Chapter Text
The Fire Lord’s wax seal is a very particular shade of red.
Because Fire Lord Sozin made the official colors of the Fire Nation red and gold, the former was made ubiquitous in Fire Nation life. Therefore, there had to be several shades so that the people could have at least some semblance of variety in their lives. From deep crimson to bright vermillion, the Fire Nation uses every single shade of red.
All but one.
The Fire Nation Royal Family is the only family that wears Imperial Red. The weavers and dyers that supply the Royal Family are the only ones in the Nation who know how to produce this particular shade of red. This is simply a fact of life, like saying that the sky is blue, and the Fire Nation is an island nation.
Azula knows this particular shade of red very well, because it has marked the scrolls that are her official instructions from her father for the last couple of months since she left the palace in pursuit of Zuko and Uncle, and later, the Avatar.
She turns the unopened scroll over in her hands, running one calloused thumb over the smooth parchment and the dried splotch of wax in which her father had pressed his signet ring. Even though message interception was a common enough occurrence in the many hawkeries that this message had surely passed through, the distinctive red wax seal of the sovereign had discouraged anyone from reading the missive.
She slides her nail under the sheet and unfurls the scroll.
Azula,
I expect results within the fortnight. Ba Sing Se must fall. The Avatar must be mine, and so must the traitors. Do not fail me.
Fire Lord Ozai
Short and to the point. She doesn’t need the reminder, of course, as she has been planning for the last three days straight. After infiltrating the palace, gaining the Earth King’s trust, then deposing the Earth King and that pathetic Long Feng, and gaining control of the Dai Li, she stands poised on the precipice of victory.
Especially with the latest piece of intelligence so willingly brought to her by the waterbending peasant.
Zuko is here, in the Upper Ring, playing domestic tea boy with Uncle Fatso, and it will be so easy to bring him to the palace and back to Father.
She smiles. Everything is perfect.
She bursts into the crystal cavern just as the Dai Li encase Uncle Fatso in crystal. The waterbender and the Avatar run out of the cavern, but Azula is unfazed. Once she has Zuko securely in her grasp, getting the Avatar will be child’s play.
“I expected this kind of treachery from Uncle. But Zuko, Prince Zuko, you’re a lot of things, but you’re not a traitor, are you?”
Uncle tells him to commit treason, and with every word, Azula can feel her brother coming closer and closer to her. She is magnanimous, pretends to give him a choice , and plays into his deepest desires that he wears on his sleeve for all the world to see.
He is wavering, and Azula is so close to victory that she can taste it, but she is nothing but endlessly patient, so she lets him stew in his own conflict and leaves the room in pursuit of her other, airbending target.
She chases them back to the first room, and-
Uncle is gone.
She can see the bodies of the Dai Li agents that she left to guard them, and Zuko is standing there, looking every day of his eighteen years, and she has never been more furious in her entire life.
“Wrong choice, brother.”
The battle should have been over as soon as it started, because she is outnumbered, but she is still Princess Azula, prodigy firebender and only wielder of blue flames, so she keeps all three of them at bay and tries desperately to gain an advantage that she can press. Where are the Dai Li? Not that she needs them, of course, but it would be nice to have them behind her where they can tip the battle easily in her favor.
She realizes, too, that her brother has improved. Somewhere on his field trip through the Earth Kingdom he has finally learned his potential, and he fights surely and confidently, his flames almost golden.
But no matter. She has one thing that he can never hope to possess.
She separates the energies around herself, and points it at the Avatar as he tries to connect to his otherworldly self. It is a sure shot, and she sees him fall in her mind’s eye, but then-
Zuko is there, drawing the bolt towards himself and throwing it back towards her, and she can barely jump out of the way. And to her astonishment, the waterbending peasant traps her in ice, and her hands are covered, and so is her mouth, and she cannot move-
As he hauls the Avatar out of the room, Zuko looks back at her, and she thinks that she sees something like regret flash in his eyes. But it is gone as soon as it appears, and with the end of the waterbender’s braid whipping around the corner, he is gone, and Azula is left alone with her failure.
