Title: Sharp Objects

Author: overlithe

Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender

Summary: Girl!Zuko AU. Prince Ozai's daughters had always been the girls, but even when you've been bound together all your life, ties can change when the world turns out to be full of sharp objects.

Characters/Pairing(s): Zuko, Azula, most of the other characters eventually; the story is primarily gen, but except background pairings of all varieties (f/f, f/m, m/m, etc).

Rating: T

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and concepts created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and owned by Nickelodeon and various other corporations/people. I'm not making any money and do not intend any copyright or trademark infringement.

Author's Note: I need more AUs to work on like I need pneumonic plague, but this idea grabbed me (since I think Zuko being female would alter the family dynamics in important ways and things would snowball from there into all kinds of interesting possibilities) and so here we are. I am posting this as I go along, which is a novel experience for me as it comes to multi-chapter stories, but hopefully the updates won't be too infrequent. (Also, I've been having some serious problems in my wrist joints for several weeks now, so I apologise in advance if this contains more stray typos than usual.) With all that said, on with the show and I hope you enjoy the story!

Sharp Objects

Chapter One: The Girls

They had always been the girls.

Once or twice Zumi wondered about that. She was older by a year and almost six months, but that didn't seem to matter much when they looked so much alike. People didn't really notice the difference in height, not when they were faced with two girls with the same nearly-black hair and eyes the same shade of dark amber. Wearing the same scarlet clothes and with the same bangs, twin gold pieces in their topknots.

And they were always the girls.

'I will take the girls down to the beach,' father would say when they holidayed in Ember Island, and Zumi and Azula would march down in identical bathing suits, holding identical bright red buckets and miniature bright red shovels.

'My bucket's better,' Azula said as she filled her bucket with wet, closely-packed sand.

Zumi rolled her eyes. 'They're the same.'

'Well, I'm making really important buildings,' Azula snapped, and carefully deposited another tower of sand next to the ones she'd already assembled.

Zumi ignored her and went back to staring at the crab-snails the tide had brought in.

'Come on, girls, let's get you in your Spring Festival clothes,' mother would say. Zumi stayed still as mother brushed her hair, making it crackle like a freshly lit fire bowl, and remained silent even as her scalp was tugged as mother braided and twisted the hair into place. When it was done, ruby eyes looked at her in the mirror, winking in her coiled locks.

When it was Azula's turn, she squirmed, then glanced at her older sister and turned still, a creature in a fable who'd been turned into stone. 'Oh, I'm sorry, darling,' Ursa said when she drove in a bird-eyed pin too deep.

'I didn't even notice, mother,' Azula said, and threw a defiant look at Zumi. When they were both ready, Azula tugged on the gilded fire lily hanging on her chest and said, in a whisper too low for mother to hear, 'The Spring Festival is so stupid.'

'Why is it stupid?'

Azula let out a dramatic sigh. 'Because we don't have a spring, dum-dum.' She toyed with the ribbons in her robe. 'It's just an excuse to eat saffron cake.'

'You said that like it's a bad thing,' Zumi said, and even though Azula opened her mouth to speak again, she instead said nothing and the two of them walked onwards together in their heavy brocaded robes, the hems whispering on the ground behind them.

They were the girls when it came to presents, given to them equally on both their birthdays, so that for a while Zumi had thought you celebrated your birthday twice a year and Azula had spent a whole month making fun of her over it once she had found out. Boxes presented on trays, wrapped in red rice paper so fine you could part it with your fingers. Dolls with braids made of real hair, tiny animals sculpted from sandalwood, miniature tea cups and canopied beds. They played in the corner of their bedroom—Zumi had heard mother said that there was no point in separating the girls while they were so young, and when they were out of earshot Azula had added "and we're just the children of the second-born prince anyway".

Azula always played make-believe battles. She would assemble regiments of wooden koala-sheep and turtle-ducks, and have them besiege the model palace laid out by the wall.

Zumi would fashion helmets from toy teacups, and siege engines from toy chairs, and look at the dollhouse palace splayed out on the floor, its wings and rooms folded open and dissected like the diagrams in writing books.

'How come we always invade the palace?' she asked as Azula hung a chain of gliding monkeys from one of the dragontooth spires. 'We live in the palace.'

'Because someone else took over the palace and we're conquering it again,' Azula said, making it sound like the most obvious thing in the world.

'How did they take over the palace? All the Imperial Guards would stop them before they even got in.' She refrained from asking how the gliding monkeys would help.

