Chapter Text
“The most beautiful part of your body / is where it's headed.”
— Ocean Vuong, Night Sky With Exit Wounds
Azula has barely spoken to Mai in almost two years. It shouldn’t matter as she ties her hair in a topknot, but somehow it does. She supposes she’ll give it another two years. The feeling will fade. It has had no right to stay as long as it has to begin with. Mai is nothing more than her disgraced brother’s pathetic girlfriend these days, and Azula is moving on to bigger and better things. They’re in different years at school, and Zuko is rarely tolerated in their father’s presence anymore, so he can’t bring Mai around to drag Azula down often. The world is better this way. Azula is better this way.
Alone, she smiles in the mirror. It looks more like a threat than anything else.
Azula walks down to the car where the driver does not look at her. He never looks at her. None of the staff do. She wonders, sometimes, if they would have looked at Zuko if he had stayed, burned and scarred. Azula has never had trouble looking at him. Not even in the hospital. Not even after he left. But Azula’s not like other people. She’s better, her father always says. Crueler, her uncle used to whisper with her pathetic excuse of a mother.
Azula doesn’t care about that. She doesn’t care at all.
She clicks her lighter on and watches it burn blue.
At lunch, Azula’s nose starts to bleed. Ty Lee tells her she should go to the nurse. Azula hums agreeably, but she goes to the bathroom instead to watch the blood drip down her face. She’s always been like this. Or at least, she’s been like this as long as she can remember. Bruises and blood and burns do not fascinate her, have never fascinated her, but she watches them with her golden eyes cold and focused. As diligently as she used to watch her father beat her brother until he burned half the boy’s face off. She is nothing if not dutiful.
The bathroom door opens. Mai walks in. She knows better than to try to have any kind of real conversation with Azula at this point. She made her choice just like Ozai and Ursa and Iroh; no one has ever loved both Zuko and Azula. It’s unthinkable. That doesn’t mean Mai doesn’t stare at Azula’s reflection in the mirror though.
Vaguely, Azula wonders if she agrees the blood is the same shade as her lipstick. She dismisses the thought when Mai does not stop staring. “Bleeding is a private affair,” she sneers. She will not voice Mai’s name, family or given. She will not give her the relief of distance nor the brunt of intimacy.
“You’re supposed to tilt your head back and pinch it,” Mai says.
Azula doesn’t know what game they are playing, but she will not play on Mai’s terms. She does not dignify the older girl with a response. She ignores Mai’s presence until Mai is gone. Then, Azula ignores her absence until the blood has ceased its flow. She cleans herself as she cleans between her legs when her father is particularly rough, out of passion or anger—she has stopped distinguishing which; it does not ease the pain to know its root. She makes herself presentable once more, and then she leaves for class.
When she arrives, Ty Lee smiles at her. Concern is etched in that smile, but Azula will not acknowledge it. She resents it as she resents all of Ty Lee’s weakness. She cannot, however, avoid her friend when school is over. They have to walk to practice, and so Azula waits outside the classroom for her to finish packing her school bag.
“The nurse’s office took a long time,” Ty Lee says. Her voice is nervous. She knows Azula’s mood has been foul since she left her lunch behind, and she knows the foulness does not stem from hunger; Azula eats in fractions, and she has long stopped biting worse for it.
“I didn’t go,” Azula says. She is in no mood to lie, however easy it would be, however compliantly Ty Lee would accept the lie. “I went to the bathroom instead.”
Ty Lee glances at the taller girl out of the corner of her eye. It’s an anxious gesture. As though she thinks she’s done something wrong to upset Azula. She hasn’t. Not really. Not today, at least.
“Father still hasn’t told me what’s happening with the charges,” Azula supplements, so Ty Lee will stop that. She will not comment further, and both girls know that. They’re silent as they change for kuai ball practice.
“I’m sure everything will be fine,” Ty Lee says. She's got the kind of smile that splits her face like a blade on.
Nothing in Azula’s life has ever been fine.
Summer break starts. Her fifteenth birthday comes. They’re going out for dinner with her worthless brother, and so her father sets out a dress for her. It’s silk. Red, of course; he loves her best in red. She puts it on without fuss, and it is only when she catches sight of herself in the mirror, her hair loose and straight, that she recognizes the dress. This was her mother’s. Azula has never seen the resemblance so terrifyingly clearly.