Mai and Ty Lee find her, and assure her that the city is still hers.
Still, when she sits on the throne, her legs shake as she crosses them over each other, and she has to take a minute to stop her hands from trembling before Mai lets the Dai Li in for their next assignment. Ty Lee fills the silence by chattering about something or the other that she saw in the city, and the Dai Li wait in silence as Azula pretends to listen while desperately trying to compose herself.
Later that night, when the training room crackles with ozone, both of her friends will pretend they notice nothing, and they leave for the Fire Nation the next day.
“Princess Azula.”
She will become a waterbender before she admits it, but this meeting with her father was one she that she had been dreading the entire trip back to the capital, after sending the missive off with the hawk, pretending that her hands weren’t shaking. She had locked herself in her room and ran cold katas the entire day each day of the return journey, steadfastly ignoring Ty Lee and her perpetual cheer and Mai with her apathy, because somehow both of their contrasting moods had made her want to fling her headpiece into the ocean.
Now, she waits for her Father to allow her to rise as she kowtows on the floor in front of his throne. Thankfully, the throne room is empty except for the two of them, so no one will be there to witness her failure.
But they will know.
“Rise.” She does, and looks up at him on one knee. She can see nothing of her father other than his silhouette in the flames, but he can see every shift in her expression, so she keeps her face carefully blank and hopes that he will not divine the way her heart is pounding underneath her armor. There is a dull screaming in her head, one that sounds irritatingly like the waterbender when Azula threw lightning at the Avatar, but by pure force of will, she forces it back. She will need all her wits around her for this next conversation, or she will pay the price in blood and sweat.
“Report on the state of Ba Sing Se,” Father says, his voice deceptively smooth.
“Ba Sing Se is firmly under your control, Father. The Dai Li are loyal to the Fire Nation, and I have placed a mind-controlled administrator in charge until General Bujing’s forces arrive to fortify the stronghold. The Earth Kingdom has fallen to the Fire Lord at last,” she says. The war has officially been won, as the Water Tribes are decimated, and the last Earth Kingdom stronghold has fallen to Fire, but she knows that it is not enough for her father.
Nothing short of perfection is expected from her, and for the first time, she has not delivered.
“And yet, I have not won,” Father leans forward on the dais. “Where is the Avatar, Azula? Where is your traitor brother and uncle? Why are they not in chains at my feet, as I ordered?”
She swallows, and forces her voice to remain steady. The screaming in her head has returned, and she does not have the energy to push it out of her mind.
“They will be yours soon, Father. This was nothing more than a temporary setback-”
“No, Princess Azula. It was a failure, nothing more.”
There is a beat of silence. Nothing she can say will change the fact that she failed in Ba Sing Se. She should have had Ty Lee with her to chi-block Zuko and Uncle when she had the chance, and she should have immediately killed the Avatar as soon as she saw him, and secured his lifeless body.
(Even if that lifeless body would have been that of a fourteen year old child. She pushes that thought away, pushes it to where thoughts about Zuko’s farce of an Agni Kai reside.)
“While your failure is regrettable, and a blight on our family’s honor, it has already happened, and nothing can be done for now. We must now move on to other things. I have decided that it is time for you to fulfill your other duty as a princess. You are, after all, sixteen years old now. And it is a fine time for a royal wedding. A strong alliance with one of our great noble families is exactly what the Royal Family needs now.”
A princess is always composed. A princess is always composed. She inclines her head to her father.
“As always, your wisdom knows no bounds, Father. You are absolutely right. I will be glad to fulfill my duty and marry.” There is nothing else she can say.
“I expected nothing less. You are dismissed, Azula.”
She bows and leaves, but inwardly, she is reeling. Married? Now? She is a prodigy firebender, a tactical genius, and a shrewd military commander. This is no idle boast; she knows this to be true. There are a hundred different ways that her father can use her talents, from governorship to inspection of the colonies.
And yet, he has chosen to marry her off.
The tapestries adorning the wall blur past her as she stalks down the halls, and she barely waits until she is inside her room before she sinks to the ground against the closed door, willing the spinning in her head to subside. The screaming from before is louder than ever, and there is a new voice in the mix.
