bringing Azula. As per Zuko's instruction, Azula had been kept under strict twenty-four hour watch by a half dozen waterbending guards, in a room they kept cold as the freezers of the Boiling Rock. Toph, upon her request, had been provided with cold coal from some of the new trading with the Fire Nation to use as a weapon if need be.
Zuko hadn't seen Azula since they had landed in the North Pole. She had been mostly quiet the entire flight from the Earth Kingdom, but that didn't mean she didn't have more taunts to give.
"...would be if Azula cooperated," Zuko finished quietly. He sighed, looking away.
"Don't worry," Katara said, with a hint of a smile, though there was no real humor in it. "I won't hold my breath."
Footsteps on the ice made them both turn. The procession of guards, led by Toph. And, at their heart, Azula.
Her every step rattled. As a precaution, her arms had been cuffed together in front of her, her feet chained so close she could do no more than shuffle. A specialized kind of muzzle had been attached over her nose and mouth for transport, a metal bit between her teeth that would keep her from trying to breathe fire. These were all Fire Nation technologies, developed for the purpose of holding powerful firebenders, and Zuko assumed the Northern Tribe could have only gotten them in trade.
Azula's face was placid, unreadable. However, as her eyes met his, she seemed to read the pain there—the pain at seeing her this way. And, though her lips were still slightly blue with the cold, she bared her teeth around the bit, and her eyes blazed with hate. She watched him as she passed, like a caged tiger-lion at a circus, that would jump out and rip its spectators to shreds, if only it could.
As Azula was loaded into the saddle, the chains of her arms held by the guards run through the nearest saddle hole and locked in place, Zuko glanced at Katara. In an undertone, he said, "Do you think… we might be able to take some of that off? Toph was able to handle her on the way here…"
Katara didn't quite look at him, and her voice was almost gentle as she answered, "It will be easier for Toph and all of us if we leave them on."
On the way over, for weight reasons the most restraint they had been able to afford placing on Azula had been small earthen cuffs, binding her hands behind her back and her feet together, and that was even with the waterbenders being taken on a Fire Nation trade ship below, watched by Katara and Aang. Even if putting Azula and the betrayed waterbenders together would not have been likely to end up in a fight, it would have been too much for Appa to carry that many people such a distance. But Azula could break out of stone with her firebending if she so chose, and no doubt it had taken constant effort and vigilance from Toph the entire way to ensure Azula wouldn't have an opportunity to do so. And the flight back to the Fire Nation would be even longer than the trip from the Earth Kingdom.
Zuko sighed. "...Yeah. You're right."
"Have you decided what you're going to do with her once we get back?" she asked. Katara was also keeping her voice low, too low for Azula to overhear.
Zuko hadn't been able to think much the past several days, but that was one thing he had decided on. "Before… Before we went to find…" He forced himself to swallow the lump in his throat. "Before she escaped into the Forgetful Valley. I'd… decided to have her moved and kept back in her old room. Since I thought it might… make her more comfortable. Give her more dignity. The preparations were already made. So…"
Katara eyed him doubtfully, and he pressed on quickly, trying to explain himself, "She's not insane anymore, not in that way, so it doesn't make sense to put her back in the institution. She'll still be strictly guarded. I could put her in prison like my father, but—"
He stared off into the blue sky above the city, where the sun was just beginning to rise. He whispered, "I think this would have made her happier."
Katara gazed back at him for a long moment. At last, she nodded once. She touched his shoulder, then continued on toward the saddle.
Zuko stared up at the sky once more, before his eyes drifted back to Appa's saddle, where the chains hung over the side. He breathed deeply, then followed.
Zuko made his way down the long, familiar halls of the palace.
This place carried so many dark and painful memories. It was here he had been reprimanded by his father time and again for his lackluster firebending, where he had first learned his mother was gone. Where he had been burned in the face and banished, and later, after his ascension to the throne, where he had been stalked by assassins and weighed down with terrible decisions and responsibilities.
And yet, he didn't think he had ever walked these halls more slowly than he did now. It had been a kind return welcome—in the courtyard as they arrived, Uncle had waited for him, his face one of sadness and understanding, forgoing any kind of formal procession with servants or guards. No one Zuko would have to put on the strong face of a Fire Lord for—Uncle knew as always what Zuko needed without even asking. And he seemed to understand when Zuko could not find words to speak to him, other than to mutter he had to see Kiyi and Ikem.
Now he was headed toward their room—or actually, as Uncle had directed him, to a new guest room, as the previous one had been damaged in an attack. He hadn't had the strength to ask anything further about that. All he knew was that they deserved someone on which to take out their anger, their grief. They may never forgive him—he wasn't how he was ever going to forgive himself.
