Chapter Text
The flickering candlelight cast long, dancing shadows across the walls of her chamber, twisting the familiar furnishings into grotesque shapes. Azula had not slept in three days.
The princess lay awake, her eyes wide open, staring into the darkness. Sleep was a luxury she could no longer afford. Not when the visions came.
They had existed since she was a child and started with small things. The first vision was a flicker, a fleeting image of a porcelain cup shattering on the stone floor. Azula, barely five years old, had cried out, her small hand reaching out as if to stop the inevitable. A moment later, the cup, held precariously by a servant, slipped and crashed, echoing through the courtyard.
Trivial things, fleeting moments, and harmless coincidences easily dismissed for the imagination of a child.
But then came the visions of things that had not yet happened.
A noble’s false smile as he plotted treason.
Her father’s voice speaking cruel words before he said them in her presence.
When these instances occurred, she always did a double take, blinking at the wave of déjà vu and looking around to see if someone was playing a trick on her.
If it were a memory of someone saying something in her presence, she would finish the sentence in her head, waiting to see if what she imagined was correct. And it always was.
~~~~~
As she grew older, the visions intensified, becoming more vivid and intrusive. They were visceral experiences, assaulting her senses, leaving her trembling and breathless. They came in the dead of night, tearing her from sleep, their echoes lingering long after she awoke.
She remembered the first time it happened, a chilling premonition of her grandfather’s death. She had woken up screaming, her body drenched in sweat, her mind filled with images of Azulon’s lifeless form. She saw Fire Lord Azulon, his eyes glazed over, his body lifeless in his bed.
She told her mother once when she was still young enough to believe that Ursa would protect her from anything. Ursa’s reaction was not what she expected.
Ursa had rushed to her side. “Azula,” she had whispered, her voice soothing. “It’s alright, my daughter. It was just a dream.”
“It wasn’t a dream, Mother! I know what I saw. It was too real to be something made up. I’m scared. What was that?” The young girl protested, her voice trembling as she clutched tightly onto her mother. Her eyes closed tightly to rid the image in her head.
That must have been the wrong thing to say. Her mother did not comfort her further. Instead, she moved from her position next to Azula and knelt before her, taking Azula’s small hands in her own, squeezing so tightly that it was almost painful.
“That was a vision; they’re glimpses of the future. But you cannot tell anyone about this, especially your father,” Ursa had whispered. “And not even to me.”
“But—”
“No, Azula. They will call you mad. They will use it against you.”
Azula, young and impressionable, had taken her mother’s words to heart. She had been too young to understand the depth of that warning. But she had learned quickly.
The next morning, the servants looked at her differently. A cautious glance, an uneasy silence.
She never spoke of the visions again.
~~~~~
Weeks turned into months, which turned into years, and Azula got accustomed to the way her visions would assault her.
If it wasn’t a harrowing vision of a deathly heated battle between blue and orange flames ( what sounded like her own screams in the midst of it, so guttural, so painfilled), she saw shadows dance along her walls and through the Palace. Voices , sometimes a singular one echoing, sometimes multiple voices woven together, repeated phrases the young girl was terrified to try to translate.
Other times, it sounded like her own voice turned against her.
Whispers that she wasn’t good enough for Uncle Iroh to play Pai Sho with her.
Taunts that her mother would always choose Zuzu over her because he’s better than her .
Memories or visions of things from before her lifetime– a battle between two powerful firebenders, their argument lost on her, but she feels connected to them nonetheless– or something yet to come, a hardened scroll titled The Prophecy of the Red Horizon (it seems to be important, but she could never find the stack of parchment no matter how hard she looked)
It seemed to fuel a cruel cycle; the more harrowing something came to her, the harder she worked to ignore it and appear as usual–and the more harrowing the next instance of something happening again. It took 2 years after her mother’s disappearance to perfect her art of not acknowledging it despite how much it affected the young teenager–yet if it weren’t for that headstrong mentality, she wouldn’t have her blue flames or lightning–perhaps this was a way for the Spirits to aid her training and make her better.
The visions weren’t the only manifestation of her spiritual sensitivity. The nights were the worst, especially after Zuzu’s banishment.
Once in a while, she would approach her brother’s room, and he’d comfort her where her mother refused to. It became their secret routine after their cousin’s death, their Uncle leaving for who knows what, their mother’s disappearance, and their Grandfather’s death, seeking comfort in the only person that remained alive and familiar.
Their father must have found out about it. Next thing Azula knows, Zuzu is pressured and invited to attend a war meeting; their father challenges him to an Agni Kai and ships him off on the next decommissioned boat they have.
After that, sleep offered no respite, only a relentless barrage of images, sounds, and emotions that overwhelmed her senses. She would wake in a cold sweat, her heart pounding, her screams echoing through the silent corridors of the palace. She saw shadows dancing in the corners of her room and heard whispers that seemed to emanate from the walls.
