Chapter 43

The next morning, after another lackluster training session, Azula was surprised to see Chibi waiting for her in her office, arranging cups and little sandwiches on a tray.

"This is not your normal day to see me." Their regular weekly meeting had been canceled for the trip to Yu Dao.

"I heard that you could use a kind ear." The therapist lifted his kettle invitingly and gestured to the couch.

Azula scowled. Raiden or Joshu must have interfered. "I suppose they told you about the disastrous meeting in Yu Dao." She took her regular seat and allowed the old man to pour her a cup of tea. He was already here, and the jasmine smelled sweet.

"I would like to hear what happened from your perspective," the old man invited her.

The Fire Lord began at the beginning, with the election and the improvements she and the governor had proposed in the hopes of co-opting the independence movement. She got upset again as she detailed all of the projects she had offered to fund in the colonies, if only they stayed under her control.

"I worked with Governor Morishita to create the perfect plan to make the colonists content to remain within the empire, but they rejected it! And then Aang agreed with them!"

"We've talked about your perfectionism before," Chibi began, and she rolled her eyes, sure where he was going. She always insisted that her relentless pursuit of excellence was not a problem for her, since, unlike most people, she really was capable of achieving perfection. He would warn that she would eventually fall short, and fall hard. She knew he was about to say that was what was happening now, and maybe he was right, but she would never admit it.

"This has nothing to do with perfectionism. I'm outraged because my generosity was scorned! And because Aang—Aang said…." she trailed off, dismayed.

"Maybe we should separate the political and the personal here. There is the foreign policy issue, and there is your relationship with Aang." He gestured as if placing things in two separate boxes.

"But for me, they've always been the same," she objected.

The therapist's forehead wrinkled even more deeply; he did not seem to understand what she meant by that. "Did Aang criticize your decisions as Fire Lord? Is that what the two of you argued about?"

"No, not really." Azula remembered that the airbender hadn't raised his voice until she had suggested annulling his marriage. Until that moment, he had been neutral, or cautiously positive, about her progress as a ruler. Though he had disagreed with her, he had even conceded some points. He had told her she was doing a decent job as Fire Lord and compared her favorably to her father, though that was a low bar. In explaining why her approach to the colonies was mistaken, he had not shamed her, but explained things to her patiently, like a teacher to a student.

"Then what was the issue? And why has it upset you so much?" the therapist wondered.

Azula hadn't discussed Aang with Chibi before, beyond the barest outline of their story. There had always been plenty of other current events to discuss and mountains of past drama to excavate. Between her parents, her missing friends, and everyday political happenings, there was always so much to talk about that time always ran out before they got to the airbender, no matter how central he was to her story.

"In the beginning of my reign I was….searching for purpose," she explained. "At first I was driven by desire for revenge against the waterbender who stole Aang from me. When that plan…missed the mark, I was inspired to try to win him back another way. He likes virtue, so I decided to become virtuous. Because he's the Avatar, I thought I could use one of his past lives' wisdom as guidance in my work as Fire Lord. I was sure he would appreciate my efforts and…reward me."

"This was the true inspiration for the Szeto Initiative?" Chibi asked, putting it together. He knew her pretty well by now.

"Exactly. So for almost two years, I've been working with the expectation that Aang would change his mind about me once he saw all I accomplished as leader of this Nation. But now, I'm getting nothing but heartbreak, and losing the colonies as well."

The therapist nodded and was silent for a long moment, digesting this information before responding. "You're not getting the reward you expected, but you are getting other rewards, are you not?"

"Like what?"

"The gratification of knowing your subjects are happy and well cared for. The delight of watching your detractors eat their words."

Azula's lips curled into a smug half-grin at the thought of the demise of the New Ozai Society. She could not deny these potent satisfactions, not to a man who had seen her gloating over her triumphs many times. But right now they seemed beside the point.

"I've worked so hard to be the perfect leader, but it wasn't enough for Aang," she returned to the subject of her lost fiance. "I thought he would love me, but instead he looked at me…." with revulsion. She had made many hard choices to avoid exactly that look, but in the end, her refusal to give up on him was what disgusted him.

"Why did he do that? Because of your proposal for the colonies? Because of your reluctance to allow this election?" Chibi prodded.

"No, that happened later. It was more personal. I threw myself at his feet and he rejected me again." She slouched, pouting.

"Did he say why?"

"He's married," she answered, resentment shortening her explanation.

"Ah." After another long silence in which they both contemplated the finality of that vow, the therapist asked a question to take them back to the real beginning. "Tell me, what do you like so much about Aang?" the old man asked, his kind eyes soft at the corners.