However, perhaps Zuko was not quite as steeled to the task as he thought, because he found himself taking a detour. He stepped into the Royal Gallery, and he came to stand before the great paintings of the Fire Lords of the past. Fire Lord Sozin—Fire Lord Ozai. For a moment he pictured his mother, how she had seemed, upon first returning to the palace, not fully herself at first. But then, as for him, this had always been a place of painful memories. Of shadows, and fear.
He stared up at Ozai, his regal face, the flames in both hands that signified his might as a leader in times of war. Katara's words about legacy whispered back to him, and he wondered once again about the legacy he would leave. Whether he would make this place a place of happier, brighter memories, or if the people would only be even more afraid—afraid under his weakness.
"I love you…"
Zuko bowed his head. However, he refused to let the grief rise in his throat. He had his duty to perform first. Only then could he be allowed to feel it. The full measure of what he had lost.
"Hey."
The voice came from behind him, and Zuko hesitated, then slowly turned his head.
A figure stood beside one of the gilded pillars. Tall and willowy, with loose fitting clothing to conceal all the weapons she carried, her jet black hair as always in a severe cut.
"Mai," he said softly. Then he couldn't hold her gaze, and his eyes dropped. A hint of a smile he didn't really feel touched his lips. "It looks like you were right, again. You heard that I—really messed up—"
Before he could continue, Mai had crossed the space between them. Without saying anything, she gently took his face between her hands, her fingers brushing his scar, and pressed her lips to his.
It wasn't really a passionate kiss—more like she was saying all the things that the air around them was too heavy to put into words just now. I'm here for you, Zuko. I care about you. I will always care about you.
Then her arms were wrapping around him in a billowing of sleeves, and he felt one of her hands against the back of his head, pressing his face to her shoulder.
Zuko found his arms wrapping automatically around her in return, and he leaned into her. It was too early to give into his own pain fully just now. He was the Fire Lord, and also a big brother, maybe even a surrogate son. It was his fault, and he had to shoulder the burden, to do for everyone else all it was possible to do.
Mai turned her head slightly, and in his ear she whispered his name. And, before he knew it, the tears were falling, falling freely like rain. And, holding her close, his face still in her shoulder, for the moment he let the grief come.
Zuko went about his duties as Fire Lord—attending meetings about rice stores and minister appointments and proposals for new laws. Trying to listen. The days slipped by again—like water through a bamboo garden fountain. Jolting every so often with a piercing sound, cutting through the vague fog to remind him again of the pain, the grief, the emptiness.
Everyone did their best to support him, in their own way. Uncle, rather than return to his tea shop in Ba Sing Se, remained at the palace, acting as a kind of advisor during meetings, speaking on occasion when Zuko couldn't. He would invite Zuko to have tea in his rooms, and occasionally he would offer some memory about his mother, the ways she had impressed those around her with her quiet dignity, strength and kindness. However, just as often they didn't talk, just sat quietly, together.
Aang and the others came and went, Aang continuing his Avatar duties in the villages closest to the capital, though never straying far. Sokka tried cracking jokes a few times, but they were more subdued than usual, and mostly fell flat until he gave up. Toph eventually had to leave to return to her metalbending academy, though not before she said goodbye, telling him to send a message if he needed anything at all, or anyone to beat up. Zuko had smiled a little, and told her he would. She seemed more like herself again, though he wasn't sure if that's because she was, or if she somehow knew how he appreciated the normalcy. He knew they were all uncomfortable, that they didn't know what to say—though he wasn't able to say it, he just appreciated them being there whenever they could be. The simple fact that he had caring friends who existed somewhere in the world, worrying about him, gave him more comfort and strength than he could have ever expressed.
Katara was the only one who remained at the palace without leaving. She spoke the least of anyone to him—yet it was never discomfort in her face. She just seemed to know there was nothing to say. He also couldn't help but notice she seemed there as much for Kiyi and Ikem as for him. Sometimes he would see her sitting with Ikem in the courtyard, as he quietly related some old memory, or playing dolls with Kiyi in the garden, and that filled some of the hole inside him more than any words ever could.
When Zuko had spoken to Ikem, his mother's husband had had nothing but kind words to say to him. That Ursa had gone trying to help someone she loved, and that was the way she would have wanted it. However, Zuko worried most for Kiyi, who seemed not to have fully accepted it. "Mommy will be back someday," she had said with confidence. "She had Kiyi to protect her. She's probably just lost."
The Kiyi doll Zuko had taken to keeping in the small beaded bag in a drawer in his room. He knew he ought to burn it, send it off as his mother had been sent off, especially since the last thing he wanted was for Kiyi to stumble across it—however, he couldn't bring himself to. He couldn't bring himself to throw away the last thing his mother might have ever held.
