Avatar - Azula and Zuko
Avatar - Azula and Zuko
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Pairing: Fire Nation royal brats (platonic)
Theme set: Epsilon
Rating: PG
Teaser: "Father is sending you away," she whispers softly into the unbandaged ear, bending close to listen to his half-smothered intake of breath.
A/N: There's so much to be said about these two, and it's been so much fun to say. The sibling relationships in Avatar totally charm me, whether they're a constructive bond like Sokka and Katara or a destructive bond like these two. Spoiler warnings for most of Season 2, not to mention the majority of Zuko's past.
->^<-
#01 - Motion
Her memory is nearly eidetic, layer after layer of crystalline shards, and the first among them is the flash and wave of a chubby child hand across the blurry edge of her vision, and the top half of a face peeping over the side of her cradle, golden eyes round with curiosity.
#02 - Cool
Her amah puts her carefully in his small arms, with the chambermaids squealing and cooing over the sweet sight they make, and Zuko looks into his sister's soft baby face, and she stares back, unblinking and unsmiling.
#03 - Young
The shattered vase is obviously the fault of the elder child, with his stutterings and nervous denials--after all, how could a girl barely old enough to talk manage such a calm and convincing lie?
#04 - Last
Mother props herself up on one elbow in the vast bed, pale and drawn and strangely fragile without the soft swell at her stomach, and explains as gently as she can that the baby is in light and warmth eternal with Agni and it's just going to be the two of them from now on.
#05 - Wrong
"That's not how you write it!" she complains, and takes the brush from his hand to copy the character for fire correctly next to his cockeyed rendition, and his tutors look at each other and then back to their four-summers princess, who has wandered in and out of her brother's calligraphy lessons for a year and never sat for a lesson of her own in all her short life.
#06 - Gentle
He comes to his mother with wide unhappy eyes, to ask if their dinner really comes from the fluffy chicks he helped the cook hatch and raise, while his sister stands behind him, smothering laughter.
#07 - One
"Father ought to get another wife," she says suddenly, in the middle of balancing barefoot along the railing of the walkway--behind her, Zuko jerks his head back to stare at her, nearly losing his balance.
#08 - Thousand
Side by side, deep in focus, they trace the steps of the fifth royal kata, five hundred each--high block, low block, quarter turn, triple alternating punch, foot-breaking kick--unexpectedly, a tongue of flame licks around her slipper as she slams her foot forward, and Azula stops short...then turns, and gives her brother a slow, smug smile.
#09 - King
"Someday," Ozai says, resting a hand on his son's shoulder, and Azula purses her lips sourly and does not stare at the throne behind them.
#10 - Learn
"They tell Us that Our daughter has already befriended several of the most well-placed scions of nobility at the academy," her lord and husband murmurs, frowning over his steepled hands at her, "and what has Our son done?"--Ursa bites her lip and has no answer.
#11 - Blur
The sight will become a familiar one: the vague, swimming shape of her face viewed through unshed tears.
#12 - Wait
"Perhaps when you're older," the drill sergeant tells her, and she swallows the hot coal of frustration and wonders if her uncle keeps any scrolls on pulling blue fire from the air in his private library, and which maid to bribe to find out.
#13 - Change
Someday he'll be bigger than her, he thinks fiercely, much bigger, and then she'll be sorry.
#14 - Command
"Sit still," Azula snaps, and Zuko grips the sides of his chair while his sister's friend tugs his hair out of its ponytail and the ribbons out of her own pigtails and goes to work, and wonders with searing-hot cheeks whether this is really meant to entertain Ty Lee alone.
#15 - Hold
They're strewing crumbs to the turtleducks again, and Azula watches from behind a blossoming plum tree and wonders what appeal he finds in wet scrabbly things and the confines of their mother's arms.
#16 - Need
Delicate lacquered fingernails bite down on the soft skin between his finger and thumb, squeezing until he cringes and squirms and tries to pull away; her eyes narrow, drinking his pain.
#17 - Vision
"You have no imagination," she laughs, then plunges into her own scenarios of intricate troop maneuvers and frontline sacrifices and unexpected ambushes, eagerly moving the carved figures around the board; while she isn't looking, he tucks the tiny, rejected wooden figure of the masked assassin into his sleeve.