She ties her hair into an elegant ponytail, her chest rising in panic. She is being childish. Weak. She didn’t even see anything this time. Anyway, the point of making her wear the dress is to hurt Zuko by reminding him of the mother who didn’t take him with her.
(If she let herself think ill of her father when they’re playing these games, she’d acknowledge that the point is also to hurt her by reminding her of the mother who didn’t protect her.)
Reluctantly, Azula lets her hair down. This is just another punishment that she will suffer silently.
He smiles when he sees her and puts a diamond and ruby-encrusted necklace around her throat. Her mother hadn’t liked jewelry because she knew it would mean Ozai owned her. Azula is not afforded this ability to slight her father with rejection.
“It’s beautiful,” she says automatically.
“You’re beautiful,” he says before he leads her to the car. His hand stays firmly, almost bruisingly on her thigh until it stops in front of a residence Azula should be familiar with, but she has never cared to know.
The car door opens to reveal her brother and uncle standing uncomfortably.
“You didn’t mention that Uncle was coming,” she says, careful not to sound accusatory. “Couldn’t we have taken the SUV?”
Ozai feigns an apologetic smile. “It slipped my mind. In my lap, Azula.”
She wishes she felt like a child, sitting in her father’s lap with his arms around her waist to trap her in place. She wishes she didn’t feel so painfully ashamed of herself for playing the game that’s dominated her life until the girl she was before was swallowed whole. She wishes Zuko wouldn’t glare at her like she’s done something wrong by virtue of existing. She wishes she hadn’t fucked up so completely in the first place.
Azula asks the driver to play the radio. A silent car ride would not bother her normally, but she cannot stand the way her gilded cage feels tonight.
It takes four songs for them to arrive at the restaurant, and she can’t help but think how fitting it is: the death number for a death march. She might as well be going to the gallows. She might feel less sick if she was.
When she gets off her father’s lap and out of the car, she turns her gaze to her brother, cold and mocking. His anger has shifted to distress at how much she looks like their mother tonight.
(His mother. Never hers.)
“Zuzu,” she says, and it comes out like a coo, “you’re growing into your scar.” If anything, she thinks this is a rare mercy on her part. A reminder that she might look like the woman who birthed them, but that is where the similarities end. They are superficial and forgettable. Even Ozai knows this.
Iroh’s eyes narrow at her as he places a hand on Zuko’s shoulder as if to say Azula is not worth his anger; Zuko clearly disagrees, but he’s always been desperate for approval.
Her father’s hand finds the small of her back. They enter the restaurant and are seated with an air of urgency. Azula takes the seat next to her father. It’s not a choice. It’s never a choice. Azula pretends it is, though. She’s an excellent liar. What was it Zuko used to say? Azula always lies. Always. But he never could actually tell when she was lying to him. He still can’t. Sometimes, she wonders what he would do if he could, though. If at these little soirees he saw through the painted-on smile. Would he even care at all? She hadn’t particularly cared when their father beat and burned him. Blood spilled is all they’ve ever shared; not tears or kindness after the fact.
They order,—her father ordering for her—and then he excuses himself to answer a phone call.
“Why are you wearing that?” Zuko croaks.
Azula almost sneers before she twists her mouth into something crueler. “Civilized people wear clothes in public, Zuzu. Besides, I thought it was pretty. Don’t you think I look nice?”
“It’s not your dress,” he says as if it matters. It is not her dress, and Azula is not her mother, but that will never stop Ozai from pretending until she stumbles and ruins the charade. It is not her dress, but these are her genes and that is her reflection, so here she is. Sitting with her estranged brother and uncle, pretending her father will not rape her when they forsake her once more.
Azula can’t help but laugh at how horribly fucked up her life has gotten and how horribly unprepared for the truth she won’t tell everyone around her always seems to be. True to form, it’s a cruel thing. She rarely laughs any other way these days. She supposes there are people—Mai and Ty Lee—who might have fonder memories of her laughter from childhood, but she’s sure that Zuko and Iroh only know the sound in its mocking. Good. She doesn’t want them to have any part of her that is not sharpened to kill.
“Did your father give it to you?” Iroh asks once her laughter subsides.
She composes her mouth into a smirk and says, “Yes. It was a birthday present.” Another lie. This is all part of an elaborate punishment. Azula does not want to think about what Ozai will get her for her birthday present this year.
“You hate Mom.” Zuko sounds torn between tears and fists.