It sounds like a young boy, screaming after his father burned off half of his face.
The screaming reaches fever pitch before she does the only thing that she can. She holds up a fistful of flames, and forces herself to breathe with the azure flickering of the fire that is so familiar to her.
This, at least, she has not lost.
The engagement is announced the next day.
Apparently Father had begun making the preparations once he had received word from her in Ba Sing Se. She is to marry Major Ito Haruto, son of Admiral Ito Ichiro. Ichiro is in her father’s War Council, and is one of his staunchest supporters.
He has also lost a son to the war, so she supposes this is Father’s way of keeping him satisfied.
Haruto himself is alright, except for the fact that he is ten years older than her. He is fairly uninteresting, but he is one of few men who aren’t terrified of her, which is deeply ungratifying.
Still, she supposes it could be worse.
Ty Lee hugs her tightly when she finds out.
“This is amazing, Azula! We’re going to have so much fun preparing for the wedding!” she says, a wide smile on her face. But her words lack her normal exuberance, and her hands linger on Azula’s arms. Azula should pry her hands off, tell Ty Lee to know her place.
But she doesn’t.
(A conversation overheard during one of their many state dinners: one of the generals, sneering about how he had found out two men in his battalion were involved , and how he had promptly discharged them both dishonorably for inappropriate conduct. And her father, his face twisted in disgust, scoffing about cowardly deviants, and how such people were nothing more than detriments to the March of Civilization.
Azula realizing that there was one thing that she had to keep secret no matter what, and realizing why Ty Lee had cartwheeled her way through the Earth Kingdom with her traveling circus.)
Mai, who sits in the corner, meets Azula’s eyes, and allows a glimmer of something past her emotionless mask. She holds eye contact, and her gaze is as steely as the knives that twist around her gloved fingers.
Engagement contracts in the Fire Nation are signed in the last light of day.
They are made between both families, so Azula sits cross legged on the mat one step behind her father and affixes her seal to the document that the Fire Sage hands her. In front of her, Admiral Ichiro is watching her, as if he is calculating something, and Azula raises an eyebrow at him, unimpressed.
He quickly turns away, glancing instead at his son’s dark head as he bends down to sign the document. Since he is not royalty or the head of a noble house, Haruto has to sign his name with ink, unlike Azula, who simply presses her stamp to the parchment.
Once everything is done, Ichiro bows at her father from his seated position.
“My Lord, I once again thank you for this advantageous match that you have benevolently bestowed upon my family. I am forever in your debt.”
“Of course, Admiral. The great Ito family has strong bending blood, and it would be a folly not to combine our houses to produce the next generation of the Royal Family.” This, at least, she knows is untrue. There are several other noble houses with equal strength of bending, and the admiral knows this too. It is why he has gone along with every single demand that Father has made of him.
Inwardly, she scoffs.
Has this man no backbone?
(She ignores the voice in the back of her head saying that if the admiral was a spineless coward, what was she?)
She follows her father out of the pavilion in which the signing ceremony was conducted, as the sun slips over the horizon. It is colder, somehow.
The date of the wedding is announced. It is set to be three days before the eclipse, and the proximity to the Day of Black Sun shows how little Father really thinks of the invasion that will surely be put on by the Avatar and his little ragtag group of peasants and traitors.
Azula goes to sleep exhausted most days, having run training sets all day. She has mastered all her forms, of course, but a princess never lets up, and she keeps herself in rigid practice. Her wrists are permanently bandaged from too-warm hands gripping them when she falters. When she goes to watch her friends train, Mai’s lips tighten at the sight of her bandaged wrists, and Ty Lee pulls her inside her room afterwards. There, she produces a stringent-smelling balm. She unwraps Azula’s wrists, and rubs the cool ointment over the burns. It is only a temporary reprieve, because the next day, it happens all over again.
When you are perfect, you can only fall.
The wedding is tomorrow.
It will occur at dawn, and Azula has all night to get ready.
