Azula Zine Piece - Black Dragon

[kawree]

A storm is coming. Though this cell is far too deep below ground to hear the roll of thunder, she knows. She grew up with lightning in her very veins; her blood can feel the brewing energy in the sky as plainly as anyone could feel the wind and smell the petrichor that heralded it. With a soft exhale, Azula opens her eyes. A storm isn't all that's coming.

She feels her brother's approach long before she hears the latch on the door release, and by the time his shadow darkens the doorway, cast long and thin from the lights in the hall, Azula's mouth has twisted up into a grimace. They are all of them fire within; it pulses through their veins and drives them toward their destinies like wildfire. Every firebender is born with a flame in their heart, and the truly gifted--like she is, like her father is--can bend that fire as easily as any other. It had been all too simple to toy with Zuko, to watch him swallow her sweet lies as though they were jam and honey; the flame in his heart was one she knew oh so well, so unlike her own, so unlike their father's. Zuko's fire was a bright and audacious thing, a flame that followed no path set by those who came before him.

The flame she had bent for years but never managed to break.

"They told me you were down here again."

Zuko's voice is collected, and she doesn't have to roll over and look at him to know the stance he's holding in the doorway, his hands fisted at his sides as his robes pool at his feet. It's infuriating how like their father's his silhouette is now. As if Zuko's flame was anything but a mere spark in comparison to Ozai's.

"You could have been sent to the prison, where father will spend the rest of his days for his actions--Aang could have taken your bending away, too..."

His voice catches, and she can feel his shoulders sag. His footsteps move closer, and the air around her shifts as the sound of water fills her ears.

"I know you can hear me," he says. "You can ignore me all you like, but you'll be here forever that way."

He shifts, the heavy fabric of his clothes sliding across the floor with a whisper, and she remembers how cleanly and smoothly silk burns.

"Maybe this will be the last time I visit," he says then, and she can feel the weight of his sigh. "I thought that maybe if you were given the chance to live a life apart from our father, to make your own choices, like I did, maybe you could make better ones. I know people can change, Azula... I did, and you've always been better at most things than I ever was," he says. "I keep hoping maybe one day I'll actually have a sister and not a dangerous monster I just happen to share blood with, but if my being here makes no difference to you, then maybe I was just naïve."

Azula gives a bitter chuckle and twists where she lays against the stone, curling herself into an upright position easily. The straightjacket is naught but one more hurdle, and though she can't bend properly without the use of her arms, she can move far more easily in the restraint than anyone is comfortable with.

Good. Comfort breeds complacency, and she would sooner die than know the very idea of her no longer struck fear into the hearts of others. Even if she is forced to spend the rest of her days trapped in a cage, her legacy as the monster beneath every Fire Nation child's bed will live on long after their bloodline ends.

"You've always been naïve, Zuzu," she croons, pleased by the startled look on his face. She hasn't bothered to acknowledge him before now, and though her smug expression doesn't falter, the image of him standing before her cell, his shoulders backlit and his hair tied up in a knot atop his head, it makes bile rise in the back of her throat. The sheer gall he has, to look so much like their father while standing at a level so unfathomably beneath him, it's infuriating. "It would be endearing if it wasn't your only personality trait. If you really wanted to work on a peace treaty," Azula says then, her amber eyes swinging to the far side of the cell, where a man in blue stands at attention, his hands poised defensively, "you could dismiss your little waterbender friend there. I mean really, keeping a wall of ice up around my prison cell, you know that cold, damp air is just terrible for one's health. What if I came down with pneumonia?"

"Azula, you literally set an orderly's hair on fire."

"It was her own fault," Azula says, wishing she could examine her fingernails nonchalantly. "I said I could give myself a trim, but she wouldn't listen. So I showed her how unpleasant it is to have someone else touch your hair without permission."