Azula didn't reply. Instead a corner of her mouth curled up in that sharp little smirk that said she knew something you didn't. 'There are all kinds of ways to get into things.' She rearranged her platoon of monkeys, looked up. 'Secret ways.'

'That's silly,' Zumi said, and looked at the spot on the floor where she had mixed a family of carved camelephants with wooly lorises made of grey stone, their eyes glinting pinpricks of amber. Sometimes she found the miniature animals more interesting that the make-believe battles Azula came up with, like she did the times when they would sit by mother, the air drowsy with tea steam, and Ursa would read the great Fire Nation classics to them. Zumi mostly liked it, even if a lot of the poems were full of coiled lines she didn't understand. Azula would just sit through them in shuttered silence, and only perked up when mother read the tale of some great Fire Nation victory.

But sometimes Zumi did wonder why mother would always skip from departing ships to scarlet banners aloft in triumph.

'Secret means nobody knows about it.' Not even you, she didn't bother to add.

'No, secret means most people don't know about it,' Azula said with an exasperated frown. It was obvious she didn't count herself in that inferior category.

Zumi didn't answer, but her skin was beginning to itch by the time Azula finally spoke again. 'I'll show you if you don't believe me,' her sister said.

'Secret ways to get into the palace? When would you have time to find them?' It wasn't an entirely pointless question. They were never apart for very long.

Azula stood up, her knee flipping one of the camelephants onto its side. 'Come on, then.'

Zumi waited for a moment before she got up and followed her sister, making sure to keep at least two steps behind. But Azula didn't have some prank prepared, and she didn't go very far—she only walked to the other corner of the room, where a finely carved wooden screen stood, curls of reddish latticework buffed to the sheen of flame. Azula ducked into the space between the screen and the wall. There was a creak and a groan of metal.

Even cloaked by the screen and the shadows, Zumi could tell one of the panels in the wall had slid to one side, revealing a hole.

She stepped around the screen, until she was shoulder to shoulder with her sister. Azula pushed back a little, but Zumi ignored her.

The hole—a rectangular opening that was just perfect for them but would make a grown-up have to crouch at least a little—opened into a corridor lined with dark stone. Spiderfly webs fluttered in a draught that smelled of dust, and wax, and cold.

'Where does this go?' Zumi asked. Her voice, like the light, was dampened by the secret passage's walls.

'Everywhere.' Azula's voice wasn't. She turned to Zumi, and her expression softened the barest fraction. 'There is something big underground. There are corridors that don't lead anywhere, but that's just what they want you to think. If you knock on the walls and the floor you can hear an echo. That means they're hollow,' she added in a drawl.

Zumi inched a little closer to the opening, enough for the—

cobwebs

—draught to brush her face. The stone in the secret corridor was dark grey and rough, unlike any she'd seen in the palace, even in sculptures turned blind and mossy by time, and for a moment she was sure that if she stepped inside she would be stepping into some alien world. A maze that lay cheek-to-jowl with the palace's daylight world, but was full of shadows and stairs that spiralled down to nowhere.

No, she was being silly. She was almost eight, which made her a big girl.

Certainly not someone who was afraid of monsters.

'Go on,' Azula said.

Zumi's gaze remained fastened to the secret passage, but she didn't move. She was sure the cold air blowing in from the dark had just shifted a little, like the breath of a living thing.

'Unless you're scared.' Azula said the last word in a sing-song voice.

Zumi bristled. 'I'm not scared.'

'I bet you can't even walk to the end of the corridor without getting scared and running back.'

'Shut up,'Zumi said, and tried to think of something to tell her sister. Azula had been the first to push her stuffed koala-sheep away when mother put them to bed at night, saying that she was big now and didn't need to sleep with some stupid baby toy. Only she still stuck her thumb in her mouth she was asleep—Zumi would sometimes stir awake to see her sleeping sister sucking away at her thumb like a rooting kid-piglet.

Heat flowed into Zumi's face. No, Azula wouldn't like being told about her thumb-sucking one little bit—she hated looking like a little child, and especially giving grown-ups any excuse to treat her like one—but how could Zumi use it? She'd just trip over her own tongue, and then Azula would find a way to throw the words back at her, twice as sharp.

Instead she just took another half step towards the hole in the wall, until the tip of her foot was inside the secret passage. She put a hand on the opening's lip. The stone felt cold and rough under her fingers, and when she pulled them back they were furry with dust. 'Gross,' she said. She tried to wipe the dust away, but a grey smear remained. 'You just want me to get all dirty so mother will tell me off.'

