Chapter Text
"Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no / other version of this story."
— Richard Siken, The Worm King's Lullaby
The first time Azula really felt a pain that was not her own, she caused it. She wouldn't say sorry that time or the next time or the time after that. She didn't have it in her, whatever regret was made of.
But the first time, it happened like this: She wanted to show Mai a new kata, but she kept looking at Azula's brother, Zuko, across the courtyard as if he had anything to offer Mai or anyone at all, so Azula shot a jet of flames at her. It wasn't even big. It barely even clipped her shoulder.
Azula's own shoulder stung, mirroring Mai's pain, but it was more than tolerable.
Ursa would have scolded Azula if she'd seen, though. She was always doing that. Azula could do no right in Ursa's eyes like she was a rotten child from the start.
But Mai didn't so much as cry. She'd never been the type. She did sharpen her eyes like knives and turn them toward Azula and away from Zuko, though.
That was all she had been asking for.
Azula bit down a smile.
Mai asked, "What was that for?" in that accusatory tone she got whenever Azula pushed her and Mai wanted to push back. Azula liked that tone. No one else ever spoke to her that way.
"You weren't watching," Azula said, splitting the truth to keep half of it for herself. She liked doing that. She liked knowing that something was hers and hers alone.
Mai was supposed to be hers and hers alone. Mai certainly wasn't Zuko's.
"Well, it hurt," she said. She was rubbing where her sleeve had been burned through. The skin wasn't raw under it, but it was yellowed. Azula had seen worse. It hurt more than she was used to, though.
"I know."
"No, you don't," she said. "You're a firebender. It doesn't hurt you like it hurts me."
Azula shook her head. "You don't understand. I felt it, Mai."
It excited her to say. It made their friendship special. Important, even. Feeling someone else's pain was far from common from what she had been able to pry out from the adults around the palace. No one knew how it happened, not even the avatar. And it never stopped happening. Once your nerves were crossed, threading out from one to the other, they would never uncross. Not until one of you died, and your nerves went with you.
Mai and Azula were rare; their bond was not severable. It was so much better than that children's myth about the red thread of fate.
Still, Mai looked at her dubiously. She wondered if Zuko had told her that she always lied yet. She hated the thought.
"No, you didn't," Mai said.
"If you don't believe me, then hit me," Azula said. "You'll feel it too."
She crossed over to Azula. Stone-faced, she stared at the younger girl for a long moment. It felt endless. Like it might swallow them both. And then she brought a hand to Azula's cheek. Her nails were short, but they bit into Azula's face.
It stung.
She winced where Azula did not. Azula smiled.
Mai shoved her down and, despite Azula's status and despite Mai's, did not help her back up. "Stop getting burned. It hurts."
"It's part of my training," Azula said indifferently. That was what Ozai told her when he had sat her down on his lap to burn her, gentler than he could have been, when she'd been four. Azula believed him. He was a god amongst men.
Mai frowned at her. It was slight, but by then, Azula knew the centimeter difference between her apathy and displeasure. There was a need to correct it like a pulse in her wrist.
"Let's prank the servants," she said.
"Whatever." Her frown had lessened.
Ursa had insisted upon tying Azula's hair into its topknot for Lu Ten's genpuku. He was her cousin, the son of her uncle, Iroh, and once Fire Lord Azulon relinquished the throne to Iroh, he would be the crown prince. He was fifteen. An adult in the eyes of the Fire Nation. Old enough to serve in the war at long last.
He was going to be sent out with Iroh on a siege of Ba Sing Se, which Azula's private tutor had emphasized was an impenetrable Earth Kingdom safe haven for so-called refugees, but her teacher at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls was convinced it would fall to Iroh. Everyone was convinced that if anyone could make them bow, it was him.
Azula disagreed.
But she wasn't supposed to speak ill of Iroh or Lu Ten or anyone at all. That was what Ursa said as she made a comb of her fingers, polishing Azula's hair with camellia oil before she swept it up into a topknot.
"Remember, Azula, you have to be nice. It's your cousin's special day, and his mother asked me to look after him before she passed," Ursa said. She sounded far away.
Azula was right there, though. And she refused to lean into Ursa's touch. If she wouldn't be there with Azula, Azula had no obligation to be there with her.
"Promise me you'll be good," she said.
"I thought I wasn't supposed to lie anymore," Azula said.
"Azula." There was that voice again. She always brought it out whenever Azula was being reprehensible as she liked to say.