"He's incredibly good-looking. He's fun to be with," she answered easily. "He's the only man who's ever beaten me in combat since I was a small child, and I find that thrilling."

"Those are indeed very attractive qualities." Chibi nodded.

"He's the most powerful person in the world, isn't he?" Azula went on. "And I'm the greatest living firebender and leader of the world's strongest nation. It was a perfect match."

"You considered him your equal."

"He's probably the only man who is. I certainly don't want a marriage like my parents'."

"What was wrong with their relationship?" the therapist wondered, though he had heard a lot about it.

"They weren't equal," the Fire Lord answered. "He was a firebender, she wasn't. He was a prince, she was a nobody."

"So you think the reason they were unhappy was because of their inequality."

"And because Father was cruel, and Mother too weak to keep his cruelty in check. If she were a firebender she could have defended herself against him. Defended us."

"Are there any other reasons you can think of for their unhappiness?" the therapist pushed.

Azula paused. "My mother told me she was forced into the marriage."

"Did your father use his firebending to do that?"

"No…. It was grandfather's idea. No one can refuse the Fire Lord."

"So the inequality between your parents was not a matter of bending ability. It was about the difference in their positions. Like you said, he was a prince, she was a nobody," Chibi restated.

"I suppose."

"Tell me, when you were engaged to Aang, were your positions equal?"

Her eyes widened and she swallowed. "No. I was crown princess, he was a prisoner."

"So, despite your efforts to avoid recreating your parents' relationship, that was exactly what you did."

"I was…acting like my father." Aang had called her abusive, and now she had to accept that he was right. She had to admit that while she had occasionally fantasized about yielding to Aang, she had been even more excited by the idea of dominating him, bending the omnipotent Avatar to her will. It would have been the most delicious power trip. Now, the idea felt supremely uncomfortable. Because he hadn't been that mighty, after all, not then. Toppling him would not have been a triumph, like defeating a titan. It would have been more like what Zhao used to do to servant girls.

Chibi leaned forward, taking her attention from her troubling thoughts. "These family patterns are insidious, but with insight and purposeful action, they can be escaped. Do you want to be like your father?" he asked softly.

"No."

"Well, then." He patted his knees, as if satisfied with this conclusion. "It seems as if that relationship was not healthy for either of you, and you're both better off without it."

She frowned. That was not the conclusion she had reached. "Aang certainly thinks he is. But I'm not."

"You think it would be good for you to treat someone the way your father treated your mother?"

"No. And I wouldn't do that, not now. What I mean is, if he had given me another chance, I would have been better off that way."

"What about him? Would he be happier in a relationship with you, or in the one he chose?"

"If he had chosen me, I would have tried to make him happy," Azula insisted.

"But he didn't choose you, did he?"

Azula leaned back, crossing her arms. "You don't have to rub it in."

"I think it's important to look directly at a painful fact in order to fully accept it. Would it have been possible for you to make him happy?"

"Not as long as he was set on the waterbender," she admitted. "And not as long as he couldn't get over what I did to him. I wanted to make up for it, but he didn't want to let me."

"What did you do, exactly? And why?"

Azula looked back and recalled the moment when she had decided to take action to break up the blooming romance she had witnessed. The pain of the recollection made her sigh. "During one of their practices, I saw him reach out and touch the waterbender's hair with tenderness, and I knew then that he…cared for her. So I challenged her to a fight, and Aang stepped between us. Then I went down to propose to Father that Aang and I should be married."

"You didn't talk to him about it first?" Chibi seemed shocked.

"Royal marriages are often arranged. And since Father was keeping him captive, Aang was not exactly free to refuse." The therapist had a stern look on her face, and her newly-grown conscience pricked her. So she justified herself, though aware her actions had been inexcusable. "I knew he wouldn't like it; I knew he preferred her. But I was desperate. I just could not stand losing him." She took a deep breath, bracing herself for the next part of the story. "Then, when I saw them together again, even after he was engaged to me, I ordered the Yuyan archers to shoot Katara. Aang protected her. Father whipped him and it was my fault. I made up a lie to stop the torture, but not before he had been hurt quite seriously."

"How would you feel towards someone who treated you that way?" the therapist questioned.

Her first instinct was to insist that no one could ever imprison her and take away her power, as Ozai had done to Aang. But recently she had experienced vulnerability in ways she hadn't before, through surviving public humiliation and assassination attempts. Despite all her talent and cleverness, she had come close to losing her throne, her freedom, and her life. She had felt trapped by her office and the impossible political predicaments it put her in. Now, she thought she had an inkling of what captivity might feel like.