Azula produced a shrug as exaggerated as those of the actors in the Ember Island theatre. 'Yes, that must be it,' she said, and brushed past Zumi. 'It can't possibly be that you're too much of a baby to go in there.' She stepped around the screen, and when Zumi looked at her, her face was covered in slats and curlicues of shadow. 'But suit yourself,' Azula added, and strode towards the other side of the room.

'I'm not,' Zumi said. She could almost see the words hanging in the air, ringing like a struck gong. On the other side of the screen, Azula stopped, turned around.

Zumi slid her foot all the way into the opening in the wall, until the darkness had swallowed her up to the ankle. 'I'm not afraid,' she said, and some little part of her was a little surprised at how hard her voice sounded.

Surprised and pleased.

She didn't bother with turning around to see her sister's face. She didn't even take a deep breath. Instead she just plunged forward into the passage.

It was like that first dive into the ocean whenever they were at the beach. The cold stung her. For a few seconds, she was almost blind. She walked on, and a small red flame bloomed in her hand.

The inside of the tunnel smelled like a cupboard unaired for too long, and the ceiling was much higher that she'd imagined, tall enough for someone standing on a komodo rhino to ride through comfortably. Orange light from her flame dripped down the walls. Zumi looked towards the end of the corridor, which now looked much farther away than it had before. But that couldn't be possible, could it? Maybe what had looked like a wall when seen from the room was actually just… something else entirely.

Something skittered behind her. She turned around but there was nothing, of course, only the dust-smeared floor and the dark walls. It's probably just an elephant-rat, she thought, and looked forward again. These passages were probably full of vermin and bugs and things. She batted away a cobweb, ghostly and sticky, and kept moving. Ahead of her, the end of the tunnel wavered in the firelight. It should be getting closer by now, shouldn't it? Her footsteps sounded too soft and too loud at the same time. The corridor couldn't be more than twenty yards long. She had to be nearly there.

A breath of cold put out her flame and she nearly stumbled. Fire burst in her fingertips again. For a moment all she could see was an open maw and she jerked back. But no, it was just another corridor, branching off from the first. She looked down into it, at a flight of stairs that plunged—

endlessly

—into the dark, far beyond the little bubble of light. Dust whitened the edges of the steps, but the middle was cleaner, as if someone walked up and down them all the time.

Or something. Something slipping through the palace's hidden veins, scaly and cold.

Stop it. She turned away from the stairs and strode to the end of the corridor—it wasn't nearly as far as it'd seemed—until she could touch the grey wall in front of her. There was nothing scary about it, of course. It was just some stupid wall. She touched it; the stone felt reassuringly rough.

Then something whispered against her neck and tugged at her sleeve.

:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:

In father's study, they weren't the girls.

Even though father was only the second-born Prince, not the Crown Prince and much less the Fire Lord, the place intimidated her a little even now. When she was six her voice had shrunk all the way to the bottom of her throat and the ruby gaze of dragons felt heavy on her skin. Father had her and Azula sit across from him at the writing desk, as if they were grown-ups. Zumi kept her hands carefully folded on her lap, sure that if she did otherwise she'd accidentally upend an inkpot all over the map that took up most of the desk, reds and yellows burnished by sun and firelight.

'Do you know, Zumi,' father began, and she perked up, 'that you are the first girl to be born to the royal family in over one hundred and fifty years? The last one before you died still an infant, and so the very fact of your birth is lucky.'

Zumi didn't really understand how that followed, but father's voice was deep and soothing like the droning of scorpion-bees, and so she just nodded and said 'Yes, father.' Out of the corner of her eye she could see Azula stare, and shift impatiently. Ozai turned to her.

'And you, Azula, you started firebending at an age as prodigiously young as Fire Lord Azulon himself.' He pushed forward a book that had been lying under his hands. Sunlight careened off a stylised golden flame on the cover and Zumi batted away her wondering about what "prodigiously" meant—it sounded like something wonderful, but also strange, and a little scary.

'It has been the duty of royal women to serve and command our nation. Greatness flows in your veins. You must show yourselves worthy of it.'

Zumi nodded. Father opened the book, let its pages flip under his fingers. Black ink was animated for a few seconds, human figures blurred into each other, bloodied by drawings of flames.

'Those are advanced firebending forms,' Zumi blurted out, then clamped her mouth shut. Too late, of course, but father didn't seem to mind.

