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Clytemnestra

Summary:

Ursa does not name her daughter, but she creates her nonetheless.

 

or: azula and ursa, a tragedy in 50 sentences

Notes:

i'm churning out so much writing wise lately jeez

Work Text:

  1. disposition

Physically, Azula is a copy of her mother down to the color of her eyes and the outline of her nails, but this is where their similarities are born and die (in the years that follow, this will not convince her father not to fuck her in Ursa’s place).

  1. service

Ursa likes to do acts of service to the community as though such things are not beneath her station; she scolds Azula for her lack of consideration when her daughter is not interested in doing the same.

  1. thank

“What do you say to Uncle Iroh, Azula?” Ursa prompts—she has the audacity to be surprised when Azula does not mean her thank you.

  1. apology

Ursa never twists Azula’s arm into apologies; she only looks at her daughter like she’s all wrong when Azula doesn’t offer them up herself.

  1. excess

They have more money than they could ever spend in three lifetimes, so Azula does not understand her mother’s refusal to wear the jeweled necklaces that are gifted to her by Ozai.

  1. thoughtful

When Azula is six and too stupid for her own good, she sneaks into the kitchen with Zuko to attempt to make Ursa her favorite dessert and fails horribly.

  1. killer

Ursa has never been afraid of her daughter; she is only afraid of what Ozai will ask Azula to be—and of what Azula will not refuse her father.

  1. insist

When Azula survives her third year, Ursa insists on taking her to her first Shichi-Go-San Festival even though Ozai believes it beneath a princess of the Fire Nation.

  1. norm

“What is wrong with that child?” Ursa whispers whenever Azula does something strange and cruel and unladylike.

  1. dignity

Azula holds her head as high as her station where Ursa will bow to any man or god who asks.

  1. wall

There are walls as tall as those of Ba Sing Se keeping Azula away from Ursa, but neither of them will ever agree whose walls they are.

  1. depression

After Azula is cut out of her like a tumor, Ursa cannot bring herself to eat or drink or hold her baby.

  1. mystery

Ursa does not talk about her life before Ozai swept her up and forced her to marry him; Azula will grow to not talk about her life before Ozai came to her chambers and left her bleeding proof of his violation all down her thighs.

  1. lake

When Azula is five, Ozai almost lets her drown in a lake to teach her a lesson before Ursa cannot stand it and saves her daughter, for which Azula will spend the rest of her life resenting her.

  1. retreat

Talking to her mother is like going to war.

  1. beginning

The first time Azula feels like a monster, it is because of how Ursa looks at her after she pushes Zuko off the roof of the palace while they play (she swallows every apology and insistence that it was an accident in favor of laughter, willing to become the monster her mother believes her to be).

  1. seize

Ursa disappears when Azula is nine, and she steals three things: her brother’s knife, her mother’s makeup, and a higher place in the line of succession.

  1. bind

Azula cannot cut her mother out of her—she’s tried.

  1. tournament

Ursa opposes the idea of her daughter fighting in a firebending tournament out of love, but Azula takes it as proof of her hatred.

  1. deprivation

Azula sees the way Ursa looks at her and the way she looks at Zuko, and she tells herself she does not need or want Ursa in her life.

  1. silver

Azula shatters every gleaming mirror she sees her mother in.

  1. dream

A truth Azula would never confess: some nights, she dreams of a mother who loves her.

  1. false

When they are nine and eleven respectively, Zuko tells Azula that Ursa will come back for them; she asks if he means that Ursa will come back for him.

  1. affair

Ozai beds his daughter while never dissolving his marriage to Ursa, and Azula wonders if this, too, is an affair.

  1. lie

Azula always lies, but who do you think she learned it from?

  1. misery

Ursa stares at a baby she cannot bring herself to love as easily as the last, and she hates herself.

  1. cage

It’s almost funny how the same man traps both mother and daughter.

  1. ostracize

Ursa is ostracized from her daughter from the moment she is born and in every moment after that.

  1. ally

In the microcosmic war of the Royal Family, Azula is never really given the opportunity to ally herself with anyone but her father.

  1. complex

Azula hates her mother almost as much as she wants her mother to love her (almost as much as she loves her mother).

  1. fruit

Like her mother before her, Azula’s favorite food to eat in the summer is pitless cherries—right up until it isn’t.

  1. method

Azula’s method of making friends has always concerned her mother, even when she brings home Mai and Ty Lee for the first time; everything she does is always wrong.

  1. comfortable

Ursa has never seen her daughter look remotely comfortable, and she never will.

  1. class

One of the only things Ursa can do to protect Azula is lie when the girl skips her lessons with Mai and Ty Lee so that Ozai will not punish her as if she is not light-years ahead of her peers anyway.

  1. evaluate

Azula learns to read both her parents’ moods to know how best to behave herself by the time she is seven.

  1. theme

The recurrence with which the word “monster” haunts Azula is almost uncanny, even after her mother is gone.

  1. linger

Azula lets Ursa fix her topknot, and Ursa’s hands linger as if holding onto the fantasy of a daughter she can mother will make it any realer.

  1. treatment

It is only when Ursa is gone that Azula asks Zuko to admit their mother’s favoritism; he refuses.

  1. tender

Whether Azula knows it or not, Ursa says goodbye to her daughter before she leaves the palace.

  1. period

Azula’s first period comes when she is twelve and Ursa is long gone, and the only women she can turn to for help are Lo and Li.

  1. offspring

The only thing tying Azula to Ursa is the fact that they are blood, and even that should only be a technicality; it isn’t.

  1. precision

Ursa watches her daughter bend fire from the tips of her pointer and middle fingers and feels equal parts proud and nauseous that she has helped Ozai create such a prodigy.

  1. generate

To generate lightning, one’s mind must be clear and their qi split, but Azula’s mind has never been less clear than the day of the Agni Kai when she sees her mother’s ghost all over her, and she still lightningbends with ease.

  1. danger

For all she knows of her husband’s cruelty, Ursa never does catch the warning signs about what fate awaits Azula when she leaves.

  1. construct

Most days, Azula can cast the memory of her mother out long enough to believe Ursa is nothing more than a story Zuko tells himself to feel better.

  1. pawn

Ursa knows that her daughter is not a monster; Ozai is.

  1. instruction

Azula follows instructions perfectly, except for when Ursa asks her to feel badly about the things she’s done.

  1. infix

Before Ursa knows it, Ozai has poisoned Azula’s head.

  1. midnight

Some nights, Azula distracts herself from the smell of her father all over her with the thought of what her dear mother would say if she could see Azula now (her favorite question of what is wrong with that child comes to mind).

  1. costume

At fourteen, in her mother’s makeup and her country’s armor, Azula is only viewed as more than a child playing dress up because of the holy fire in her veins.