Chapter Four
"Are you sure that you want to see our father, Azula? Aang took away his bending, and he's been pretty angry since then." Zuko said uncertainly. He didn't know how Ozai would react to seeing Azula again. Sometimes Zuko visited his father, but he always either said spiteful things to him, or completely ignored him, so Zuko was going less and less to see him.
"I'm positive. I need to see him… If only once."
"Okay. Excuse me…"
"Firelord Zuko!" The guard said suddenly, turning around. "And… Princess Azula?" He asked.
"Hello. We've never met, have we?" Azula asked, looking away. She still wasn't sure she was ready to be back in the Fire Nation. What would Lo and Li say when they saw her? Maybe they would be just as polite as ever. But would they secretly hate her?
"No, ma'am. What can I do for you, Firelord?" The guard asked. Zuko looked at him.
"Azula wants to visit her father."
"Of course… I'll take you right to him." The guard said, bowing and turning around, leading them to the right cell. When they got there, the guard shivered slightly, and hurried off. He had been the subject of much verbal abuse from the previous Firelord, and he didn't care to have more heaped on him.
"I suppose I should consider it an honor that the Firelord, the princess, and her little whore have seen fit to grace me with their presence."
"Ex… cuse me?" Azula asked dangerously, her fists clenching at her father's sudden, and uncalled for attacks on Ty Lee.
"It's alright, Azula… He can't offend…"
"No… How dare he say that!" Azula demanded furiously, her fists beginning to steam with fire, just barely below the surface.
"What do you want? Say what you have to say and let me get back to my peaceful silence." Ozai said, turning around briefly, then turning again to face the wall. Ozai's beard had become highly unkempt, and his hair was long, scraggly, and greasy.
Once a man in his prime, even in his forties, he had lost a great deal of his muscle mass, and was beginning to look truly old.
"I wanted you to see me, now. You ruined me as a child, and as a young adult. You turned me into a paranoid, mentally unstable monster, just like you.
"But I wanted you to see me now that I've risen above that. I'm no longer that sadistic, monstrous, but terrified little girl. I know I still have a long way to go, but I hope that my friends and family will help me make it."
"I see… And… am I supposed to break down, and beg for your forgiveness? If that is what you are expecting, you'll be leaving disappointed."
"Well, it wouldn't hurt. But I wasn't expecting it. Knowing you, you probably won't even admit that you've done anything wrong. But I'm happy, now, and you can't take that away from me."
"And who is the young woman with Zuko?"
"This is Jin, my fiancée… Despite your attempts to poison us and the whole Fire Nation against the rest of the world, I'm in love with an Earth Kingdom woman."
"Figures that the family failure would drop his noble Fire Nation girlfriend, and take some Earth Kingdom whore instead."
This time, it was Zuko's turn to be angry. Suddenly, Zuko stomped his foot, fire blasting up around the footprint. Jin grabbed Zuko's arm, though.
"It's alright, Zuko! Maybe someday, he can be happy for you, and be proud of you. Until then, I can love and be proud enough of you for both of us. I would say it's a pleasure to meet Zuko's father, but… Honestly, I get the feeling that I would like his mother better… Given what he's said about her."
"Ursa always was annoyingly sympathetic toward Zuko. She coddled him, and made him the weakling that he is today." Ozai snarled. Finally, Jin seemed to be getting angry.
"No! If anyone made him weak, it was you! You were the family's weakest link! You challenged your own son to an Agni Kai and scarred him for life! When I met Zuko for the first time in Ba Sing Se, he was a good and kind person, but confused and awkward!
"I wanted to be with him at the time, but he turned me down… It wasn't until he came back after the war that he seemed to have found himself… And he did that all without you! How dare you belittle him, when he's stronger than you'll ever be!? Come on, Zuko… Azula… Have you gotten what you needed out of him?"
"Not yet. Father. I-I wanted to tell you that all I ever wanted was for you to love me… But you never did. I was only good as long as I continued to excel. And you turned me into something terribly ugly and monstrous…
"I betrayed the best friends I ever had… I hurt the woman who loved me most in the entire world. I tried to kill the uncle that only ever tried to help me… I almost killed my brother… I wonder if that would have made you proud enough to say that you love me… Even if it was a lie?" Azula muttered, seeming hesitant, even scared to show such weakness.
"You're pathetic, Azula… I was raised the same way by my father… Brilliant as you were, you clearly didn't deserve my praise." Ozai said, shocking Azula into silence. The princess felt her hand loosen around the glass bottle she was holding, dropping it on the hard stone floor. She didn't hear it shatter, though. She only nodded, and gasped out a weak "alright. I-I'm ready to go, F-Firelord Zuko…" forgetting even to mock him by calling him Zuzu.
"Okay… Goodbye, Dad." Zuko said, looking down at his father disdainfully, taking the rest of the group outside. Ty Lee looked at Azula, who was pale as a sheet, shaking violently. She looked like she was about to cry, but she wasn't letting out a sound.
"Azula… Are you alright?" Ty Lee asked, trying to hug her lover. Suddenly, though, Azula hissed furiously at Ty Lee, shooting a fireball at her.
Fortunately, her belligerent hiss caused Ty Lee to recoil so Ty Lee wasn't hit directly by the fireball. But the heat radiating off of the fireball was incredible. As it hit the sand, the former earth turned to glass. Zuko gasped. Having fire hot enough to turn sand into glass was just incredible. Even Azulon, the firelord before their father wasn't that powerful. Was this a result of Azula visiting the Sun Warriors to find the true source of Firebending?