'Quite.' The flipping pages stilled on a series of drawings showing a complicated sequence of kicks and turns. The firebender was a woman, Zumi noticed. 'This is the Jaguar-boar's Step,' he said. 'Study it.' Both girls leaned towards the book, Azula going out of her way to inch forward a little more than her sister. Zumi looked at the pictures, sure that this was some kind of test and that she was already failing it. The weight of the sunlight streaming in from the windows and the smell of the scented oil in the flame bowls were making her drowsy, and the form in the page was eight steps long, much more complicated than the basic forms she'd learned so far. When her father closed the book, the moves quickly jumbled in her mind. She was sure she'd barely had enough time to memorise the first three steps.

'Do you think you can demonstrate it?' father said.

Azula nearly bounced to her knees. 'I can!'

Zumi looked up. 'Mother says we don't—' The words fizzled out on her tongue. She'd heard mother said that thankfully the two of them had no need to learn any more firebending than that necessary for self-defence; how lucky that they were the daughters of a second Prince and not the Fire Lord.

Another time, when the two of them had been playing, Azula had declared herself the commander of the Fire Nation forces. 'You can be the commander of the Earth Nation, and then we can fight,' she added, sounding like she was dispensing an enormous favour.

'I don't want to be the Earth Nation commander,' Zumi said. 'I want to be in the Fire Nation too.'

'There's only the two of us,' Azula said in a stinging tone. 'Maybe I'll let you help me when I do it for real.'

Mother's chuckle was almost drowned out by the quacks of the turtle-ducks. 'What a thing to say, Azula,' she said. Her tone was not unkind, but for a split-second Zumi was sure that her mother's face was a blank mask, a hard shell over flesh. But it vanished in an instant, and Ursa was again the warm, lotus-scented body that cuddled her close, the hands that gently untangled her hair, the lips that kissed her goodnight or hummed a song. Zumi was sure she had just imagined the other one. 'You two won't be commanding any armies, thank goodness. But I am sure you'll be a great firebending teacher,' mother had added, scattering Zumi's thoughts, and set her book aside to pat Azula's head.

'Ah, yes,' father said, and rose to his feet in one fluid move. The memory winked out. Both girls got to her feet, Azula smooth, Zumi nearly stepping on her own hem. 'I am afraid you will encounter people who will think of you as lesser. Those who cannot bear educated women, much less women who can best them in combat. Do you two realise that there are parts of the world so barbaric that you two, for reason of your sex, would be allowed no skills other than those necessary to serve men and bear their children?' Zumi swallowed a small lump in her throat and shook her head, even though she wasn't quite sure about what was involved in that last thing father had mentioned. 'And some places so decadent that they boast of having wives that need no other purpose than that of a beautiful vase, or a pretty bird in a cage. Something you can afford to cast aside or replace when it no longer serves its purpose. Or when it breaks.'

'That's stupid,' Azula said, and lowered her head quickly, but father didn't rebuke her for the outburst.

'That's… why we're fighting the war, isn't it?' Zumi said. Her gaze didn't go further than father's collar. 'To make things better.'

'Yes,' father said, and stepped around the desk. Zumi turned around in his wake and Azula, she couldn't help but notice, did the same. 'Though even in our nation, there has been some corruption of our great traditions. You will still find those who do not believe you are fit for the greatness you've inherited.' He turned to look at Zumi. 'Those who will be looking for any flaw, any weakness, any excuse to dismiss you.' She wanted to lower her eyes, but her gaze was hooked in his. Her body felt trapped in warm, invisible amber. 'Of course, maybe that is what you want.' The golden eyes darkened. 'Maybe you find greatness too demanding. Maybe you are too weak and foolish for it and would prefer that comfortable cushion in that beautiful cage. Is that what you want?'

'No,' Zumi said hurriedly, but it didn't matter what she was saying. Her father was something beautiful and powerful, and she thought of the dragons in the stories mother told, scales turned to fire by the sun, eyes of molten gold heavy with magic that could look into your very soul and hold you still and in thrall, happy to march into a mouth ringed with fangs.

Only it—

was

—wasn't scary. It was comfortable, reassuring, even. She desperately wanted to please him. To have that little half-smile come again, the cloud dispelled.

'Ah,' he said. 'You want strength, then. Excellence instead of mediocrity. Good. Do the form.'

She took a step back, sure that she couldn't even remember the first step. 'I…'

'I can do it!' Azula said. 'I can do the form, father.' She cast a sharp glance at Zumi.