"I was only joking, Mom," she said. The words were saccharine and sticky in her mouth. Azula hated her for needing to hear them.
The truth was that there was no point in promising to be good. Ursa would find something wrong with her no matter what she did. There was always something wrong with Azula.
"Your friends will be there, too," she said. She was speaking softly, almost as she did with Zuko.
"Oh?" Azula asked.
"Yes, Prince Lu Ten invited Mai and Ty Lee for you. He knows you're so fond of them," Ursa said.
Mai had been Azula's since I had been three and she had been four.
Ty Lee, on the other hand, was shiny and new. Like a trophy that Azula could mount on her wall. Except she didn't think Ty Lee or Ursa would like very much if she mounted Ty Lee on her wall. The difference between the two was that Ty Lee would never say that she didn't want to be mounted on her wall; Ursa would scold her endlessly for her so-called mistreatment of her friends. Ursa had been doing that lately, so it did not surprise Azula when she spoke next.
"Play nicely with them, too, all right, Azula?"
"Yes, Mom," she said. "I'll behave."
She didn't know if she was lying or not. She didn't know if she wanted to be lying or not.
The knife in Azula's hand was cold. Its weight was both a reassurance and a threat. Mai was teaching Azula to throw knives as she herself was learning to. Azula didn't need them the way Mai did as a nonbender, but she liked them nonetheless. They were useful and sharp and pretty. Like Mai.
They were throwing a dulled knife back and forth, but it still carried a risk. It could still hurt one of them if we weren't careful. Mai was always careful.
"I want to try a sharp one," Azula said.
Mai's concentration was broken. She caught the knife wrong, not by the hilt but by its blade. Azula imagined a sting in her fingers where Mai's were wrapped around the blade.
"Hell no," Mai said. "I'm not letting you slice me up."
"Why not? I'm sure your insides are very pretty," Azula said.
Mai rolled her eyes. "You're not funny, Azula."
"Zuzu would agree with you there," Azula said, "but I think I'm hilarious."
"Ha ha," Mai said monotonously.
Azula crossed the threshold to Mai and slipped her hand over the older girl's. She thumbed the blade of the knife. It was painfully dull. Azula wanted something that could cut her, cut Mai. She wanted something Ursa would never approve of.
"Please, Mai. I want to try a sharp blade," she said. She never said please like that. Least of all to Mai. Ozai liked to say it was beneath Azula's station. But Mai was different. She was a part of Azula, an extension of Azula's pain like Azula was an extension of hers.
Mai looked at her. Her eyes cleaved through the princess.
"Fine," she said.
Ozai was showing more interest in Azula as of late. He had given up on Zuko entirely by the time Zuko was Azula's age and had proven to be a mediocre-at-best firebender. But he thought Azula was a prodigy. He'd always been kind to her, always sneaked her candied sweets and rice cakes when Ursa was mad at her and called her his dragon.
It was different once he decided she was a prodigy, though. He talked to her, not as a child but as an equal. Even when he was busy with his princely duties, he carved out the time to ask her her thoughts on politics, the war, their family. She was allowed to think freely and speak her mind with him; he never scorned her for it or told her she was wrong like Ursa and Zuko would have. She was even allowed to dislike her uncle with him.
"My honorable brother is a fool. As… talented as he is as a firebender, he is not suited to be Fire Lord," Ozai said.
Iroh was waging his war on Ba Sing Se. Its outer walls had fallen, but it had been five-hundred-and-forty-four days. He had hardly made any progress at all, and he had lost more men in his siege than they had in the last decade of the war.
"He'll fail any day now, and then Grandfather will see his true nature," Azula said. "Maybe he'll even die."
Ozai laughed and pulled her hair out of its topknot too harshly. Her scalp burned. She thought of Mai, who she had not seen outside of their lessons since their knife throwing lesson.
"Perhaps he will," Ozai said, approval humming in his chest.
He never approved of Zuko like that. But he approved of Azula, and she wanted to keep it that way. She wanted him to always look at her and think she was right.
"You would be a much better Fire Lord than him, Dad," she said.
Ozai smiled at her in a way Ursa never had.
"I'm ten now. I don't want to play pranks on the servants with you anymore," Mai said.
Azula frowned at her. She didn't understand how Mai could have changed her mind so easily. It had always cheered her up before.
"What does being ten have to do with anything?" she asked.
