Chapter 7

Azula's song for this chapter is "One Way or Another" by Blondie.

When Azula woke the following morning, she found that her brain had solved the riddle in her sleep, putting together three clues: Water Tribe, S, and servant. That boy in the laboratory who had flirted with Ty Lee. Sokka.

As soon as she was dressed, she went over to the lab to talk to this boy.

"I'm looking for the Water Tribe boy who works here." She announced to the scientist and his young assistant.

"Sokka?" the older man's jaw dropped, and he exchanged a look with his helper. "He's gone, my lord."

"Gone?"

"He disappeared—-"

"The night my father was killed," she guessed, dismayed.

"Yes, my lord."

Too late, then. "Tell me more about him." She commanded.

"Talented engineer. Invented three different kinds of war balloons. Captured from the South Pole about five years ago." Azula's memory dinged. The peasant was from the South, too. She remembered because it was so unusual: all of the waterbenders were supposed to have been wiped out in the South years ago. The scientist was going on. "Worked his way up to this lab by showing what he could do, and got himself better food and a real bed. Trashed this place on his way out."

"Show me his room." One of the assistants led her from the lab building to a dingy dormitory in the servants' quarters.

The bedroom was smelly and messy, with dirty clothes flung over diagrams and broken models. On the dresser, she found an flyer for one of Ty Lee's acrobatic performances, illustrated with a picture of the girl walking on her hands, her spine bent backwards with her toes pointed parallel to the ground, winking at the viewer. And on the stand next to the bed, a pink hair ribbon.

Ty Lee wasn't just flirting with this guy, she was dating him! Now she remembered, Ty Lee had brought the boy to her wedding. It was even serious enough that she ran away with him! But she hadn't bothered to tell her best friend. Yet another betrayal.

"You saw how hot he is, Azula!" Her friend explained with a giggle.

"She was looking for a way out for months," Mai put in. "I told you she would leave. She always liked me more than you."

She left the servants' wing and stalked straight to Ty Lee's empty room. There she found confirmation: A message in a masculine scrawl asking to meet tomorrow night, signed with XXX's, and a blue shirt that would have been much too big for her friend. She compared the handwriting on the two notes: a match.

Why would Ty Lee and this Sokka run away at the same time that Aang leaves with his peasant? The Fire Lord puzzled. And why would the waterbender try to break Sokka out, so long ago? Were they lovers? Then she seduced Aang, and he seduced Ty Lee, and kidnapped them both away from me, so they could be together!

But then she shook her head. Though her low opinion of the two tribesmen led her first to that conclusion, she was too logical to accept its needless complications. If the waterbender and the engineer had wanted to be together, why involve Aang and Ty Lee at all? They could have escaped as a pair anytime. Even if they had needed Aang to help them get away, why bother with Ty Lee?

Something clicked: The two Water Tribers weren't lovers, but family members. Probably siblings. That was what Zhao knew.

And if Zhao knew that, he would blackmail the peasant with her brother's vulnerable position. Perhaps to….extract favors from her. She remembered Zhao's description of the way Katara had attacked him in the prison cell. If the waterbender had resorted to such tactics after months of exploitation, Azula found it much more admirable than blameworthy.

Yet another wheel turned into place in her head. When she had ordered the archers to kill the waterbender, Aang had defended her, and made a spontaneous escape attempt, only to have the tribeswoman stab him in the back with a tranquilizing arrow. Though it had certainly been convenient for her, that action had perplexed Azula. She could not understand why the peasant had chosen to stay in captivity. But now she knew: because Katara had known what Zhao would do to her brother if she disappeared. The Fire Lord vividly remembered the betrayal on Aang's face before he had passed out. He hadn't known.

She kept a secret from him. She might say she loves him, but she loves her brother, and the Resistance, more.

I can use that.

Listless, Azula wandered back into Aang's room. She touched his books and pens, sniffed the cologne she'd given him, opened the closet to stroke her fingers down the sleeve of his wedding jacket, and drank the last bit of water in a glass by the bed. This bit of contact with these artifacts wasn't enough for how much she missed him. She opened a drawer and found a set of his training clothes: worn in, loose, and comfortable. The Fire Lord shed her own garments and put on the billowy shirt and pants, then lay down in his bed, trying to surround herself with his essence.

There, Azula braced herself and focused on the hardest, most painful part of the whole problem: He thinks he's really in love with her. Even if she dies, he'll just pine away and continue to refuse to see how perfect we would be together. I have to not only find him, but change his feelings. Make him see her for what she really is.

"And what's that?" Mai wondered with a roll of her eyes.

"An opportunist!" Azula exclaimed, sitting up. "She's using him! All she ever cared about was getting a weapon for the Resistance!"

"Just like me," Father chimed in.

"Exactly!" Azula pointed at her father, surprised to agree with him for once. "Worse, because she seduced him into it!"

"Is seduction worse than torture?" Mai's head tilted in doubt. "Certainly more fun…."

But Azula turned away from her, focusing inward on this shining pearl of an idea. "All I have to do is make him doubt her. I can show him why he was wrong to choose her! She's sure to betray him eventually, but she'll do it sooner if I….apply the right pressure to her." Then she put this new thought together with the previous night's news. "If I hold her brother's life in my hands, I could make her do anything, couldn't I?"

Author's Note: Thanks for reading! Please leave me a review! I'll update again on Friday!