#18 - Attention
The prince fidgets and stares blandly out the window while their teacher rattles on about the violence and glory of war, and his sister sits forward with one slim elbow poised on her knee and her golden eyes bright with intense focus, and their sifu worries more about the girl's slight dreamy smile than the boy's lack of interest.
#19 - Soul
"Of course not," she says, digging her chopsticks into the curried piglamb with relish, "not unless they're the mortal form of a higher spirit. They aren't smart enough, Zuzu."
#20 - Picture
Strolling the palace grounds in the dewy cool of the morning, Ursa watches her children tumbling and shouting in play around the Wisteria Garden fountain and smiles wistfully at the charming tableau they make.
#21 - Fool
"Mother won't believe you," she sneers in a voice double-layered with contempt.
#22 - Mad
He hid the broken doll under his pillow, knowing the toy itself meant nothing to her and hoping she would never notice it was missing, but when he looks up from his solitary game of kickball and sees her standing in the garden archway with cold flame in her eyes, the ball is left rolling quietly by itself while the boy flees like a hawkbat for his mother's safe arms.
#23 - Child
She makes a darling of herself to the guests at the New Year's banquet, all dimples and curtsies and sweet limpid eyes, while her brother slides down further and further in his chair, as if he could hide in the afterglow of her girlish charm.
#24 - Now
The death of an uncrowned heir isn't enough to put the whole court into mourning, but Azula weaves the single white ribbon into her hair with relish, thinking of succession and conquest and everything that this could mean.
#25 - Shadow
Hovering around the women's quarters at their mother's heels has gotten Zuko nowhere--if children are meant to be seen and not heard, Azula will do her silent seeing from behind the curtains of the rooms where things are really happening.
#26 - Goodbye
By the time they're both properly awake, Ursa is gone, and a softer chapter of their lives has vanished with her.
#27 - Hide
"You can't stay in there forever, Zuzu," she says, with the curl of her boot-toe drawn back and waiting for the first sign of his emergence from under the heavy bed-drapings, and he hugs his knees, choking on the dust and the darkness, and tries to blot out her voice echoing in his head--Who's going to stop me? Who?
#28 - Fortune
Born lucky, brought from the womb with her eyes open and her hands outstretched--she is the flame-wreathed maiden at whose feet everything falls, opponents and cities and family included.
#29 - Safe
Seated on his nephew's bed, the general gathers the shivering and weeping boy into his arms and simply holds him, rocking him gently and wondering what more than Ursa's loss has passed between his defeat at the great wall and his return home.
#30 - Ghost
"There's no such thing, dumb-dumb," she scathes him with a scornful toss of her head, watching the tears well up in his eyes--it was her, I swear it was...she smiled at me...!
#31 - Book
"You're never going to get it," she singsongs at him in passing, having paused long enough to peek over his shoulder, and he drops the tome of military strategy and twists to glare at her as she glides serenely out of the room.
#32 - Eye
Life has become a long tense sequence of him watching her watching him, the prey silently aware of the predator lurking nearby.
#33 - Never
"Women aren't allowed to be Fire Lord," Zuko tells her, glaring, and she blandly lets her gaze slide away from his, thinking to herself--Yet.
#34 - Sing
She remembers the lullaby down to its exact cadences; humming it absentmindedly as she brushes past him, she glances back around the corner of the hallway and sees his face crumpling in her wake.
#35 - Sudden
Years of practice and meditation, and yet when the crack and blast of blue light finally erupts from her hands, it takes her deliciously by surprise.
#36 - Stop
"Don't", "stop it", "go away"--the list grows and grows, all the words in his vocabulary that have become meaningless.
#37 - Time
All her self-honing and patience have been in preparation for this moment, outside her brother's sickroom, where a glowering Ozai is emerging from the curtained doorway; radiant with ambition, she smooths her features into a look of solemn concern, and approaches.
#38 - Wash
She makes the very picture of the solicitous and respectful younger sister at her dishonored brother's bedside, tenderly sponging the weeping fluid from his burns, while all the attending servants observe the contrast between the serene young woman and the moaning, delirious boy and a thoughtful murmuring begins among them.
#39 - Torn
"Father is sending you away," she whispers softly into the unbandaged ear, bending close to listen to his half-smothered intake of breath.
#40 - History
She learns from her mistakes, her false steps, her observations--in a razor-sharp addition to her arsenal, she has learned that he does not.
