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When Azula is eight, she hears her Grandfather order her brother’s death.
She sings it down the hall after Zuko, skipping with a snicker in her voice. It’s wonderful. Pathetic Uncle, unmoored and ridiculous. You’d think he’d understand war, given his experience, but a death was unpredictable? How can a General expect a war with no casualties?
And she admits, Fire Lord Azulon made the right call. Well, given the situation. It’s a weak plan, but she supposes there’s some benefit to practicing pity.
Father’s going to kill Zuko. Like in those horrible plays Mother enjoys. Like a swift slash, removing the infected limb, leaving the warrior stronger.
It’s funny, really, how easy it was to win this time.
She sings and sings, all the way to her chamber, passing Zuko as he fumbles with his door. He’s never found the humor in these family squabbles; he only ever sees the surface. Oh! Look at her. Practicing pity.
At her room, she pauses. Azula doesn’t understand all his trembling. It truly grates on her nerves. It’s annoying to look at, for one, and, furthermore, utterly pointless.
He looks back at her, fear written all over his face.
She gives him one last sneer and twirls through her doors.
Moonlight casts a faint pink pattern, filtered through the thin curtains. Otherwise, her bedroom completely black around her closed eyes. She feels the swell of the torches in the hallway, flickering with silent intensity, right beneath her breastbone.
Hinges creak quietly.
Azula can’t sense body heat at her doorway, so she ignores it.
She pays it no mind.
In the silence, she keeps feigning sleep. If someone is really there, she will have the element of surprise. Not that she needs it, however. The shock in their eyes is just a pure delight.
The stark silence continues.
She can feel its eyes.
When they move from her face, she peaks open one eye.
A long, draping shadow blocks firelight from the hallway. Tall, flames just visible over its head. No hand holds the door open, just one, unending arm follows to the floor. Motionless, soundless, it stands there, edges rippling. She trails down the figure, noting its emptiness; so deep it seems to attract everything toward it. Hungry. The bottom of its robes seems to blend into its own shadow.
Flicking back up, she watches the faceless head pull darkness inward.
The torchlight behind it dims, stuttering, choking.
Suddenly annoyed, a quick sharpness in her chest, like the absence of her inner flame, she sits up. Flicking a quick movement, all her candles scorch the room with light.
Her door is shut. Figure gone.
She wipes off her hands, smirking. That will teach any more ghosts who dare bother her sleep.
Azula is eight years old when her grandfather dies.
Zuko had run to her in the courtyard. Again, with the trembling. His mobile limbs and beating heart prove her mother’s efforts successful. She pauses in her training to entertain him.
He tells her, breathless, that Mom is gone. Mom isn’t coming back. Mom might be dead.
She feels his heat, boiling, shaking along with him.
“Oh, Zuzu. You really think she would just leave?”
Her father is no fool. Leaving a witness, privy to his own maneuverings? If she was so desperate to save her precious Zuzu, she would know this was the cost.
He refuses to believe her, tears building in his eyes, and storms away.
She goes back to her newest kata, half a mind on their unpredicted stalemate. Zuko lives.
By sheer dumb luck, her brother has survived. Upset and confused, clearly grieving their mother, he’s completely blind to the fact that he hasn’t lost. By all means, he should be grateful. He’s the Crown Prince now.
Considering how she’d felt toward her victory, “not losing” must feel something close. Especially given his constant experience with “not winning.” Zuko has never truly understood. This is about something greater than family. This is the crown.
Now, thanks to Mother, she has the opportunity to win the crown herself.
She hasn’t won yet, but still finds herself grinning.
The ghost seems to follow her.
Fast and silent, it tucks itself around corners, behind tapestries and columns and fire. Unseen. Its presence makes itself known on the back of her head, down her neck, between her shoulder blades. Her skin buzzes with more than the servant’s wary gazes. Only once does she try to spot it, seeing if it would jump. No, it can’t muster even that much.
It never shows itself. That’s enough to make her smile.
It’s afraid of her, too.
She stops the man in the hallway after the war meeting, glare already perfected at eleven years. The General balks under her gaze, telling her all.
Just as she suspected, her brother is as much of an idiot as Uncle.
Being the Princess, she gets a front row seat.
Zuko stands, false confidence pulling up his shoulders, as her father shoos the ancient General from the arena. Scowled and eager, Fire Lord Ozai waits at his son’s back.
Anticipation bubbles in her chest. Element of surprise.
