Chapter Text
Azula watches her brother dive in front of the cold lightning meant for the Water Tribe peasant and feels something deep within her chest snap .
She doesn’t remember laughing, but someone is, and it’s high-pitched and insane and wild and uncontrolled, and it certainly isn’t the Water Tribe girl, because Zuko is on the ground, spasms rocking his curled up form, and the damn peasant is trying to get to him. To heal him, no doubt, and then kill Azula.
So she sends a bolt of lightning at her again, and the girl runs. Azula keeps laughing, and she knows that she’s the one laughing for certain, this time, because her throat feels raw and overused and hoarse. But what else can she do but laugh? She laughs as the peasant flees her lightning, laughs as she approaches her, cornering her against the wall, and then, all of a sudden, there’s water everywhere, and she can’t laugh anymore.
It’s cold. So cold.
There are chains around her wrists, and Azula wants to firebend at the peasant, but she can’t exactly do that in the water. Her lungs are getting painfully tight, though, and faintly, in the back of her head, she wonders if this is how she’ll die. A laugh stuck in her throat, air trapped in her lungs, water all around her.
Drowning is the most dishonorable way to die for a firebender. Azula wonders if the Water Tribe peasant knows this. She must; no doubt Mother must’ve told her, though she still can’t figure out how, exactly. Perhaps Zuko told her… No, no, he’s too soft for that. It must’ve been Mother.
(Azula doesn’t want to think about the fact that she dismisses the thought so quickly because maybe she doesn’t want Zuko to be that cruel, especially to her.)
There’s a cool, hard rush, and suddenly the water is gone, and Azula is chained to the metal grates below her knees, gasping for air. The Water Tribe girl rushes off to Zuko’s side.
Azula struggles as hard as she can, but her limbs are rendered useless with the metal chains. Panic begins to grip her as the severity of her predicament begins to settle in. She’s trapped here, soaked in ice cold water, with what has to be the most spirits-damned, stupid haircut that anyone has ever had, black strands clinging to her pale skin. And the stupidest, most insane thought occurs to her as she realizes how much lighter her skin is in comparison to Zuko’s, and she wonders if he realizes it, too. They both used to be so pale, being raised as royalty, their skin a matching milky white, almost porcelain. Now, his skin has a golden hue to it, like Agni himself had embraced him.
Combined with his scar, Azula no longer looks like him in the way that she used to. Or, rather, Zuko no longer looks like her.
(They both changed so much, so fast, but who changed more?)
Azula writhes against the chains. The metal digs cuts into her wrists, her arms, but she doesn’t even notice. Her throat aches as if she’s swallowed gravel, and her breathing feels rough, and it’s too fast, too much; her lungs can’t keep up with how quickly her chest heaves up and down, and there’s a high pitched noise somewhere far away, like someone’s screaming, but in the corner of her blurred vision, as her head whips around, she can see Zuko and that peasant standing in front of her, watching, and neither of them have their mouths open, so where is that accursed screaming coming from, and the water is gone, so why can’t she breathe?
The screams turn to sobs, heaving and hiccuping and full of anguish, and it’s only then that Azula realizes that it’s coming from her. Her struggling only becomes more and more desperate as she fights to get out of the chains, out of her body, out of her head , and hot tears roll down her cheeks as she struggles and fights and breathes fire, blue fire, and Father had always been so proud of her blue fire; he’d been there when Mother liked Zuko better, and even Iroh liked Zuko better. And Zuko and that peasant are watching her, looking at her with something dangerously close to pity in their eyes, but it can’t be pity; no one pities Azula , especially not Zuko; Azula was never the weak one, but she’s the one crying, not Zuko, and why do they keep staring at her?
Azula screams, and everything goes dark.
---
They’re going to put her in a cell.
Azula wakes up halfway down the hall as they’re dragging her there, and she’s mildly proud of how quickly she takes in the situation. There are two guards on either side of her, neither paying very close attention to her, and she thinks she can sense two somewhere up ahead.
Their first mistake was assuming that Azula would be going down without a fight. She’s surprised that Mother didn’t warn them about that.
Without a moment of hesitation, she breathes fire on the guard to her left, searing the hand he has on her shoulder and causing him to flinch back against the wall, and jabs her fingers into the throat of the other guard as hard as she can. He chokes on his own breath, and she makes a run for it.
As far as she can, anyways.