Zuko went about his days as normal as he could—knowing there was still yet something else he had to do. That he had kept putting off, yet had to be done, before all this could really truly be closed, or as closed as it ever would be.
It was early evening when Zuko returned to his room, exhausted after a day of meetings and arguments among his advisors and generals. There were whispers of continued support for a return of Fire Lord Ozai to the throne, dissatisfaction with Zuko and his rule, yet for now it was merely smoke on the wind, and not a fire that they could find and put out. Zuko couldn't seem to muster the apprehension he knew he ought to feel—whatever would come, would come.
The servants helped him out of his Fire Lord's robes, taking great care with the royal garments as always, whisking them away to be pressed and cleaned, before they would be brought again tomorrow. They also took the five-pointed headpiece of the Fire Lord for polishing, holding it with reverence.
Zuko, meanwhile, rather than change into his bedclothes, found instead the light travel garments he had worn the days they searched for Mother, the same ones he had worn when he had first found and joined Team Avatar. He put them on as he had every day back then, sliding his arms through the vest and cinching it at the waist. He didn't bother remaking his topknot, instead letting his hair hang loose. He took a deep, silent breath, then turned and made his way out, to the halls beyond.
At the very end of a long hall, he came to a stop in front of a door. Two figures in green stood before it, and they both raised his eyes to him as he approached.
"Is it done?" he asked quietly.
Suki nodded once. "Ty Lee did it. Hers lasts the longest."
"You should have at least an hour," Ty Lee added. She glanced anxiously toward the door. "But maybe you shouldn't stay longer than forty-five minutes, just to be safe."
Zuko nodded. "I don't think it's going to be a long conversation. But come in if you notice the time's getting close."
He heard a light clink of ceramic on wood behind him, and he turned to see Mai, bearing a finely carved tea tray, complete with teapot, cups, and silver spoons.
"Express delivery from your uncle," she said, with her usual deadpan.
Zuko smiled a little, taking the tray.
"I still think this is a bad idea," Mai said, folding her hands back in her sleeves.
"What can she do?" Zuko asked. "Without bending, and chained to her wheelchair."
"It's Azula," Mai said darkly. "She always finds something."
Suki had opened the door, and now Zuko proceeded forward, bearing the tray.
Ty Lee called after him in a whisper, "We'll all be out here. Just call out if… if…"
She didn't need to finish the sentiment, and she didn't, as Suki quietly shut the door behind him.
Azula's room was as it had always been. Expansive, neat and pristine, the crimson of the Fire Nation over everything in various shades, from the decorative walls to the silken curtains that hung next to the bed. Touches of gold interspersed the red, at the bed's headboard, at the bases of the pillars at its foot, and the head of a carved dragon that snarled from the canopy overhead, as though to strike terror in the hearts of would-be assassins.
Azula sat in her wheelchair by the gilded window, gazing out over the city as the sky turned red with sunset. The straightjacket she normally always had to wear had been draped over a low standing table nearby, and now she simply had on the light robe she always used to wear to bed, deep crimson hemmed in gold. One wrist had been chained to the arm of her wheelchair, but otherwise her hands were free.
Without turning she said, "Hello, Zuzu. I thought you might be stopping by sometime."
Zuko went to the low dresser near the bed, and set down the tray. His hands shook slightly as he poured out the tea into a cup, then into the second cup. Breathing, steadying himself, he carefully picked up the tray again, and approached.
Azula at last slid her eyes in his direction. "Tea," she drawled. "How very quaint. I wondered why you bothered with the chi-blocking. I hope you didn't brew it yourself."
"No," Zuko said, voice rasping and low. "Uncle… made it."
"And what did he have to say about this little meeting?"
"He didn't say anything. He just said he'd make the tea."
He lowered the tray, and Azula casually reached for a cup, the chain on her wrist jangling slightly. Her fingers lingered on the handle. Her eyes flickered up to him, and for a moment he was sure she was contemplating flipping the scalding liquid up in his face—but then she was taking the cup, along with the tea plate beneath it, and pulled them to her lap. She held the cup suspended above the plate delicately, with manners more perfect than he could ever have hoped to imitate.
Zuko set the tray down on a nearby stand, and picked up his own cup and plate. Suki and Ty Lee had brought in a chair for him earlier—he noticed they had set it several paces away from the wheelchair. Holding his plate with one hand, he drew the chair a little closer, then sat down.
"Ah," sighed Azula. "Now, isn't this lovely? Tea, served by the great Fire Lord himself. I am so honored."