"Azula, we're young ladies now," she said as if that ought to mean something to Azula. It didn't. It was a useless thing to say, offering no clarity to her refusal. It only sounded like her mother's words in her mouth.
"So?" Azula challenged.
Mai frowned at Azula as if she was wrong. It was the way Ursa and Zuko and Iroh all looked at her. Azula hated her for it.
"I'll be betrothed soon. You will, too," she said.
Azula didn't understand.
It was the second year of knowing Ty Lee, and the idea of mounting her on the wall held no appeal for Azula anymore. But Ursa wouldn't care that the idea had passed over time. It would be bad enough for her that Azula had ever had it at all. She was an awful girl and an awful friend in Ursa's eyes. In all the servants' eyes, too.
Mai had come home with one too many bruises. Or she had complained to someone. That was also possible, though Azula shoved the notion down somewhere she hoped it might died.
But her servants had gossiped like the useless help that they were and word had reached Ursa, even if Mai's mother would never be want to confront Ursa about Azula's behavior, and now Ursa was certain that she played too roughly with Mai. So she directed Azula's attention toward Ty Lee, who lived much farther from the palace and who had fewer servants and who knew better than to complain.
It wasn't the same.
Ty Lee did not push back. She dodged every verbal blow with grace, and she grew teary-eyed when Azula singed her hair even if she never once complained about the act. She went along with every prank Azula wanted to pull with far less restraint than Mai did, but it wasn't enough. She wasn't Mai.
Not that Mai seemed to have noticed.
She was spending all her time staring off in the distance at Zuko as he followed after Ursa like a lost turtle duck. It was completely pathetic.
She was so enamored with him. "I bet we could help," Azula whispered conspiratorially to Ty Lee.
Ty Lee giggled and nodded. "I'm in," she said. "What's the plan?"
"Follow my lead," Azula said. "Mom! Can you make Zuko play with us? We need equal teams to play a game!"
Ursa gave her a look. She was scrutinizing Azula. Azula was sure of that. She was always scrutinizing her daughter. It didn't matter how Azula behaved, so she didn't. Except, this time, she needed Ursa to give her what she wanted, so she would pretend.
"I am not cartwheeling!" Zuko said. He really was an idiot.
"You won't have to," Azula said. "Cartwheeling's not a game, dum-dum."
"I don't care. I don't want to play with you!" he said.
"We are brother and sister. It's important for us to spend time together! Don't you think so, Mom?" Azula smiled at her, not flinty or sharp-toothed for once.
Ursa smiled at Zuko. She was always smiling at him, no matter what he did. "Yes, darling, I think it's a good idea to play with your sister. Go on now, just for a little while," she said.
So Zuko joined Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee, no matter how much he didn't want to. He never liked upsetting Ursa. Maybe he saw the way Azula did and the way Ursa looked at her like she'd come out all wrong, and he never wanted Ursa to look at him that way.
Mai got to her feet and joined them at last. The presence of that idiot Zuko must have made her want to spend time with Azula again. It went unspoken that Ty Lee was on Azula's team, and Zuko was on Mai's.
Her skin prickled.
She plucked an apple from a tree branch.
"Here's the way it goes," she said, placing the apple on top of Mai's head. Mai looked put off by it. "Now what you do is, try to knock the apple off the other person's head, like this."
From the tips of two of her fingers, Azula sent a jet of flames at the apple. It didn't budge from its spot. It only burned on top of Mai's head.
She looked concerned, but she made no move to knock it off of her own head.
Zuko, on the other hand, looked terrified. He launched himself at Mai, tackling her into the fountain behind her. They splashed into it together, humiliated.
Azula's hip hurt where Mai had fallen. Still, she laughed at them both, dripping with water and making stupid faces like wet cat dogs.
"See, I told you it would work," she said to Ty Lee.
Ty Lee giggled with Azula. "Aw, they're so cute together!"
"You two are such… ugh!" Mai said. She was sopping wet. The sight didn't make Azula feel as good as she had hoped it would.
Ways Mai had hurt Azula: telling her that they were young ladies and not girls anymore, listening to her mother when the wretched woman spoke, smiling for Zuko more times than she smiled for Azula, making Azula play with Ty Lee while Mai daydreamed about Azula's brother, wanting to spend more time with him than she did with Azula, looking at him like that, no longer pushing Azula back when she pushed her.
Ways Azula had hurt Mai: not nearly enough.
