Author's note: Contains spoilers from the Boiling Rock and to some degree the NYCC trailer.

The purpose of this writing was to explore what it would take for Azula to achieve a 'change of heart' similar to that of Zuko.

The inspiration for this came primarily from Wren Sharpbeak's "Chapter 16 'The Sanctuary': Segment 4 - "A Touch of Madness"" which spurred me into some serious thinking about Azula's character. The events of the Boiling Rock part II and the NYCC trailer also play their influential parts in this.

Thanks to fuzzytomato for proofreading, helping me edit a few lines, and picking out a fantastic title.

Edit: Rava77 points out that their are many similar details between my writing here and the Sozin's Comet book. Honestly, I was vaguely even aware of the books existence, let alone any details from it, so an similarities are pure coincidence.

Contrition

Sitting up in sudden wakefulness, breathing hard, feeling the sweat that clings to her skin, the perspiration on her scalp and under the haphazardly wrapped bandages on her body, Azula's eyes adjust to the light in the empty room around her. She had been dreaming, a nightmare she realizes as her memory returns to her, and with the memory comes an unbidden sob that rattles from deep within her.

She surveys the room, fear on her face, golden eyes darting around wildly, her lower lip quivering. Her mind is a cycle of unclarity, her thoughts circling back to their origins just as a conclusion seems imminent.

Her friends, where are her friends? What had she done to them...

Her brother, how could she have gone so far? Why had she been so cruel...

Her mother, what had she put her mother through? What had she done? Why did she...

Her father, why did she listen? Why did she follow? Why did she believe him? How could she have...

Herself, what had she let herself become? Why did she trade her conscious for power and control? Why did she...

Mai and Ty Lee had betrayed her at the Boiling Rock and were locked away for their actions, but Azula couldn't understand why they had acted the way they did. Why did they betray her? Why did Mai defy her and how could Ty Lee side with Mai instead of her? They feared her, she had made sure of it so they would never act against her, but they had despite her efforts. Why?

It didn't matter anyway. She had learned to survive with minimal interaction with those around her and the absence of friends was nothing new to her. After graduating from the fire academy for girls, Ty Lee left to join the circus and Mai joined her parents in the colonies. She had lived with no one but servants to order around and a father who let her do as she pleased while he managed a war. No mother to watch over her, no Zuko to tease, and no friends to interact with.

This new situation wasn't any different, she had told herself.

But the knowledge that she had somehow failed refused to leave her. Somewhere she had shown weakness and that was all Mai and Ty Lee needed to turn against her. If her two best friends were willing to betray her, then no one could be trusted.

With this in mind she made an extra effort to intimidate her servants, the guards, and anyone she came across in the palace. The more harshly she acted toward those around her, the more they began to talk behind her back, none plotting, but all worried and frustrated with the princess. The fact that they were talking about her was reason enough for Azula to dispose of them. The prisons began to fill up as more and more palace officials were locked up at her order and it wasn't long before she was locking away the jailers herself.

The palace had become practically empty, but still, she wasn't safe. After a terrifying experience returning to her room from the kitchens in the unlit palace halls one night, where every shadow and every sound was an assassin hired by some official she had failed to scare into submission, she had locked herself in her room.

Alone, she felt safe for a short while before the nightmares began to plague her. As she lay asleep at night, Mai and Ty Lee would sneak in, hover over her body ready to strike and the princess would awaken gasping to find no one. After burning the curtains of her bed to allow her to see the expected intruders, the princess would return to sleep to meet her mother's haunting image, condemning her for being what she was, for everything she'd done. Startled awake, Azula would search her room with a vicious fear, demanding her mother show herself before destroying everything in the room in search of the woman.

The dreams of Zuko scared her the most. Of everyone, he was the one she undoubtedly knew no longer feared her. She'd wake up in a cold sweat each time she fought him in her dreams. They all ended the same, a reflected lightning strike back at the princess, the electric shock striking her heart before permeating her body.

And then Zuko showed up at the palace one day as she was fearfully making her way to the kitchens.

She remembers the fight, Zuko confronting her, dropping his swords at his sides before igniting twin orbs of fire in his hands. She had laughed. Not her cold, intimidating laugh, but a laugh foreign to her that came out in gasps as blue flames danced on her fingertips. The fight was a blur, the only thing she remembers of it is that she refused to bend lightning, fearing her dreams might become reality.

Almost as soon as the battle started, it was over.

Zuko collapsed to his knees, propping himself up with one arm while clutching his chest with the other. Azula's eyes went wide behind her disheveled hair, her mouth falling open to ease her ragged breathing but her lips twitching upward in a victorious smile.

And then she arrived.