Zuko was silent. He had not seen Azula in the days, weeks since they had arrived back at the palace. He had been dreading it—facing the lack of penitence, the mockery. But he needed to speak with her—his sister, whose life he had chosen to spare not once, not twice, but more. His sister who his mother had chosen to die trying to help. He needed to speak to her—to understand.
He began, "How… have you been enjoying your meals? I had the servants make your favorites." It was something to say—conversation.
Azula sniffed. "Not much. Are these really the same cooks who prepared for Father and myself? They seem to have forgotten the basics of proper seasoning. I had better than this at the institution, and there they didn't even like to feed us anything solid."
They were, in fact, the same cooks as before. After Azula had banished everyone, Zuko had done his best to have most of the original staff tracked down and reinstated. They were the ones who knew best what they were doing, after all. He had heard the rumors of Azula's nonstop complaints about the food—he'd done his best to reassure the terrified chefs.
Azula continued, "Evidently your royal palate has never recovered from your life as an Earth Kingdom peasant. That, or you're too lax with them."
Zuko had been ready for all this, yet he felt his stomach tighten all the same. However, he took a silent deep breath through his nose, then asked, "And your room? The servants tried to set it the way it was before, as much as possible."
He expected more complaints, but this time her tone was mild as she said, "It makes no difference. It is no different from the institution or a prison cell. Wasted effort, in my opinion—but then, Zuzu, if it makes you happy to do things that are pointless, go right ahead. Doing whatever you want is one of the perks of being Fire Lord."
Zuko stared out the gilded window for a long moment. Though the city was hard to make out through the intricate gold patterns, he could just see the sun in the distance, already mostly set behind the caldera lip.
At last, he ventured carefully, "Mother… would have been happy, I think. To see you here, instead of a prison cell."
Azula was silent for a moment. Then her lip curled with derision. "Of course she would."
Zuko was quiet. He felt they had exchanged enough pleasantries—it was time to say what he had come here to say. To ask the questions that a part of him might already know the answer.
"Azula, isn't there… any part of you…" He took a short breath. "That cared? That feels sorry she's gone?"
Azula considered this for a long moment. She was gazing down into her steaming tea, which she still hadn't touched yet. At last she said lightly, "If I was going to feel sorry, I wouldn't have done it."
Zuko had to work to keep his emotions in check. He finally said in a low voice, "What did she say to you? At the end."
Azula shrugged a shoulder, nonchalant. "Oh, nothing that would particularly surprise you. That she had been a good mother who didn't think I was a monster, that she loved me." She paused, then added off-handedly, "Oh, and that Father didn't love me. She was wrong about that, of course. He most certainly did love me."
Zuko paused, glancing her way. He was surprised Mother would have said that—but she must have thought it important for Azula to hear. He considered his next words.
"She did love you, Azula," he said quietly, earnestly. "I wish you could understand that."
Azula waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, you misunderstand, Zuzu. Have you really been so fixated on what I said on Ember Island? It was never that I didn't want her to have thought I was a monster—I told you, she was right. The reason I wasn't absolutely perfect, as perfect as you all thought, wasn't because she thought I was a monster—it was because it hurt. When it should never have mattered what she thought. What I needed was to overcome her—and I did, in the end…"
Zuko had not expected this conversation to be easy, and yet it was harder than he could have imagined. Still, he wanted to communicate everything his mother had tried to communicate—to make sure Azula did understand, even if it changed nothing.
He readied himself as he opened his mouth to say what he would say next. Unsure whether to expect more scorn, or fury. "Azula. Have you ever… thought about… I mean, what if it was you?"
Azula paused, cocking her head to one side. Then she sighed. "One would think that in becoming Fire Lord, you would have to learn to be more articulate. Apparently not."
Zuko pressed on even as he felt his agitation growing. "I mean—what if it had been you in the war meeting? Who stood up to the general. And…"
Azula took a sip of her tea for the first time, then made a face. "Too much jasmine." She didn't look at him as she continued airily, "You mean had I embarrassed Father talking back to a general about troop movements I had no business interfering in, in his own war room?" She tapped the side of her cup with an impatient finger. "I suppose he would have challenged me to an Agni Kai. And if I had further insulted him by bowing my head and refusing to fight, he would have burned me in the face and banished me on some ridiculous quest he never expected me to fulfill."
Zuko stared at her in disbelief. In spite of her complaints about the taste, she took another sip of tea.
"But," he finally sputtered. "If you think he would have treated you like—like me—how can you say you think he loved you?"
Azula sighed in a long-suffering way. "Because I never would have done any of that, dum-dum."
She set her tea back on her plate with a light clink, lowering the plate to her lap. She stared out at the distant horizon through the gilded window. "I suppose dear Mother was right, in her way. The way she means it when she says love. But you see, Father loved me the way I loved him. The way I loved Mai and Ty Lee."