Of course, Iroh thought that Azula liked dolls. It was so like him to attach something so frivolous to her. He had never taken the time to get to know her at all. He never would. She had accepted that before he had even left for Ba Sing Se. Burning the doll had been cathartic, and running away from her mother and brother before they could tell her how wrong she was for it was a necessity.
So she stood in the training grounds, and she ran through an intermediate kata she had yet to perfect. Her ankle still wasn't turning how she needed it to turn to execute the swivel kick this kata required. Her body didn't move how she wanted it to. Ozai would have been so disappointed if he'd been there. Her firebending instructors, Lo and Li, certainly were when they were there to watch her fail. Treasonous hags.
"Hey, Azula."
It was Mai. It was always Mai. Even when she wanted Zuko. Even when Azula ignored her for Ty Lee. That was the law of the universe. They were tethered to each other, after all. It only made sense that it would be her.
"Hello, Mai," she said. "To what do I owe the honor?"
Mai made a face.
"You don't have to talk like that," she said.
"Like what?"
"Like an adult," she said. She looked disappointed in Azula somehow, with her arms folded over each other against her chest.
It was Azula's turn to make a face at her. She didn't get to do that.
"Why not? We're young ladies now." Azula was throwing her words back at her. Maybe it was fair, or maybe it wasn't. But it was what she was doing. At the end of the day, she didn't care if it was fair or not. She only wanted to hurt Mai.
"Tell that to Prince Iroh," she said. She was spinning a knife in one hand. It wasn't her dominant hand, but Mai hardly had a dominant hand.
Azula made eye contact with the blade, watching the black metal glint under the sunlight. It was the dead of summer. It was almost blinding to look at, but she was determined not to acknowledge Mai herself. Azula didn't want to give her the satisfaction of being right. Of needing to be consoled like some pathetic girl.
"I heard he got you a doll."
"Oh. That. Well, I handled it," Azula said. "He won't be stupid enough to give me a doll again once Mother tells him."
"I'm sorry," Mai said. It sounded like a prayer.
Azula wanted to hit it out of her, whatever faith Mai was holding onto. She didn't care if it was Azula's faith or Mai's on her tongue.
"Why?" Azula asked.
Mai looked at her. Her eyes were bright and sharp. They often were.
"He should know you, Azula."
"That would be awful, wouldn't it?"
Mai's hand found Azula's wrist. She squeezed. It was a touch too tight. She winced at the sensation in her own wrist. She was always showing Azula her cards like that. No matter how much she didn't want Azula to, Azula could read her every expression. They'd known each other as long as they'd had memory. They'd been tied to each other even longer than that.
"It's not awful. I know you," she said.
"Do you?"
She looked as if Azula had slapped her, but Azula felt nothing.
Zuko was too cowardly to listen to Azulon yell at Ozai for asking for a path to the throne, but Azula was brave enough. Even when Azulon ordered Ozai to kill Zuko.
Except, she was not brave enough to let her brother die. Instead, she taunted him about how Ozai was going to kill him.
By taunting her brother, she saved his life.
By taunting her brother, they lost their mother.
Mai's mother, like Azula's own, had never liked Azula very much. She tried to hide it behind a veneer of piety, but her eyes always gave her away. She always looked at Azula like she'd done something horrible. It was a familiar look in her eyes. Azula had seen it so many times, she could only half-remember how it felt to not be looked at like that.
That was all going to change, though.
Four things had happened in succession: her cousin had fallen in Iroh's failed six-hundred-day siege of Ba Sing Se, her grandfather had died, her mother had fled the Fire Nation in the middle of the night, and her father had been named crown prince.
Overnight, she had risen up from fifth in the line of succession to second. It wasn't something she had ever thought about, but it wasn't bad.
People could look at the girl who was fifth in the line of succession as if she was wrong, but they couldn't look at the girl who was second in line the same way. There was a power that was within grabbing distance of her. It didn't matter if she wanted to grab it; only that she could have.
Better yet, her weak-willed mother had disappeared without so much as a goodbye, replaced instead with the return of her uncle who looked at her the same way Ursa had.
But Ozai promised her that he would find a way to rid them of Iroh, too. And maybe then Zuko would stop looking at Azula like she was all wrong.
Mai's mother certainly would, and then Azula knew that she would stop discouraging Mai from spending time with her and only her. If Azula could have Mai again, it almost didn't matter how her brother looked at her. How anyone else looked at her.
