Chapter Sixteen: The Makers

Azula paces in her room. Zuko ordered a reprise of the dinner Azula hosted on the first day of her true recovery and redemption. Ty Lee apparently forced her to dress up and Azula chose herself to go through with her plans. It worked then; Azula supposes it will work now.

However, she has conditions. She is smart, after all.

"These people made me. They all made me what I am," Azula says, adjusting her ruby choker. "I need to turn their influence into ashes if I am to be reborn. The blood of my child is on their hands as much as mine and apparently only my forgiveness can wash it clean."

"That's the thing about it. If you keep putting so much energy into hating them for shaping who you are, you can never make yourself."

"I agree, but there is one little condition. When I forgive them," says Azula, turning to Ty Lee, "I want something in return."

Ty Lee finishes pinning up her braid and, smiling, asks, "What?"

With a severe expression, Azula turns to her.

"I want apologies tumbling from their lips like jewels."

[X]

Her relatives arrived quickly. Zuko must have explained the situation in the letters because they all look at her with pity in their eyes. Save for her father, of course. Azula does not think he can feel bad for another person, which they have in common.

Then Azula thinks about the scars on Ty Lee's skin and how they consistently penetrate her mind. Maybe she does not share that character trait with her father when it comes to the precious few she holds dear.

"Welcome," purrs Azula as she sees her guests waiting at the table. "I am flattered you all chose to attend my pity party."

Azula sits down across from the head of the table—across from Zuko—and Ty Lee hastily takes the empty seat to her right.

Iroh, of course, breaks the uncomfortable silence by saying, "I'm sure it will be fun."

Azula mirthlessly laughs.

"Oh, I am so sure." She smirks at her guests. Zuko cringes.

Servants serve the first course. The party remains in utter silence. Ty Lee squirms in her seat but Azula could not care less.

"Do you take this whole charade seriously?" asks Ozai of all people. "I have heard that you want to fix things. How much do you remember now? Did it all come back?"

"No. In every way I am as I was at sixteen, but now I know my child is dead because of me. It is a lot to lay on the shoulders of a teenager," Azula bitterly says, glowering at every guest.

Ozai narrows his eyes. Angry, protective. Azula has not seen that look since she was a little girl who scraped a knee firebending. He demands, "Does she sleep with you?"

"You have no right to ask that," Azula snaps, her cheeks flushing bright red.

He growls, "I have every right to worry about someone exploiting my child. I do not want someone in their thirties sleeping with my sixteen-year-old daughter. It would be quite sick of her."

"Again, you have no right to interfere," Azula icily breathes, clutching the table tightly.

"Maybe I am just trying to be a better parent like you are. The only difference is that I refrained from,"—He matches her coldness as he speaks, then pointedly turns to Zuko—"killing the runt of my litter."

Azula shrinks in her chair. He always could disarm her; he was the only one.

Ursa vehemently protests, "She didn't kill anyone."

Azula corrects her presumptuous mother. "I was a soldier. I directly killed many people and indirectly killed hundreds more by conquering Ba Sing Se. It would not surprise me if I added another to the list later on."

Ursa insists, suddenly the savior of the daughter she once despised. "She fell and got badly hurt. Children fall, even around completely sober and sane parents."

Azula blinks and asks in earnest curiosity, "Did she?"

"You don't remember, do you? Someone only told you about it," Ursa says, her empathy so genuine that Azula wants to vomit.

"I had to know why I destroyed my own memories. It took time and effort but I managed to convince someone to develop a conscience and tell me the truth. Zuko explained it all, but I couldn't hear the rest of the story after I figured out why I did it," Azula explains, losing herself in the story, in the facts, in all she does not remember of this fucked up life.

"We tried to stop you," says Ursa. Azula hates the honesty and hates the presumptuousness and hates that these people think they are still her loved ones. That they ever were her loved ones.

Azula shoves her full plate away from herself and stands.

"We are done here. I desire honest apologies in return for my loving amnesty, not a joke like this dinner," Azula articulately snarls. She pivots on her heel and leaves the room, silk fabric billowing behind her as she abandons her own party.

They eat without her.

[X]

Azula sits in her room and listens to them laugh, pouting like the teenager she still is. They should at least be fighting. Ozai is in attendance, for Agni's sake. Ozai! And Ursa! Together! In the same room! Zuko and Ty Lee and Mai and all of them should know better than to be happy while Azula is heartbroken.

Of all people, Iroh knocks on the door. Azula groans when she rises to open it.

"Do you want help?" he gently asks, behaving so nobly as usual.

"I am not listening to any of your strange new ideas, Uncle," Azula snarls.

Iroh calmly says, "All new ideas are strange only until you try them on."

"You understand better than anyone else, don't you?"

