Chapter Text
“I am not interested in lies, Azula,” her uncle says, looking up into the bright light of the red sun. Its red rays fall all around his face like red leaves and she sees suddenly—irrevocably—that his eyes are wet. “I know my brother—I know what he thinks of what happened in the north. I’ll come in chains, if you like. Just sit with an old man. Listen to him a little while. Let him tell you what he’s lost.”
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It creeps up the coast with the tide, moving slowly and strangely with a new hunger. It wants only what is red and warm—but when the sea spits up an old desire, it folds against a black rock and sobs with a sound it thought it could no longer make.
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She sees her uncle again in the brief, black moments of the eclipse. He crouches where she is pinned to red rock and says, “It is time to think, Azula: he left you exposed. What will he do when he is really done with you—and do you want to disappear under his ambition like Zuko?”
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It wakes in blackness and clutches at its own red heart with red fingers, already hollow with hunger. It wades into the water and says in its soot voice: “This won’t last. Stay asleep. You aren’t ready for that fire.”
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The water-winder pulls water up her burnt body, furious in her red defeat. “This isn’t over, Azula. I won’t let it be. I’ll still be standing when Aang comes back.”
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They stop screaming when it cuts their throats. They like it, even—relaxing when it sets a sharp mouth over a clavicle to lap at red gore.
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It is her uncle who holds her upright when her father is brought back to her broken and unbent, her uncle who fixes the golden flame in her knotted hair, her uncle who stands amongst the red-robed sages and says, “It is time to tire of war; now, you’ll have to learn how to love peace.”
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Only once does a human ask it what it wants. “What a useless question,” it says, after a moment’s consideration. It no longer sees the red rise of the sun, but it still knows how to find sustaining warmth at a pulse point. It nicks the human’s skin with an old knife. “I have what I want. I am just waiting for it to wake up.”
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She signs her name to ceasefires and treaty agreements; she collapses the colonies; she makes an adequate match and marries politically. But when she finally lifts her first child from between her thighs after long hours of labor, she feels the red flash of sacred fire through her heart and knows that she will burn forever. Her uncle touches the child’s cheek with a finger tip, smiles, and says, “This is a love that will change you, if you let it.”
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Sometimes, it is sated enough. It abandons its villages and its pathways and walks into the shallow seawater, searching out the body of the boy that sleeps there. It touches the boy’s white robes and presses a palm to the boy’s scarred face. It remembers when it first emerged in this form—how it felt so forlorn and forsaken wherever it wandered—and it remembers the slipshod joy of finding a face once familiar. “I still haven’t lost my love for you,” it says. “I never will. I will wait for you until you wake. I will let you lay your red hand on me. I’m hungry for you, only."