The torches grow.
Zuko kneels.
His pleas are wet and pathetic, as if begging to be silenced. They tremor, steeped in terror, and she can’t stop the upward curve of her lip. He’s prostrated himself before the Fire Lord, revealing the weakness of the Royal Line to an audience. Loyalty only means so much until you defend it, and Zuzu has just proven that he can’t
And so, he screams.
Azula is eleven when her brother dies.
Her father gladly makes her the Crown Princess of the Fire Nation, as she deserves. And if her brother’s dying scream resurfaces at night, it’s only a reminder of the moment her reign began.
Mai is much more withdrawn these days, even months after. So much she hides behind the loss of Zuko.
–and sure, to someone with sparse intellect, she would seem placid as usual. Azula can tell, though, that her silence is sourer than boredom–
As she was saying, her reticent attitude could be largely attributed to grief. Why, though, does she train alone, now? These sessions were the greatest opportunity for her to roll her eyes, maybe show off her lethality while completely disinterested. She enjoyed them. She could tell.
But not anymore.
Azula is twelve when she hears his ghost.
She’s out by the turtleduck pond. Her bitter mood is usually brightened by tormenting these vermin. It’s not too bad; she’d just need a kick or two. Now that she’s here, the plan has lost its luster.
Scowling, she flicks a weak fireball at a group of them. Not even their shrieks and squabbles do anything to lift her spirits. She barely even watches as they scatter away, feathers trembling.
All that trembling.
If these filthy pests have done anything, they’ve actually worsened her mood. That cannot do. Normally, she’d cook them all, punish them for their indiscretion. But her disgust requires them out of her sight immediately. She grits her teeth.
All that trembling.
She turns to step toward the palace.
“Azula, no!”
Against her will, she freezes, blood heating, anger rising unpermitted, at the sound of her competition to the Crown.
Fire ready under her skin; she spins around.
The windless day only gives the subtle din of quacking and an empty courtyard. There’s no one around. Not even her brother could hide from her here.
Something brushes her ankle, prompting her to lift her heel, ready to strike.
It’s a turtleduck. Obviously. She’d nearly stepped on it. She puts her foot down gently in the grass. It just waddles between her legs.
Of course, she smirks. He’s just making sure she doesn’t hurt them in his absence. That’s too bad. She won.
“No one tells me what to do, Zuzu.”
She raises her smoking fists.
It’s just over a year later that news of the Avatar fully reaches the Fire Nation. Sure, Zhao has been “hunting” it for a couple months, but no one thought it was much more than a rumor. The idiot thought his assignment was genuine, rather than Father’s excuse to get his incompetence far away from the capital.
Even Zuko could’ve beat him in an Agni Kai. A bitter fool.
“It’s too bad, Zuzu, you could’ve died with at least that honor,” she tells his shadow, caught in the thickness of the ugly Earth Kingdom trees.
Now that the boy Avatar has a confirmed sighting nearby– the Dai Li as her spies– she’s been dispensed for a quick, subtle removal. Father knows this is a mission of utmost importance. Sending some low-level, brash General was out of the question.
Once the boy is killed, their victory is secured, and she can take the throne. And she wins. It’s all so simple, it’s pitiful that so many have lost. Such intellects deserve a mind like hers in charge.
Azula is newly fourteen when she sees her brother’s ghost.
It’s grotesque and scarred, sightless in one eye, draped in dark cloth. Like the spectre it is, it hovers around the edges of the confrontation, watching as she disables the warrior boy, watching as blue fire hisses at blue water, watching as the waterbender tumbles to the ground.
The Avatar yells for ‘Lee’ to help.
Azula sends a blast through his plea.
“Can’t fight for yourself? Calling for civilians to defend you?”
Pathetic.
Increasing her attacks, she advances on the airbender, ignoring the prickly eye contact digging into her temple. Intense and constant. But her brother’s ghost holds no power over her. Not now. Not since the courtyard. All it does is distract her, prevents her from winning. Tells her to betray her own father. Tells her to try something else.
That doesn’t work, dumb-dumb, did you learn nothing?
As the boy recovers from the barrage, she pulls her energy into a pulse, static suspending the hairs on her arms.
The lightning crackles.
The waterbender screams in warning.
Her leg is swept from under her.
She lets out a growl and allows the electricity to dissipate, focusing instead on rolling backward. Twisting to a defensive stance, she meets her assailant, only to pause.
“Zuzu?”