This counts as Christmas spirit right?
I've finally crawled out of the backlog of all my obligations (okay just some) but the perfect response would be to give myself more work. Everyone I flaked out on before has full permission to smack me here. Yes, even if I'm still working on their other stuff...
The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request a drabble of any pairing/ ( Read more... )
The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request a drabble of any pairing/ ( Read more... )
Azula grinned triumphantly and snuck back to where Mai and Ty Lee stayed behind. Mai was looking even gloomier than before, and Ty Lee’s fickle sympathies had changed to feeling bad for Mai as she tried to wring out the excess pond water from her friend’s clothes.
“Can I go home now?” Mai asked, not daring to make it sound hurt or accusatory, but all the same Azula frowned.
“It is getting late,” Ty Lee added.
“Fine then. I’m done anyway,” Azula sneered, ignoring the fact that there was at least two hours more she set aside before her firebending practice. It wasn’t like she could play with them anyway, with Mai completely wet and Ty Lee looking guilty enough for the three of them.
Azula took to reading the book in the dead of night, creating only the smallest of flames to illuminate the text. She read of Mulan’s disguising herself as a boy and training with them. The story’s words provided nothing but gentle sympathy for her plight to fall behind the other soldiers and the loneliness she felt at the secret. Azula sneered and rolled her eyes each time Mulan stumbled, muttering under her breath how easy they would be for her.
When the army reached the passage, Azula had long since forgotten that she should have been asleep. Here the narrative slipped to the strategy of a light cavalry against heavier forces from the invaders. Azula even managed a small glimmer of approval to see Mulan’s plan of firing at the mountaintop to cause an avalanche worked so well. That was something to surprise her tutors with when they went over the South Pole siege, she imagined.
But Mulan’s victory was not met with cheers by the army she had worked so hard make them accept her. Instead they turned on her in discovery that she was a girl-And what is so wrong with a girl? Azula thought to herself with something nearing a pang of self-recognition-and declared Mulan a traitorous spy. Not content with the brief moment of understanding, Azula sought to put it to rest by skipping to the end to see how it ended. If Mulan rose up and crushed the ones who scorned her, if they put her to death, what fate would play out.
And as Fa Mulan returned to the garden where the cherry blossoms sat, she knelt at the feet of her father’s lame leg and bowed. “Father, I have restored your honor. I humbly ask that you forgive me for what I did to get there.”
And the father leaned on his lame leg and set a blossom in his daughter’s hair. “The greatest honor I could ever wish for would be having you for a daughter.”
Azula threw the book away the next morning. She woke up tired and sluggish, not perfect for her early morning training but far better than anyone else. And as the hours wore on, when her father finally appeared to watch her progress, Azula was flawless.
“I am proud of you, Azula,” Ozai said with a fierce grin. “One day you will bring great honor to the Fire Nation.”
Somehow, even if the words were the same Azula knew she was right the first time: there was nothing of Ozai in Mulan’s father and nothing of Mulan in her.
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