[OC] The Avatar and the Fire Lady

It is possible that this not the right place to post this, but it seems the obvious place. Please let me know if there is a sub better suited for posts like this.Feedback is welcome and encouraged.***************************************************************************************The cell of the former Fire Lady, unlike that of her father, was richly appointed — or at least it would have been if every piece of furniture or decoration the guards put in had not been rendered into ash as soon as they left. The walls themselves were made of fire-proof stone, but they were still blackened and scorched; the cell’s occupant had apparently not liked the color of the paint. This was a Fire Nation mental asylum, and the new Fire Lord had ordered that his sister be contained, but kept in great style. This he had done at the insistence of the Avatar and of Prince Iroh, and almost no-one outside the royal court had been able to figure out why. Officially, the reason was that it would not do for a member of the royal family, especially a former Fire Lady, to be kept in a common prison, and the reason that Ozai was himself kept in a dark stone chamber was that when had abdicated the throne of the Fire Nation in order to declare himself the Phoenix King, he had also renounced his Fire Nation royal titles and status, and therefore was no longer part of the royal family.Nobody bought this explanation, but it was given nonetheless.Those within the royal court (or rather, those who had remained in the royal court after the end of the Hundred Year War; most of the former courtiers were in prison awaiting trial) were few enough in number that the secret remained un-discussed. It was not wise for any but his closest friends to bring up the Fire Lord’s relationship with his father, and even the Avatar did not speak of the matter lightly. No, most of the world did not know and would not have understood, but the Lady Azula could hardly be held to account for her actions in the last year, at least in the judgment of the Avatar. She was, after all, not even sixteen years of age, and the only loving presence in her life had been banished years ago by her father. She had known nothing but manipulation and abuse for nigh on a decade. Even her brother, whom Ozai had burned and banished, had escaped the worst of it, for in his exile Iroh had worked to heal the unseen wounds that Ozai had inflicted. Zuko did not understand, and wished to hold Azula to account, probably for the sake of their childhood enmity as much as for any of her real crimes. The Fire Lord was many things, but forgiving was not one of them.And so she who had once been the most powerful teenager in the Fire Nation — and perhaps in the world, at least in a legal sense — was now confined to a blackened suite of rooms in a mental asylum, ash floating in the air as eddies and vortices carried it to the barred windows.It was into this facility that the Avatar now strode. The immediate dangers in the Colonies had been quelled, the treaty negotiations between the Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, and Water Tribes no longer required his constant attention, and the more powerful Fire Nation war criminals had been taken into custody. Now remained this task, which would perhaps be the hardest of them all.The Avatar paused before the locked door of Azula’s cell and told his guards not to enter. They would only hinder him, and if Azula could overpower the Avatar, she could certainly overpower the Avatar and two guards. But he did not think that to be likely.He opened the door, entered, turned to close it —He felt the heat of the inferno approaching him before anything else. His eyes and tattoos flashed white, and in a motion which would have looked more at home in the icy city of the North Pole than in the temperate archipelago of the Fire Nation, he bent the fire into a circle around him and condensed it into a ball of white-hot flame, which he extinguished. Then a high, thin voice cackled.“So the Avatar, high and haughty, has come to gloat?”He closed the door behind him and heard a guard lock it before he moved farther into the suite.“Or perhaps he has realized his error and come to swear loyalty to his rightful ruler, like Long Feng the wise?”Azula cackled again. Her laugh betrayed her state of mind. A few scant months ago she had been cool and collected, still as a millpond. Now she was… broken, somehow. Cracked, like a struck mirror; it would still reflect an image, but fragmented and warped. That was what Azula was now: a broken mirror, a fragmented reflection of her former self.“Azula, stop this. Come out and talk.”