'Well, then.' Ozai put a hand on Zumi's shoulder and ushered her aside, clearing a space on the floor. 'Let's see it. Show me the motions only—we wouldn't want to set a rare scroll on fire, would we?'

'No,' Azula said with a smirk, and Zumi was sure this was some private joke between the two, one she would never be privy to.

Azula stepped to the middle of the floor, raised her arms, and begun. Jab, spin, kick, side-step, spin. She didn't really need the fire: her motions were every bit as quick and blinding. She moved as if she had been rehearsing this all her life, instead of being a little kid who had only turned five a few months ago.

And yet—and yet Zumi was sure, as Azula finished her routine by landing in a half-crouch, that her sister had not followed the form laid out in the book, even if by now the pictures were a half-remembered jumble in her mind.

'It's not what was in the book,' she whispered. Her words were almost inaudible, but father whipped his head towards her. He would have heard it even if she had only thought it, she was sure, but he didn't look displeased. He turned back towards Azula.

'You reversed it,' he said.

Azula straightened up. 'I thought I should use my better arm.' She waved her left hand in the air. 'I can do it right-handed if you'd like, father,' she added, smug.

'That won't be necessary,' Ozai said. 'Zumi will do it right-handed. That is your better hand, isn't it?'

Zumi was too pleased that he had noticed—most people didn't, especially since both of them could use either hand; it was only when they were sitting across each other, holding brushes or chopsticks, that they looked like perfect mirror images—to immediately realise what this meant. She couldn't just copy her sister's motions.

Well, how hard could it be?

'I'll do it right-handed, father,' she said, and strode towards the middle of the room. Azula had just done the motions in front of her—it was only a matter of flipping them. Her heart fluttered against her ribcage like a frightened bird, then quietened as she took a deep breath. She raised her arms and began: right-handed jab, sideways leg spin, right leg kick—no, left leg—

Her body felt stiff with rust. Line drawings scattered in her mind. She stumbled halfway through her second spin, wobbled for one terrible second on one foot, then went flying, arms splayed, and rammed into a cabinet with a sickening crack. The world flashed scarlet. Something clipped her shoulder, hit her chest, and clattered to the floor.

She opened her eyes.

There was no pain. At least, not yet. She saw only father and Azula's faces, still despite the wet haze in her eyes. Azula's face was blank, father's moved a little in her direction. 'Are you hurt?' He didn't sound very concerned.

'No,' Zumi said, and knew it sounded like a whine. Azula's face remained blank, but Zumi knew it was a mask, and now the pain did come, in her back, her head, her arms, throbbing and dark red.

'Well, you'll just have to practice,' father went on. 'How odd that your skills diverge so, though. You look alike so much I am sure you keep being mistaken for each other.' Azula's eyes widened just a fraction, but Zumi barely noticed. The haze in her eyes had turned stinging and hot, threatening to spill. She was back in the music room, an erhu too big for her propped up on her lap, an edge of its sound box poking her stomach. She had looked with undisguised curiosity at the great wind instruments, hulking and curled like the horns of long-dead beasts, but mother had turned her away with that little wordless shake of her head that meant that something was firmly and irrevocably closed, then handed her the erhu and its bow. She adjusted strings, bow, hands. All Zumi managed to produce was a screech like a cat-owl tied up inside a sack. Azula snickered under her breath.

'Keep copying your scales, Azula,' mother said, and gently patted Zumi's shoulder. 'It's all right, darling. It took me a long time to learn too—you'll just have to keep going.'

So she had, the screeching unchanged, until she was sure everybody in the palace could hear it and her world was a bright, hot point of humiliation.

Azula hadn't snickered again, like she wasn't snickering now, but she didn't have to. 'Come,' father said, and extended one hand towards her.

She didn't think before her fingers groped around on the floor at her side, across scattered glass, and fastened around a length of leather-covered metal. Something flared inside her, the same thing that had kept her playing the erhu until her fingers were cramped and stiff. Steel whistled through the air as she swept forward into a crouch and fire burst out of her left hand.

She blinked, and the fire sank down to a little orange ball. She had just—without planning, without thinking—unsheathed a knife, and slashed at the air in front of her while balanced on one foot. She looked down and her ankle wobbled, then she looked back up again, at her father's face looming above her. The knife remained in her hand, as if it had been welded on, the steel an edge of white light. She couldn't drop it. She couldn't move. She couldn't even speak. Her stomach knotted.