The accusation lingers and weighs bitter in Azula’s chest. On some level, she thinks Zuko has always blamed her for Ursa’s abandonment. Maybe if her daughter was less of a menace, Ursa could have stomached staying to protect her son. Maybe if she didn't hate her daughter enough to abandon her, she would have loved her son enough to take him with her.
“I hated Ursa when I was eleven,” Azula says, “but Father loved her. I don’t particularly care about her anymore.” She watches as Zuko’s grip on the table tightens, his knuckles turning porcelain, and she smiles. “Honestly, I don’t even remember her at this point. It’s been just us for so long now.”
Zuko’s knuckles turn whiter still. It’s been almost four years since he was burned and dismissed. It’s been almost six years since their mother left, and their father stopped pretending to love him between the bouts of violence.
Her uncle’s stupid face twists into something between anger and grief. For all his proverbs and preaching, Iroh has never thought there was anything salvageable in Azula. It’s the only thing they agree on.
“You know, neither of you wished me a happy birthday,” she says. She loves to chastise her brother. She's always had the upper ground in all the ways he can see.
“Fuck you,” Zuko spits out.
She smirks, unforgiving as always. “I don’t think brothers and sisters are supposed to do that, Zuzu.”
“Azula.” To Iroh, she is always Azula—cruel, awful Azula, just as foul as her namesake, and Zuko is always Nephew—beloved, adored Nephew, just as tenderhearted as his mother. He cannot unshare her blood, but he is more than happy to spit at it. If she didn’t know better, she would think he was her mother’s brother instead of her father’s.
Azula is growing tired of toying with her brother’s fragile feelings, though. She drops the subject, and she falls into obedient silence as she waits for her father to return. Iroh and Zuko do not share her restraint as they discuss trivial matters with each other such as Zuko’s day and what kind of tea Iroh should get. Finally, Ozai returns, stone-faced as ever. Their food arrives shortly after.
As much as she resents it, she drinks both glasses of namazake her father pours for her. It makes her cheeks flush how he likes them and her stomach burn like she might be sick. Her uncle asks if it is wise to let her drink at all.
“She’s fifteen, Iroh. She’s hardly a child anymore,” her father says.
(If she was a lesser woman, Azula might laugh at that. She has not been a child since her mother left. Maybe even before then. What had she said when Azula pushed Zuko off the roof in a fit of rage? Monster. Azula isn’t sure she was ever a child. She burst forth from her mother’s womb malleable, waiting for her father to tell her what she was and willing to comply with each demand of brutality.)
The topic is dropped, but Azula does not drink another glass. She chews each bite of her food fifty times before swallowing. It is a labor that will not go unpunished. She cannot finish her meal in a timely manner at this rate, and, though Ozai can more than afford to waste money like that, he will not appreciate doing so.
“As inconvenient as these charges are, Zhao is finalizing the best plea deal he can for me. Three years in a minimum-security prison. I’ll most likely be released early for good behavior,” her father says.
She hasn’t finished chewing this bite yet. She’s not sure she will. Somehow, this is infinitely worse than she had imagined.
“This changes nothing in the long run. Azula will continue attending the Royal Academy for Girls. She’s at the top of her class,” he continues, making Zuko flinch at his own failures, “Chan Sr. will oversee the company in my absence.”
“… But you would like for Azula to live with me?” Iroh asks in a tone Azula has never heard from him.
She doesn’t even give Zuko a chance to object before she’s bursting at the seams, saying, “I won’t do it. There has to be someone else. Anyone else.”
Ozai doesn’t hit her for her insolence. He wouldn’t do that in public; he always says he barely likes striking her in private. He wants her pristine and unscarred like a doll on display. Instead, he rests his hand on her shoulder, and his nails bite into her flesh.
She smiles reflexively.
(“What have you done? You horrible little girl. Why would you tell such filthy lies? It’s bad enough you’re losing your mind, now you want to lose my love? I should have known you would disappoint me like your brother. Failures, both of you.”
“You can’t treat me like this! You can’t treat me like Zuko!”)
“You will stay with your uncle. I want you safe while I’m gone, Azula.”
She’s supposed to say here that she’ll miss him too much, but the lie tastes bitter on the tip of her tongue, and she chokes on it instead. She barely utters another word as Ozai and Iroh discuss the details of such an arrangement. Zuko barely eats another bite, his eyes glinting with something boringly volatile.
Dinner does not end fast enough, but when it does, her father’s hand finds her the small of her back once more. She does not let herself stumble as he guides her to the car, and she does not say goodbye when her uncle and brother depart, opting to look disinterestedly at her nails instead.
