Chapter Text
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(embers)
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Azula giggles unevenly.
"You're worse than dead, you're pathetic," she says, shaking her head. "How does it feel, Daddy?"
He snarls, lunges forward—and she can see now the slowness of his movements, some essential vital power vanished, like a war machine with its engines dead. She doesn't even need Ty Lee to dart forward and punch the nerve clusters along his side, dropping him instantly.
"Coward! You could never face me at full strength," he says, even as he crumples to the floor. Azula rolls her eyes.
"Someone did," she says, glancing over the array of gleaming steel buried into Ozai's flesh. She's seen Ty Lee in action more than enough times to recognize the chakras and chi pathways, each skewered with an obsessive precision she's only ever seen in one other person. "Looks like you were beaten by a nonbender with more needles than sense."
"I resent that," croaks Mai.
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"Don't move," the waterbender says, with a refreshing lack of prattle and fuss. Her pale blue eyes keep flicking anxiously to Azula.
Mai doesn't protest, mostly because even the thought of moving sends pain screaming through her ravaged nerves. She lets her eyes drift shut while her free hand finds Zuko's and twists, hairpin between two fingers. The cuffs open with an embarrassed click.
His hands are still shaking as they tighten around hers.
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Looking down on Ozai is a strange occurrence that sets her head spinning. He is weak... weaker than her. She could reach out and touch him, and he would be powerless to stop her.
(anything—anything at all)
"You should know better," she says, almost to herself. Ozai tenses. They understand each other too well.
Azula doesn't play well with weaklings.
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"Do you remember how I would train for you for hours? You were never happy," Azula says, out of the blue. She stands easy, nonthreatening. "Almost perfect. Always that almost. Almost isn't good enough."
Ozai says nothing, only watches with wary eyes, like an animal before a predator.
This is your natural place, filth, something in her snarls. Another part of her squirms in silent discomfort. She ignores it.
"This is justice," says Mother, something hungry in her gaze. "For us, my love. For our family. For the world."
"Father, I'm perfect now," Azula says, feeling the warm weight of her mother's presence behind her. "Blink and you'll miss it."
Without a single outward sign, she lets her chi tear asunder.
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Seagulls whirl overhead, shadows dancing over the white sand of Ember Island like empty spaces in Agni's gaze. She knows instinctively that she can feel this and Zuko can't, so Father is proud.
Princess Azula puts her small hand in her father's and looks up at him radiantly. Ozai offers that lilting smile meant only for her. Father should smile more, she thinks, but the thought passes like the shadow of a gull's wing. She loves him.
Azula glances back at the legless crab twitching where she'd left it, then up at her father for permission. His mouth quirks up slightly as she drops his hand to look for a rock.
The surf roars behind them.
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"Azula! Stop!"
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Lightning lances through the air, a blue-white killing thought, a scorched path of ions and plasma leading straight to Ozai's heart—perfect, at last.
A crackle of impact. The entire room is illuminated in stark, glowing blue.
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Katara doesn't stifle the scream that tears from her as the hostile energy crashes through hers, water vaporizing on contact, the moment of resistance stretching into an eternity of actinic death raging around her.
No. She is the ocean, and the tide knows when to recede, stepping backward, dancing. Lightning passes through water clear as glass, like a demon filling its vessel, blue-white claws unsheathed and scraping madly at the translucent walls.
Katara stands under an arc of glittering, boiling water, carrying the lightning for a single living instant.
Then the momentum of that exhilarating power comes crashing down, the unstoppable rolling tsunami tearing out of her control just as she whirls and directs the lightning out into the atmosphere, destroying the neighboring airship with a deafening explosion of superheated steam and electricity.
So that was the power of the Comet, Katara thinks light-headedly, her hands trembling as if disbelieving the power they'd channeled. She remembers to breathe. The air is heavy with hissing, steaming mist.
"No," she says, her own voice sounding so tiny compared to the cry of the lightning. "Not like this."
The water vapor beading on the ceiling drips loudly into their silence.
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Something poisonous rises in Azula's throat, whispering rage and murder.
Peasant girl fool enough to defy the Avatar, the Spirit of the World in all her glory. How easy it would be to brush her aside, just a gossamer veil between her and justice, perhaps crush her bones against the far wall.
Zuko in a corner, pale with shock. Kill him now, take the throne, you deserve it, take it take it take it Fire Lord Azula—then kill the witnesses, sink the airship, send it to the ocean floor and no one will know—
A promise is only words, Ty Lee.