She doesn’t recognize this building, but she’s pretty sure that she knows where it is. It’s not like she made a habit of visiting the cells by the palace; the prisoners inside tended to be boring political people too dangerous to keep too far away from home. Nothing like that Kyoshi warrior Azula spent some time getting acquainted with. She had some interesting stories.
And then Azula's leg buckles under her.
Great. She’s not even injured, as far as she can tell, so the only reasonable explanation is that her leg is asleep. Fire Princess Azula, making a run for it in a prison with a leg suffering from a lack of blood flow. And yes; she knows that she isn’t the Fire Lord. She may be delirious and perhaps insane, but she isn’t stupid. Azula is many things, but she is not an idiot, though the same cannot be said about darling Zuzu.
It takes her a moment to realize that she’s laughing again. She’s leaning heavily against the wall for support, and as she turns around, she realizes that there are at least five guards standing there, watching her with a mixture of horror and fear on their faces. It’s a familiar, comforting sight, and it only causes her laughter to grow louder, wilder. She takes a step towards them. One of the guards shifts into a firebending stance.
“Princess Azula,” he says, and Azula raises an eyebrow.
“Am I really still a princess after all of that?” she asks, and it’s mostly to herself. Her voice cracks slightly towards the end from how hoarse it is, but she ignores it. “You must truly be out of your mind.”
No more than you are, a voice that sounds annoyingly like Mother says in the back of her head. Azula scowls.
She can tell that she’s thrown them off with her comment, however, and she takes advantage of their momentary hesitation. She lunges forward, blazing fire erupting at her fingertips, and whips an arc of flames across the hallway. The guards jump back in alarm, and she purposefully allows a lick of fire to singe the end of the leading guard’s shirt. She smirks at his expression.
She takes down the five guards easily despite her less than favorable condition, because even at her lowest, she is still more talented than anyone else she knows, and she runs for what she thinks is the exit. Her feet pound against the floor, and her head is spinning, but she keeps running. Keeps running, keeps running, keeps running--
And then someone tackles her from behind. Someone much heavier, much stronger, and much bigger.
She gasps as she hits the floor, eyes widening and stomach seizing as her chest smacks stone, chin following suit. There are rough hands pinning her wrists to her back, then a pair of cuffs are slipped over her wrists, chaining them together. She’s hauled to her feet unceremoniously.
“Take her to the cell,” says the guard holding her, and she’s shoved forward by the same rough hand. “The Fire Lord will deal with her, soon.”
The Fire Lord. It can’t be Father; they would be calling him the Phoenix King if that were the case. And he certainly wouldn’t leave his daughter, his heir , in a prison cell like this. It’s either Iroh or Zuko, then, meaning that…
That Father failed to defeat the Avatar.
Father failed.
But Father doesn’t fail. He’s Father , he’s Ozai . He’s not-- he’s not a failure. Azula isn’t a failure, either, but then why is she here? Why is he…
Where is he?
Azula starts kicking and screaming, attempting to escape the firm grip the guards have on her, but these guards are wearing metal armor, so her flames and fists do more damage on her than they do on the guards. She is tossed into a cold stone cell with metal bars, and her body hits the ground with a sickening thud. She throws herself against the bars as the metal door slams shut behind the guards, screaming, pressing herself forward and whipping flame after flame against the bars, against the walls of the room, as though she could melt through the foundation of the building itself, but it’s no use.
It’s no use.
She keeps screaming, screaming as if someone can hear her. She’s certain that they can; the sound of her voice ricocheting back at her from against the walls is painful enough that there is no way it isn’t making it through the door, but no one comes. They can hear her, she knows, but no one is listening.
She wants to put words into her screams. Wants to demand that they listen to her, that they answer her, that they tell her what is happening, what they plan on doing with her, who the Fire Lord is, where her father is. If he’s still alive. Logically, he shouldn’t be, but the Avatar is a pacifist and a child and weak despite all of the power he holds, so she wouldn’t be surprised if he were too cowardly to go through with killing him.
Father will be so disappointed when he finds out you failed.
Disappointed… disappointed like he was with Zuko . He has never been disappointed in Azula before, so she doesn’t know what to expect. He will make an effort to regain power, she knows that for certain, and whether that takes the form in those still devoted to him in the Fire Nation or in something else, Azula will be by his side as his loyal daughter.
But, for now, she keeps screaming.
(And, quietly, she prays that someone listens.)