"Yes. His death was my fault. I ordered him to fight that day." Iroh closes his eyes in a way Azula relates to. She knows he knows how she feels and he is the only one.

Funny.

Azula whispers, "How do you live with it?"

Iroh almost smiles. Azula sees it on his face even if he manages to stop himself. "I thought you didn't want any strange new ideas."

"I do not want to know about what you think would work for me. I want to know how you personally survive and go on knowing what you have done and what you have lost."

Iroh remains silent for an agonizing period of time. "Most of the time, I just don't know."

Azula shrugs. "At least it is an honest answer."

They sit there in silence for a thousand years until Azula rises and leaves.

[X]

Azula walks out into the gardens. Late at night, they look eerie. The moonlight illuminates the plants and statues like ink paintings. She shivers in the cold air and then sees her father waiting for her. Wonderful, another person to speak with and try to forgive.

"Walk with me. No one will mind," Ozai says as he emerges from the pathway through the plants and idols.

Azula sighs and complies. She follows him through the tangled mess of flora. It is in there that she remembers the last time they took a stroll through a garden. Azula has not thought about it much; her trip turned into something much more dramatic afterwards.

Thinking aloud, Azula says, "You were more honest with me than anyone else. I am stunned and impressed. You told me I gave myself amnesia and you told me they would lock up the girls if they could and you… you told me that I had to hear the news in the right way."

"People change, don't they?" Ozai asks, smirking.

"I am certain you did it for your own ends." Azula plucks a flower and tears it to pieces. "I am supposed to forgive you tonight. It is supposed to be the first step."

"The first step to a new you? We have done this before and it didn't change a thing. It convinced the Avatar and the courts to give you freedom and let you have a wife and a career but you never changed."

Azula says, "I can, if I want to."

"Oh, little princess, you will always be the same. Envious, manipulative, sadistic—"

Azula screams, causing the night creatures to loudly flee, "And who made me that way? Who raised me to be that way?"

Ozai sighs. "I did. I will embrace that, unlike you."

"I will too. I will embrace that you designed me to be those things and that perhaps I will never lose those qualities. But that is unimportant. I learned that this world is real and I am stuck in it, and I learned that I am not the dignified and divine princess I ought to be. I am changing those things," Azula states. "So, I will embrace the truth. I did not change and I am all of those things and I always have been. But as long as I want to wake up in this world over and over, I do not care."

He smirks. "That's what you want most."

"Yes, and I always get what I want, at all costs, even if that cost is forgiving you."

Azula walks back inside before he can fill her head with more poison.

[X]

When Azula returns to her room, she slips into the bathroom to wash her face. She needs sleep; she needs to forget for a little while and start again once the sun rises. But when she finishes with the golden wash basin and towels off her face, she looks up and sees a mirror image of herself standing behind her.

She does not dare turn around.

Hollowly, Azula says, "You again."

"Don't act so sad to see me. I'm the only person in this world who understands you," purrs the hallucination, batting her beautiful dark lush eyelashes. Azula is lost in gold irises for too much time.

The Visitant palms the side of her face and passionately kisses her. When she sinks her teeth into Azula's lower lip, it feels so real that terror surges through the princess's veins. But, when she touches her mouth with her fingertips, she discovers that the bite left no mark.

"You're so cute, how you try to move on. Do you really think you can change? Do you really want to change?" she asks, whispering in Azula's ear.

"Of course I do. I hate the person I became and I want to change her. Living as her is dreadful, and so I have no choice."

"You have a choice," purrs the Visitant. "You can succeed where you failed before. Leave this life behind and never again struggle with the pain it causes you. I would help."

"I do not want that."

"You should've swam out to sea like I told you back on Ember Island and spared yourself all of this. It would've been a calm end."

"I thought that this world was fake then, but this is real."

"Trust me more than you trust her. I am far more intelligent and precocious than that airhead you apparently married."

"I never said anything about Ty Lee."

"You fell for her. That is the only reason you want to stay here in this life."

"Maybe I did. It is the children, though. I owe them. I really know that after seeing my parents again tonight. That is what I hate most about this self. She is too much like those who made her. Maybe that is why I never could forgive myself. I did not deserve forgiveness."

"You didn't care much for them, did you? Why should you now?"

"I need to make it up to them. I refuse to make them the way my family made me."

"Yes, you just kill them off. That works awfully well. It's less time consuming."

"Go away."

"Have I ever done that on command before?"

"Go away."

"No."

"Go away!" Azula spins around and sees Ty Lee, not the Visitant.

The real, flesh and blood human says, "I can, if you need me to."

"No," Azula says, shaking her head. "I am going for a walk."

She leaves the bedroom and heads down the corridor. Lo and behold, it takes her less than two minutes to run into her mother.

