Chapter 35

Raiden had a weekend off duty, and used it to travel to his parents' home, and oversee the construction of the new roof he had paid for with his bonus. Grateful and proud, his mother stuffed him with his favorite dishes, while his father pressed him for stories of his adventures at court.

When he returned to the palace, everyone was abuzz with the news: Ursa, the former Fire Lady, had come back. Raiden was curious to find out more.

The morning's training session was over, but the afternoon meetings hadn't yet begun. The captain searched the office and the tea room, until he found the Fire Lord sitting alone in the small family garden with the turtle duck pond.

He emboldened himself, and sat on the bench beside her. "I heard your lady mother came to visit you," he tentatively began a conversation.

"Yes, she did." The words were empty of feeling, which disturbed Raiden.

"Aren't you happy to reunite with a long-lost member of your family?" he pressed. He loved his own parents, though his career kept him from seeing them often. Fresh from a weekend in their company, he could not imagine feeling anything but overjoyed at seeing one of them for the first time in years.

"Happy?" Azula repeated, as if the word was foreign. The whole story came out then, shocking Raiden: the arranged marriage, Azulon ordering his grandson's death, the poisoning, Ursa's banishment, even the burn she had shown her daughter. He had long suspected dysfunction of some kind in the royal family, but this narrative went beyond his darkest imaginings. He couldn't help thinking it explained a lot about Azula.

He struggled to respond. "I'm sorry your family life was so difficult, my lord. That could not have been an easy way for you to grow up."

"It certainly wasn't," Azula sniffed, lifting her chin. "And my mother seems to think that just because she's forgotten everything that happened, I will, too. She has another family now. She wants to bring her new daughter to the palace to meet me."

"That's wonderful!" Raiden found the thought of the Fire Lord surrounded by a new family, acting as a doting older sister to a cute little girl, absolutely charming.

Azula shook her head with decision, and a hint of disgust. "No, I'm not going to invite them."

The captain's face fell in dismay. "You're not?"

"It's not as if my mother is some saint. Once I heard her tell my nurse that she thought I was a monster."

"Perhaps she was not the best mother to you. No one is perfect," Raiden allowed. "And of course, mending a relationship after such a long absence is not easy. But it sounds like your mother would like a chance to try. I'm sure you wouldn't regret it if you let her."

"Why do you say that? What do you know about it?" Though the sentiment was harsh, there was no heat behind her words, only confusion.

"If I may say so, my lord, I can't help but notice that you don't have many people around you to support you," Raiden ventured, expecting every moment to be scolded for the intrusion. "Besides your guards and your staff, of course."

She looked away, not bothering to deny the truth of this statement. "I had friends once," she said, after a moment silently contemplating the pond water. "Mai and Ty Lee. We had a lot of fun together. We used to play here in this garden as children. But they betrayed me."

"I'm sorry to hear that. It sounds like you miss them."

He could have sworn she blinked a couple extra times, as if her eyes were tearing up. "How can I miss them when they're still with me?"

"What do you mean?"

"I hear their voices. It's like they never went away. Father, too. Mother, less often. Aang used to visit occasionally, but not since the desert." Her voice was soft and abstracted as she gazed into the pond. "They come to me at odd moments, especially when I'm alone at night. I don't mind the rest of them, but Father…he's crueler than ever."

Was the Fire Lord confessing to him that she was insane? "You hear your friends talking to you when they're not really there?" Raiden repeated, just to make sure he understood. He supposed imagining missing friends could be benign, as long as her sense of reality was intact. But everything he'd ever heard about Ozai had been terrible, so surely having that voice in her head was not good for her.

"I'm not crazy. I know they're not really there," she snapped. "I just wish they were. Except Father. I wish he would go away." Then she looked down, vulnerable again. "I'm afraid….something is wrong with me. Like my mother said."

Raiden felt as if an injured wild animal were approaching him. If he tried to help, he might only get his hand bitten off for his trouble.

He said in the most careful tone he could manage, "Nothing is wrong with you. But maybe it would help you to talk to someone about all of this."

"Who?" she asked blankly.

"A doctor. Or a Fire Sage. A counselor."

"I have plenty of counselors," she scoffed.

"Not that kind of counselor," Raiden clarified. "After my grandfather died, my mother spoke with someone, and she said it helped her a lot."

"How can just talking help?" Azula wondered, wrinkling her nose.