But instead of rebuking her, father's mouth twisted into that same little half-smile he'd shown after Azula had finished her routine.

'Stand up, my dear,' he said. Her heart fluttered. Father almost never called them anything other than their names, or, on occasion, "child". Zumi hauled herself to her feet. Her knees shook a little. Still the knife remained clasped in her hand, held low, the tip pointed up. Azula snuck across the room until she was standing a few steps behind father.

Ozai held Zumi's wrist and turned the knife to and fro. A thread of light careened down the metal, off a winking ruby eye in the handle. 'Do you know what this is?'

She tried to say no and only managed a little shake of her head. 'I do,' Azula piped up.

'It's a dragon dagger,' father said, and this time, when he tipped the dagger towards his hand, Zumi's grip slackened. 'Double-edged, made with the finest steel in all the Fire Nation.' The hilt was a scaly dragon's neck, the head so full of small detail Zumi wondered how someone had crafted it. Jewelled, lidless eyes stared at her. 'From Fire Lord Sozin's time. Awarded only to those who had earned the title of Dragon. An excellent choice, daughter. You must have been admiring it.'

She hadn't, really—she was sure she hadn't noticed it before and that her fingers had only closed on it by pure chance—but she found herself looking straight into her father's eyes and saying 'Yes, father.' A thread of fear rose inside her—she had never lied to her father, she didn't even think it was possible—but it was drowned by the same heat that had filled her when she'd slashed with the dagger.

'Good. It seems like you have a skill after all. Weapons too are part of our lineage's great traditions.' His tone changed. 'But they are not for the weak. Those who quit at the first hurdle. Those who are afraid. If you wish to be trained, you'll have to be willing to be work day after day through pain, and sweat, and blood. There will be no whimpering, and no tears, and no complaints.' He pulled the dagger away, as if to tuck it into the folds of his robe. 'But maybe you are too young. Not ready yet.'

'No!' She almost grabbed at the dagger, but knew that would just make her look like a child. 'I am ready, father!'

His expression softened a fraction. 'Give me the sheath.'

She had to shake off a few pieces of glass off the tooled leather before handing it to him. He sheathed the dagger and handed it to her hilt first. 'Here. You may have it.'

It was only as she took it that she noticed the golden characters near the top of the hilt, shining dully in the light. Conqueror.

:=:

Three days later, mother found the dagger. Zumi had been playing with it every day, drawing it and out and sheathing it again, lunging and stabbing at the air. At some point Azula had let out a dramatic sigh and rammed at Zumi's feet with her own. 'There,' Azula said as she did it, 'and there. That's where your feet should be. All right? That's a proper stance. Now stop embarrassing me.' Zumi made a face at her sister, but she had to admit it was easier to keep her balance.

She was playing in their room when mother stepped in, but she only noticed when Azula stood up and she turned around, dagger still in her hand. 'What are you doing?' Ursa said. She didn't sound like she'd noticed the dagger yet, even though Zumi was sure it blazed in her hand like a falling star.

'Nothing,' Azula said, but mother was already looking down.

'What is this?' Ursa said, and snatched the dagger from Zumi's hands. Zumi almost jumped up to try to get it back, but held herself back at the last second. She—

father wouldn't like it

—didn't want to look like some little kid trying to get a pie from a high shelf. 'Father gave it to me,' she said.

Ursa turned the dagger around in her hands to examine it. 'It's real!'

'Of course it's real,' Azula said. 'What would be the point otherwise?'

'Don't say things like that,' mother said with a frown. 'Weapons are dangerous. Someone could have been injured.'

'Father gave it to me,' Zumi said. She wasn't sure why she'd said it—father had made it sound like they weren't supposed to talk about their visit to his study, and she only tattled when Azula was being really annoying—but it seemed to work. Even she could tell mother's face had just softened a little.

'Oh, I see. Then it will be a very beautiful heirloom for when you have a household of your own. I think your children will like it very much.'

Zumi didn't reply. She didn't realise she was supposed to leave the palace some day. She didn't want to leave, and didn't even know where she was supposed to go. And she certainly didn't want any children. She might not hate being a kid as much as Azula did, but she wanted to be big. Grown-ups didn't have to practice their calligraphy for hours, and they weren't punished when they got dirt on a silk dress, and when they did something it wasn't just pretend, with carved animals and toy teacups. They went to real war meetings and real battlefields.

Well, except mother.

Maybe that was why she wanted to take the knife away.