It is a few minutes before midnight, and Azula sits in her room, as Ty Lee runs a comb through her hair. The motion is repetitive and soothing, and Azula closes her eyes as she feels the teeth of the comb scrape against her scalp. Her friend is unusually quiet today, and the silence sits heavy between the three of them, with Mai sitting on the bed and studying a knife like it holds the secrets of the world.
After she is seemingly satisfied with the luster of Azula’s hair, Ty Lee sets the comb down and moves aside so that Mai can take over. Azula hears the silk of Mai’s robes rustle as she settles behind her. Mai moves Azula’s head slightly, and begins to braid something into her hair. It smells like jasmine.
Suddenly, Azula is transported back too many years to count, and sees herself lounging in her mother’s room as she gets ready for some important function. Azula cannot be more than four years old, and she hangs upside down from a chaise lounge while Mother dabs jasmine perfume at the pulse point on her wrists. Azula flips upright, and bounds up and asks to have some too, because her mother looked very grown up when she tipped the bottle to her wrist. Mother laughs, and dabs perfume at Azula’s wrist, too.
Azula comes back to herself with a start, and Mai murmurs softly behind her as she adjusts her head again. Azula barely registers it.
Why had she remembered Mother? After Grandfather died, Azula had done her best to put the woman out of her mind, and it had worked, for seven years. There had been other things to focus on, like showing up her brother, impressing Father, and making sure that Mai and Ty Lee’s training went along at the pace that she expected. There had been no time to stop and think of the woman who had left to protect her son, and had not left a single thought for the daughter she believed to be beyond saving.
So why did she remember Mother today, on her wedding day?
And then she realizes.
When she has children, she will provide her father with the continuation of his line. It is no secret that her grandfather, Fire Lord Azulon, only married Father to Mother because of the fact that Mother’s grandfather was Avatar Roku, and Grandfather wanted to join two strong bending lineages and see how powerful their children would be. She would say that the experiment worked out pretty well, considering Azula’s prodigal firebending.
But when Azula marries, there will be pressure for her to have children. And after that, her father will not need her anymore. She already won him Ba Sing Se, and she has failed him by not capturing the Avatar or the traitors in their family. Even if she rectifies this failure in the future, he will not care for her survival, because he will still have an heir.
She will become expendable, and the vultures will descend.
She does not realize that she is breathing hard until Mai’s hands are on her shoulders, her touch feather light: I am here. Azula’s traitorous hands are shaking again. She brings them up to eye level, and on a whim, brings her wrist up to sniff. Jasmine.
“What- what perfume is that?” she manages to croak out, hating herself for how weak her voice sounds. Ty Lee moves to squat in front of her, at her eye level.
“It’s a jasmine perfume. They dabbed it on your wrists a while ago,” she says, her voice gentle, like she’s talking to a spooked animal.
“What’s wrong, Azula?” Mai asks, and her voice is low, soft, quiet ( ladylike, Mother would say). She comes around to sit on the floor next to Ty Lee, her robes whispering secrets against the lacquered floor.
“I’m going to end up like her.” It is a whispered confession, torn from some hidden place inside Azula, that had seen the way that her face was growing into her absent mother’s features, how she wore her hair completely up in a topknot to avoid looking like Ursa, her hair falling down her back, her mouth a slant of disapproval, long sleeves to hide burns around her wrists-
“Like who?” It is an unnecessary question from Ty Lee, but maybe Azula needs to say it. Needs to say what has been bothering her from the day that she rose from a kneeling position in front of her father when she returned from Ba Sing Se, the salt from the ocean air still in her hair.
“Like my mother. Trapped in the palace, until I’m unnecessary, and then I’m gone, but- but I was gone the moment I birthed my child.” And wasn’t that the truth of it? The second that her mother had had her, the strong child with the spark in her eyes, her mother had become useless. She had languished within the suffocating red walls of the palace, useless even to raise her children, because her husband had punished one child for acting like her, and had praised the other for going out of her way to antagonize her. Both of her children had suffered, and in the end, she slipped away into the night, leaving them to a father who was willing to publicly burn one and sell the other.
She looks up at her closest friends, the two girls who she had manipulated and used to conquer a kingdom, but who now look at her with concern in their eyes nonetheless as she falls from the stars, falling until she crashes to the ground in a pile of silk and crushed jasmine.