Zuko, who had followed her gaze to stare out at the city, paused, turning his eyes back to her in surprise.
She did not look back, but she seemed to sense his gaze. "Oh yes, I loved them. I couldn't admit it to myself at the time—how much it hurt to lose them."
Zuko felt something rise in his throat, and he blinked, but before he could find the words, she continued, "I loved them because they were the most useful. I have taken allies since, but none that could equal the two of them. They always knew how to please me, and they did. I considered them my best friends because they were the best."
The words that had been trying to rise in his throat died back down.
"So you see," she said, "even my love is better than yours. I loved them better than you could ever love your friends. I loved them because they were truly superior, because they were worthy, and I loved Father because he was great, and powerful, and I could be proud to be his. And he loved me in turn—I did everything he could have asked for, I performed great and glorious feats that could only bring prestige to our family name. I was everything he could want."
She lifted her cup to her lips once more, taking another delicate sip. She added, "Of course he would have always cast me aside if I did not live up to his expectations, if I was inept or traitorous—as I did Mai and Ty Lee. Even my favorite silk cloak I would dispose of if it were to rip, or if my favorite comb were to break one of its teeth. They would be useless then. But—that is the best kind of love. The kind that has a reason. That proves you to be better, deserving. The love that you and Mother offer—it has no reason. Because I was her daughter, because I'm your sister—it's meaningless. And I have no need of it."
Zuko wasn't sure what to feel. To hear these words, to see just how warped Azula's mind actually was. And yet—this felt like it might be one of the most honest conversations they had ever had. He wanted to understand Azula, in a way he never could before, and now he thought he did, at least a little.
"Although," Azula continued idly, "I suspect you might actually be slightly cleverer than you let on. I don't think you spared me because you love me. I think it was so you wouldn't lose. I should have seen that angle, I suppose."
Zuko glanced at her, surprised, before his eyes wandered back out to the city. And, in spite of everything, a hoarse chuckle escaped him.
Azula's eyes flickered in his direction, and they briefly narrowed in annoyance.
"You know," Zuko said, "that was the reason—at least, back in the warehouse, when Katara and I were fighting you. Part of the reason. I figured out what you were trying to do, and I—knew doing what you wanted couldn't be a good thing." He sighed deeply. "But in the clearing… no, Azula."
He turned back to look at her, and found her still regarding him with suspicious eyes. He smiled ruefully. "The truth is, Azula—you couldn't have won. Or maybe you already have. Half won."
The corner of her mouth tightened. "Clarity, Zuzu."
He continued, "I've accepted… you're right in a way, Azula. As Fire Lord, I'm going to have to make hard decisions—protect my people with a kind of strength I wish I didn't have to. But I'm still not going to be the kind of Fire Lord you want me to be."
He reached over, setting his plate and cup of untouched tea on the nearby nightstand. He leaned forward then, resting his elbows against his knees, in a most un-Fire-Lord-like posture. "I could have executed you, Azula. Not because I hated you—but because, I realized, I didn't hate you. In that moment, I was only thinking of the Fire Nation, my duty. I didn't spare you because I couldn't kill you, or I didn't want to lose to you, but because—"
He paused, trying to think how to put the feelings into words. But the truth was there was no way to phrase it so Azula could understand. At least he understood now why the words couldn't reach her.
"Because Mother loved you, Azula," he said softly. "Because you are our family. And like Mother, I still want to hope for a better future for you."
Her eyes watched him, with no particular emotion. "You should regret it," she said. "You should regret sparing me back then. Because if you hadn't, she would still be here."
Zuko took a slow, deep breath. She was right, of course—it had been his decision. And there was no amount of understanding and philosophies that could undo that truth. And yet—when he wound back to that moment in time, standing in the warehouse, watching as Katara held Azula in place, he simply could not picture himself acting any differently. It still felt like murder, to kill Azula on the fear of what she might do, before she had actually done anything worthy of execution. And whatever she had done, he was glad his sister was still alive.
"I don't regret it," he said softly.
They sat in silence for a long time, watching the red sky darken. At long last, he climbed to his feet. It would probably be getting time for Ty Lee and Suki to come in, either for more chi-blocking, or to put the straight-jacket back on. He could stay longer, but there didn't seem much more for either of them to say.
She had long since finished her tea, and he wished he'd thought to refill it—but before he could ask, she held her empty cup in his direction without turning, as though he were no more than a servant.
"You may take this back," she said. "Tell Uncle that his tea-making skills are improving, but he still has some way to go before it is satisfactory. Also if you would please stop indulging the cooks by letting them get away with such drivel. You are the Fire Lord, and you shouldn't settle with anything less than the best."