The Avatar's waterbender ran forward, mouthing Zuko's name, but the voice Azula heard belonged to her mother. Azula's eyes locked shut in a moment of disbelief, flinching under the sound, before reopening, sending a wave of panic washing over her as she found the waterbender gone and instead Ursa holding her fallen son, hands glowing with water as she cradled him in her arms, speaking with a soft desperateness to the prince.

"No! No no no no no!" Azula screamed, stumbling forward and collapsing to her knees, "He doesn't need you! He doesn't! I-I...Mom!"

Her mother looked up, unconcerned expression meeting the wailing girl's despairing stare for a brief moment before returning to her son.

Despondency crashed over the fire princess as the world began to spin around her. Losing her balance from where she knelt, she fell to her stomach before rolling to her side and curling in on herself.

A series of agonizing convulsions rocks Azula's body as she lies on the floor in the fetal position before a noise across the room pulls her out of her memory back into the present, back into the bed she lies in. 'Mom?' her mind shouts as her head jolts to the side to see her mother, only to recoil slightly when she finds the arrow headed Avatar approaching her instead.

"I hope you're not thinking about zapping me," Aang says half jokingly as he takes a seat at her bedside, chuckling slightly but quickly stopping when he sees the torment on her face.

"My m-mom, Ursa, w-where..." Azula gulps, "what happened..." she finally manages.

Taking a deep breath, Aang begins, "Zuko and Katara found your mom before the battle. She was...she was dying, bed ridden. She spent her last moments with Zuko—"

"I saw her!" Azula interrupts desperately, crazily, struggling to get out of bed and closer to Aang as if it will help him understand as she explains, "At the battle, when...I..."

She halts under his pitying expression.

"She wasn't there," he tells her again, "It was only you, Zuko, and Katara."

Lowering her head, unable to convince herself, Azula asks, "Zuko. Is he...did I..."

"He's going to be alright. He's lucky Katara was there."

"Where is he? Can I see him," Azula asks, pleading eyes meeting Aang's solemn gaze. He opens his mouth to speak, but she interjects quickly, "I just want to talk to him. I...I just need to—"

"He won't see you. No one will," Aang says, lowering his eyes and shaking his head, "They want nothing to do with you. They've left your fate up to me."

She understands, but she doesn't want to. Her jaw trembles, her breathing quickens, and her head begins to spin again. Never once do her thoughts stray to her father and she doesn't even consider trying to escape or hope someone will come to her rescue. Her desire for control and power are absent, replaced by an anguished conscious that understands why no one will see her, that understands this is the consequence of her actions, but doesn't understand how she allowed herself to become this and do what she's done.

"I d-deserve to die," she stutters in a whisper, eyes closing as she whimpers painfully, "I've done...so many things...so many terrible things, I don't deserve to live."

"Maybe," Aang says somberly from where he sits next to her, looking away from the bed ridden princess, "We both deserve a lot, some negative, some positive." A sobbed breath prompts him to look back to the girl, "But its rare that anyone gets what they deserve, in this lifetime at least, and I'm not about to give it to you." Averting his eyes and letting out a long breath, Aang finishes, "I forgive you."

Its not an easy choice for him. She had killed him, and if Katara hadn't been there with the water from the spirit oasis the Avatar would have ceased to exist. She was behind so much pain during the final months of Sozin's War. But he's learned that people can change when they're willing, Zuko was example enough for him, and though the war is over and Azula cannot prove herself by joining his side as Zuko did, he's learned that forgiveness doesn't require proof of sorrow or a redeeming act.

Azula's eyes open wide, her mouth parting open in disbelief, to protest, to refuse, to just let out the pained cry she feels inside her, but instead she asks in quiet, tearful astonishment, "How can you forgive me? I-I killed you, in Ba Sing Se. And your friends, and everyone else, I—"

"Because you're sorry and you know what you deserve," Aang tells her, ending her confession and looking her in the eyes straight faced, "None of us are perfect, none of our wrongs can be redeemed. But where does that leave us? All we can do is forgive each other, forgive ourselves, and if we can do that then we'll do better in the future. What we deserve is never erased and so we can only rely on the charity of forgiveness to move on."

Arms lying limp at her sides, Amber eyes scrunched shut, Azula's face tightens painfully as she curls forward, ignoring the searing pain of the wounds on her stomach, shaking tensely, tears escaping her eyelids and coursing down her cheeks as her body throbs under the pressure. She can't handle it. Her once calm, collected, rational mind founded on irrational truths is now a disjointed mess of emotion and logic that can't even begin to fathom how she justified the things she's done. There's no excuse for her, no one and nothing to blame but herself for falling prey to it.

She knows she deserves death. She doesn't want it, but she can't accept the alternative either - to live, even with forgiveness. There's no compromise, no way out, and all she can do is cry.

She doesn't notice when the Avatar takes her hand, but as her fingers curve around his, returning his gentle squeeze, Aang knows it helps. It's all he can do. The rest is up to her.