“I need to leave. I can’t stay here.” She expects them to be surprised, for their eyes to widen and for their heads to whip around to see if anyone is listening, but Ty Lee only nods emphatically, and Mai’s lips thin into a determined line.
“Well, duh. Took you long enough,” Mai says, sounding for all the world like they are talking about getting ready for a night out on the town and not committing treason and sedition. Ty Lee gets up abruptly, and walks over to a cabinet, and rummages around in it. Azula watches them helplessly as they bustle around her room, pulling things out of shelves and cupboards and cabinets.
“What are you both doing?” she asks faintly, sinking into the chair that she is supposed to be getting ready for her wedding in. They look up at her in surprise, like they forgot she was there in the room.
“We’re getting our stuff together! So we can leave!” Ty Lee says, and there is that exuberance that has been muted for the last couple of weeks, and Azula can only gape, because- what?
“We knew you would want to leave, because no way in hell was Princess Azula getting fucking married , and if you left, we would probably be tortured for allegedly aiding and abetting a traitor, so we decided that we would aid and abet anyways,” Mai says airily as she places three bags in front of Azula. “So let’s go. We don’t have much time.”
Azula looks at her friends. They are absolutely serious, and they have obviously thought this through. She nods.
“Let’s go.”
The next hour is a blur, as the three of them finalize everything and do everything that they possibly can to throw any pursuers off of their scent. They decide that they will head to one of the eastern Fire Nation islands. No one ever comes there from the mainland. The farthest east most mainlanders come is Ember Island, anyways, and so they don’t expect to be bothered here. Azula only comes back into herself when they are on a war balloon, powered by her own firebending. She realizes with a start that she has been mechanically punching fire into the furnace of the balloon for the last twenty minutes, and looks up.
Mai and Ty Lee are sitting on the floor of the balloon, and they look up when she does. She sees that Ty Lee is fiddling with the end of her braid, and Mai is idly tossing a knife and catching it. Azula checks their speed, and when she is satisfied that they are traveling as fast as they possibly can, she settles down across from them.
“What now?” she asks. It is a little disorienting to not be the one with the plan, but she finds that she is strangely at peace with not being in control. “I am hoping one of you brought a map.”
Mai rolls her eyes, and that gesture at least is comforting in its familiarity. “Of course I did. And now our stupid Aerial Navigation class from school will finally come in handy.” She pulls a scroll out of her pack, spreads it out on the floor, and holds it in place with three of her shuriken. Ty Lee points at one of the islands.
“We’re going to go to Shu Jing, because Master Piandao is in charge there, and Mai knows him from when he taught her to throw knives, and he’s apparently super cool! So we should be fine there. Mai said that we should only have another hour until we get there.”
“...when did she say this?” Azula is utterly lost, because she would have definitely remembered such a conversation.
“It was when we got on the balloon, and you zoned out and bent so much fire into the furnace that I thought we were going to blow up or something,” Mai says, and swiftly rolls up the scroll. “Anyways. You guys can get some rest. It shouldn’t be that much longer.” At this, Ty Lee curls up and promptly falls asleep, although Azula knows from experience that Ty Lee is a notoriously light sleeper and will get up at the slightest indication of trouble. She’s not too worried about that, but she cannot bring herself to rest. She stays crouched by the furnace, making sure that they are wringing every last knot of speed out of the balloon.
Mai goes back to tossing her knife, although she does make minute corrections to their course. Azula suddenly has a bizarre vision of the three of them manning a ship, with Mai at the helm, Azula at the engine, and Ty Lee perched at the lookout. She snorts lightly to herself, and punches more fire into the furnace. They fly on.
Sooner than she would have hoped, they touch down lightly in Shu Jing province. They hide their balloon, and purge all proof of their existence in it. They might need it later, but right now, it could give them away to any pursuers. So far, Azula hasn’t seen anyone come after them, but she has not achieved as much as she has by being optimistic.