Her disinterest is ripped away and discarded when he pushes her in through the front door of the estate. The staff has gone home for the night, but she knows they wouldn’t help her if they were here.
Tonight, she is drunk enough that she thinks of when he read her stories in her bedroom and kissed her forehead before he left. He’s been kissing her lips since she was nine, but she will take his affection however it is handed to her. This is what separates her from her brother; Azula is smart enough to know when she has lost.
“That’s my good girl, just like that.” He’s hurting her on purpose. She thinks he likes her best when she bleeds for him. “Say it, Princess.” It’s a command, not a request. Never a request. He is not the kind of man who asks for things; he takes, and he conquers. He might have raised her to do the same, but he also raised her to always bow before him.
“I love you, Daddy.”
He doesn’t say it back. He hasn’t said it back since she—
“I love you, Azula. You’ll be free soon.”
Azula has never hated her mother more.
Last winter, Ty Lee was drunk, and Azula was pretending to be when Ty Lee confessed to some pathetic infatuation. As if anything good could ever come from handing Azula a weakness like that. As if anything about Azula has ever been worth loving. She had kissed Azula, and Azula had been unmoving and silent the whole time. It made Ty Lee cry, so Azula had hugged her, awkward and unsure. The tears had smudged the concealer away and left her mottled throat on display. That just made Ty Lee cry harder.
Azula avoided her for a week after that, and Ty Lee learned to stop sniffling about suffering that wasn’t hers.
(Somehow, Azula doubts the suffering is hers. The trauma between her legs belongs to him. Every part of her is his, conquered and taxed. He is all she’s ever known. Some nights, she thinks he is all she will ever know. Who else could ever want her if they knew her? Who would he ever let have her when he's through with her?)
Today, she sits prim and proper next to Ty Lee in a cafe like it never happened. They don’t talk about it. They’ll never talk about it if Azula has any say. It's a weakness she doesn't even bother to exploit. It's a weakness that will fade if Ty Lee ever learns the truth. The thought makes her insides burn, but it might just be that she hasn’t smoked in twelve hours. She can feel herself rotting for it.
Her father likes her rotten, though. He didn’t even care when he found the cigarettes. He had laughed in her face at her so-called rebellion and told her not to make her body an ashtray. He hates the idea of her ruining what’s his.
(Once, when she was seven, she broke a vase. It was a family heirloom. When he asked what had happened, she lied and blamed Zuko for it even though she was old enough to know he’d be hit for it. At the time, she had flinched at the sound of her brother whimpering on the floor as their mother tended to him, wanted to apologize and cry for him. Their father had pulled her onto his lap roughly, his arm curled around her stomach, shackling her to him, and told her to never disappoint him like Zuko did. Azula wouldn’t dream of it. She doesn’t dream of anything these days.)
Azula takes her coffee black even though she hates the taste of bitter things. Ty Lee has learned to stop questioning these things.
(A withered female doctor smiles flimsily, her mouth moving wordlessly.
Azula stares past her where her disgraced mother is smiling and saying words she knows better than to believe: “I love you, Azula, I do. I’m sorry this is happening to you. I wish I could protect you.”
“You could have, you stupid bitch!” Azula snarls like a rabid dog. “You should have aborted me or—or killed him! Don’t cry! You don’t get to cry!”)
It’s her last day with her father until she’s eighteen. Or seventeen. She can’t rule out the possibility of good behavior. Her father is not a good man, but he is more than capable of pretending to be. She learned that lesson eons ago.
She wasn’t allowed to sleep last night—they had to say goodbye in private because he’s going to miss her so much these next three years. She covers the dark circles sitting beneath golden eyes and the hickeys lining her throat dutifully, and she dresses nicely, and she hugs her father like she’ll miss him too.
Azula doesn’t feel much of anything right now. Faintly, she thinks she registers the physical ache of her body, but even that feels dull. She watches her father kiss her cheek once his plea deal is accepted. She obeys as he tilts her head up, and, for a sickening moment, she wonders if he’s going to kiss her on the lips in front of all of these people.
He doesn’t. He wouldn’t. What a stupid fear to have. Ozai is many things; a fool is not one of them.
“Princess,” he murmurs quietly enough for only her to hear, “say it.”
He’s never made her say it in public before. She thinks she’d rather he kiss her. Somehow, that would be less of a violation.
