Remembrance

Azula could imagine it all.

She imagined her mother, sitting behind her on a velvet cushioned stool, reaching forward to pry the scissors from her daughter's grasp. Ursa would take up the gold brush on the dressing table, untangling the snarls in Azula's hair until it lay in soft and shining waves down her back.

"My daughter," Ursa would murmur softly as she looked at Azula in the mirror. And Azula would close her eyes, breathing in the scent of her mother, savoring the touch of Ursa's long and gentle fingers twisting her hair into an elaborate bun.

But she was Azula, and she would be afraid. She would force her eyes back open and clench her fists, jerking away from her mother as soon as she had finished putting the last of the hairpins in place. And with a voice full of fire and eyes full of flames, she would spit out a question. "Mother, why don't you love me?"

Ursa would stand, and look at her daughter, and see what Azula had become. And looking into Azula's eyes, she would say, "I am your mother, and I will always love you."

Azula could imagine it all: a kind mother with warm eyes and embraces and bell sleeves meant to dry the tears of her children.

But memory stretched only so far, and all she could recall were gentle fingers and harsh words, and amber eyes that looked at her and that were full of fear.