She sought solace in training, pushing her body to its limits, hoping to exhaust the visions out of her system. Ozai encouraged this. He saw her as a weapon, a tool to be honed, and heavily encouraged her to focus on warfare and strategy. He dismissed any signs of emotional or spiritual turmoil as weakness, a distraction from her true purpose.
“Strength is all that matters,” he would say, his voice cold and unwavering. “Emotions are a liability. Focus on your training, and you will become invincible.”
Azula clung to his words, believing that if she could master her body, she could master her mind. His methods weren’t enough for the young teenager to ignore the visions, but they provided a shield for her to hide behind.
Away from Ozai’s watchful eye, the visions persisted. She felt the deaths of the country’s soldiers as though they were her own, their pain echoing in her soul. Each life lost was a weight on her shoulders, a burden she carried in silence.
They manifested in migraines that split her skull, paranoia that made her see enemies in every shadow and emotional outbursts that left her feeling raw and exposed.
Nearly every time she blinked, she was forced to hear the visceral sounds of fallen soldiers. Desperate to rid herself of their shadows, the princess buried herself in the library’s scrolls and maps. If she could learn topics even her tutors weren’t aware of, perhaps her father would appreciate her show of verbal superiority.
She was wrong. Father wanted strength in a soldier, not a scholar. Those sleepless nights led to many failures under the Fire Lord’s watchful gaze.
Every stumble through a kata, he made sure to verbalize her failure.
Every attack she failed to block, he made to match it and mar her skin.
It didn’t help that the spiritual visits she endured now took a physical toll. She’d always wake with a start, a loud gasp violently ripped from her throat while she restrained herself from screaming. No one would come to save her from the visions, let alone comfort her.
She would grasp her sheets, her hands shaking turbulently, as she fought to calm her racing heart. Every night, Azula would look around her room, vying for anything familiar to ground herself. And quickly, she would regret that decision. Some entities seemed to be occupying the reflective surfaces. Their face distorted but determined to track Azula’s movements, making the princess nauseous as she felt the presence of numerous beings around her, some making concerted efforts to speak to her.
~~~~~
She had tried to suppress it. To drown it in training, discipline, and rigid expectations of her father’s court. She had learned to be perfect .
But perfection was not enough.
The older she got, the worse the visions became. Not just dreams now—but feelings. Sudden, unbearable pain gripped her chest when a soldier fell on the battlefield hundreds of miles away. The phantom heat of a village burning before the flames had even reached its walls.
It left her exhausted, raw, and dangerous.
She had snapped once, during a war meeting, when a general—older than her, condescending in that way men always were when speaking to women in power—laughed at her warning.
“There will be an ambush in the valley,” she had said. Her eyes were downcast, and she focused on the map spread across the table.
He scoffed, not bothering to look in her direction. “We have scouts, Your Highness. There is no sign of enemy movement. I suggest we continue as planned.”
She had clenched her fists beneath the table. “They are waiting on the cliffs. If we march those soldiers down that base, we’ll be slaughtered .”
The general had dismissed her. Ozai merely narrowed his eyes in suspicion but said nothing more.
And when the news arrived—when messengers reported the attack , the casualties , and the men lost due to the arrogance of fools—the court refused to acknowledge her warning.
They only whispered more fervently.
“The princess is unstable! It’s obvious she’s following in the path of her older brother, wherever that dinghy of his is.”
“A mad child should not be in these meetings, let alone try to lead armies.”
“It was mere luck, nothing more. Those soldiers must have deserved to meet such a fate. His Majesty would have stepped in otherwise.”
Ozai must have heard their whispers; he seemed to go even harder on her during one training session. Ordering her ladies-in-waiting to have her ready in the training yards in the early hours of the morning, Azula stepped onto the courtyard, her indifferent expression masking her apprehension.
Demanding more than perfection from her. Determined to forcefully remove whatever he deemed to occur with his daughter. By the end of the day, the princess bore dozens of sore muscles and scars spiraling around her arms that she swore all medical and spa staff to secrecy.
The teenager used to keep a journal during the first few years of her brother’s banishment. She had detailed visions she could remember and had the stomach to document. It lessened the physical toll on her, but after that battalion’s slaughter and her father’s “bonding time,” Azula burned it in fear it would be used against her. The whispers from the War Council were whispering through her ears as it happened.
It’s been years since that meeting, and the princess feels she’s watching it recounted before her eyes.
Rumors of her detached behavior began to circulate through the court. As if she wanted to keep the things she saw to herself, her Mother and Father made sure that Azula knew not to share what she experienced.
Nobles whispered behind her back, their words laced with fear and contempt. Their voices intertwined with those familiar and unknown, ensuring the young woman thrived in uncertainty, agitation, and paranoia.