“The Avatar presumes to speak to me! And in such a familiar manner; he forgets himself! Should I condescend to reply? I am the Queen of the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Lady! I am vassal only to the Phoenix King himself!”Again she cackled, and the Avatar saw a spark of electric blue in the corner of his vision. Again his eyes flashed white, and with the speed of the wind itself he moved over to Azula and grabbed her extended hand.It was too late; he could feel her energies surging back together and meeting in a violent confrontation. He did not keep them from each other, but instead allowed the forces from the energy’s collision to flow through him. Both his hands were occupied, so he jumped up, kicked a leg towards the window, and allowed the energy to flow from his hands down to his foot.Electricity arced, there was a clap of thunder, and a crater formed in the hillside visible from the window.The Avatar looked into Azula’s eyes. They were the eyes of a madwoman who in that moment knew fear, perhaps for the first time in her life. They were the eyes of a fourteen-year-old girl who had not heard a compassionate word in years, who had been pushed to and past her limits by her abusive father, and who had been betrayed by all those whom she had called friends.And in that moment, he ceased to be the Avatar and became instead Aang. Aang, the (hundred-and-) twelve-year-old boy who knew what it was to lose everything one had. Aang, the twelve-year-old boy who, instead of killing the tyrannical, murderous leader of a warlike nation who had tried to burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground, found it within himself to spare the man’s life. Aang had had to wear the mask of the Avatar for the last few months; in treaty negotiations, in arbitrating colonial disputes, people did not want to see the boy who had lost his entire civilization, who had gone to fight the Phoenix King not knowing how he planned to defeat him, they wanted to see the Avatar, the world-spirit, balance and justice incarnate. And over time, the mask he had put on had changed him, and even he did not notice that it was difficult to remove. But now, in this moment, the frightened eyes of a fourteen-year-old girl in fear for her life struck the mask right off his face, and the stern expression of the Avatar evaporated.“Zu… Zu-zu taught you that trick, I suppose. You know Uncle invented it by studying the water-benders? Father would have banished me for such a shameful display. Fire does not sully itself to imitate water.”Azula looked away, and in a remarkable feat of self-control, only the first syllable she spoke in any way betrayed her fear. Her face returned to the broken-mirror arrogant sneer that was her normal expression these days.“I suppose you’ve come to kill me and tie up a loose end. Very well. I know when I’m beaten; let’s get it over with.”“No, Azula. I came here thinking I understood, but after seeing you I recognize that I do not. And I realize that I owe you an apology.”“An apology? Whatever for? Taking my father’s bending? Stealing my throne? Confining me to this pitiful cell?”Azula laughed again, and Aang could hear the cracks.“No. Those were acts of justice, and I do not have the slightest qualm about any of them. You and your father were a threat to the balance of the world, and it is my duty to keep the balance.“I am sorry that I did not come sooner. I am sorry that I did not put an end to Sozin’s ambition.”“You? Sozin? Great-grandfather would have eaten you for breakfast, air-bender. Or have you forgotten what he did to your people?”Aang ignored the deposed Fire Lady’s barb and looked her dead in the eye.“Azula, what your father did to you was despicable. It was cruel. It was unforgivable.”“Father made me strong! He raised me as a princess of the greatest nation in the world! He made me into a ruler! I am the Fire Lady!”“You do not see it, but your father abused you and your brother. He, a grown man and master fire-bender, attacked and banished your brother, a child, for speaking out of turn. And when Zuko was gone, your father pushed you as far as you would bend and then he broke you.”“No, you do not see! Father punished Zuko for disrespecting the Crown! That is treason, and my father showed mercy! And with my idiot brother a disgrace to the family, Father made me into a princess worthy of the throne!”“Azula, I am sorry that he did these things to you. I am sorry that I was unable to stop him. If, when I was Roku, I had set aside sentiment… or if, when Sozin’s armies came to the Temple, I had fled to the Northern Water Tribe instead of the Southern…”Aang blinked back tears at the memory and continued.“If I had acted differently, you might have been spared… and that makes it partially my fault. Azula, I am sorry.”“Fool! You have all the power in the world, and yet you think to show mercy to your enemy? If all of the airbenders were as weak as you are, I see now how my great-grandfather was able to exterminate them so easily…”Azula continued on, but Aang stopped listening to her. He had accomplished his purpose in coming here, and he did not need to listen to the ravings of a madwoman desperately defending the core of her world-view. Aang stepped towards the door and knocked. It took a moment for the guards to unlock it, and in that time Aang noticed that Azula had stopped her rant and started to cry.The guard unlocked the door and Aang stepped through. He could still hear Azula after the door shut. As he walked away, Azula morphed from crying to laughing again.It might have been Aang’s imagination, but he thought he heard fewer cracks. via /r/ATLA https://ift.tt/3eHYEpD