"I'll… see," Zuko said grudgingly.
He took her cup and his own—still full, which had now gone cold, he had a sneaking suspicion Uncle would be more unhappy with him than with Azula and her insults—and returned to the tray on the other side of the room.
As he went, Azula went on casually, "Also, the next time you come here and let your guard down, I probably will try to kill you, bending or no bending. I've given up on you entirely, but that doesn't mean I won't still try to give you the occasional lesson."
Zuko picked up the tray, then turned, heading for the door. However, just as Zuko, carefully balancing the tray on one hand, reached out for the golden handle, Azula spoke again, tone idle.
"I never did love you, Zuzu. You were just never the best at anything. A failure. Even now, all you can do is disappoint me."
Zuko's shoulders tensed slightly, then he forced them to relax. He placed his hand on the handle, wrapping his fingers around it.
In a murmur, she added, almost to herself, "I did try, though. I tried to make you into someone I could love…"
Zuko paused, and slowly he turned his head back.
Azula sat in her wheelchair, her back to him, staring out over the city, as the torches began to light with the fall of evening. The chain on her wrist jangled again slightly.
Zuko pulled back the door, and stepped out into the hall, closing it again, as gently as he could.
There came a knock at his door, and Zuko looked up from the report he had been reading. For a moment he had that strange sense that still came to him sometimes—that it would be Mother, smiling apologetically, and wanting to see how he was holding up under the duties of being Fire Lord, and also ask if there had been any signs of Azula.
"Come in," he called. It had taken him a long while to remember that he wasn't supposed to get the door himself—the guards had politely asked that they be allowed open the door for him, and it was Suki who had finally explained it wasn't all just the Fire Lord shouldn't be allowed to do anything himself, but also for security reasons, in case the guards were knocked out, and it was an intruder.
The door to the Fire Lord's quarters opened, held open by one guard, the other standing back.
Katara was there. Instead of her usual waterbending pouch, she was holding a small light satchel over one arm. Her face was calm, gently reassuring.
"Come in," he said again, standing up from his desk.
Katara took a step inside, and the guard carefully closed the door behind her.
Katara looked around the deserted room. "Should I be worried about Mai getting the wrong idea?"
Zuko, who had been placing the ink quill he had been using to make notes back in its holder, glanced up in surprise. Sokka had tried to crack the occasional joke, but Katara hadn't said much to him, let alone teased him. She glanced at him then, and from her face, in spite of her light tone she was partly serious.
"I'm more the jealous one than she is," he admitted, embarrassed. "She just doesn't like secrets."
Katara removed the small satchel from her shoulder and held it up. "I brought what you asked for. It took me a while to collect everything."
Zuko nodded. He stood, stepping over to the dresser, and pulled out a drawer. He reached toward the back, and his hand closed over a small beaded pouch. He drew it out, then turned back to Katara. Pulling the drawstring, he held it open for her.
Katara peered down inside—at the charred remains of little Kiyi. She took the pouch, eyes never moving from the contents.
"It would almost be easier to make a new doll."
"I know," Zuko said quietly, heavily.
"What will you do with it when I finish?" Katara asked. "Give it back to Kiyi?"
Zuko shook his head. "No… I think the fact that she thinks Mother still has it gives her hope. That Mother is still out there, and safe. She'll have to realize eventually, but—I don't want to take that away from her. Not yet. I just… can't stand it looking like that."
Katara looked back down at the doll. The inner rice had leaked heavily into the bag, leaving it half flat. Katara nodded once, in perfect understanding.
He expected her to turn and go, but instead she made her way over to the collection of couches across from him. The Fire Lord's quarters were, of course, enormous—though it had no windows, perhaps for security, the gold bed and deeply stained dresser sat on one side, with a large mat in one corner for firebending training and meditation. The desk Zuko had been using served as a kind of office in another corner, complete with a library's worth of scrolls tucked into compartments inset into the nearby wall, while couches and long chairs for relaxation were arranged just across from it, for entertaining close friends and family. When Mai used to come to see him in the early months of his reign, she would spend plenty of time lounging there.
Katara sat herself down, facing away from him. Opening her satchel, she began laying out materials on the small end table nearby, one by one. Some pink cloth close to the color of little Kiyi's dress, sackcloth of roughly the same make as the doll's skin, a few buttons, a couple bundles of carefully tied tufts of brown hair—and, finally, a sewing kit.
As Zuko settled himself back in his chair behind the desk, Katara, threading her needle, asked lightly, "How did your talk with Azula go?"
So, she knew about that. He shouldn't have been surprised, Suki had probably told anyone she thought might be a support to him, in case the meeting opened all his wounds again.
