Chapter Text
The forest was on fire. Brassy golden light bled through the dense canopy, cascading down in fractured streaks that shattered the greenery as smoke curled around the rays like ink spilling messily into water. Leaves shriveled in the heat, branches cracked like stiff joints as they burned, and everything shimmered as it radiated hotly. The sky above had quickly turned to a bruised purple splashed against thin clouds, and even that looked like it might catch the orange tongue of the flames that had spread hungrily into the vegetation.
Katara stumbled into the clearing on accident more than anything else, ash clinging thickly to her lashes, the sharp tang of burning pine tar heavy on her tongue. The wind whipped past her face, thick with smoke and heated, stinging her eyes and throat. She gagged against her will.
“Azula!” The name tore from her lips before she could think as she caught sight of the woman before her. Her boots skidded in the soot, her body surging forward on instinct alone. Somewhere behind her, someone let out a muffled shout, but she didn’t hear it clearly. All she could see, all she could hear or feel, was the figure at the center of the inferno.
Azula bent on her knees as blue fire rippled across her arms like a second skin, alive and ravenous. Her sleeves were in tatters, her tunic blackened, and the flames extended into the sky even as they consumed her. Katara retched again at the scent of burning flesh and heaved a sob as she watched, weaving fire licking at Azula’s fingers and wrists like dry kindling. She wasn’t extinguishing it, she was feeding it.
Katara’s breath caught as she stumbled forward. “Azula, stop!”
A vice clamped around her arm. “Don’t,” Toph snapped beside her, the single word brittle and hard. “She’s not seeing straight.”
Katara turned sharply, eyes wide, trying to shake her off, but Toph’s grip only tightened. And then, before she could wrench free, the earth moved beneath her. Stones surged from beneath the soil, cool and rough, locking around Katara’s ankles like shackles.
“Toph!” she shouted, panic and fury colliding in her chest as she scowled at the girl beside her uselessly, shoving her shoulders. “Let me go!”
“She’ll burn you,” Toph insisted, refusing to budge. “She doesn’t even know where she is right now, Katara.”
The clearing pulsed with heat. Katara could barely breathe. Every instinct she had screamed to run forward, to reach Azula, to grab her and pull her back from the edge, from the fire, from herself, but Toph stood firm and immovable.
Katara twisted in place, fighting the stone that scraped the skin of her ankles and failing miserably. Her fingers ached for water, but her pouch sat full in the kitchen where she’d foolishly left it. The summer heat made everything sluggish, including her.
Behind her, Aang stood silently with one arm half-raised, wind circling around him as he tried to contain the blaze at the perimeter of the clearing and stop its spread further into the forest. His grave expression stood a stark cry from his earlier laughter. Nestled in the crook of his other arm, Kiyi wept. Curled into Aang’s side, the little girl’s face was streaked with soot like the rest of them, her tiny fists balled against his abdomen. Her sobs came in broken hiccups, barely audible over the crackling fire. She couldn’t look away from her sister. No one could.
Azula hadn’t moved. Her head hung low, her thick black hair limp and tangled around her face. But her shoulders shook, her breathing shallow and jagged as they heaved. The fire on her arms began to flare higher, streaks of blue arcing up toward her elbows, uncontrollable and angry.
Katara’s heart lurched. “She’s going to hurt herself,” she whispered, dropping her arms at her sides defeatedly as she slumped forward.
“She already is,” Toph muttered apologetically, her earthen shackles holding fast around Katara's feet.
And then, from across the clearing, Ursa stepped forward into view. She hadn’t spoken a word since it happened, since Azula’s face had tightened minutely and she’d stormed out of the room. She stood slumped against a curved tree, frozen like a statue, her hands trembling and eyes rimmed red. The hem of her long cloak was stained with a thin layer of clotted ash.
Katara turned her head toward her, rage climbing up through her body and exiting furiously.
“Say something,” she hissed through clenched teeth, raising a finger to point at her accusatorily. “Say something!”
Ursa flinched, her lips parted, and her weak voice was so small as she spoke that it nearly vanished in the roar of her daughter’s flames.
“I didn’t mean it.”
But the damage was already done. Katara’s mind flashed back to the words, barely twenty minutes old, but already carved irrevocably into memory.
“When I looked into your eyes the night that I left, I saw nothing looking back at me. I had tried desperately to love you, but you made it impossible. That's another thing you had in common with your father.”
And Azula had stood there, silent and still for all of five seconds before she’d turned sharply and left.
Katara bit down on a sob. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t mean-”
“Well, you did! She’s going to-” Katara choked out as she tried furiously to steady her breathing and pull herself together. “She’s going to destroy herself if you don’t make this right.”
Ursa took a step forward and stopped, her feet seemingly rooted to the ground as much as Katara's despite the woman's freedom. Her face crumpled, but she didn’t move again as she began to cry openly, falling to her knees against the earth below defeatedly.
And then, without warning, Kiyi broke free from Aang’s side. Like a spark flaring against the wind, she twisted herself from his arm and ran straight into the arms of the fire held open before her.
“Kiyi!” Katara shouted, struggling uselessly against the earth that held her fast.
“Kiyi, no!” Ursa surged forward instinctively, but Aang held her back.
The girl was small, fast, and certain in trajectory. She wouldn’t be stopped. Katara’s heart seized as she took in the defiant, hard-set look on her face, so similar to her sister already. She looked up at the newly risen moon and sent a plea to Yue to keep them both safe.