"You can't just breathe fire at all your problems," Zuko says sharply, and that flame within him flares and twists inside its cradle of bones. Like their father's, the flame is red and gold and glittering with spirit, but the similarities end there; it's such a shame Zuko's ambitions remain so small, his fire dwarfed always by those of his predecessors. He could have the whole world, if he really set his mind to it, she can see that now. With the Avatar in his pocket and that Water Tribe girl at his side and that freak who somehow learned to bend metal backing him, Zuko could have easily finished what their father started.

She supposes good intentions starved power as readily as aspirations could feed it, but it really is such a pity.

Zuko gives the waterbender a nod, and the man hesitates only a moment before bowing neatly and stepping out into the hall. Azula watches him go, and then her gaze returns to her brother.

"If I am down here forever, it's because you put me here," she says, her lip curling in contempt. "Is this any way to treat your family? I deserve better."

"You could have better if you truly wanted it," Zuko replies, and his words are so clipped and curt that for a moment Azula forgets herself, her eyes widening in shock.

They narrow again just as quickly, and she gives him a bitter smile. "That sharp tongue of yours really will get you in trouble one day, Zuzu," she says, and then her face twists in mock surprise. "Oh, wait, didn't you already learn that lesson?" She clicks her tongue chidingly. "How quickly they forget."

"I wish I could say I'm sorry," he says. "You brought this on yourself, but it doesn't have to stay this way."

"Spare me your empty gestures," she says dryly, rolling her eyes. "If you really wanted to help me, you'd get me out of here and let me lead our great nation to the top of the world, where it deserves to be."

"Father asked me to bring him tea, the last time we spoke," Zuko says, and it's so non sequitur, so utterly dismissive of her words that Azula isn't sure if she's impressed by his arrogance or utterly gobsmacked by it as she watches him tend to the little tray he's set on the seat of the chair against the wall. "I remember you used to like tea, too, so I brought you some as well."

"Ugh, I don't want any of Uncle's stupid tea," she says, hunching her shoulders.

Zuko bristles visibly. "It's not stupid," he snaps. "Uncle has done great things with his teashop, and I think it's wonderful he's so happy. Maybe if you had hobbies that didn't involve hurting everyone around you, you could be happy, too!" He is positively seething, and Azula all but basks in his ire. "Besides, I made this tea myself."

"Even better," she says in a singsong voice. "Is it poison?"

"No," he says plainly, "it's wūlóng. You told me once you liked that it was named for the great black dragon."

She is so astounded by this revelation that her ears ring, and she presses her lips together as Zuko unlocks the door to the solitary cell and sits down across from her.

"I can't believe you actually remember that," she says, her voice tinged with almost reverent docility. "Uncle told us that story when we were just children."

"Of how the black dragon was the rarest and most spectacular of them all," Zuko recites as he holds the top of the teapot to pour the steaming liquid into two cups, "and how its unique blue fire roasted the leaves so perfectly they curled into tiny balls with tails to honor him."

She remembers happiness, even apart from that which she gleaned from the harm she had wrought. The day she had produced blue flames, like those of the black dragon of legend, was surely the happiest day she could recall in her lifetime. When she really stops to think about it... none of the happiness she's felt since even comes close to that moment long ago.

She stares at the steaming cups of tea for a moment, then awkwardly attempts to shrug her shoulders. "And how would you have me drink with you, big brother?" she asks. "Perhaps your friend in the hall can waterbend the tea into my mouth?"

Zuko holds her gaze a moment, then gets to his feet and pulls the cell door closed, locking himself inside with her before tossing the key out of reach.

"Are you certain that's wise?" she asks as he kneels beside her to carefully untie the straightjacket.

"No," he admits, "but the right thing and the smart thing aren't always the same."

She rolls her eyes. "Avatar wisdom, no doubt."

"Yes, actually," he says, and steps back as the fabric falls away. She rolls her shoulders and flexes her fingers, energy crackling just beneath her skin and making the hair on her arms stand on end. She catches a spark on her fingertip, holds Zuko's gaze briefly, then grins and blows a puff of air across the fledgling flame before it blooms.

"I'm not stupid," she says. The expression on his face tells her he knows that all too well. "To attack the Fire Lord when he has extended such good faith would only ensure my bending being taken away." She shifts where she sits, her legs still bound, and reaches for the cup of tea that has been poured for her.

