Chapter Text
Azula dreamed of her grandfather. Her namesake Azulon. She dreamed of one of the speeches she overheard from the back of the throne room. Azulon’s last monologue for Ozai and Ozai alone, based on the content she assumed it to be the last of a series.
“Ozai… you must remember to play the game. The Clans may have been subdued by our forebears but the great game goes on. They wait for us to be decimated and deposed so they may destroy us. Each house seeks to marry your daughter to get their hooks into the throne. They seek only power and they will fight and claw from the shadows because they can no longer do it with armies and open assassinations, so instead they do it with economic attacks and shadowed manipulations of other clans, and houses, and people. Because all that matters is the game. I have taught you the game from your youth, and you have not passed this lesson on to your progeny,” said Azulon.
“The game is everything. Playing the game wins the war,” Ozai interjected.
“This is not about some tiring war Ozai, this is bigger than the war. This is bigger than everything except the whole world itself. The game is the only way forwards. The game is all that will be left after we win the war.
When Azula wakes she writes a letter to Iroh. Searching for a first step that she can take.
The response from Iroh is unequivocal.
“Gather about you those you can trust. Seek out power, gain a following, become better loved than your father. Find Ran and Shaw.”
After memorizing it Azula burned the note. She reached for a new parchment and began to script letters.
Azula’s letters flew across the world in the bags of men and women. Placed with care in the care packages of soldiers on the front lines, passed in battle to those on the other side of the lines. Carried across continents by multitudes of people, into the hands of a select few who have become necessary.
—
Mai is sitting in a lounge balancing a grape on the end of a knife. She refuses to engage with the party raging around her and instead focuses on how the grape is slowly sliding further onto the blade. She slips the grape off the point and begins to peel the skin very carefully off of the flesh. She eats the grape.
—
Ty Lee focuses on the knuckles of her left hand and she balances on the high post. Her foot bends into view, and her right hand reaches over to re-tie her slipper. She bends back into the idea of a dragon, she flips off the post and lands in a perfect maihua pose.
—
When Ty Lee received a note sealed with blue wax she wondered who would be so tacky.
‘Ty Lee,
I am asking you to abandon that circus. Please, I need you back here. For me’
When Mai received a note sealed with blue wax she wondered when Ty Lee had changed from pink to blue.
‘Mai,
I know that you are bored, please return. I think I’ve a plan that will prove to be exciting.’
When Jeong Jeong received a note sealed in blue wax he balked at what was asked.
‘General,
Your nation calls you back into service. Recover your wits. Cease your foolish guerrilla campaign and bide your time. The Dragon of the West and the Blue Dragon are building support. Join us.’
—
Jeong Jeong moved through the Fire nation like a ghost. Shadow and the night were more often his friends than the light of Agni. He forayed past the islands on a single stolen ship. Through the blockades under the new moon, into a colony after three days. Jeong Jeong shaved, and combed his hair. His name was Li, and Iroh, and Bumi, and Long. He moved from the colonies into the earth kingdom. He crossed the Serpent’s Pass and arrived dusty and road weary on the outskirts of Ba Sing Se.
A small tavern built outside the wall is mostly empty and everyone looks up as Jeong Jeong enters. He stops at the bar and pays for a single mug of tea, and moves to the Pai Sho table in the corner. An elderly woman from the Earth kingdom sits and asks to play. Jeong Jeong plays a lotus tile illegally and the woman scoffs and stands. A gentle frown crosses his face. A gentleman sits and attempts a real move but Jeong Jeong stares him down and he leaves. A man who looks like he may have been a soldier in a past he has now forgotten sits across from him. He plays a White Lotus tile and the dance begins.
—
The constant push and pull of battlelines move across the face of the earth kingdom like wrinkles on an ancient face. Fortresses of steel and stone dot the landscape like blemishes, and inferno-scoured forests scar the world. The ground bends and ripples during conflicts, fires start, spread, and are pulled off the earth and hurled into battle lines. The earth itself fights against the advance of the Fire Nation, but a burning scar is carved through the continent and country, and the people.
Across the world there is a shift. A glimmer of hope in the hearts of those who know. A convoy of elders pass through a town and hand out toys to the children. A group of young soldiers, out of uniform, walking together laughing and joking. With yellow, bronze, green,and brown eyes laughing together. With flower pendants hanging from their necks.
Battle lines push and pull across the face of the earth kingdom. But, at some of the steel walls, fire comes up, not just down…
__
Azula trains, day in, day out. Learning to flex muscles that her 12-year-old form had no need of. She was never going to beat an adult with strength alone. But bending is a muscle that is unfettered by youth, and thus the flexing of that strengthens it only further and further.
No one says anything, but she can see in their faces that the ever-lightening blue jets of flame she produces with the slightest effort are clearly fast approaching the most powerful bending of her generation, of any generation. She’s heard the stories, blue flames are a sign of power and skill. She also knows that the blue flame has occurred most often in two family lineages. Her fathers… and her mother's. This knowledge was the reason Azulon brought Ozai to Ursa. Azulon could, in his youth, produce the blue. Ozai never could. She was told enough that she was special by people she knew didn’t mean it. She craved a larger audience. One that she could pack with messengers to Iroh. Messengers to Jeong Jeong. People she knows would examine her performance critically and give decent feedback.
__