“I love you, Daddy,” she says faithfully. She’s never called him that of her own volition,—not as a child and especially not at fifteen—but if it sounds strange to Iroh and Zuko’s ears, they don’t comment on it.
“That’s my good girl.” He says it clearly. Everyone can hear him. His lips twist up into a mockery of a smile at her humiliation. One final punishment before he leaves. Even now, he has all the power. He always will.
Iroh puts a tentative hand on her shoulder; it’s the first act of physical affection she’s received from him in almost a decade. He guides her out of the courtroom. She’s too tired to pull away from him right now.
“… Do you really love him?” Zuko asks in the faux privacy of the car.
Iroh glances at her in the rearview mirror. Nosy old man.
“He’s my father.” It’s not an answer, but, for once, it is the truth. Even Zuko can't accuse her of lying right now.
“He’s my father, too.” There’s a sharp bitterness to him now. She can’t say she doesn’t understand it; Ozai took everything from Zuko when he was done beating the boy. She can say, however, that she doesn’t respect it. Zuko has suffered, sure, but it’s his own fault that he never learned to play the game. It’s not like the rules were hard to figure out even if Ozai never explained them.
(What is his suffering when compared to the love he has always been gifted by Ursa and Iroh and Lu Ten before he died a coward’s death? Sometimes, Azula thinks it is Zuko who has everything and her who has nothing. She thinks telling him that is the one thing that could compel him to finally hit her like she knows he secretly wants to.)
“You used to say you were his loyal son,” she taunts, but it’s only got half her usual bite. She’s not really in the mood to play mind games with Zuko. Nothing can restore her false sense of control today.
“Are you his loyal daughter?” Iroh asks. There’s a warning in there somewhere.
Azula snorts. She wants to ask if Iroh has ever known her to be loyal, but she knows better than that. All he and Zuko see when they look at her is the blindly obedient daughter of a monster. They don’t know that it is fear and not loyalty that has kept her compliant and silent all this time, taking each punishment and following each order without question.
They don’t know that this is all happening because she was stupid enough to betray her father.
“Turn the radio on. I don’t care what station.”
Neither of them tries to talk to her again until the car stops, and they have to help Azula with her luggage. Azula has never been particularly sentimental. She has no use for worthless trinkets or irrelevant photographs, so she’s only taken the essentials: hygiene products, skin, nail, and hair care products, her electronics, and a fraction of her wardrobe that she had some nameless staff pack for her since she knows her living quarters will be infinitely smaller here, but it’s still a big fraction.
“This is your room, Azula,” Iroh says once they’ve heaved the last of her luggage in. She’s getting her own room: a mostly unused guest room she’s half-surprised Iroh has. She supposes he must have had a more than substantial amount of money saved before he abandoned the family business he was set to inherit, but she hadn’t realized it would be enough for him to own a three-bedroom house. “You’re to keep the door open if you have any boyfriends over.”
Azula blinks at him. “I’m not allowed to talk to men I’m not related to, Uncle. I go to an all-girls school for a reason.” And even then, she’s barely allowed to speak to Zuko and Iroh.
His mouth opens with his lips curled up as if he’s going to laugh. He stops before the sound comes out. She’s not sure if he realized she wasn’t joking or if he hates her too much to let her make him laugh. “Your father mentioned his… no dating rule, but you’re a teenager. I don’t expect you to abide by it.”
“He’d kill me if I had a boy in my room, and he’d kill you if you let me,” she says simply. It's the absolute truth of the matter.
Zuko eyes her warily. His mouth moves as if he wants to speak but can’t find the words. Finally, he asks, “Azula… has he been violent with you?” as if he can’t fathom the idea of their father ever hurting his beloved daughter, but part of him wishes it were true. As if they could lick their wounds together and anything between them would be better for it.
Azula sees flashes—split lips for saying something idiotic and bleeding so much she thought she was dying and her vision blurring as he strangled her and the sound of bones breaking without remorse—but gives nothing away. She’s always been fonder of taking. “I’m not you, Zuzu. It’s just a figure of speech.”
He glares at her before stomping away to his room.
She rolls her eyes. “It’s good to see Zuko is as dramatic as ever.” There’s no fondness to her voice. She is all jagged edges and no apologies ever. Her father has taught her well.
“Your brother has made a lot of progress since he came to live with me. If you… disrupt that progress, Azula, I will not hesitate to make other arrangements for you, regardless of what your father wants,” Iroh says calmly, but the sharpness of his eyes gives him away.
