Azula: Redemption

Chapter 5

I straightened my spine as I began walking towards him, observing how his cell lacked even the small mercy of a window, with all cold stone, the ceilings dripping water in a slow but steady drip.

I found myself wondering if they punished him with ice water as they so often did to me. "Father, they are shipping me off to the southern watertribe." I told him, blunt with my words and straight to my concerns. "Zuko implied Aang has the ability to subdue my fire, to take it away" I said firmly. I saw a small malicious smile graze his lips.

"Azula, do you not know what has been done to your father?" He asked, standing up and striding to the bars. He held out his left arm, palm up as if to create a small flame. Nothing happened.

"Father, you, you are the greatest fire bender to ever live, you will not have been brought down by an ignorant fool!" I screamed, forgetting the disrespect I shown.

His eyes lit with a fire of pure gold and hatred "You are the only fool I see here. Have you forgotten your lessons? You see proof with your own eyes and deny it? My huburis brought me down, you would be wise to not let it do the same to you." He seethed in my face.

Raged fueled me, wether it be from my own shame, or by seeing my powerful father behind the same bars as my own. "If you were as great as you claim to be, you would have burnt the Earth Kingdom to the grown. You wouldn't have let the Avatar take down a kin-"

That same hand that was still out for display reached and grabbed onto my dirty prison clothes. Drawing me in by my collar till we were almost nose to nose, he said "You were my legacy, you were my pride, and now, your brother brings me more honor by betraying me then you do by sitting in your cage." He let go of my collar and stepped back into his own created darkness.

Maybe prison time had broken me, maybe it had broken him. Thunderous steps had occurred and screaming that the princess had escaped . It wouldn't be long before they were pounding at the door. I looked to the back wall, in the shadows stood mother, her eyes bright like embers.

I stared into her eyes and said "Then perhaps father, you made the wrong decision when you burnt Zuko instead of me."

I started to walk away, accepting my fate at the Southern Watertribe when his hand wrapped around my throat, holding me in place against the bars. The pounding at the door finally began, right on time I realized. To the precise moment I had counted to, to the moment I realized, he was counting to.

His face coming to my ear as the iron door began to to glow red with fire burning to bring it down. "With you turning against me just as your brother has, I realized I made a fatal mistake when I only marked your brother. I should have made his punishment more permanent." I was panting and scratching at his hands, my breaths coming in shallow heaves as my heart raced and he drew his hand tighter. The edges beginning to turn to soft round globes of iron.

"I will not have another child turn traitorous, what would your mother say? She would be so disappointed to know her sacrifice was wasted on such a pathetic excuse for a daughter" my sweat was dripping on the hot stone beneath my feat, sizzling as it met its end. I wondered if my end would be hot, if it would burn as I had burned so many.

As his left hand began to move towards the right and his right hand began to move to the left, I realized the type of death I would endure. Nothing spectacular, nothing noteworthy a simple broken neck.

"Don't worry daughter, you're death will be as beautiful as you, as meaningless as you, and so much more useful" he said, the twisting finally hitting the base of my neck.

The door was finally brought down, not a single door hinge, but by a wave of fire so powerful as it brought the entirety of the door down in molten iron. Zuko and Aang stepped through the door, with a quick intake of what was about to happen, Aang sent a spiraling blast of air that not only pushed my body even further against the bars, but sent my father back, slamming him against the cell wall.

I shrugged to the ground gasping, realization not settling in on what had just occurred. The throbbing in my neck speaking all the truths I needed.

Zuko rushed over to me, not to embrace me I realized, but to put my familiar chains around my still sore wrists, locking them down even tighter than before. Dragging me to a standing position and looking at me with outrage and something like pity.

I was lead out of the room just into the hallway, I could still see him. Glancing around to see the audience that had formed. Excited perhaps to see a royal execution. I spotted Katara in the front, along side her brother, and the short blind one, I don't know her name. I never cared to remember.

They all watched me with intense stares, except the blind one for obvious reasons. "What were you doing Azula? Why did you go to see our father!?" Zuko whisper screamed once he joined the small group of guards surrounding me, and dismissed them.

I turned my attention away from his "friends" and focused on my brother who now towered above me as I said back to him "Just because you are not loyal doesn't mean I don't have to be" I said sneering into his face. A thought in the back of my mind screaming he had just tried to kill me and yet I am playing servant to him?

Zuko seemed to be about to say the same thing when Aang stepped up. The man was tall and slender, with a grace only an airbender could possessed. "This isn't the best time, but uh, your ship is boarding." He said, turning pink on his cheeks. He was a quiet person and an old soul, most of all, he is a pain in my ass.

"Yeah and Aang, you need to do what your promised Zuko you would, the safety of passengers and crew need to be ensured" Katara said, stepping up beside Aang and placing a hand on his shoulder in a motherly fashion.

In my oxygen loss and confusion over the past few minutes I didn't understand what they were implying. What was about to happen to me. Until Zuko knocked my knees out from under me and I was on the ground. Staring straight up into the face that took my throne away from me.

I didn't get a chance to fight, to scream. Something hot, something cold, something new, and something old blasted into me. His hands touched my forehead and my chest, pushing all of this into me. I could feel my fire, my soul as though it was apart of me, a tangible thing.

My head fell limp as he pulled back, dragging something along with him, he took it. He took my fire.

He looked at me, head high and no longer in the stance of bashfulness, he looked at me as the Avatar, eyes glowing blue. "You will get your bending back, this is the promise I make to you, should you recover in ways of both mind and soul." His eyes lighten and the human was back.

I was concious only long enough to see the watertibe guard appear behind the crowd of people, say something to Katara and pick me up, carrying me out of the prison towards the icy ship.

If only I had stayed awake for one more flicker, one more second, I would have saw my father smiling at me, dangling his cell key in his hand.