Chapter 27

The Great Gates of Azulon came down for two ships flying the Fire Nation flag, the flaming net extinguishing in the water before workers pulled it aside. A crowd had gathered to welcome the vessels' return, filling the entire neighborhood surrounding the port. As the ships docked, the people pushed forward, barely leaving any space for the passengers to disembark. Police had to usher them behind ropes before the sailors were able to lower the gangplanks.

Five thousand former prisoners of war stepped from the ship onto their native soil, into the loving embrace of tearful family members. They were a bit underfed and bedraggled, but they had had time to recover from their ordeal on the sea journey, and the prospect of returning home had lifted their spirits immeasurably. The streets filled with mothers fussing over their returned children, toddlers over the parents they barely recognized, and spouses over partners whose capture had caused them many sleepless nights. One soldier, a lusty bachelor from a distant corner of the nation, grabbed a random girl and bent her over for a celebratory kiss. When they came up for air, she hit him with her purse, protesting that she didn't even know his name. He apologized on his knee and begged her to go to lunch with him, and she accepted.

The joyful crowd spent much of its energy on these reunions, but there was still plenty to spare when the second ship docked and began unloading its few passengers. The royal yacht carried only the Fire Lord and her retinue. The citizens prepared to welcome their leader. The terms of the treaty had not yet been announced, but they assumed she must have been victorious if the soldiers were home. After all, failure was foreign to them, and Fire Lord Azula had never lost a battle when she served as her father's commander.

The people began to murmur as the first guards came off the boat. They carried their helmets under one arm, showing their bare heads, shorn of their hair. But a complete hush fell over the crowd when the Fire Lord herself finally emerged, her hair shorter than anyone had ever seen on a noblewoman. It was shaved at her nape, while the bluntly-cut sides descended to a sharp point at her chin. Despite her lack of a topknot, her crown was mysteriously anchored to the back of her head. Her chin lifted defiantly as she surveyed the crowd, daring them to comment on her new look.

A harsh voice broke the silence, jeering: "A herd of koala-sheep in spring!"

"A bunch of babies and old men serving in the guard!" A similar voice, from the opposite side of the square boomed. People turned to see the man who had spoken, grinning as if he had just made the wittiest remark in history.

"Looks like our Fire Lord has a weakness after all: earthbenders."

"I thought it was hard to watch Toph Beifong kick her ass, but this is even worse."

"Yeah, she looks pathetic."

"If that was the price of my baby's life, then I'm glad she paid it!" a stout mother protested, clinging to a soldier's arm.

"Better your boy die than we all endure this disgrace," an old man near her declared, astonishing several people around him, including his own family members, with his coldness.

"How dare you!" burst out his daughter, covering her little son's ears.

"Does this mean we lost the war?" a child wondered.

"Death before dishonor!" A group of middle-aged men began chanting aggressively, as the port area erupted into disorder.

Soldiers and family members began arguing with the Fire Lord's detractors, and soon the glorious welcome had been torn by division. Fistfights broke out, and the police intervened to break them up and quiet the crowd.

The guards ushered the Fire Lord into her waiting carriage as quickly as they could, ready to protect her from any direct attacks. Her reputation shielded her better than they did: not even the nastiest rioter dared to strike the best firebender alive, though they jostled and shoved her guards with impunity. Azula looked dismayed and stunned as she followed, her usual combativeness seemingly paralyzed by the scene before her: her own people fighting each other.

Alone back in the throne room, Azula took her crown off her head, pulling it out of the clips that clever Peony had used to anchor it to her topknot-free head. She gazed at the reflective metal in her hand, its vibrant gold color, its lines evoking the ceaseless movement of a flame. All of her ancestors had worn this emblem, and now it quite literally did not fit on her head.

"You're not worthy of our ancestors' crown," Father snarled. "If those crowds of righteous protesters overrun this palace and take that crown from you, along with your miserable life, it will only be what you deserve."

She looked out the window. Outraged shouts called for her resignation. They chanted, "We won't accept defeat!" and "Death before dishonor!" This last one might be loosely interpreted as a threat to her life.

Azula couldn't help being taken aback by the ferocity of this opposition. She had thought she was popular among the commoners. People had always cheered for her, anyway.

"What did you think would happen?" Mai drawled. "You know what our people are like. What tradition means to them. Surely you didn't expect them to welcome a shorn koala-sheep as their Fire Lord."