"...Not as bad as I thought it would be." He added, "What about you? Did she… tell you anything?"
Katara had gone to visit Azula briefly, right after they had arrived back in the capital. Zuko had been vaguely aware of it, but he hadn't asked about it then. Katara wanted to find the master bloodbender who had trained the others. Azula probably knew exactly where she was, though being Azula, he could guess how the conversation had gone.
"No," Katara said. "I didn't think she would, but… I thought it was worth a try. The waterbenders wouldn't say anything either."
Zuko couldn't see exactly what Katara was doing, but she drew a long cloth out from her satchel and laid it across her lap. She then carefully extracted little Kiyi from the bag, and he heard the rush of more rice pouring from her back into the bag. Katara transferred her from the bag to her makeshift operating table. He heard the snip of scissors.
"You seem… a little better," she said at last, not looking up from her work. "Since you went to see her, I mean. I'm glad."
Zuko looked down. "I… needed the closure, I guess."
Katara was quiet for a moment, as though considering what she was about to say next. There was a light clack as she set the scissors on the table, and a flash of the needle as she picked it up again.
At last she said softly, "If it were me… I couldn't have forgiven her. I don't think I could not hate her."
Zuko looked away, toward a tapestry he'd had hung on the far side of the room. It had been unearthed from the old archives, depicting the first Fire Lord uniting the warring tribes of the Fire Islands. He breathed, then answered, just as quietly, "If it were Sokka… could you hate him?"
Katara was silent again, and the needle which he had been watching flash in and out of his view slowed for a moment. She said finally, in words so low he barely heard them, "If he did something like that on purpose—I think I could." She added, "You really might be one of the kindest people I know, Zuko. I'm glad you're the Fire Lord."
Zuko glanced at her, and he was surprised to feel a burn in his good eye. He quickly looked away.
"The decision I made before…" he began. "In the warehouse. I still don't regret it—even knowing now what it cost. I don't think Azula can ever be helped, but—my mother had a chance to try. I'm glad for her. And… I like to think she would be proud of me now."
He looked back to find Katara had stopped what she was doing, and had turned her head to watch him. He knew she couldn't have felt what he felt in this same situation—perhaps couldn't even comprehend it. He wasn't sure he fully comprehended it himself. But Katara was smiling a little anyway, with a face full of compassion, even pride, just the way he imagined his mother might have looked at him.
His eye was burning again, and he looked away.
To change the subject, he said, "How… did the talks with Arnook go? What did you decide?"
His voice was still too low and gruff with emotion, but Katara pretended not to notice. She turned back to face forward, and once again he saw the needle moving, up to his view, then disappearing down to her lap, then appearing again, in a steady rhythm.
"Chief Arnook thinks," she said calmly, "and Aang and I agreed—that bloodbending should be formally outlawed."
This was enough to make Zuko start. "But—I thought you said—"
"And I will use it," Katara said in a measured voice. "If I had no other choice to protect someone. Even if it was against the law." She added, "But there will probably be provisions for self-defense, or defense of someone else. When I go back to the North Pole, I'll be helping negotiate all that."
Zuko blinked, then considered for a long moment. "You're… going back?"
The needle flashed again. "Yes. We'll wait until after the next full moon passes, just in case the palace needs protection again, and then Aang, Sokka, and I are going to work on finding Hama and the girl Nukka. We think they'll be hiding out North somewhere, maybe close to where Azula recruited the waterbenders." She added, "But even after we do that, I'm going to stay in the Northern capital, at least for a while. I'm going to properly study healing."
She picked up the scissors again, followed by the snip of blades slicing through cloth. "The war is over. Fighting isn't the most important thing anymore. I may never be able to change how people remember me, but—I'd like it if, someday, people knew me as Katara the healer, instead of Katara the fighter. I think that's how I'll be able to do the most good now."
She once again set aside the scissors, and threaded the needle with a new color.
Zuko stood up from the desk, and came around to stand behind the couch, inspecting her work so far.
The doll was almost completely deflated, all its insides fallen out. He could see where Katara had cut away the burned sections of its head, dress, arm and leg, and had sewn a new pink patch of material onto the dress, not quite the same pink as the original material, but almost. She was getting ready to start on the head now, and the light tan sack cloth was already laying on her lap cut out, as she raised the needle.
"It won't look the same," she said.
Zuko couldn't help it, he smiled a little. "No, no one's ever the same after being broken. You come out… patchy."
Katara glanced back at him, mouth flashing in a quick smile. "If Sokka were here, he'd admire how deep that was."
"Or make fun of it," Zuko muttered.
He stood behind the couch for a long moment more, watching Katara's hand make each stitch with quick precision, occasionally stopping to adjust her position, or pull one a little tighter.