"They can teach you how to see things differently. May I arrange this for you? Please, my lord. I want to help." Hope burned in his chest. Perhaps if the Fire Lord got help for her anger and impulsivity, she might become a better, more mature leader. If he could help her heal, it would be the greatest service he could provide to his nation, to the world.

She gave the faintest of nods and murmured, "Very well." Then she got up and left the garden.

Though he felt uncomfortable breaking Azula's confidence, Raiden didn't know how else to find a therapist for her, so he asked Piandao for a recommendation. The swordmaster was unsurprised to hear about the Fire Lord's mental health issues, but glad to hear she would finally be addressing them. He gave the captain the name of Chibi, an experienced therapist who also happened to be a member of the White Lotus, and a childhood friend of the Fire Lord's Uncle Iroh.

Azula's first meeting with Chibi took place a week later. The short, fat, balding, gray-haired man came to the palace and met with her in her private sitting room.

She began with a torrent of words, laying all of it at his feet: Mother's visit, Father's abuse of Aang, her longing for her ex-fiance, her friends' betrayals, their persistent voices interrupting her sleep nightly. He listened sympathetically, making the appropriate noises. She expected the story to shock him, but he remained pleasantly blank. When she finally finished, he was silent for a moment before responding.

"This problem seems more simple to me than you may believe. You miss your friends. That's all. And so your mind has cleverly invented this way of staying connected to them, despite their absence." Chibi explained.

The Fire Lord liked the way he talked about her mind, as if it were a mysterious, ingenious being separate from her. "There's a part of me that doesn't really want the voices to go away. Mai and Ty Lee, I mean," she confessed.

"Of course you don't." He nodded encouragingly.

"Even though all Mai ever does is tell me I'm an idiot, I'd rather hear that than hear nothing from her ever again." Then her face darkened. "But Father—I really want him to just disappear."

"When was the last time you heard from him?" he asked, as if he were a living person who had contacted his daughter.

She thought back and realized it had actually been a while. "When mother was here, telling me about how he treated her."

"A week ago? Weren't you telling me he keeps you up every night?"

"Well, he did."

"Does he usually go so long between visits?"

"No. But that must mean he'll be back soon. It could be anytime. What should I do if he comes back?"

"The same thing I would tell you to do for any of your voices. Don't try to push them away. Don't try to ignore them," he advised. "Let them say what they have to say, and take it in, but don't accept it as absolute truth. Thank them for their input. Then let them go."

She didn't know what that meant. She frowned and explained further. "Usually they're telling me all kinds of contradictory things about whatever crisis I'm currently dealing with. It's confusing and overwhelming."

"Listen to them as if they are mildly interesting, but unimportant little people who ultimately have no say in the matter," Chibi advised. "Then, in your own time, respond to the issue at hand in the way that you want to respond."

She liked that idea. That was the way a Fire Lord should act: powerful, and in charge of her own mind, not dominated by bullying internal voices. "I'm glad I don't have to get rid of Mai and Ty Lee," she confided. Chibi seemed to understand that banishing their voices would feel like losing them all over again, and she appreciated that.

"You miss them. That is natural and good. There is no need to repress that feeling. Instead, you should express it in a way that acknowledges the reality: they are not here. Perhaps you could write letters to them, instead of engaging with an imagined presence."

"But I don't know where they are," she pointed out.

"You don't have to send every letter you write. In fact, it may be better if you don't. You can write down all of the things you would like to say, exorcize all of those difficult thoughts, without worrying about hurting your friend, or dealing with their reaction."

Azula had never worried about such things, but she was feeling optimistic, so she decided to try it. She purchased a notebook for each of her lost ones: red for Mai, pink for Ty Lee, blue for Mother, white for Zuko, black for Father, yellow for Aang. Whenever she had something she wished she could say to one of them, or imagined one of their reactions to whatever was happening, she wrote in a notebook. She wrote out dozens of imagined dialogues between herself and each of the missing.

As her weekly meetings with Chibi continued, and her father failed to reappear, she started to notice a feeling that she couldn't quite describe: not quite calm, not content, not safe, but something approaching each of those three. When she tried to explain it to her counselor, he laughed, his belly jiggling.

"That's called peace, my lord. You are beginning to feel at peace."

Author's Note: I'm still looking for a beta reader! If you would like to read this story to its end NOW, please let me know!

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