For the first time in her life, Azula feels a grain of something akin to respect for her uncle. Meaningful threats and razor-bladed doublespeak and coldhearted manipulations are languages that Azula understands intimately. She grew up in a household that demanded her fluency in them, and she has always known that her uncle and father did too, even if her uncle has been reluctant to show it for whatever sorrowful reason.
“That’s fine with me, Uncle. Do you care if I smoke in here?” She’s already pulling out a cigarette and her lighter.
It’s his turn to blink at her. “You’re fifteen,” he says.
“I’m aware. We just had a soiree about it,” she hums. “Father doesn’t care as long as it doesn’t interfere with school or kuai ball. He won’t be mad if you let me, and even if you don’t, I’ll just smoke somewhere else.”
It is with something like pity that Iroh confiscates her cigarettes and lighter. That’s fine. Azula can play with matches for a while. She has a whole repertoire of parlor tricks involving them anyway.
The staff packed lingerie.
Azula wants to scream, but, instead, she smiles and changes into the familiar lace. She knew that they knew. Her secret has never really been her own. No one has ever wanted to protect Azula. Not even her own mother would’ve stopped him if she knew.
She waits for sleep to come. She waits for her father to come. Neither do.
She comes out of her room for breakfast with lipstick on, and without changing. She doesn’t have anything to wear to laze about in. All her clothes are made for going out or taking off.
Zuko flushes in embarrassment or contempt and averts his gaze, and Iroh drops the tray of tea he was carrying.
“It’s not even that revealing. Surely you’ve both seen lingerie before. I mean, maybe Zuzu hasn’t, but you must have at some point, Uncle,” she waves them off.
“It doesn’t matter if I’ve seen it before! I don’t want to see my sister in—in—just change!” He sounds so whiny that Azula can’t help but laugh.
“Would you rather see me without it?” She smiles, wide and cruel, relishing his and Iroh’s growing discomfort. Her body has been weaponized against her for so long now, and it feels good to hurt someone else with it. It feels good to be reminded how much stronger she is than the two of them. They can’t even stomach looking at her half-clothed form, but she’s survived the last six years of her life like nothing has changed since her mother abandoned her.
Zuko’s face scrunches up in disgust as he shouts, “No! Stop being gross!”
She laughs once more. He doesn’t get the joke, will never get the joke. He wasn’t the one who heard their father’s jealous whispers every time she played nice with him in childhood. He wasn’t the one who was told she’d already been claimed by her own blood and anything else was cheating.
“Didn’t your mother teach you the perils of immodesty, Azula?” Iroh asks, his voice schooled into calmness.
(His mother used to scold her about her immodesty. The first time he came into her room at night, her father told her that was why he was doing this. He said that he couldn’t help himself. She made him feel this way. She brought this upon herself. She had to take responsibility for what she did to him. Everything wrong in her life is her own fault.)
“The only thing that woman taught me was how to abandon your family.” She forces herself to roll her eyes even when she can’t bring herself to enjoy the aching in Zuko’s eyes. “If you must know, most of my clothes sacrifice comfort for aesthetics, and the idiots who packed my things didn’t provide any leisurewear. I suppose I don’t really own anything of the sort, and this is more or less what I sleep in any way, but they’re still incompetent, and I’ll see them fired for it when Father gets out.”
“If you need clothes, I can take you shopping,” Iroh says slowly.
She rolls her eyes once more. “Ty Lee and I are going to the mall today. I’ll get something to make you both more comfortable then.”
Zuko storms off to his room and returns with a too-large hoodie that he forces onto her.
“Mother used to bathe us together. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” she says as she fixes her hair.
“When you were three,” he hisses.
She smiles coldly in return, and the conversation ends there. She doesn’t touch the food before her. She doesn’t even pull her phone out to text Ty Lee or scroll absentmindedly through social media. She just sits there, quiet and unmoving. She watches judgmentally as her brother drops grains of rice from his chopsticks, but she refrains from commenting on it with the cruelty she did when they were children.
“Are you not hungry?” Iroh asks once he is halfway through his meal.
Azula narrows her eyes a fraction and takes the bowl of miso soup to her lips, silent. Both men shift uncomfortably across from her rudeness.
They’re halfway through their shopping spree when Mai joins Azula and Ty Lee in the dressing room of a department store as if the last two years of their lives haven’t happened.
