con·va·lesce / to recover health and strength after illness; make progress toward recovery of health / verb

Summary: Azula (purposefully / maliciously / unfortunately) aligns the fates at the palace.
Rating: M for Mature; dark themes.
Notes: Again, this chapter doesn't contain a lot of mature rated material, but I will keep the rating in place just to be safe.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything affiliated with Avatar: the Last Airbender or any of the characters portrayed here.

ig·nite / to set on fire; kindle / verb

Azula trembles. Azula screams. And then, Azula fights.

She stares into her brother's eyes and Zuko stares back (effortlessly / calmly / patiently) as she feels her rage (boiling / bubbling / overflowing) inside of her chest. Zuko is going away for a week for a retreat with a master swordsman. Azula thinks this is foolish (and thinks that her begging should have convinced him to stay) and Azula is foolish for having begged him. She thinks that her father is rolling in his ashes at the thought of her begging. Zuko is stoic and stares at her, waiting for her to accept, waiting for her to relent, waiting for her to understand.

She doesn't.

She destroys her room piece by piece. Azula throws books, Azula throws pillows, Azula throws chairs, Azula throws things while Zuko stands and Zuko stares and Zuko waits for Azula. She is five years old and she hasn't garnered a complete understanding of things yet; she'll be six in a few weeks but that doesn't impact her very much. She doesn't understand her brother's impassive appearance and she refuses to cry (although her conscience beats her mercilessly and repetitively and painfully).

He won't even miss you, her conscience lies, and he certainly isn't coming back.

Her conscience berates her and demeans her and lies to her and still, Azula allows her rage to get the best of her. She doesn't understand why she says what she says, but she knows the moment that she shrieks it, that she regrets it.

"I challenge you to an Agni Kai, big brother!"

Azula stares (fiercely / passionately / wrathfully) as her brother's face cracks, her brother's fists clench, her brother's eyes darken. She has finally gotten a reaction from Zuko, but she doesn't like it. He walks out of the room and Azula goes back to destroying her belongings.

Now he definitely isn't coming back, her conscience says with an air of condescension, you're behaving like a child.

She starts tearing pages out of books because her conscience has started to sound like her father. Azula hates vegetables, Azula hates turtleducks, Azula hates her mother's scent, Azula hates Uncle Iroh's beard, Azula hates when Zuko leaves her. But the only thing she hates more than everything else in the world is her father. She hates him for never seeing her as a prized daughter but as a prized pawn. She hates him for raising her but not loving her, for watching her but not protecting her, for challenging her but not caring about her.

Azula doesn't hate the nightmares about killing her father so much as she hates not being able to do it again.

Zuko returns to a tornado of parchments scattered on Azula's floor and he yanks her viciously. She instantly starts to cry, but Zuko doesn't release, he doesn't relax, he doesn't react. He pulls her along and Azula follows, trailing tears as she watches the hardened face of her older brother, her Zu-Zu. He is not weak. He leads her into the training yard and pulls his tunic off. He pushes her towards her mark and stands in a firebending stance. Azula cries even harder.

"Are you going to fight me, Azula?"

She falls to her knees with her forehead against the ground and sobs and sobs and sobs. She doesn't want to fight him but she doesn't want him to leave either. Fighting him will harm him, but leaving her will break her. "Please don't leave me," she sobs until she feels Zuko lifting her from the ground. She wraps her arms around his neck and buries her face in his shoulder and lets him rub her back. "I need you to stay, please stay, please stay, please stay." Azula doesn't know if she can function without Zuko. She certainly couldn't when she was on the island for crazy people. She didn't even bother thinking about how she had acted when they separated the royal siblings for those ten weeks of time, how it would have been longer if Iroh hadn't intervened for Azula's sake. Azula wasn't even sure if she could remember those times because of how dead she felt (and how dead she had wished she was over and over and over).

"Azula," his voice is firm and he has called her by her given name, "I have to. I promise you that I'll be back. I need to go and…you need to let me. You need to be without me."

Azula feels like her brother has just slapped her in the face with a fireball.

How dare he, she wonders. He has no idea how hard she has it when he's not around to (love / protect / save) her from herself. She is just a child. She doesn't know how to tell Zuko that she wants to die without him. She doesn't even know how to properly tell Zuko that she loves him. He is always telling her that he loves her and misses her and won't hurt her and she tells him nothing. All she knows now is that she wants him to stay and he won't stay. She wants him to stay and he won't stay. She wants him to stay and he won't stay.

She cries for an entire twenty-four hours after he leaves.

The week lasts for a century. Azula tries to live, tries to learn, tries to survive without her brother. She dreams at night that he kills their parents, that he is slitting their mother's throat and running their father through with his broadswords. During the day, she fights her tutors with her intellect and fights her instructors with her fire. Everything that threatens to consume her on the inside is matched for a flame that threatens to consume her opponents on the outside. Azula builds a canal to funnel all of it from the inside of her to the outside. She learns to love firebending because she can (scald / burn / ignite) things on the outside without hurting her inside.

When Zuko returns, Azula is every bit the firebending prodigy her father saw her becoming.

She hates herself for that, but she learns to accept the good things with the bad.