"I'd want revenge," she stated honestly. "I'm lucky Aang's a pacifist."

"It's possible that even if there were no other woman in the picture, he would still want nothing to do with you," the old man asserted.

"But there was another woman." Bitterness lay beneath her tone.

"Why do you think he picked Katara over you, then?"

Azula forced a shrug. "I don't really know her at all. She didn't treat Aang the way I did. She wasn't in a position to do so. If anything, he forced her into a relationship. He made the guards bring her to his room at night, as if she were a whore."

Chibi's bushy eyebrows lifted. "I suppose none of us can know the inner workings of other people's relationships," he answered carefully. "Perhaps they bonded over their mutual captivity, though their prison cells were different."

"I thought she was a rebel fanatic. A member of an underground organization that called itself the Resistance. I was sure she had seduced Aang so that she could use him as a weapon, just like my father, and would eventually force him to commit some act of violent terrorism. But she never did." Azula had been waiting for it to happen for the entire time, convinced she would wake someday to news of a Fire Nation merchant ship sunk by the Avatar and his waterbending lover. As time went on, and no such calamity occurred, she had wondered if she might have been wrong, but there was no way to change course. Now, she had a sinking feeling much like the one she'd had in the desert, when she realized her kidnapping plot had been based on a faulty premise. "I knew from the beginning that my plan had a weakness, a variable that was completely out of my control."

"You were betting on your rival being unworthy of Aang."

"But it turns out she didn't want to wield his power to overthrow the Fire Nation. Her ambition was much more common than that. She just wanted to breed." Azula sneered. At the therapist's surprised look, she explained between gritted teeth, "The waterbender is pregnant."

"Now, there's nothing wrong with that," Chibi scolded. "The desire to have children is natural. Just because you can't, doesn't mean it's all right for you to denigrate others. Are you envious?"

"I was for about a minute, just after he told me," she admitted. "Then I thought about the two of them together, and it disgusted me so much I threw up." That wasn't really the entire reason she'd vomited, but it had been part of the mix.

"What if they simply love each other?" Chibi suggested.

The thought hurt her, with a pain that turned in on itself and began to pulse. She sat with it for a minute that stretched on and on. Her thoughts went to her mother, torn from her engagement with Noren, captive in the palace, bearing children to a man who hurt her, eventually returning to the love of her youth. Something similar had happened to Aang, but it hadn't gone so far or taken so long. The part of her that was her mother's daughter was glad he had escaped, and that made the throbbing bearable.

"Is it strange that I kind of hope they do?" she whispered in confusion.

Chibi's mouth opened in surprise, then he recovered, pleased. "No, that's not weird at all! It's actually….healthy. Tell me, why do you feel that way?"

"Because if she's actually everything he thought she was when he….left with her, then he'll be happy. And she can give him a child, and I can't." Her chest ached with hollowness as she forced the words out.

"If you want him to be happy, even without you, then that is a sign of true love." He handed her his handkerchief.

"What do I need this for?" Azula held the little embroidered cloth between her fingers as if it were disgusting.

He gestured wiping at his cheeks, and she imitated him. The handkerchief came away from her face wet, evidence of the truth of Chibi's words.

"If I truly love him, then what am I supposed to do now?" She held up her hands helplessly.

"You said you wanted to make up for what you did, didn't you?"

"Yes, but I'm not sure how I would do that, anyway."

"You could start with an apology."

Azula wrinkled her nose. "That sounds supremely uncomfortable."

The old man chuckled. "Saying you're sorry often is. You should send him a nice, non-intrusive letter."

"That's all?"

The therapist shook his head. "The hardest, and most important thing you have to do is simply to let him go."

She recognized those words from when Aang had spoken to her in the desert: If you really love me, you'll let me go. "I still don't know what that means," she protested.

"I think you did most of the work today."

"I did?"

Chibi nodded earnestly.

"All right. But then what do I do about it tomorrow? What actions do I perform?" Frustrated with the vagueness of this advice, she pushed for specificity.

"Leave Aang alone. Find something else to occupy yourself. Like ruling the Fire Nation. Wish him well. You can even try to be happy for him."

She scoffed. "That's going a bit far. How am I supposed to be happy for someone else, when I'm not happy myself?"

"Why aren't you happy?"

"I miss Aang." She swallowed. Her throat felt tight, so that speaking was difficult. "And I'm never going to be with him."

He mimed dabbing his face, and she imitated him, wiping away more tears with the handkerchief.