“Mai!” Ty Lee hugs the older girl. She’s always been too trusting for her own good, and Azula feels her own trust in Ty Lee waning at the knowledge that Ty Lee must have told Mai where they would be.
“Hey, Ty,” Mai says, forever unsmiling despite the borderline affection coating her voice. She does not look at Ty Lee as she says the next part: “Zuko told me you’re staying with him.” It’s an accusation of wrongdoing that is, for once in Azula’s life, unwarranted. It’s not like she wants to stay with Iroh and Zuzu. She’d rather stay with her father. At least there she knows what the enemy is capable of.
Ty Lee looks confused as ever. “You didn’t tell me that, Azula. Is everything okay?” she asks, forgetting their unspoken rules.
A smile twists its way onto Azula’s face. “Father is going to be away for a while, so I have to stay with my uncle. Zuzu just so happens to live there too,” she says lazily.
“He’s in prison,” Mai corrects. She would deny deriving pleasure from it, but Azula knows better. Mai has hated Ozai since she saw Zuko in the hospital. Maybe even before then. It makes Azula’s blood boil; Mai has no right to that hatred. She’s not the one who was ripped open for her tenth birthday.
“It’s all quite boring. He got away scot-free with burning half of Zuko’s face off, but he gets three years for tax evasion? The only thing Zhao’s good for is leering at underage girls if you ask me,” she smiles. This time, it looks less like a threat and more like the smiles from their shared childhood.
The image is not lost on Mai. “What’s wrong with you?” she asks, struggling now to keep her voice even. She sounds like Azula’s mother. Like her uncle. Like her brother. Traitor. Mai used to be Azula’s, and now she openly fraternizes with the enemy. “Just leave Zuko alone.”
“Or what?”
“Guys…” Ty Lee pleads. Her voice is quivering like she’s going to start crying. She’s never been subtle in her micro manipulations, but Azula rolls her eyes and gives her this much. She doesn’t want to stand there uncomfortably while one girl sobs and the other glares at her.
(Her father hates crying. He looks at her so coldly when she can’t stop herself from crying. Azula has never seen eyes that cold anywhere else. Not even in the mirror.)
“Fine. A mutual ceasefire,” Azula concedes. Before anyone can respond, she turns away to examine a pair of jeans with disdain. Ty Lee had said that it was weird that Azula didn’t yet own a pair of jeans, but Azula doesn’t think these look any more comfortable than the clothes she already owns. “Make yourself useful.” She glares at Mai. “Go find something casual but cute for me to wear. I’m down two sizes since you abandoned us.” She sing-songs the last part, but her nails bite into her palms. She’s not over it. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be over it. She had thought—
“That’s the only thing about you that’s changed,” Mai mutters. It’s not particularly cruel-sounding in her mouth, but there’s nothing fond there either.
Azula tries to smile; she can’t.
The room Iroh is letting Azula stay in has a lock. Azula hasn’t had a lock on her bedroom in years. She considers it for a long moment when she enters, but she does not lock it even as she begins to change into leisurewear. She barricaded her door once. She came out of it bruised and bloody. She would not feel safe locking this door. Azula wonders sometimes if she will feel safe when it ends.
(Azula wonders sometimes if it will ever end. She used to think he would stop when she went to university, and then she made the mistake of telling him she wanted to go to school overseas with Mai and Ty Lee. The leash he keeps her on has only gotten shorter since then, and it will only get shorter still when he is released.)
When someone knocks as though the door is locked, as though Azula has ever been allowed to lock herself away from prying hands, she jumps and hates herself for it. Weakness is intolerable. Azula is not weak.
“It’s unlocked,” she says, clear and dutiful and not moving from the bed.
Zuko enters. “Hey…”
She narrows her eyes in suspicion. “What do you want? You already set your girlfriend on me, and I’m sure she told you I agreed to leave you alone if you returned the favor.”
He sighs. “I wanted to check on you. She said you… mentioned losing weight. And… you don’t really—eat. I don’t know.”
Azula can feel her nails biting into her palms again. None of this is any of Zuko’s business, and Mai had no right to tell him anything. She’s fine. She’s always been fine, and it’s not like anyone has ever given a damn either way. Even Ty Lee is too afraid of her to be concerned. Azula is more monster than girl. She’s made everyone in her life intimately aware of that.