"I'm glad we understand each other," Zuko says, sitting across from her again and picking up his own cup.

"Honestly, I'm not sure we do," she admits quietly. She lifts her eyes to him without moving her head, peering through her lashes. "I don't understand so many things about you, Zuko, not the least of which is why you keep trying. Anyone else would have just left father and I for dead."

He sips at his tea, his eyes closed, then regards her with a hint of a smile.

"That's part of the story, too, though, right?" he asks. She furrows her brow in puzzlement, and he waves a finger in the air. "Only the carp that relentlessly leaps up the waterfall will eventually succeed at reaching the top, and ascend to become a dragon," he says. "Otherwise, he'll stay a fish forever." His smile widens just a little. "So we all have to keep trying, unless we're satisfied with what we are right now." There's a beat of silence, then, "I'm not," he says, taking another sip of tea before catching Azula's eye. "Are you?"

She sighs and turns her gaze away. "You have been spending far too much time with Uncle," she says, but there is a softness to her tone.

Every firebender is born with a flame in their heart, and perhaps Azula is more akin to lightning in a bottle than the flames trapped in lanterns that are her countrymen. She's always been handled with careful, gloved hands, her reputation for biting preceding her, but where that distinctiveness had once allowed her to believe that she was an island of one, sometimes she finds herself musing that lightning and flame are not so different after all. Naturally, she isn't the only firebender who can sway lightning to her will, and where lightning strikes, flames often rise. Perhaps she is not singular so much as simply anterior, striking first and calling the flames of her people to her. And yet, lightning, too, is often called by flame. She thinks of the roiling clouds of ash above volcanoes, riddled with jagged bolts that split the foul, blackened sky; they are intrinsically linked, the fire and the lightning, and she would never tell him so, but she finds Zuko's ability to channel her lightning only too appropriate. Zuko lacks her progressive, intrepid nature in many ways, but at the same time, he has a stick-to-itiveness she never developed a taste for. She grew quickly bored and lost interest in things as soon as they stopped fighting back... but Zuko had found another route she hadn't considered: he didn't fight back unless he absolutely had to, but nor did he surrender. He had never surrendered, and for that she did, begrudgingly, have to give respect where it was due.

Zuko had chosen a different direction than anyone else had, and it is one she finds she isn't so bored with. That which fights the lightning only draws it nearer, that which surrenders to it is burned to ashes... but that which follows the same current as the lightning may, in fact, reach the same destination.

"So then... are you asking me to swim upstream with you?" she asks quietly, after a long pause, and Zuko sets his teacup down on the lacquer tray.

"Maybe," he says, getting to his feet but leaving the tray where it sits. "I guess I'm saying... I'm willing to share the river if you're willing to try and go with the flow."

She gives him a dry look. "The entire point of the story is the carp swims against the flow, Zuko," she says, and he glowers at her, but there's somehow less venom in it than before.

"Well, Uncle tells the story better anyway."

And in that moment, Azula does something she hasn't done in a long time: she laughs. It's a soft, almost reluctant sound, but it's genuine, and Zuko looks almost baffled.

"Go on, then," she says, waving a hand. "I won't set your waterbender on fire, I shan't take this mercy from the great Fire Lord for granted."

"And don't break the teapot, either," he says, jabbing a finger toward her. "Uncle gave it to me as a coronation gift, so I'm trusting you to take care of it."

He calls for the guard to return and retrieve the key to let him out of the cell, and she closes her eyes as the wall of ice is raised around her once more, the steam rising off the tea growing more visible as the air around her chills. She watches his silhouette move out of the room and into the hallway, blurred and distorted by the ice, and wonders, absently, why in the world he would do something so unanticipated as extend her his trust. After all these years, after everything she'd done to him, it was hard to imagine he had any left.

Maybe that's just the river he's chosen to swim against, she thinks idly. Holding the teacup with both hands in her lap, Azula closes her eyes and feels the storm rage overhead. Maybe it's a river she's willing to swim with him after all.