"Everybody hates a know-it-all who keeps saying 'I told you so,'" she retorted. She resented the way Mai was always right. Truthfully, she wasn't sure what she had expected from her people, after such an abrupt and complete change in their orientation toward the rest of the world. The fierceness of this rejection of her entire regime took her somewhat aback, though she had of course anticipated some resistance. She couldn't be completely surprised when she was struggling with the same beliefs herself.

Azula remembered the end of her match against Toph Beifong, the way she had been both booed and applauded. Now it was like the conflicted crowd was inside her own head, alternating between congratulating her for her humanitarian effort, and excoriating her for accepting defeat and dishonor.

She actually liked her new haircut. It felt light on her neck, and it accented her jawline in a very flattering way. It was transgressive and attention-getting, and as a bonus, easy to care for.

There had been a moment on the ship when she had felt free, the wind ruffling her short, unbound hair. But that moment of liberty on the sea was past, and she was more trapped than ever.

There was a part of her that wanted to flee. To run away from this palace, from this suffocating responsibility, and never come back. Maybe if she were far away from this place, on the open ocean somewhere, or on some remote island, then she could find that feeling of freedom again.

"Go ahead and run, if you want to leave so badly. Venture outside these palace walls and walk through that mob. See what they do." Ozai dared her.

Doing the opposite of whatever her father's voice urged was becoming a habit. Azula sighed. She felt stuck. Trapped, and not only by the unrest in the streets. She was penned in by traditions, General Fong, the opposition, her upbringing, her position, her contradictory desires, her own character. She was pulled in one direction by the unreasonable demands of Aang's morality, and in the other by the equally unacceptable humiliation of surrender. Keeping her honor would have incurred Aang's disapproval, but the price of her beloved's good opinion had been her reputation in the nation she had to rule.

Was it worth it? She sank down in her throne and puzzled over that impossible question for a while.

Peony bustled in, peeked through the curtain, and shook her head disapprovingly.

"You know, I wonder if they would have treated your father that way," the maid mused. At Azula's sharp look, she explained, with some trepidation. "I just mean, people might act more respectfully if you were a man, my lord." The Fire Lord shrugged, unconcerned with hypotheticals. Peony went on. "I asked Joshu to make an appointment with the royal jeweler, if you don't mind, my lord. I'm thinking we could have him bend the part on the bottom to lie flat against your scalp, then attach a kind of wire to the crown, to make it fit around your head. Like this." She held her hand up to an ornamented hair band, demonstrating. Azula gave a vacant nod.

That was when the captain and his guards came in. It still startled her to see men with shaved heads in a Fire Nation uniform. Usually if someone did something shameful enough to lose their topknot, they also lost their job, especially one as prestigious and visible as the royal guard.

Most of the guards looked terrible without hair, honestly; their ears and noses seemed to have grown much too big overnight. Their topknots had boosted their height, and they looked shrunken without them.

But the captain–the change suited him. He was tall enough not to need the extra inches, and his other features were in good proportion. The black stubble that now covered his scalp was actually attractive. Or maybe she only thought so because it reminded her of the way Aang had looked when she saw him last.

Probably he was going to try to cheer her up. Let him try it, she thought, sinking deeper into her throne. Let him square this circle. He might as well paint stripes on a cheetah boa. It won't change anything.

Raiden entered the throne room, a heavy book in hand, to find the Fire Lord slouched listlessly in her throne, toying with her crown. She looked like a sulking teenager. He remembered that she was only twenty, after all. He was twenty-three and his mother said he still acted like a teenager most of the time, when he wasn't on duty.

"How does it feel to be home, my lord?" he asked bracingly.

"Fine," she replied dully.

They could both hear the protesters outside, their increasingly aggressive chants rising up to the windows of the upper floor where the throne room was located. The demonstrators made Raiden nervous, to say the least. The Fire Nation had never codified the right to free speech, so Azula could order them to disperse at any time, and lock up those who refused. Except, of course, that violent responses to peaceful protesters would not improve the reputation of an already unpopular Fire Lord. No matter how strongly Raiden personally disagreed with the demonstrators, he also hated the idea of silencing dissent on principle. But it was only logical that people protesting against peace were not likely to do so peacefully.

"It can't be easy to hear your own subjects calling you names," Raiden began.

"I don't care about that. Their opinions are worthless. They don't count." She waved her hand as if swatting a fly. Her body stayed in that despondent slump, though.