'Let's put it someplace safe, shall we?' Ursa went on, and turned around to leave the room. Zumi and Azula followed on her heels, down the corridors and into Ursa's anteroom, where she wrapped up the dagger in a length of red silk, put in inside a lacquered box, and shut it away in a drawer far too high for Zumi to reach. She heard the compartment's secret mechanism click shut with a sound like a tomb lid falling into place. 'There,' mother said. 'When you're older, you'll want to display it on a wall, I'm sure. Won't that be nice?' she added, with a pat on Zumi's head.

'Come on,' Azula whispered under her breath, and grabbed Zumi's hand. The nails dug a little into her palm, and Zumi was sure she was doing it on purpose.

'Shall we go for a walk in the gardens?' mother said. 'Maybe I can tell you about some of the plants. Would you like that?'

'We're not finished with our game,' Azula said.

Zumi looked from her mother to her sister. 'Yeah,' she said. 'We're still playing.'

:=:

The dagger was on her side of the bed as she slipped under the sheets that night. Mother was right—you really could hurt yourself on it. She sucked the blood droplet off her finger, not minding that she'd cut herself, and shook the scrap of paper off the blade. In the half-light the steel looked bloodless, and beautiful, and the carved dragon's gaze was the colour of fire wine. She picked up the paper, abandoned on the mattress, and unfolded it.

The message was from father, of course. She still read only haltingly, but he always used all kinds of characters, even ones almost nobody else used any more. For a moment she didn't bother with the note's contents. She wanted only to hold it in her hand, tuck it along with the dagger under her pillow, where they'd both be in easy reach of her fingers all night long.

You have one last chance at discretion, daughter, the note said. We begin tomorrow. It will be our little secret.

'I was the one who got it for you, you know,' Azula said from her side of the bed once Zumi had read the note three more times and finally lay down. 'After you let mother take it. Father wouldn't trust anyone else to get it.' She half-turned towards Zumi. 'No point in asking you, of course.'

'Then why did you do it?' She could feel the slender hardness of the dagger under her pillow. Not just close. Safe.

Azula turned away again. 'I'm going to sleep now.'

It was only when the room was silent again that Zumi considered what that meant—that Azula had snuck into mother's rooms and stolen something.

Well, not really stolen, she corrected herself hurriedly. After all, father had given her the dagger, hadn't he? All of a sudden its weight under her head was no longer cold. It felt like a live coal under her pillow.

She looked at the canopy above her, and wondered if she could have done it herself, and if father would ever ask her.

:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:

'Azula!'

Zumi scrambled to her feet. She had nearly fallen down when her sister had crept up on her, her heart an icy lump in her chest, but now all she felt was anger. Azula laughed and darted down the corridor, a darker shape in the shadows.

And it was Azula, of course—she certainly hadn't felt the too-sweet smell of something starting to rot, and when she'd yelped and grabbed the thing touching her, she'd felt her sister's warm flesh, not skin and fabric soft and powdery with age.

'Get back here!' Zumi said, and raced down the passage, towards the small rectangle of light. 'Or I'll tell—'

Who?

Azula giggled again and the rectangle began to close. No! Fear flashed inside Zumi again, slowing her until she was moving through molasses. She was going to be locked inside the secret tunnel, rattling around in the palace's hollow skeleton, scratching at the walls. She was going to be locked in with it, and it was stalking her even now, scurrying up the steps, slithering on her heels—

She dove into the bedroom, hitting Azula's body so hard the air was knocked out of her chest. They stumbled and rolled onto the floor. Something hard cracked Zumi's side. She opened her eyes to see the wooden screen wobble once, twice, and finally fall with a creak of wood. 'Watch—' But it was too late. The screen whooshed towards the floor, hit the edge of a table, and finally landed with a crack so loud Zumi was sure everybody in the palace heard it. The vase on the table pitched forward and crashed to the floor. Its lid rolled towards the two of them. It finally spun to a halt with a porcelain hum.

Azula was the first to get up. She prodded the lid with the tip of her toes and picked a wooden splinter off her sleeve. 'You're an idiot,' she said.

'You were going to lock me in there!' Zumi said as she got to her feet. Her knees throbbed a little, and she was streaked with dust. She was sure she had even swallowed some, and she had probably torn a hole in her clothes. At least Azula's headpiece was sitting askew—though the satisfaction was thin and short-lived. It winked out as soon as she looked at the shattered screen lying on the floor, the painted vase with thick black cracks in its belly.