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"What do you think you're doing?" the Avatar answers, voice cold, but trembling with some hidden tension.
Katara stands in front of the Fire Lord and says, "What you couldn't do for me."
The specter of Yon Rha passes before them in a heartbeat.
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Ursa crosses the sand and grips hard enough to bruise her daughter's wrist. The jagged rock falls from suddenly nerveless fingers.
"Mom! You're hurting me!" Azula says, twisting away.
She doesn't wait for an explanation. With eyes like bronze blades, Ursa says quietly, "You may be stronger or smarter than it, Azula, but nothing gives you the right to torment a helpless creature. Now come back to the beach house. You're grounded."
When Ursa isn't watching, Father gives Azula a look that says, Your mother is a fool.
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Azula stands very still, then reaches one hand up to pry the warm fingers off of her shoulder.
Ursa's long black hair cascades around her, soft and sweet. In her ear, she whispers, "My love, don't listen to her. You need me. You need this."
"You are not my mother," Azula says, something breaking in her heart as she turns away from Ursa's sad, beautiful face.
The apparition vanishes in a shower of embers.
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Distant. Azula doesn't seem to register the water dripping into her hair.
"You're right; I'm not your mother," Katara says, mouth making a firm, determined line as the sound of her voice drags Azula back to solid ground. "I don't want to be. I just don't want you to destroy yourself."
Azula blinks, as if coming out of a trance. Suddenly she looks very tired, as though the weight of the world on her shoulders is only just now making its presence known.
"Get away from him," she says, and when Katara hesitates, Azula sighs, "I'm not going to kill him now. Don't ever leave your back open to someone—something like him."
As Katara steps cautiously away, minding the word now, Ozai drawls, "I'm flattered that you think I'm still a threat to you like this."
"I did not give you leave to speak," Azula says, voice utterly empty of warmth. He falls into a poisonous, calculating silence.
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"What are you doing?" Zuko asks, low and outraged, glancing back at the unconscious form of their father in the back of Appa's saddle. "Leaving him alive is only asking for trouble."
Azula looks at the murder in his heart and searches for words. "Mercy is the mark of the great. Patricide will turn everyone against you," she says. She lets herself smirk. "Don't worry. You can murder the Fire Lady once we get back, if you're so keen to shed blood. Invent some charge of treason."
Into the silence, she adds, "I didn't think so." Some things never change.
They watch Sozin's Comet vanish into the vastness of space, and the terrible responsibility of power passes away from them.
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Armed guards begin appearing in unexpected places, brandishing authorization from the high council but otherwise refusing to explain their presence. They line the streets outside generals' and advisers' homes, and even dare blockade a section of the Palace itself.
"Our apologies, Fire Lady, but we have our orders. For your own safety, please remain in the west wing."
She stops short, looks at the soldiers for a long moment, then turns around without another word.
The Court begins to whisper.
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Azula stands, ready to strike terror and obedience from the gathering citizens—mostly civilians, but the tell-tale armor of the Royal Procession and Home Guard features ominously. She stops when Zuko grabs her sleeve.
"I can handle this," he says, and means it.
Reckless, well-meaning Zuko, who triggered an Agni Kai the first time he opened his mouth in a war meeting... A different Zuko stands now, and jumps effortlessly to the ground. A spear flickers through the air, but the prince barely even looks before his swords flash in and out. The blade clatters uselessly to the ground before him.
Despite herself, Azula turns to Mai, who lies flat on her back, glowing water pooled over her ruined face. "Aren't you worried?"
Mai looks almost surprised by the question, then turns her gaze straight up to the darkening sky, not even bothering to observe Zuko's confrontation with the crowd. "If... can't handle a few loyalists... doesn't deserve the throne," she says.
Azula watches silently. She can't quite fight her surge of envy when the entire crowd slowly bows to the Fire Prince.
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Zuko almost brings Mai to the royal infirmary, but at her uncompromising insistence, she walks home unaided. Not that anyone would believe her capable of fighting the Fire Lord, but there's no reason to trigger accusations of treason because the right people in the Palace noticed her burns.
"I'll do what I can," Katara says quietly, looking at the vast stretches of inflamed flesh, "but I can only do so much. You're going to scar very badly."