Raiden started. Her snobbish dismissal of popular opinion rankled him, but he reminded himself he shouldn't be surprised. Azula had grown up steeped in aristocratic privilege, heir to an absolute monarchy. Ozai had certainly never consulted or even considered the common people in any of his decisions. Why should his daughter act differently? Raiden realized that in this case, Azula's snobbery could work to his advantage, since he was hoping to convince her not to allow the protests to shake her from the course she chose when she severed her topknot.

The captain knew that what he really needed to pay attention to was the difference between her words and her attitude. Despite her careless, defiant words, Azula's posture remained in that morose slouch. Even though Azula insisted that the protests didn't bother her, her expression and demeanor showed her to be unsettled. He should pay more attention to that than to her words.

"But a part of you agrees with them," he guessed.

"Of course I agree with them. You know what this means." She snapped, pulling up a piece of her hair to show where it had been cut. Then she pouted, crossing her arms. "My crown doesn't fit."

Raiden had come to the throne room hoping to fortify the Fire Lord's courage and encourage her to ignore detractors. He had even prepared by looking up a quote from Szeto: "I say to the one who is convinced of their righteousness: let no criticism sway you from your path." Now he realized he had chosen the wrong quote. Azula wasn't convinced she was right, and that was the problem.

Luckily, there was a more appropriate passage in the same volume. He lifted it and began to search the pages. "As the final clan uprisings died down, and the nation unified under your family, Szeto was asked how to deal with punishment, prisoners, peace–all those difficult questions," he murmured, setting the scene as he finally put his finger on the words. Then he cleared his throat and read from the book. "The highest of all values is life. All other considerations—wealth, order, success, loyalty, tradition, beauty, honor—must bow to the prime significance of this principle. Life must be preserved at all costs."

She reached precisely the conclusion he meant her to. "Then Szeto would have advised me to do exactly as I did," she murmured.

"He would have handed you the knife." Raiden agreed solemnly.

"You're the one who handed me the knife, Captain. I'm glad you keep it sharp." He felt a little chilled to realize that she was aware of exactly how much influence he had over her. She touched her hair again, fluffing it this time, a self-satisfied vanity in her hand that made his own fingers itch to follow its course. "How did you end up in the royal guard, anyway? It seems you're more a scholar than a brute."

He blushed at the bit of personal attention. "I joined the army to see the world and have adventures. I didn't become interested in Fire Nation history until….until I'd been serving for a while." He looked down, unsure whether he wanted her to ask him to elaborate.

"Ah. Neither did I." Self-centered as ever, she seemed uninterested in exploring her guardsman's history. "May I have that?" She reached for the book, and Raiden gladly gave it to her.

Azula read for the rest of the day, her concentration drowning out the mob's shouts and her father's vitriol. In Szeto's words she found more comfort, more affirmation that she had chosen rightly in valuing the soldiers' lives. The ancient Avatar had not been enamored of the honor culture either, she discovered. He had called it superstitious and irrational, centuries before it had reached its current extreme form. That meant he would probably also agree with General Fong's demand that the Fire Nation redefine the concept.

Szeto says I was right, so Aang would agree, she concluded, quite reasonably. This assurance of her love's good opinion outweighed Ozai's constant criticism, and quieted his nasty voice in her head. Aang's approval was more important to Azula than the traditions she'd been taught, the shame she'd taken on with her dishonor, everything.

I did it to get him back, but that isn't a good enough reason by itself. Or at least, he would say it isn't. Azula knew she had to change, from deep inside. She accepted that now, even embraced it.

Besides, the choice had already been made, and it was too late to take it back. Now she just had to live with it. To follow through.

I'm becoming the Fire Lord he wants me to be. She recalled Aang's words, which had become almost a mantra for her: Do good. Make the Fire Nation peaceful. End suffering. Be better. Soon she would be worthy of his love, she was sure of it.

"You think that will be enough?" Mai rolled her eyes. "You've completely forgotten about Katara."

Azula started. A vision of her airbender embracing the waterbender sprang to mind, before she pushed it aside. "I'm focusing my energies on the things that I can control," she informed her friend. "When Aang sees how I am literally changing the world for love of him, he'll forget all about her." She pointedly turned her back on her doubting friend, then realized the flaw in her plan.

How would Aang know what she had done, much less that she had done it for him?