Zuko had found, when he returned from the Sun Warrior culture, that his firebending prowess was also much improved, although part of his victory against Azula could be attributed to the fact that she had collapsed mentally and emotionally, and had lost all vestiges of her sanity. It seemed as though her time in the psychiatric home had helped her with that, and now, she was as close to emotionally stable as Zuko had ever seen her. Ty Lee knelt down next to Azula, hugging her tightly and kissing her gently.
"It's alright, Azula…" Ty Lee whispered, trying to soothe Azula's turbid aura.
"I'm proud of you. You faced the man you feared most in the entire world. His cruel words can't take that away from you."
"I'm not scared of my father! Get the fuck away from me!"
"No? My mistake, then. Sorry." Ty Lee muttered, pulling away, with tears filling her eyes.
"I… No! Please, don't leave me, Ty Lee!" Azula pleaded, pulling her closer, but giving her enough room to pull away if she wanted to. Ty Lee could see Azula's aura, though. If she did pull away, she knew something would be gone in Azula, that Azula would never trust her again.
She knew that their relationship wasn't exactly "conventionally healthy" at the moment. But she hoped that she wasn't walking right into the same trap she did the first time, and that Azula's health would continue to improve as it had done in her time in the hospital.
"I won't leave you, Azula… I love you."
"I love you, too, Ty Lee…" Azula sobbed, leaning into Ty Lee desperately. Zuko took Jin's hand loosely, walking away from the two girls with her, giving them some time alone.
"Zuko… Is… Azula going to be alright? She seems so…"
"Mentally unstable?"
"I was going to say upset."
"Well, you saw how our father treats us when he senses weakness in us. Azula's speech to him was, to him, at least the ultimate display of weakness. She openly admitted that she could be frightened and that she depended on his approval. Those are two things that are both forbidden and required in our family.
"I know, it seems odd to hear something like that. But our father was a man of contradictions. He both required complete loyalty and obedience and independence. Azula managed to walk that razor thin line for a long time before she broke. I'm not sure exactly what happened. I only have her word for it, and when she told me, she was not in her right mind."
"Well, tell me what she told you, then."
"Okay. I need to go back a bit before our final confrontation. Do you remember the Day of Black Sun? The solar eclipse?"
"Yes! My mother and I made a weird contraption to watch it!"
"Right… Well, the Avatar and his friends chose that day to attack the Fire Nation to try to defeat my father. See, during a solar eclipse, Firebenders lose their bending, since Firebending is powered by the sun. It was a brilliant plan, I suspect made by Sokka. But because of well-placed sources, my father knew of the eclipse and the Avatar's plan, and hid away.
"On that same day, I betrayed my father, and went to teach Aang Firebending. However, most of the troops organized were captured and thrown in Fire Nation prisons." Zuko said. Jin gasped.
"Right, well, eventually, we found out where Katara's and Sokka's father was being held. It was in a top security Fire Nation prison for the worst traitors to the Fire Nation. It makes sense, really. So Sokka and I infiltrated the prison, and broke his father and Sokka's girlfriend out of the prison.
"But Azula and her friends, Mai and Ty Lee found out and came to the prison. Azula, I think was already beginning to lose touch with reality, and when Mai, who was my ex-girlfriend…"
"That girl with the really sharp eyes, you mean? She was your girlfriend? I mean, go ahead." Jin said, blushing at having spoken about Mai like that.
"Right… Mai betrayed Azula and attacked her to give me and Sokka and the prisoners time to escape.
"Azula was going to attack Mai when Ty Lee attacked Azula… I'm not sure exactly what was going on between Azula and Ty Lee, but I do know that Azula had been hurting Ty Lee for a long time… Maybe in Azula's mind, her torment of Ty Lee was a test of her loyalty? I'm not sure. But Ty Lee's friendship also kept Azula sane… Well… At least kept her outside the walls of a crazy house. So Ty Lee's betrayal sent Azula over the edge.
"So when I went to the Fire Nation again with Katara to face my father on the day of Sozin's Comet, we found that Azula was the Firelord. But her already tenuous grip on reality had snapped. She may have been less of a threat in terms of combat, but she was that much more dangerous. Like a cornered animal. She and I had an Agni Kai, and she tried to attack Katara. Needless to say, I almost died. But we defeated Azula, and she ended up in a psych ward.
"But I've skipped ahead. I think the last blow to her crumbling sanity was when our father said that he was going to fulfil alone the plan that she suggested and he initially promised they could carry out together. They were going to burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground. You, your family, Ba Sing Se, everything would have been gone. But he told her to stay in the Fire Nation, and made her the Fire Lord. That was what sent her over the edge.
"Mad with power and driven by rage that our father refused to have her at his side when he undertook the plans to defeat the Earth Kingdom, she had truly lost her mind. So, you see why, even now, she's not really the picture of mental stability. And even now, her father rejects her."
"That's… Terrible… How could anyone be so horribly cruel?" Jin whispered, tears flooding her jade green eyes. Zuko hugged her tightly.
"I almost became like that, too. For the longest time, I was obsessed with capturing the Avatar. I was determined to regain my honor, which I believed I had lost for speaking out of turn at the war meeting and refusing to fight my father in the Agni Kai. I had to abandon my nation of my own free will though, to realize that I never lost my honor.
"No… I refuse to believe that you could ever be like that. You're just as kind as you've ever been."
"Have I told you the story of my hunt for the Avatar?"
"Yes… What is that over there, Zuko?" Jin asked. Zuko looked where she was pointing.
"Mm… I don't see it…" Zuko said, falling for the joke, once again.
"Oh, come on, Zuko! Your honor isn't so small that you can't even see it, is it?" Jin laughed. Zuko rolled his eyes. Jin still occasionally made jokes about Zuko's honor, much to the uproarious laughter of Aang and the rest of his friends.