#41 - Power
The slight weight of the Heir's Flame tucked into her topknot makes her smile each time she notices it anew; after allowing herself a brief day or two of such indulgence, she turns her thoughts to higher goals.
#42 - Bother
"Zuzu," she says, relishing it--the most effortless way to make him squirm.
#43 - God
There are days when he loses all control and screams helpless fury at the heavens; the self-proclaimed architect of her own fate, she has no time or interest to spare for anything so distant.
#44 - Wall
Trailing her fingertips across the sprawling circle of Ba Sing Se on the map, she spans it with her hand and smirks; she has crushed and thrown away far tougher obstacles in her fourteen summers than a few piled-up stones.
#45 - Naked
As he looks up at her, frozen on the gangplank of her warship in the very moment of her betrayal, even his pain and anger is stripped from him and she is almost startled to see his most fundamental desire laid bare in his eyes--the bleeding, viscereal longing to be her brother, to be their father's son--and then she smiles, and turns away.
#46 - Drive
Nature was never much of a king-maker to begin with, if her uncle and brother are the best it has to offer, and she intends to follow in her father's footsteps.
#47 - Harm
Thinking on the scars that riddle and disfigure him, within and without, he wonders sometimes if the reason she remains unscathed is because there is nothing inside her to scar at all.
#48 - Precious
What holds them together is a thin thread of common blood; what stands between them is an entire kingdom, and they have both learned in their own time and for their own reasons that the former is worthless and the latter, inestimable.
#49 - Hunger
Their father is fickle, and could very well have Zuko's flesh seared crackling from his bones on their return, but she knows what her brother wants to hear and what telling it to him will win her, and she feeds him the loyal, sisterly words without qualm.
#50 - Believe
"Azula always lies," he whispers, staring at his hands and seeing only the blood she has laid on them, and wonders why he chose that moment of any to forget.
->^<-
{Brief Cultural Notes}
#02 - An amah is a sort of nursemaid.
#08 - A kata is a series of prechoreographed movements taught to martial arts students as an exercise in discipline and memory and a way to drill their moves without a partner.
#24 - Many Asian countries wear white as the color of mourning; the scene of Fire Lord Azulon's funeral officially added the Fire Nation to that list.
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Pairing: Fire Nation royal brats (platonic)
Theme set: Epsilon
Rating: PG
Teaser: "Father is sending you away," she whispers softly into the unbandaged ear, bending close to listen to his half-smothered intake of breath.
A/N: There's so much to be said about these two, and it's been so much fun to say. The sibling relationships in Avatar totally charm me, whether they're a constructive bond like Sokka and Katara or a destructive bond like these two. Spoiler warnings for most of Season 2, not to mention the majority of Zuko's past.
->^<-
#01 - Motion
Her memory is nearly eidetic, layer after layer of crystalline shards, and the first among them is the flash and wave of a chubby child hand across the blurry edge of her vision, and the top half of a face peeping over the side of her cradle, golden eyes round with curiosity.
#02 - Cool
Her amah puts her carefully in his small arms, with the chambermaids squealing and cooing over the sweet sight they make, and Zuko looks into his sister's soft baby face, and she stares back, unblinking and unsmiling.
#03 - Young
The shattered vase is obviously the fault of the elder child, with his stutterings and nervous denials--after all, how could a girl barely old enough to talk manage such a calm and convincing lie?
#04 - Last
Mother props herself up on one elbow in the vast bed, pale and drawn and strangely fragile without the soft swell at her stomach, and explains as gently as she can that the baby is in light and warmth eternal with Agni and it's just going to be the two of them from now on.
#05 - Wrong
"That's not how you write it!" she complains, and takes the brush from his hand to copy the character for fire correctly next to his cockeyed rendition, and his tutors look at each other and then back to their four-summers princess, who has wandered in and out of her brother's calligraphy lessons for a year and never sat for a lesson of her own in all her short life.
#06 - Gentle
He comes to his mother with wide unhappy eyes, to ask if their dinner really comes from the fluffy chicks he helped the cook hatch and raise, while his sister stands behind him, smothering laughter.
#07 - One
"Father ought to get another wife," she says suddenly, in the middle of balancing barefoot along the railing of the walkway--behind her, Zuko jerks his head back to stare at her, nearly losing his balance.