(And look where that’s gotten you, a voice says in her mind, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Mother. She pushes it away immediately. Look where optimism got you, Mother. )
It is still in the gray predawn hours, but they have no idea what is happening in the island right now, so Mai tells them to stay put while she scouts ahead. There is little to no tree growth on this part of the island because of the canyon, so Azula and Ty Lee stow themselves in a rock fissure in the canyon wall, and watch as Mai disappears around the corner and out of sight. They sit in tense, anticipatory silence until Mai returns, half an hour later. Her face is even more stony than usual.
“There are people at the estate. I think they’re White Lotus,” she says, and accepts a waterskin from Ty Lee. She takes a sip, and hands it back, and says, “Azula, this could mean that-”
“I know. There’s a possibility that we’re going to have a family reunion in the near future, if Uncle’s little tea group is in league with Piandao.” They all know that the Order of the White Lotus is much more than a simple tea group, especially after Ba Sing Se, because there is no way that Iroh was able to settle so comfortably in the Upper Ring of the city that he nearly conquered without help. Azula takes a breath, and tries to think like a tactician again, after how frazzled she has become in the last few hours.
“This also means that they already saw you watching them. And if there’s one person who’s better at stealth than you, Mai, it’s my dear brother. If Zuko is there, so is the Avatar and his merry band of misfits.” She feels, rather than sees, the both of them tense. “Although I must say, it seems as though we are in a case of the-enemy-of-my-enemy right now. I have no inclination whatsoever in capturing the Avatar, or Zuko and Uncle, for Father. So let’s let the White Lotus lose their shit over why we’re here, and let them come to us.” She grins lazily at them, feeling more like herself than ever before. “What say you, girls?”
The smiles that they shoot back at her are sharper than the most deadly shuriken in Mai’s arsenal.
The sun has just risen when a shadow darkens the concealed entrance to their makeshift rock shelter. Azula rolls her shoulders, and she hears the knives slip into Mai’s fingers and Ty Lee’s feet moving into position, but she suspects that she knows who it is. Only one person can move so silently, and it sure isn’t any old, tea-drinking man.
“Hello, dear brother,” she drawls. “Long time no see.”
He steps into sight, and his expression is uncharacteristically unreadable. He takes them in, and then sits on the ground in front of them, back straight and legs crossed.
“Hello, Azula. Mai, Ty Lee,” he rasps, his voice rougher than usual. He must have just woken up, but he looks as alert as ever. He seems to study her, his mismatched eyes shining bright gold. She takes the opportunity to do the same. He wears dark blue and white robes, with the motif of a pai sho tile. She assumes it is the garb of the Order, and not peasant clothing of the Water Tribes. His hair has been pulled into a semi-respectable topknot, although she can see several too-short hairs falling out of place. Such hair would have never been acceptable at home, but here, amidst the wild beauty of the canyon and river rushing through it, it is strangely not out of place. She realizes that he is wearing some sort of crown, with two leaf-shaped pieces on each side of his topknot. It is strangely familiar, but she cannot for the life of her remember where she has seen it.
She looks back at his face, and sees him frowning.
“What,” she says flatly. He seems to be struggling to say something. There is some emotion on his face now, that she can’t quite place. It is disconcerting to not be able to read him like an unrolled scroll.
“Why are there flowers in your hair?”
Azula blinks. Out of all the questions that she expected him to ask, this is definitely not one. But someone behind her, Ty Lee, she thinks, inhales sharply and she realizes why.
She looks down at herself. Her robes are rumpled and slightly creased, but they are of fine make, elaborate designs picked out in red thread on golden silk. They are much more exquisite than her normal robes or armor, and her arms and wrists and ankles are adorned with gold jewelry that she barely remembers putting on.
And her hair is braided with jasmine, braided by Mai’s deft fingers into a coil that is falling undone now, spilling petals and blooms over her dark hair and golden anarkali.
Shit.
The Royal Family wears red at all times. There are only two occasions when they do not: funerals, and weddings.
Zuko seems to come to the realization at the same time that she realizes exactly why she has run away to this eastern island, and his eyes widen in horror, and he looks her in the eye.
“Azula, did he- did he try to get you married?”