'I was only joking,' Azula said, as she slid the panel in the wall shut. You'd never notice it if you didn't already know it was there. 'Besides, you can obviously open it from the inside, dum-dum. What would be the point otherwise?'

Zumi couldn't think of any appropriate reply, so she just let out a grumble as she wiped dust off her face. 'What are we going to do about this?'

Azula glanced at the ruin on the floor. 'It was your fault.'

'You started it!'

'You finished it.' She stepped around the screen and kneeled by the vase. 'Let's just turn it around. Nobody pays any attention to these things anyway.'

'That's your plan?' Zumi looked down at the fallen screen. Yes, maybe they could prop it up again.

Maybe they could pretend a platypus-bear had clawed at it.

'I don't need a plan,' Azula said breezily. 'I just need someone else to take the blame.'

'Don't—'

'Girls, are you ready? It's time for— My goodness, what happened here?'

Zumi looked up, her heart dropping down to some place by her feet. Mother was standing at the bedroom door, flanked by two maids carrying folded fabric. One of the maids' mouth quivered, then froze, her eyes still demurely downcast.

'How did this happen?' Ursa stepped into the bedroom, slippered feet approaching the wreck. Zumi couldn't move, couldn't speak. She just remained frozen in place, cold sweat pearling her forehead. Mother turned to Azula, who was still kneeling by the broken vase. 'Zumi, look at you. I told you you should be careful when you're playing with your little sister.'

That released Zumi's tongue. 'I'm Zumi,' she said, then added, limply, 'We were playing. The screen fell.'

'Oh, of course, I'm sorry,' mother said, then turned to her, her tone displeased again. 'But look at the two of you. You're filthy, and look at the mess you've made. You should be old enough to play on your own.' She hauled Azula to her feet, then grabbed Zumi's arm. 'You're young ladies now, I thought I could leave you alone without you breaking things. Do you know how old that vase is? How precious?'

'It was the screen, mother,' Azula said in her sweetest tone. Zumi recognised it as the voice she always used when she wanted to fool a grown-up; Azula always said you just needed to sound as stupid as most grown-ups thought kids were. Zumi had tried it once, but she sounded like her mouth was full of jumping beans instead of honey, and of course it hadn't worked. 'I don't think it was built properly.'

Mother frowned. 'Well, you shouldn't have touched it,' she said, and soon the pair of them had been hauled into one of the bathing rooms, stripped, rinsed, and dunked into the large tub sunken in the middle of the floor.

It was only when their attendant turned her back on them to fetch a wooden comb that Azula spoke again. A curtain of steam rose between them, and Zumi's hair floated around her, dark and slippery, like seaweed. 'I wonder what we were supposed to be doing now.'

'You didn't find anyone to blame,' Zumi said, knees pulled close to her chin. The water was hot but a ripple of cold passed under her skin. They would probably only be given some rice porridge before being sent to bed, and who knew how many hours they'd have to spend copying characters without being allowed outside, but the prospective punishment didn't seem to phase Azula in the slightest.

'Which is funny, considering it was all your fault.'

'I should have told mother it was your fault.'

Azula scoffed. 'She can't even really tell us apart.'

:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:

TBC…

Notes: Clearly, in this universe Ozai knows that if you want to get the Angels together, you can't go around delegating. ;) Seriously now, obviously this is my interpretation, but I do think that if Zuko were a girl Ozai would have an easy entry point to manipulate her, by driving a wedge between her and people wishing to shoehorn her into a much narrower idea of what a ~~proper lady~~ should be like, and while Ozai being Ozai means he'll probably go all "I'm bored, let's you and her fight" at some point, for now he's quite happy to have two faithful little weapons for the price of one. And while Azula was never going to have a sibling relationship that's all sweetness and light and rainbow Care Bears or whatever, I think she's shrewd enough to quickly grasp the fact that, as should become increasingly clear in upcoming chapters, from the PoV of a lot of people, if she has a brother, she has to prove herself as being better than him, so his failure benefits her… but if she has a sister, another girl's failure reflects on her, so sibling rivalry aside, she has an interest in making sure her sister doesn't let the side down. Especially when you consider the fact that she and Zuko were hardly at constant DEFCON 1 in the canon in any case—so this is the world in which their interests coincide most of the time (at least for now).

The bit with Zumi thinking for a moment that the secret corridors stretch on forever was somewhat inspired by Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves. There's no direct quotes or anything, but I thought I ought to mention it anyway.