“I know you said he doesn’t hurt you, but… I’ve been going to therapy since Uncle took me in, and—and even if he hasn’t hit you, you still… witnessed all that violence growing up.” She can tell this is hard for him. She can tell he doesn’t really want to say this. She’s sure Iroh didn’t put him up to this either. Neither of them has ever had any sympathy for Azula, and even if they did, she wouldn’t want it. There’s nothing about Azula to pity. “My therapist said it would make sense if it still hurt you, and you were seeking control by—”
“Did I ever cry about it?” she asks, her voice steady, free of anything to betray her racing heart.
“Uh, no.”
“Did I ever seem upset about it?”
“No,” Zuko scowls.
“Have I ever liked you or our mother?”
“No.” His teeth are grit now. She’s getting under his skin, and he’s forgetting whatever lies his shrink told him about her psyche.
She smiles like a predator about to go for the kill. “So why, dear brother, would I be hurt by the fact that the two of you got beat? It’s not like I’ve ever been particularly empathetic.”
“Damn it, Azula! Don’t you at least know it was wrong?!” The outburst is not unexpected. Zuko never had very good control of his temper. In that sense, she thinks he’s just like Ozai. Even Azula’s not cruel enough to tell him that, though.
She laughs, cold and callous. “How little do you think of me?” she asks, her head spinning as he relaxes ever so slightly. As if she’s reassured him now that his little sister isn’t a complete monster. As if he can rest easy knowing there’s enough humanity in her to recognize that their father isn’t a very nice person. She’s never hated him this much before. “Right and wrong don’t matter when you have enough money, though. There’s a reason he’s not in jail for screwing up your face.” Or for screwing his own daughter.
Zuko opens his mouth to speak. He never did learn to bite his tongue like Azula. Till it spilled blood that would grow absolutely nothing. Till it might finally sever from the effort and rot like fruit. Till that pain was more prominent than whatever pain you were fool enough to want to verbalize.
She speaks first, razor-edged and perfectly controlled, “You’re dismissed.”
He doesn’t leave, though. Instead, she watches from the corner of her eye as he inhales sharply and his nostrils flare. “Why are you like this?” he demands. She supposes he wants to be able to tell his shrink that he tried, but Azula was just too difficult. Too far gone. Too fucked up. She can’t see why he would want a real answer. Her psychology isn’t worth unpacking. It won’t bring him any answers she could see him wanting; it would just leave them both miserable.
Her eyes flash dangerously in warning. “I’ve always been like this, Zuzu. Weren’t you paying attention?”
There was a little girl once who walked four steps behind her big brother and his mother in the park. There was also a little girl who watched silently as her father beat them both. Azula knows by now that Zuko has never liked either of those girls. He’s just never been able to be honest with himself about it.
“Just because he’s a monster doesn’t mean you have to be one too.”
She can’t tell if he wants to scream or cry. She doesn’t care either way. She just finds herself wishing, not for the first time, that she was an only child. It would be kinder to him, she thinks, if he’d never drawn breath. She thinks Ozai might even feel some semblance of love for him if he had died years ago; loving a memory is so much easier than loving something in its flesh with all its flaws.
(Sometimes, Azula lets herself wonder if her mother can love the memory of the daughter she held in contempt. If Ursa might regret abandoning Azula even a fraction as much as she must regret abandoning Zuko.)
“This is why Father never loved you,” she sing-songs.
He grabs her by the chin, rough and unforgiving, and drags her up to face him.
Azula goes limp in his hold. She can see the scar covering half his face. She knows this is Zuko and not her father, but she still feels her eyes glossing over into emptiness. She still feels the reflexive need to recite the major battles of a war, any war, in her head until she doesn’t remember why she had to stop existing in the first place. She still feels half-formed apologies lodged in her throat, waiting to be strangled out of her until she’s biting back tears with each blink of her lashes.
He lets go. “Azula…?”
This isn’t Father. This isn’t Father. “Get out,” she murmurs, low and deadly.
He doesn’t leave. Father wouldn’t leave either, but she’s never said anything like that to Father. There's no point fighting wars she can't win. She knows Father would only laugh and hurt her worse if she tried.
“I said get out!”
This time, the door slams shut, and Azula is alone. Painfully alone. She strikes a match to watch it burn. It occurs to her that she could burn herself if she wanted, and her father could do nothing to stop her. He could only split her open after the fact.
(When Azula was seven, she broke the vase on purpose. Zuko’s broken arm was just collateral damage from a girl too scared to take her own beatings.)
She pinches the flame out of existence. Azula is not Zuko. She will not burn for their father. Not when she’s spent so much of her life bleeding for him.