#08 - Thousand
Side by side, deep in focus, they trace the steps of the fifth royal kata, five hundred each--high block, low block, quarter turn, triple alternating punch, foot-breaking kick--unexpectedly, a tongue of flame licks around her slipper as she slams her foot forward, and Azula stops short...then turns, and gives her brother a slow, smug smile.
#09 - King
"Someday," Ozai says, resting a hand on his son's shoulder, and Azula purses her lips sourly and does not stare at the throne behind them.
#10 - Learn
"They tell Us that Our daughter has already befriended several of the most well-placed scions of nobility at the academy," her lord and husband murmurs, frowning over his steepled hands at her, "and what has Our son done?"--Ursa bites her lip and has no answer.
#11 - Blur
The sight will become a familiar one: the vague, swimming shape of her face viewed through unshed tears.
#12 - Wait
"Perhaps when you're older," the drill sergeant tells her, and she swallows the hot coal of frustration and wonders if her uncle keeps any scrolls on pulling blue fire from the air in his private library, and which maid to bribe to find out.
#13 - Change
Someday he'll be bigger than her, he thinks fiercely, much bigger, and then she'll be sorry.
#14 - Command
"Sit still," Azula snaps, and Zuko grips the sides of his chair while his sister's friend tugs his hair out of its ponytail and the ribbons out of her own pigtails and goes to work, and wonders with searing-hot cheeks whether this is really meant to entertain Ty Lee alone.
#15 - Hold
They're strewing crumbs to the turtleducks again, and Azula watches from behind a blossoming plum tree and wonders what appeal he finds in wet scrabbly things and the confines of their mother's arms.
#16 - Need
Delicate lacquered fingernails bite down on the soft skin between his finger and thumb, squeezing until he cringes and squirms and tries to pull away; her eyes narrow, drinking his pain.
#17 - Vision
"You have no imagination," she laughs, then plunges into her own scenarios of intricate troop maneuvers and frontline sacrifices and unexpected ambushes, eagerly moving the carved figures around the board; while she isn't looking, he tucks the tiny, rejected wooden figure of the masked assassin into his sleeve.
#18 - Attention
The prince fidgets and stares blandly out the window while their teacher rattles on about the violence and glory of war, and his sister sits forward with one slim elbow poised on her knee and her golden eyes bright with intense focus, and their sifu worries more about the girl's slight dreamy smile than the boy's lack of interest.
#19 - Soul
"Of course not," she says, digging her chopsticks into the curried piglamb with relish, "not unless they're the mortal form of a higher spirit. They aren't smart enough, Zuzu."
#20 - Picture
Strolling the palace grounds in the dewy cool of the morning, Ursa watches her children tumbling and shouting in play around the Wisteria Garden fountain and smiles wistfully at the charming tableau they make.
#21 - Fool
"Mother won't believe you," she sneers in a voice double-layered with contempt.
#22 - Mad
He hid the broken doll under his pillow, knowing the toy itself meant nothing to her and hoping she would never notice it was missing, but when he looks up from his solitary game of kickball and sees her standing in the garden archway with cold flame in her eyes, the ball is left rolling quietly by itself while the boy flees like a hawkbat for his mother's safe arms.
#23 - Child
She makes a darling of herself to the guests at the New Year's banquet, all dimples and curtsies and sweet limpid eyes, while her brother slides down further and further in his chair, as if he could hide in the afterglow of her girlish charm.
#24 - Now
The death of an uncrowned heir isn't enough to put the whole court into mourning, but Azula weaves the single white ribbon into her hair with relish, thinking of succession and conquest and everything that this could mean.
#25 - Shadow
Hovering around the women's quarters at their mother's heels has gotten Zuko nowhere--if children are meant to be seen and not heard, Azula will do her silent seeing from behind the curtains of the rooms where things are really happening.
#26 - Goodbye
By the time they're both properly awake, Ursa is gone, and a softer chapter of their lives has vanished with her.
#27 - Hide
"You can't stay in there forever, Zuzu," she says, with the curl of her boot-toe drawn back and waiting for the first sign of his emergence from under the heavy bed-drapings, and he hugs his knees, choking on the dust and the darkness, and tries to blot out her voice echoing in his head--Who's going to stop me? Who?
#28 - Fortune
Born lucky, brought from the womb with her eyes open and her hands outstretched--she is the flame-wreathed maiden at whose feet everything falls, opponents and cities and family included.