"Anything I can hide is fine," Mai says calmly. Ty Lee moans something about her perfect skin, but it's Zuko's quicksilver flash of grief that she turns to. "... don't regret."
"You really don't think Azula would have done it?" Zuko bursts out, furious.
Mai looks directly at him and swallows to soften her throat. "... not your sister. The Avatar. Fire Nation... more than enough reasons to fear. Don't be... in debt to her."
Zuko frowns, instincts catching something withheld. "You let him live," he says carefully.
"I thought," she begins, closing her eyes, "... ask him about your mother."
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Azula releases Appa's reins and turns to the only other figure on the sky bison's back. One last battle.
"You can stop pretending to be unconscious now."
Ozai opens his eyes sullenly. Father and daughter regard one another across the windswept space as cresting waves pass below them.
"You won't recover," Azula finally says, dangling one of Mai's spent needles between two fingers. "Custom-designed, hollow gouging tips loaded with acid. There's no healer on earth who can restore your bending."
"Gloating?" he says, the single word dripping with a masterful level of scorn.
Azula shrugs, careful not to let his tone bother her. "You don't need fire to be dangerous. I think Mai and Ty Lee demonstrate that rather well. Perhaps you think you'll do even better now that we're underestimating you."
"And you think you can disabuse me of that notion," he says, amused. "You, threaten me?"
She takes a moment to observe him before saying, "The crown of the Fire Lord belongs to Zuko now."
A shadow of distaste crosses Ozai's face before he snaps, "What of it?"
"An attack on his territory is an attack on himself, to be neutralized without pity. Is this not what you taught us?" she asks, tilting her head with false innocence.
He glances ahead to the point of her words and sneers, "The Avatar is a relic, the superstitious imaginings of the past—"
"No. The Avatar is the Spirit of the World. I hold the divine right to rule all things." she says softly. Her instinct strikes with calm assurance. "This is the truth you feared ever since you were young."
Ozai turns chilling. "Don't talk about things you don't understand, my daughter."
The tone her child-self would have cringed to hear almost makes her apologize before she controls herself. "Something in me is your daughter," she says distantly, looking at the gauzy cloud ceiling above them. "But I have had thousands of fathers, thousands of lives."
"Yet you chose to spare my life in a fit of sentiment," he sneers. "Even with all the power in the world, you are still weak."
"Oh? Did you think this an act of mercy?" she asks, leaning forward to touch the wound at the base of his neck with deliberate suddenness, and he doesn't reply. She sinks into her memories of the mirror world, mimicking that unnerving tilt of the head.
This is the best kind of game: a lie she fully believes. She tries to embody the disconnect between Koh's faces and the shadow mind shaping their words. Azula cannot be his daughter now. Her pale features and golden eyes must be a shell to hold something ancient and terrifying, a vengeful god to be obeyed. At the very least, feared.
Azula whispers, "You are mortal, but I? I have passed through millennia. I have been worshiped. This is the throne you sought to usurp, O Phoenix King, ruler of figments and delusions! The entire world is mine by birthright. The people upon it are an extension of my will... and you thought to claim them as your own."
She steps back, trying to gauge the effect of her words—his words, reframed—through his pulse, then decides it doesn't matter.
"I sentence you in the name of myself, the Spirit of the World. You are an exile from power forever," she says coldly. "So live. Plot and connive as you wish... but know that I have revoked your right to rule, and nothing will keep the throne in your hand."
Ozai starts to laugh, slow and mocking. Eyes gleaming with vicious mirth, he says, "You are my legacy, my immortality. You cannot renounce me. My children are the two most powerful forces in the world, and you think I no longer reign?"
"We stopped being your children a long time ago," Azula says. She says it quietly, without defensiveness. In the same deliberate tone, she adds, "If your tongue utters another lie, I will cut it out."
And then, because his faint derision has been needling her since the moment he opened his eyes, Azula jerks her fingers once—just to make him cry out as the water in his mouth suddenly turns to razor-sharp ice. Blood spurts from his mouth, dribbles down his chin, and seeps into his rich red robes.
Finally, the telltale hum of fear sings clear, brief and immediately silenced, as Ozai doubles over and spits blood from his lacerated mouth. The stain is dark, almost black. Azula only smiles.
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The streets of the Capital seem to stretch to accommodate the colors of four nations, gathered to observe the passing of one era and the rise of another. Civilians stare wide-eyed at strangely-dressed visitors who stare right back.