The whispers grew louder and more insistent, threatening to undermine her authority and shatter the carefully constructed image of strength she had cultivated. The court, always eager to seize an opportunity, saw her vulnerability as a weakness to be exploited. The harder those old ministers and officials worked to exclude her and diminish her worth in front of her brother, the harder Azula worked to rebel against them and show that her family should still give a damn about her, regardless of the time she spent under Ozai, regardless of the time she spent in the asylum .
~~~~~
Within the council room, Azula finds herself in the company of her brother and his wife among the ministers gathered for the day’s meeting. Azula stands at the other head of the table, poised but sharp-edged, her golden eyes flicking over the assembly like a blade waiting to strike.
“I see the whispers behind your hands, the glances you think I don’t notice. I invite you to say it here . Say it to my face.” Azula begins, her arms behind her back as if she’s a commander talking to her troops.
Around the table, the nobles exchange wary glances. Some lower their gazes; others stiffen, their spines rigid with practiced decorum. One individual, Minister Hikan, a tall figure with a pristine topknot and well-groomed facial hair, clears his throat and steps forward.
“Princess Azula, no one questions your… capabilities. But the court is troubled by the resurgence of recent claims of, shall we say—premonitions? We are a people of reason . The spirits have never guided Fire Lords before; why should they start now?”
Azula, in return, flashes a sharp smile towards towards the minister. “You think Fire Lord Sozin consulted spirits when he channeled the energy of a comet to ravage the Air Nation? That my father’s rule was merely divine intervention? No, Minister, you mistake our history. The Fire Nation has never been led by reason. Only by strength, something I have a surplus of. And because you fear that I still have it, you find any reason to delegitimize me in the eyes of the Fire Lord.”
Minister Hikan’s lips press together, but he does not deny it. The murmuring in the court grows. Katara, sensing this, shifts her body, catching Zuko’s attention, and nods her head toward the scene unfolding, queuing for him to act. Thankfully, the young monarch takes the hint and clears his throat.
“That’s enough,” Zuko says firmly, causing multiple heads to look at his seat at the table. Katara, slightly behind Zuko, crosses her arms, watching the exchange with narrowed eyes.
Azula turns to Zuko, his face unreadable. He watches her carefully, weighing his words.
“No one is calling you mad, Princess Azula,” he begins slowly, measuring his words as he looks at his younger sister. “But I can’t entertain this. I won’t . Can the council leave us? We’ll adjourn now and return tomorrow.” Hasitliy, the ministers make their way out, one of the guards keeping watch, closing the door behind them.
“Won’t? Or can’t ?” The princess retorts, her eyes narrowing, arms crossed.
Zuko sighs quietly but maintains a firm composure. “What do you want me to do? Call for a tribunal with the court scribes? Rewrite our history because the ministers are saying you’re seeing things in the flames? What do you expect, Azula?”
The young woman takes a step towards her brother, “I expect you to stop being a coward.”
A tension pulls tight in the air like a drawn bowstring. Zuko’s hands clench on his lap, but he doesn’t react immediately. Azula watches him, waiting for something—anger, indignation, maybe even fear.
Katara looks at Azula before stepping from her seat and pulling a cushion to sit next to Zuko. Her mouth is set in a hard line, and her eyebrows are furrowed, cementing her stern expression. Despite the silence between the siblings in front of her, her voice echoes loudly in the meeting room. “Enough, Azula. It may not be what you intend to do, but accusations won’t help us to be at your aid.”
Azula flicks her gaze to Katara, who meets her with steady eyes. There’s no fear there—just understanding, maybe even a sliver of sympathy. It’s almost worse.
Zuko takes a deep breath, and responds to her with a steady, softer tone. “You want me to believe you. I get it. But if I do—if I stand here and say I believe the spirits are speaking through you, that our family has been blind to something greater—what do you think happens next? Do you think the world just accepts it? That the court, let alone the Nation or others, won’t turn on us both?”
Azula scoffs and rolls her eyes, “You think they would dare?”
“I think they already have. Lala.”
Azula falters just for a second before the mask is back in place. The silence between them is heavier than the heat in the room. Katara watches her carefully, trying to gauge how much of her disposition is pride and how much is desperation.
Zuko begins talking again, his eyes downcast and his voice quieter. “I’m not calling you mad. I would never do that to you, in front of or behind your back. But I can’t fight this battle for you. Not like this.”
“Remember what I said, Azula. You don’t have to do this alone.” Katara adds softly, pleading with her sister-in-law.
Azula exhales sharply through her nose, turns on her heel, and stalks from the throne room. As the heavy doors close behind her, the murmurs resume, hushed and frantic. Zuko watches her go, his grip tightening on his robes. Katara exhales, then looks at Zuko.