#29 - Safe
Seated on his nephew's bed, the general gathers the shivering and weeping boy into his arms and simply holds him, rocking him gently and wondering what more than Ursa's loss has passed between his defeat at the great wall and his return home.
#30 - Ghost
"There's no such thing, dumb-dumb," she scathes him with a scornful toss of her head, watching the tears well up in his eyes--it was her, I swear it was...she smiled at me...!
#31 - Book
"You're never going to get it," she singsongs at him in passing, having paused long enough to peek over his shoulder, and he drops the tome of military strategy and twists to glare at her as she glides serenely out of the room.
#32 - Eye
Life has become a long tense sequence of him watching her watching him, the prey silently aware of the predator lurking nearby.
#33 - Never
"Women aren't allowed to be Fire Lord," Zuko tells her, glaring, and she blandly lets her gaze slide away from his, thinking to herself--Yet.
#34 - Sing
She remembers the lullaby down to its exact cadences; humming it absentmindedly as she brushes past him, she glances back around the corner of the hallway and sees his face crumpling in her wake.
#35 - Sudden
Years of practice and meditation, and yet when the crack and blast of blue light finally erupts from her hands, it takes her deliciously by surprise.
#36 - Stop
"Don't", "stop it", "go away"--the list grows and grows, all the words in his vocabulary that have become meaningless.
#37 - Time
All her self-honing and patience have been in preparation for this moment, outside her brother's sickroom, where a glowering Ozai is emerging from the curtained doorway; radiant with ambition, she smooths her features into a look of solemn concern, and approaches.
#38 - Wash
She makes the very picture of the solicitous and respectful younger sister at her dishonored brother's bedside, tenderly sponging the weeping fluid from his burns, while all the attending servants observe the contrast between the serene young woman and the moaning, delirious boy and a thoughtful murmuring begins among them.
#39 - Torn
"Father is sending you away," she whispers softly into the unbandaged ear, bending close to listen to his half-smothered intake of breath.
#40 - History
She learns from her mistakes, her false steps, her observations--in a razor-sharp addition to her arsenal, she has learned that he does not.
#41 - Power
The slight weight of the Heir's Flame tucked into her topknot makes her smile each time she notices it anew; after allowing herself a brief day or two of such indulgence, she turns her thoughts to higher goals.
#42 - Bother
"Zuzu," she says, relishing it--the most effortless way to make him squirm.
#43 - God
There are days when he loses all control and screams helpless fury at the heavens; the self-proclaimed architect of her own fate, she has no time or interest to spare for anything so distant.
#44 - Wall
Trailing her fingertips across the sprawling circle of Ba Sing Se on the map, she spans it with her hand and smirks; she has crushed and thrown away far tougher obstacles in her fourteen summers than a few piled-up stones.
#45 - Naked
As he looks up at her, frozen on the gangplank of her warship in the very moment of her betrayal, even his pain and anger is stripped from him and she is almost startled to see his most fundamental desire laid bare in his eyes--the bleeding, viscereal longing to be her brother, to be their father's son--and then she smiles, and turns away.
#46 - Drive
Nature was never much of a king-maker to begin with, if her uncle and brother are the best it has to offer, and she intends to follow in her father's footsteps.
#47 - Harm
Thinking on the scars that riddle and disfigure him, within and without, he wonders sometimes if the reason she remains unscathed is because there is nothing inside her to scar at all.
#48 - Precious
What holds them together is a thin thread of common blood; what stands between them is an entire kingdom, and they have both learned in their own time and for their own reasons that the former is worthless and the latter, inestimable.
#49 - Hunger
Their father is fickle, and could very well have Zuko's flesh seared crackling from his bones on their return, but she knows what her brother wants to hear and what telling it to him will win her, and she feeds him the loyal, sisterly words without qualm.
#50 - Believe
"Azula always lies," he whispers, staring at his hands and seeing only the blood she has laid on them, and wonders why he chose that moment of any to forget.
->^<-
{Brief Cultural Notes}
#02 - An amah is a sort of nursemaid.
#08 - A kata is a series of prechoreographed movements taught to martial arts students as an exercise in discipline and memory and a way to drill their moves without a partner.
#24 - Many Asian countries wear white as the color of mourning; the scene of Fire Lord Azulon's funeral officially added the Fire Nation to that list.