"That is hard," the therapist acknowledged. "You did feel a connection with him, and you had dreams for the future that will need to be mourned. Perhaps eventually, if you do move on, then he will be open to seeing you again, on his terms. But don't depend on that."

"I understand."

Azula stared off into the distance for a couple of minutes, so that her counselor eventually called her attention back with a gentle question. "What are you thinking about now, my lord?"

"My father believed that because he was the Fire Lord, he could determine what was right and what was wrong. Anything he wanted to do was morally acceptable simply because he was the one who wanted to do it." The monarch spoke with a soft, reflective tone that was rare for her, even with her therapist. "For most of my life, I learned from him and imitated him. But then I decided to try to win Aang's love by being good like him, and I had to study Szeto to learn to rule in an entirely different way. It was more satisfying than I expected. Now, thinking pragmatically, I believe Szeto's way is more effective than Father's. I want to continue, even with no hope of romantic reward."

"I commend your resolution!" Chibi exclaimed.

"I wonder, if I had been the person I am now, from the beginning, would things have been different between me and Aang?" she mused.

"Perhaps they would have been. There is no way of knowing."

She waved the idea away. "There's no use thinking about such hypotheticals. If I'd had this conversion ten years ago instead of just two, it would have changed my entire life. Father might have tried to burn and banish me, like he did Zuko. Or I would have usurped him and become Fire Lord a lot sooner. If I'd been in charge, Aang might never have been taken to the Fire Nation at all. Like you said, it's impossible to know." She sighed. "Anyway, I've lost Aang forever now, and will always be alone."

"You don't have to be."

She rolled her eyes. "What am I supposed to do, hold a ball for all of the eligible bachelors in the Fire Nation? It's not like I'm ever going to marry, anyway."

"Why not? You wouldn't have to give up your throne; things are different from Izumi's days."

"I know, but still, there's no point. I can't have children."

"Are children the sole purpose of marriage?" the therapist asked rhetorically.

"For the Fire Lord, yes."

"You know, I didn't say a thing about marriage. You're the one who took the discussion there," Chibi pointed out. "It's possible to be single without being lonely. What about friendship?"

The word reminded her of Ember Island, but she pushed away the memory. "I don't have friends." Azula turned away, nose in the air.

"Just…look around. The answer might be right in front of your eyes."

Raiden stood outside the Fire Lord's office, eager to speak with her as soon as she finished with her therapist. As the session dragged on past her usual hour, he began to wonder whether that was a good sign or a bad one. Though he knew it wasn't his business, he couldn't help his curiosity about Azula's relationship with Aang. He wondered how she might have wronged the Avatar, to cause him to yell at her the way he had in Yu Dao. Had Azula merely been complicit in her father's cruelties toward the airbender, or had she perpetrated her own? He remembered the hints that she had dropped of violence within her family. Many people, without help, perpetuated cycles of abuse because it was all they knew. Azula was getting help now, finally, but was she truly any better, if she was still pursuing the Avatar? He had known she was dangerous when he fell in love with her, but it seemed he didn't understand the full extent of her darkness.

As soon as she exited the door, he put aside his misgivings. The Fire Nation needed its monarch, and that was all that mattered.

Raiden confronted the firebender. "I have something for you, Azula." He placed a sheaf of papers in her hands.

"What's this?"

"Letters of gratitude from your subjects. Veterans who have benefitted from your programs. Students who now have the opportunity to attend university. Children whose parents are home from war, for good. Even a few who simply admire your bending skill or your hairstyle."

Her face opened a little, and she seemed almost touched. "This is thoughtful of you, Raiden."

Swallowing his nerves, the captain made his push. "You may have been working to earn the Avatar's esteem, but he didn't truly see any of the benefit himself. Do you know who did? Your people. The young men who are no longer drafted. The students who are learning true history. The Earth Kingdom, that you made peace with. If you can't do this work for Aang anymore, then, please, do it for them."

She sighed. "You're right, of course. You were right about Szeto, too. I'm glad I listened to you, even if it was for the wrong reason." She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, appearing resolved, then walked the few steps down the hall to her chambers. He followed, encouraged.

As they arrived at her door, she seemed to come to a decision. "I need the rest of today to myself, but tomorrow I'll go back to my normal routine as Fire Lord."

"I'm relieved to hear it, Azula. The nation needs you."

She graced him with a small smile. "I'll see you in the morning, Raiden," she promised, then shut herself in her room.

Author's Note: What do you think of Azula's growth? Please leave me a review and let me know!