Chapter Text
“Dad’s going to kill you. Really, he is.” The sing songy words felt like a life time ago as Azula and Zuko huddle together for warmth on the only strawbed at the run down inn. Their mother was away from the room. She always did that when they got to a new town. Put her and Zuko to bed and then disappeared into the night.
The memories of that night just a few weeks ago replay in her head. How she had taunted her brother. How her mother had heard and pulled her away. Her mother forced her to bed once she was done telling her what she’d teased Zuku with. Azula tried to convince her brother to run away but of course his only response was to cower. Typical Zuzu, weak until the very end.
Well, at least mother left and Azula wouldn’t be scolded until the next morning. Or so she had thought before she was awoken by the hushed voice of her mother pulling her from bed. A cloak wrapped around her form as the lights from the hall silhouetted her form. “M-mom?” She asked rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Get up Azula, we have to go.” She said in a hushed but urgent voice as she scooped up the seven year old from her bed. Azula only now noticing her ten year old brother trailing behind as her mother fled into the night. Every question answered with a hush ‘quiet Azula’ or a simple ‘shh’.
She led them through the city streets before stealing away on a cargo ship headed for the colonies. Guards in the streets and sailors aboard dodged with an ease that shocked the little princess. Pulling her children into back of the hold she finally answered what she could.
Azula remembers being stunned. She fought back the tears as her mother told her, father was dead. She watched Zuko break down into a crying mess. His dignity forgotten as he bawled his hands into their mother’s cloak.
The princess refused to follow his example. Refused to shed any tears no matter how painful it was. Father may be dead but I can’t be weak. Can’t let them see me be weak. I have to hold onto my strength. It’s what father would want.
That same need to be strong is what pulls the little princess from the lumpy inn bed towards the door.
“What are you doing Lala?” A sleepy eyed Zuka asks when he finally feels the indent where his sister used to be.
“Just getting some water dum-dum, go back to sleep.” The prince reluctantly agrees after watching her move around the room for a moment. Muttering something about ‘not a dum-dum’ before the exhaustion from their travel pulls him under.
Letting out a sigh of relief from no longer being watched, Azula makes her way to the room door. The same exhaustion Zuko fell to trying to pull the seven year old under. But she shakes her head and moves regardless. Refusing to be weak.
The floorboards of the inn creak far more than those of the palace. Nor are there any hidden servant passages. But despite these hinderences, Azula still is able to find her mother. Talking with a hooded figure at one of the far tables in the small bar the inn called its dining room.
Keeping to the shadow of the doorframe, the princess does her best to make out the conversation. Unfortunately there aren’t any curtains to hide behind to get closer and the rooms far too vacant to use a crowd as cover.
“—fire nation soldiers—”
“—inland.”
“Where?”
“Ba Sing— -best bet, but…”
“What?”
“— too dangerous—----fire nation muts.”
“How much-”
“boy or the girl.”
“…The girl…”
And while no deals of death are made this time when Azula ease drops on a parent, she’ll look back on what she heard for years with the same sense of dread.
The same sense of dread that forces her from her hiding spot and back up the stairs to her sleeping brother. That forces her to grab on his shirt and pull him closer.
“Huh? Lala?” The half conscious prince asks his little sister as she fights of the shaking fear. When he gets no response he just pulls her closer. His protective arms around her shoulders are the last thing she feels before the exhaustion finally takes her.
But that feeling is gone when the sun pulls her from her sleep. And as she opens her eyes, she realizes, that so are Zuko and Ursa.