"Hey! Hey, you!" yells a Fire Navy recruit, running to catch up to the robed woman drifting through the crowd. The airbender turns guarded gray eyes upon her, something shifting defensively in her stance.
"Yes?"
She struggles for words. "They, uh, my captain said that the Northerners were gonna let us die. And that you people were the ones who arranged the rescue boats."
"All life is sacred," the nun replies, instead of confirming the rumor.
"I mean, if it was me I wouldn't go off looking through ice water for my enemies, 'cos they're just as like to kill me—Wait, that's not what I meant at all," the Fire Navy recruit says, biting her lip.
The woman's face warms with amusement, and she realizes the airbender isn't that old, really. It's just the weird hairline over the tattoo that gives her that alien grandmother look. Close up and smiling, the Air Nomad looks almost human.
"What I mean is... thanks. For saving us," she says, extending one armored hand.
The nun's blue arrow fills her palm, cutting across the steel.
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Azula falls into step beside her brother, her cloak brushing the marble floor. The dark brown color suggests humility, distances her from the Fire Nation, and cuts off the family resemblance, all without declaring allegiance to any nation.
"After you," she says, with a playful smirk, as Zuko steps into the light and the gaze of thousands. The plaza roars with approval.
"Please. The real hero is the Avatar."
The sudden outpouring of adoration almost takes her by surprise as she walks forward. They're only cheering because they think you defeated Ozai, she reminds herself, but when she sees Lin smile at her, standing tall even on crutches, her spirits leap anyway.
Zuko's voice is loud and confident as it breaks over the crowd, speaking the words that generations have longed for.
"Today, this war is finally over."
The wave of sound is deafening, filling the streets like a living thing. The entire city, the entire world seems to laugh and weep and dance together. The sharp borders between nations waver as strangers embrace one another.
Zuko doesn't let his address last much longer, in order to cast his coronation in the same breath as the moment of the peace declaration. He kneels before the presiding Fire Sage, and the cheering turns to reverent silence.
The deadly bolt of jealousy she's expecting doesn't come—only a subtle, crawling hunger she can push away with a thought. Azula even manages to smile as her brother stands, the twisted gold flame catching the sun.
"All hail Fire Lord Zuko!"
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"All hail Avatar Azula," she whispers to the night, to taste the words. Lying on the Palace roof, she looks into the sky of her childhood, cradled by the jagged circle of the caldera. Every other sky in the world has the wrong stars.
She doesn't even feel surprised when a hand grips the ledge, followed by a pink sleeve and the girl it's attached to. Ty Lee waves as if interrupting her brooding is as natural as breathing, and to her, perhaps it is.
"Dreams are funny things," she says, without preamble. "Saving the world with you was a lot better than staying with the circus."
"Saving the world," Azula repeats, rolling her eyes.
"It's true!" A little softer, she adds, "Everyone's proud of you, you know."
Azula doesn't want to think about the moment when everything stood so crystal clear in the mist, when all she needed to do was turn, engulfed in lightning, and say—
(a promise is only words)
Instead she says, "Almost isn't good enough."
"Maybe," Ty Lee says, giving an easygoing smile, "but since no one's good enough, it doesn't stop us from being proud of you. We're trying to be human. Not good enough is not the same as not good."
Azula frowns and hugs her knees, not sure what to make of her words, and finally decides to put them away for the time being. "What are we going to do now?" she asks, the we quietly inserted, an almost-question hanging too casually in the air.
"We'll figure it out later," Ty Lee says, sealing the almost-question away with gratifying nonchalance. "But if you're not busy, want a rematch?"
She's briefly puzzled before her memory offers the scent of aloe and the words: I'm stronger than you, and I'll prove it.
"I could hurt you," she warns, standing up, but only half-reluctant. The other half of her is already stirring her chi to life, coiling, eager. The acrobat only laughs.
"I'd like to see you try. Don't hold back."
It's been many years since they raced over the walls of the Fire Academy for Girls. They fall into the old game with grateful familiarity, though this time the steps are fists and blossoms of fire. Azula finds herself smiling at the leaping flames, even when none of them so much as singe a single bouncing braid. Her arm goes numb and she whirls, only to see Ty Lee skip away with a wide grin.
"Told you not to hold back," she says.
The night enfolds her ringing laughter, and the dance continues, choreographed in silken white flame and shadows in starlight.
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end
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