"I'm sorry your dinner ended that way," Ursa states, clearly missing the point of why Azula left. She cannot honestly maintain that behavior. How is Azula supposed to forgive her?

"I thought it was a bad idea, anyway," says Azula. "You knew, when I met you back on my little family vacation. You knew when you met Kazumi that she had a twin once."

"I did, but I understand that you aren't to blame. You were made the way you are, and you never had a father figure to teach you how to father your children. He broke you by forcing you to commit war crimes and no one would blame you."

It first strikes Azula silent. She bites down on her lower lip and tries to fathom how Ursa could say that.

"You made me too, mother," she calmly, sweetly whispers. "You cannot wash your hands of me and pretend I am his fault alone."

Ursa walks forward towards her daughter. "I know I made you. I love you no matter who you are and what you do because I made you."

"Shut up." Pause. "I…" Longer pause. "I understand what you did now. Not everything. I will never understand how you could argue with father about how much you hated me right in front of my face when I was little, but I understand why you ran away."

"I ran from the law."

"Your husband was the law. You made sure of that that night. I do not believe I would ever do such a thing to the children I only just met a few weeks ago—much less known since birth—but things happen to people that they are not equipped to deal with. I am done punishing you for your choices."

"Thank you," Ursa says and Azula almost attacks her. But that would make her the kind of person she does not want to be anymore.

"Do not thank me," Azula coldly says as an alternative to violence. "I am doing it for myself. If I am to reshape this life into one I desire, I must get rid of that which holds me back. Lamenting over my lack of a mother is childish and pointless. I must get rid of little human hangs up like that if I am to be as divine as I wish to be."

"Still, thank you," whispers Ursa.

Azula stares at her some time before she walks away and paces the other corridors.

[X]

After sufficient time away, Azula slinks back to her bedroom and finds Ty Lee sleeping in bed. Azula closes the door and walks to her. She looks beautiful asleep. Azula softly traces patterns on Ty Lee's bare arm as her chest methodically rises and falls. To Azula, it is brief rapture.

But, as with all bliss, it ends.

Azula lies down in bed and closes her eyes.

Surprisingly, she easily falls asleep and enters another life. Well, the same one, but she is certainly trapped in another body, one that does not respond to her cues.

She screams and rages at Ty Lee. She shoves a weeping Azusami out of her way although she does not want to, grabs the arm of a small girl who looks very much like Kazumi and violently tosses her aside, despite trying to tell herself to stop. After the long, stormy walk, she ends up in the courtyard, taking deep, livid breaths.

Azula sinks, sobbing like a maniac. She tears at her hair and then tears at her arms. Her sharp nails leave long red marks on her ivory skin. Azula sobs and shudders.

She suddenly suspects what will come next when she hears a child crying out for her. Azula cannot stop herself. She wants to scream at herself to change what happens. Wants to claw at her arms and force her head to turn, force her feet to move and prevent it. But she has no control; she is trapped in the body of a horrid woman.

"Momma!" cries a child so young that the word slurs and warbles coming from her lips.

She just lies down and screams, "Find someone else! Leave me alone!"

Princess Azula does not bother to control her rage. She screams into the nothingness of the gardens and her lips contort into a snarl. When she closes her eyes, she hears the thud from the stone staircase. Azula leaps up and runs, but she knows she will be too late.

When she reaches the patio in the courtyard, she sees a tiny little girl lying motionless on the ground, her head lying in a pool of her own blood.

Azula opens her eyes. The cold sweat drenching the blankets around her reminds her of where she is. That was a dream—that was a memory of the past—now she lies beside Ty Lee in her bedroom in this life of a monster.

Ty Lee wakes when Azula sits up.

"I see no point in redeeming the person I am in this life. There is too much wrong with her to even begin," Azula breathes.

"There is nothing wrong with you," Ty Lee urgently insists. "Things happened to you. A lot of things happened to you that you couldn't cope with. That's all."

"What do you want from me," Azula hisses.

Ty Lee should say nothing, but Azula supposes she asked for the truth.

"I want a real marriage," says Ty Lee, faintly forcing a smile. Azula sees how fake it is.

So Azula asks, "And what if I'm just not ready for that?"

"Then I'll wait. We have a lifetime, don't we?"

[X]

Early in the morning, Azula walks outside into the chilly air stands where her daughter died. Her skin prickles with goosebumps from the cold and the pain. She sees the blood on the stones even though she knows someone scrubbed it away long ago.

After an eternity, someone walks up behind her with light, graceful footsteps. Ty Lee, of course. Azula does not need to turn around to know it is her alleged wife.

"What was her name?" Azula softly inquires, still staring at the stones.

Ty Lee softly says, "Itami."

"Itami," Azula whispers. She closes her eyes and nods.

Suddenly, Ty Lee seizes her arm. "Do you want to get out of here?"