"Princess Azula will perform at my coronation," Ozai said.
"What about me?" Zuko asked.
Ozai shook his head softly. He chuckled lightly.
"You have embarrassed yourself enough, Prince Zuko,"he said.
Azula saw Zuko go to open his mouth and run it the way he always did. He was always so determined to earn Ozai's favor that it blinded him to any real path toward it.
"It will be my honor, Father," she said quickly. She didn't want Zuko to get himself on Ozai's bad side again, not after Ozai had almost killed him at Azulon's orders. She still didn't actually know how that situation had resolved itself, though she suspected Ursa had intervened, and she wasn't in the mood for her brother to jeopardize himself again so quickly.
Zuko didn't understand that, though. He never understood anything Azula did.
Ozai was Fire Lord, Zuko was the heir, and Azula was the spare. And Ursa was gone. This was how it should have always been. There was only one last obstacle to remove.
But Iroh didn't seem to understand that. He had invited Azula to tea. It was the first time he'd invited her to anything, and it was the first time she'd be speaking with him following Ozai's coronation and the funerals.
So she agreed to it.
Ty Lee had said it might be good for Azula, but what did Ty Lee know? She had hugged Azula when Azula had told her Ursa was gone. As if Azula was something fragile for her to hold together.
Ty Lee was a useless girl sometimes.
Still, Azula had to tell Lo and Li that she would be leaving training early—her fool of an uncle couldn't fathom that she was disciplined enough to train as much as she was meant to because her brother was too soft to manage the same.
As expected, they looked scornful at the idea that Azula would ever leave her training early.
"It is not ideal, but my fuddy-duddy uncle has requested my presence," she said stiffly. She was allowed to do that now: insult him openly. She was ranked higher than him within the confines of the royal family, after all.
"Very well, but do work on your footwork when you are finished," Lo and Li said together. They were always saying things together like that. It was unpleasant, their closeness.
Mai and Azula had whispered many times that they were creepy and unsettling and half-dead.
Ty Lee never contributed, but she always snickered at whatever Mai and Azula hurled their way. She never liked talking badly about Iroh either; she even liked the man, for some unthinkable reason. Mai, though, had always found him too cheerful for her taste.
Azula smiled, knowing that if Ozai was too busy for her, she could go to Mai to complain once she was done with Iroh.
"Why, Princess Azula, you look so ladylike," Iroh said when she sat down across from him. It was uncomfortable in her practice robes, still slicked with her sweat.
She forced herself to smile. It felt more like bearing her teeth at him.
"Thank you, Uncle," she said. "You look… plump."
He laughed at that as he poured our tea for them both. It was oolong. Azula had never liked oolong tea. The taste of it was too grassy on her tongue, so unlike the vibrant floral flavor of matcha tea or the sweetness of jasmine.
"You're as quick-witted as ever," he said pleasantly.
"Thank you, Uncle," she said once again.
"I humbly receive this tea," they said together.
They both drank from their cups without so much as blowing on their tea. It burned Azula's throat slightly. She knew from experience that Mai must be feeling it, too, as she did when Mai drank tea without cooling it first.
"I hope you like it," Iroh said. "I wasn't sure what your favorite kind of tea was."
It was black tea, a fact he would have known if he had cared to at least ask Ozai. But it was so like Iroh to not care enough to ask after his own niece. He was a fool who had decided she had come out wrong before she could remember who he was.
"I hate oolong tea," Azula said. She took another long sip.
Iroh's already wrinkled brow furrowed.
"My apologies, Princess Azula," he said. "Next time—"
"Why did you ask me here?" she asked suddenly.
He stared at her like a gaping koi fish. His mouth opened silently, then closed, then opened once more. The sight left Azula impatiently tapping her fingers against the table, not caring for manners.
"Do I need a reason to spend time with my niece?" he asked.
It was the first time he'd ever called Azula that.
Her fist closed around the teacup. She pulled it tighter, shattering the cup against her palm. It stung horribly. She didn't care at all.
"Princess Azula!" he said. "Let me go fetch a healer!"
"No need. I'm fine," she said with a snarl.
She left before he could move a muscle, but he made no move to follow her.
The next time Azula saw Mai, she didn't tell her how awful Iroh was. Mai was with Zuko, nursing her still-stinging palm. Azula knew that because, whether she would let it up or not, she was doing the same.
She had thought things would be different after Ozai ascended.
She had been wrong.