Azula didn’t even look up at the commotion, blinded until Kiyi flung herself forward without any regard for her safety and wrapped her arms around her sister’s waist. And suddenly, everything stopped. The fire vanished in an instant. One moment it roared around her, and the next, it was gone, smothered like a flickering candle beneath a dome of glass.
She gasped. Her hands lifted slightly as they shook harshly, red and angry from the burns that spanned from her fingers up her forearms, discovering them for the first time and registering the dull pain that already throbbed in the nerves. She looked down, and there, clutching her like the world was ending, was her recently discovered little sister sobbing against her ruined tunic.
“Please don’t cry,” Kiyi whispered. “I still want you.”
Even the forest held its breath as Azula's whole body gave out silently. Her head dropped forward as her arms, slow and unsure, moved to hold Kiyi back. She clutched her, trembling all over. Kiyi shook equally against her, her small face buried in her tunic, and Azula clung to her as much as she could with arms too sore and burned to hold anything tightly.
She couldn’t remember dropping to her knees. She couldn’t even remember what had happened just before it. The roar in her ears had deafened her, and had drowned out all reason. The world had gone white-hot and narrow and full of noise, and all she had wanted was for it to stop.
It had started with her mother’s voice, and she supposed it was poetic that it would end with her sister’s silence.
Azula squeezed her eyes shut, her fingers twitching against Kiyi’s back. The scent of burning still clung to everything around her. Her tunic smelled like charred cloth and pine resin, and her skin much worse. Her hands stung, the open burns raw and angry beneath a light dusting of ash. She could feel every heartbeat in her palms, intrusively registering the incessant pattern and focusing on its drumming strength in all of her weakness.
I lost control.
It had been years since she'd lost control like that. Not since her own mind had fractured in the war, and she’d been defeated by Katara. She had worked so hard to rebuild. Piece by piece, trying to reassemble a shattered tile mosaic using only the dust left behind. And a single sentence from her mother - cruel, yes, but true - had shattered it all over again.
She could still feel the shame crawling beneath her skin. Her mother had seen her break. Katara had seen it, again. They all had.
Azula turned her head slightly, just enough to see the others through strands of limp black hair. Katara knelt a few feet away, unmoving even now that the earth around her feet had been released. Her cheeks were stained with gray ash and tears, and she didn’t speak. She just stared at her with a broken look that made Azula want to cower away.
Aang stood further back, a hand still curled protectively in front of Ursa, stopping her from moving forward. He looked like he wanted to say something, his lips puckered comically, but couldn’t shove the words out of his mouth. And Toph… Azula felt her disappointment radiating without even looking at her. Judging by the broken dirt at Katara's feet, Toph was probably the only reason Katara hadn't run straight into the blaze and gotten herself burned by the woman who was supposed to love her.
By me.
The guilt twisted in Azula’s stomach, deeper and sharper than the burns covering her skin. She had done this. She had snapped, she had erupted, she had perpetuated the monstrosity that overtook her in the worst way.
She had terrified the one person in the world who had ever looked at her with innocent, uncomplicated love. That same child now blindly clutched at her singed tunic like Azula was still something good. Azula dropped her chin to rest atop Kiyi’s head, a lump rising in her throat as she swallowed her sob. She wanted to speak, but her voice felt small and useless. What could she say?
Please don’t look at me. Please don’t remember me like this.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered raspily. “Kiyi… I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I didn’t want you to see that.”
Kiyi sniffled against her chest and said nothing, only gripped her tighter. Azula bit down on her lower lip. Her body ached. Her arms trembled. The fire was gone, but it had hollowed her out. What remained felt like smoke and splinters.
“I didn’t mean to scare her,” she rasped, finally lifting her head to meet Katara’s gaze. Or you.
Katara frowned slightly, a single tear sliding down her cheek. “I know,” she said softly, and the accompanying sad look on her face sent a shameful pang through Azula’s chest.
She shifted just enough to adjust Kiyi in her arms. The pain lanced through her burned hands again, and she winced, her breath raking into her lungs audibly.
“Your hands…” Katara murmured, managing to rise from the ground as she wiped her face. “You need to let me heal them.”
Azula hesitated but eventually nodded in agreement when her eyes dropped to the angry red wounds across her palms and fingers. She hadn’t even realized how deep they went, hadn’t even realized it was happening until Kiyi stopped her.
Ursa, still standing behind Aang, finally spoke up. “Azula,” she began, her voice thick and nasally. “I-”
“Stop,” Azula said. The single word came out hoarse, but clear and definitive. Kiyi flinched slightly against her but the girl didn’t let go.
Azula took a breath, and it rattled hollowly on the way out. “Don’t try to explain it. Don’t try to take it back. You meant it.”
Azula finally raised her eyes to her mother’s face and only felt disappointment as Ursa’s mouth opened and closed stupidly in response.
“Just… don’t speak to me right now.”
Ursa looked like she might argue for the slightest second, but she didn’t. She lowered her gaze remorsefully and nodded.
Azula turned back to Kiyi, her voice breaking. “You shouldn’t have run into the fire. That was dangerous, and you could’ve been hurt.”
Kiyi looked up at her. “But you were hurt. And I didn’t want you to be alone.”
When she did, Azula didn’t cry loudly. She didn’t shout or scream or collapse. But tears slid quietly down her cheeks as she pulled Kiyi closer against her shoulder and closed her eyes against her little sister’s short, untamed hair. She didn’t know how she would begin to fix this.
Aang’s voice broke the filled silence abruptly as he asked, “How did we even end up here?”