Zuko finally turned, returning to his desk. He really ought to try to get some more work done on those reports.
He had barely sat himself down when there came a knock at the door.
Katara's needlework paused again. "That's not Mai, is it?" she asked, again with that same tone that was half teasing, half legitimately apprehensive.
Zuko wouldn't have minded if it was, but he frowned. "I don't think so. Tom-Tom apparently has a cold, and she said she was going down into the city to help out at her aunt's flower shop for the day…"
As Zuko spoke, he was already at the door, before he remembered he wasn't supposed to do that. Well, Katara was here if there were assassins waiting with darts to knock him out. He opened the door.
A servant stood there, hand raised as though contemplating knocking again. When he took in Zuko, he blinked, eyes widening, before he bowed deeply, profferring an object above his head.
"Fire Lord," said the servant. "This came for you, marked for your eyes only. It appears to be from a commoner. It has been tested thoroughly, though we will dispose of it if you wish."
The object appeared to be a scroll sheath, the kind used by messenger hawks to carry dispatches and other communications. While no one was permitted to lay eyes on any words intended only for the Fire Lord, anything deemed suspicious was always inspected carefully for any signs of poisonous powders or plants that might be rubbed into parchment. As though he needed any more reasons for paranoia from assassins.
Zuko took the case, and held it up, eying it for a moment with vague curiosity. "I'll take it." He added, in a tone of both gratitude and dismissal, "Thank you." He turned with it, retreating back into the room as the guards closed the door behind him.
Katara had stopped her work again, and was watching him. "What's that?"
"I'm not sure." As Zuko wandered back toward his desk, he opened the sheath and drew out the scroll.
Unlike official communications, either from Fire Nation nobles or officials from the Earth Kingdom, the scroll bore no wax seal, though some kind of black gunk had been smeared in the same place in seemingly an attempted approximation of one, to ensure it could not be opened without Zuko knowing. There was also no stamped family crest, as would normally signal a private communication for the Fire Lord, and instead only a small note had been attached to the outside by a leather cord. The note, reading that the scroll was for the Fire Lord's eyes only, was perhaps the worst handwriting he had ever seen, more like a child's scrawl with a stick in the dirt. Zuko could see why the servants had thought it suspicious.
Curious, Zuko undid the dirty leather cord, and broke open the scroll, sending small patches of black dirt crumbling to the floor. As he unfurled it slowly, inside he found the same overlarge, scratched out handwriting. He was so distracted by the way the characters warbled oddly in size, uneven spaces between them, that it took him a moment to take in the short message.
He froze.
Zuko stared down at the characters. He couldn't think, couldn't breathe. Trying to make sense of it.
"Katara," he whispered. He wanted to shout all the thoughts and words suddenly racing madly through his mind, but it felt like all the breath had been knocked from his lungs.
Katara had been watching him. Now she was setting aside her work, approaching, eyes wide with alarm. "Zuko? What's—"
Hands trembling, he carefully handed her the message.
Katara stared down at it, uncomprehending for a moment. Then her eyes widened—so round the whites shone entirely around her irises. Her gaze snapped back up to his.
"Zuko," she whispered.
He shook his head rapidly. "It—it's a lie. It can't—I mean, surely I would have—"
"Zuko," Katara said again, urgently. "The name at the bottom—this is from that girl. Nukka. The bloodbender who escaped." She didn't add what he could already see in her face. It's possible, Zuko. It could be true.
Hand still shaking, he reached for the message again, and Katara let him have it. He stared down at the words, palms slick with sweat as he clenched the sides tightly.
He didn't know how long he stood there before Katara asked quietly, "What do you want to do, Zuko?"
He drew in a slow, steady breath, then let it out again. He closed his eyes—and when they opened again, they were full of a fire he hadn't felt in what felt like an age.
"I have to go see Azula."
Katara didn't argue, only nodded once. And as Zuko turned for the door, he felt her right at his heels. A fire was building in his chest, in his mind—in a way, he dreaded it. To have this hope, and see it perhaps extinguished—he already couldn't imagine the pain. And yet, the burning fire seemed to be filling him again, banishing away the emptiness. He had furled the message up again, and now he clenched it tightly in his fist, as the curt words played again in his mind.
Fire Lord,
I have your mother. If you want to see her again, meet me at the lake where we fought, on the night of the full moon.
Bring me the Princess of the Fire Nation.
A/N: Uh, yeah. So. The story's not over yet. (Whether you're relieved or extremely angry, I understand either way.)
Thanks so much for reading! If you like, let me know what you thought—if all goes well, next update should be coming out early next week. See you there!
Posted 9/1/23