Word of the treaty and its terms, including her severed topknot, would spread quickly through the Earth Kingdom, or wherever else in the world Aang was, she was sure. Without an explanation, though, he couldn't know that she meant it. She intended to make this only the beginning of her efforts to change her country from the bottom up. And Aang's previous self, Szeto, could guide her in that process.

Confronted with a popular opposition movement on a recently annexed island, Fire Lord Yosor had addressed the people, at his Avatar advisor's direction. Yosor didn't like the idea at first, because he was an absolute monarch who didn't want to give common people the impression that they had some voice in the government. But Szeto explained that it would be easier to rule a country that didn't actively hate and oppose him. To provide the people with representation and voice, he had also established the Assembly, which had checked the monarch's power until the day Sozin abolished it. That was going a bit too far, Azula thought. She had no desire to surrender her authority to a contentious group of nobles who would never be able to agree on anything anyway. But Szeto's principles made sense to her. He had argued, if the Fire Lord respected the people enough to speak directly to them, then they would respect the Fire Lord. Szeto was pragmatic that way. People understand reason when it is explained to them, he said.

Like her ancestor, Azula trusted the Avatar's promise.

I can lay down my entire plan of reform for the nation and show them that they have a competent, benevolent leader. I'll outline the changes to the national history curriculum, with my new understanding of the war. I'll explain the Szeto initiative, how it will bring back the glory and prosperity of the Fire Nation's golden age. The thought of a speech on this topic excited her. She wanted more than anything to share her developing ideas with Aang, sure he would appreciate them.

A public address was the perfect way to send a message to Aang, even though she didn't know where he was or how to reach him, and even though he had asked her to leave him alone. She had resolved not to contact him, at least for a while, but surely this wouldn't count. If she happened to write her speech with him in mind as her audience, that was a private matter. If he happened to read it later, all the better. Surely he would want to know the good she was doing. That she'd changed. She needed him to know that he was welcome back anytime.

Besides, there was one matter concerning Aang that she did need to settle as soon as possible. The warrant for the Avatar's arrest was outstanding. If he ran into any Fire Nation soldiers, wherever he was in the world, he was liable to be stopped and chained. (More likely, her troops would fail to capture him, and perhaps injure themselves in the attempt.) Azula didn't want that to happen, because she was positive that if he were harassed by her troops, it would only solidify his disdain for her. Surely 'letting him go" meant canceling that warrant, at the very least.

But she couldn't do that because she had blamed Aang for her father's murder. She couldn't just quietly end the search for the previous Fire Lord's killer. She would be questioned about it if she tried, so she had to get ahead of those questions by putting forward her own version of the story. Especially since Toph Beifong had implied she knew the truth. She certainly didn't trust the earthbender to be satisfied with humiliating her in the arena. It was only a matter of time before the bitch blabbed.

We have laws that allow killing in self-defense, she reasoned. Usually for a homicide to be ruled justified, there must be a trial, but in this case I am the sole witness, and I'm Fire Lord, so my word is law. If I word the statement very carefully, I won't even need to lie. I'll just explain the confrontation that ended in Father's death in a way that makes it clear he was responsible for his own demise.

"It's not enough that you murdered me, you must destroy my reputation as well?" Father whined.

"You did that yourself," she retorted. "Everyone knows you were an abusive brute; you burned Zuko's face in front of the entire nation."

Recalling her brother, and feeling magnanimous, Azula decided to lift his banishment as well. There was no reason for him to stay away anymore, with Ozai gone. Maybe he would bring Mai and Ty Lee with him, if he returned. They had been together in the desert, after all. Upon her recent reflection, she had gained new respect for Zuko, and thought he might make a decent advisor. She had been crowned, so she had won their sibling rivalry once and for all. Her older brother could not threaten her rule. If he was stupid enough to try to take her throne, she would just defeat him in an Agni Kai. He had always been a mediocre firebender.

Zuko would also need a pardon for fighting against his country with the Resistance. So would Mai and Ty Lee, and Aang, for that matter. That was fine. It would be worth it to have them back. She would even pardon the waterbender! Aang would like that! I have forgiven them all. Azula felt so clean and virtuous, imagining herself issuing pardon after pardon to those who had betrayed her.

That's enough, she decided. No need to address Aang more explicitly than that. Let him watch and see how good I am now.

She glanced at herself in the mirror and smiled, smoothing her hair. My haircut is already headline news, but the world doesn't yet know how good it looks on me.

Azula sat down to write.

Author's Note: What do you think of Azula's change and her plan? Let me know with a review!