"Yes," Azula says, not bothering to hide her relief.

Ty Lee slides her grip down to Azula's hand.

"Ember Island?"

"Ember Island. You and me and the children. No one else," Azula whispers.

"As you wish, my princess," Ty Lee says with a slight bow of respect.

She backs away and leaves Azula in the courtyard alone.

[X]

Ember Island is frozen in time, as it always has been.

The summer palace may be very different after a long time away (albeit the same as it was last time Azula stayed here), and Azula again sets her hand on the fresh paint. She knows she cannot cover up her flaws and cracks like Zuko did here, but she knows she can start again as a new person. The spirits gave her this chance and she shall take it.

Her daughters bounce around, excited to be near the sea.

"Do you want me to play with you?" Azula offers the girls.

Tears blossom in Ty Lee's eyes and Azula pretends not to notice. Kazumi wraps herself around her mother.

Azula orders, "You need to stay out of the sun, but there is still sand in the shade. Azusami, don't you dare go out in that ocean alone. I think we should build a very elaborate palace of sand."

"Yay! Yay! Yay!" exclaim the very loud little girls.

Princess Azula knows their excitement stems from years of neglect.

It is easier to start with them.

They never hurt her the way everyone else did.

Azula abandons Ty Lee and goes outside to play with her children.

[X]

When Azula comes inside, soaked and sticky with sand, she walks to go clean herself, dropping the kids on Ty Lee to bathe. She played with them; Ty Lee might as well do the hard part.

Azula rinses herself off and examines herself in the mirror. She will look like this forever. Maybe she will never get used to this body, and she still hates looking at it. But Azula could learn to live with it.

"No, you can't," says a familiar voice. "You'll never accept this life. You hate waking up in it and you hate living it and you hate looking at the body of the monster you always knew you would become."

Azula sighs and stares down at the filthy wash basin. She feels the presence of the Visitant and forces herself to look up at the mirror. Princess Azula always has been able to see her ghost without a mirror, ever since she was a little girl, but it always becomes more apparent in reflections.

"There are merits. In my old life I would be dead or imprisoned," Azula snarls.

"Oh, they brainwashed you, didn't they? They made you wuv them."

"I love none of them but the children and my wife. I will never trust them, but I think I trust her."

"Hm." The Visitant sets her hand on Azula's shoulder. "What's it like to fall in love for the first time? What's it like to love someone enough to force yourself to live a life you despise?"

"It is like dying a little every day. Maybe it is like being alive for the first time too. It is a sense of pained and disgusting bliss inside that I do not trust because I know someone else could take it away. That I had no control over myself when it came to her. When it comes to her. It destroyed me more than once. She… unmade me. They made me. She unmade me. That means she is more powerful than I want a traitor to be."

"You are so poetic," purrs the Visitant. "You are so in love. Don't let Ty Lee have that power. She didn't hesitate to betray you and ruin your life. She lied to you just like everyone else. Just because she had babies with a different you doesn't mean she deserves your affection."

"No. Maybe she does not deserve my affection, but she has it."

"You aren't imprisoned. Run. Run as fast as you can away from this life and build your own without these traitors and beasts surrounding you."

"I always thought you knew me better than anyone else. But you do not."

"Oh?"

"I am Princess Azula of the Fire Nation and I never run from a fight."

The Visitant hums and vanishes for the time being.

Azula clutches the sides of the wash basin and begs the spirits never to let that ghost return.

[X]

That night she burns her skin with the kisses of a woman she always was attracted to.

They melt into each other as they tear their own hearts to pieces.

Azula does not think she will ever understand the perfection of sex.

[X]

In the morning, Azula lies in the sand, basking in the sunlight. Usually, she would be practicing or meditating. She just lies there like a silly girl on a quaint vacation.

Speak of silly girls on quaint vacations; Ty Lee lies down beside her.

They say nothing at first.

"We should get to work today. There are many things to change and we cannot waste time," Azula briskly says. "I came to this island to start my life again. You promised to assist me with your knowledge of how I recovered last time. I am relieved you are awake and we can begin working."

Ty Lee lazily sighs. "You have your whole life ahead of you to mend what's broken. Happy moments like these are few and far between. Maybe we should just enjoy this while we have it."

Azula closes her eyes and basks in the light of the sun. Ty Lee's warm hand gently touches her wrist and pulls her back to reality. Right now, she thinks she accepts this life. She enjoys being dragged into it again by the woman she sometimes hates but always loves.

"I would like that, Ty Lee," whispers Azula, her voice almost drowned out by the waves.

She keeps her eyes open long enough to see a radiant smile spread across her wife's face.

THE END

A/N: I don't really know what to say. I've loved writing this story. That's why I put off the very simple ending for so long. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed the show.