“You know she’s not wrong,” Katara says quietly, gently holding Zuko’s hand in hers.
Zuko looks down at their intertwined hands and responds tiredly, “I know. But I don’t know how to help her.”
Like she’s said before, the nights were the worst. And when you can’t sleep, there’s nothing better to do than get up and try to find something to occupy your mind.
The princess wandered the palace like a restless spirit, drawn to the royal temple despite not knowing why. The incense, the stillness, the flickering candlelight brought a strange sort of peace.
Azula often sits before Agni’s great statue, knees drawn to her chest, eyes half-lidded with exhaustion. She wants it to stop—the visions, the voices, the weight of things she cannot comprehend or explain.
Just once , she wanted to close her eyes, see nothing at all, and get a full night’s rest.
~~~~~
She began wandering the castle halls at night, drawn to the royal temple, a place of quiet contemplation and spiritual reflection. She didn’t understand why she felt drawn to it, but she found a strange sense of peace within its walls, a respite from the turmoil within her mind. She had never been a devout follower of any particular spiritual practice, and her focus was always on the tangible, the physical, and the strategic.
But the temple offered a solace she couldn’t find anywhere else. When in this part of the Palace, the whispers constantly surrounding her seemed to fade, and the weight of her burdens lifted, if only for a moment. She would sit in the shadows, her eyes closed, her mind still, seeking a connection to the silence, to the peace that eluded her in the outside world. The flickering candlelight makes the carved figures appear alive, and the scent of incense clings to her skin and provides an air that calms her racing heart, quiets the chaos of her mind, and finally allows the young woman to drop her shoulders.
It was a sanctuary where she could shed her armor, be vulnerable, and simply be . She would sit in the dimly lit chamber, surrounded by statues of past Fire Sages, their eyes seeming to follow her every move.
She would close her eyes and listen to the soft chanting of the Fire Sages, nuns, priests, and apprentices, their voices weaving a tapestry of peace and tranquility. She would breathe deeply, quietly repeating the words, trying to calm the storm within her and find a center in the chaos.
Azula saw the woman before she heard her, though she wasn’t sure if the older woman had walked next to the princess or had always been waiting. She stood with the stillness of an undisturbed lake, the dim candlelight painting soft hollows in her lined face. Her robes, simple and flowing, carried the hues of the Nation—garnet and fading gold.
Her head was shaven and carried herself with quiet certainty, a presence both gentle and immovable, like stone shaped by centuries of wind. When the woman finally spoke, her voice was low and measured, carrying the weight of a truth that had existed long before Azula had ever questioned it.
“You are not mad, child,” the woman said, her sharp eyes holding Azula’s like a mirror. “You are listening .”
Azula scoffed, folding her arms, her tranquility broken. “Listening to what? Ghost stories? Superstitions? The whispers of my own fractured mind?”
The woman’s gaze did not waver. “To what has always been there. They are not tricks of the mind. They are echoes of something greater, something your ancestors have long ignored. You were born attuned to it, whether you wished for it or not.”
Azula wanted to dismiss her, to call her another fool chasing spirits and visions—but something in the woman’s presence made the words falter in her throat. The woman stepped closer, her scent like old parchment and incense. “You see because you were meant to see . What you do with that sight is your choice.”
Azula hated the way those words settled in her chest like an ember refusing to die. The two sat in silence for a few minutes before the Sage continued her assessment of the princess.
“You are troubled, Princess Azula,” she said, her voice soft.
Azula hesitated, unsure how to respond. When she decided to speak, her voice trembled for once in the presence of another. “Like you said, I see things… things that haven’t happened yet. I feel things… things that aren’t my own.”
The Sage nodded, taking in her words, her eyes filled with understanding. “You are gifted, Princess Azula,” she said. “You have a connection to the Spirit World, a sensitivity few possess.”
Azula’s eyes widened in surprise. “But… but that’s impossible,” she stammered. “Why would I be someone that has this kind of connection? For all the things that occur in my mind–the Fire Nation… we don’t believe in spirits.”
“We used to be as spiritually attuned as the Air Nomads before Fire Lord Sozin’s regime. The spirits are real, Princess Azula,” the Sage said, her voice firm. “They are all around us, unseen but ever-present. And you, with your unique gift, can see them, feel them, hear them.”
Azula’s mind reeled. She had been taught to suppress this part of her, to see it as a weakness, a superstition. But the older woman’s words resonated with her, echoing her soul’s whispers.
“But why?” she asked, her voice filled with confusion. “Why me?”
“The spirits have chosen you, Princess Azula,” she said gently. “They have a purpose for you, a destiny that awaits.”
Azula’s heart pounded in her chest. A purpose? A destiny? What could it be?
The Fire Sage smiled, her eyes filled with a knowing light. “Only time will tell, Princess Azula,” she said. “Only time will tell.”