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Memories from Western Airtemple	By : DarthAnimus Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > AU/AR - Alternate Universe/Alternate Reality > Slash - Male/Male Views: 16187 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own "Avatar: the Last Airbender" or the characters. I don't make any profit out of writing this.

Chapter List
- 51
- 52
Memories from Western Air Temple

Chapter 52

There is Some Power in Love
    By all appearances, Azula felt nothing but contempt and hatred towards her brother, with the only somewhat positive feeling being a touch of pity. Zuko had always been overly emotional, his feelings making him pathetic and foolish. Zuko was no threat to Azula, so he was safe to pity.
    There had also been something Azula had never shown outward, a worry that stemmed from those emotions she always scolded Zuko for having. It was his feelings that made Zuko resilient and dedicated, so when the boy had snapped at Azula once, swearing that he’d one day become as great a bender as her, Azula had believed him. At the time she had laughed at him, thought that no matter how hard the boy worked he’d never be as good as her. But when night had fallen and she had lain in her bed in her dark room, a worry had started to take root in her mind, worry over the ‘what if’s.
    Azula had trained tirelessly since that night, deciding that she would never allow Zuko to reach her. But that had been a shallow goal at best, to stay the least. What measure did she have for her skills? It had almost driven her mad to try and keep her advantage, while Zuko had watched her, learned the length of the distance between them and then started working on decreasing it.
    Zuko had struck at their father, impressively enough to bruise the man’s ego, and then vanished off to join the Avatar before Azula could find out just how strong her brother had become behind her back. That had been her topmost motive for following the prince, to find out just how much he had truly improved. She had almost caught him at Boiling Rock, only to be foiled by the two people she had never hesitated to keep at her back. Mai had been won over by Zuko; in a way, Zuko had beaten her then.
    The brief skirmish at the airbender ruins was supposed to be their rematch, but it had been over before anything had been determined between them. So she had continued in pursuit.
    It probably would have been better if she hadn’t insisted on following Zuko, on finding out the truth. The moment she had seen Zuko perform the kata for lightning bending she had known that he would succeed. And that realization had left her empty. What was there left for her if the one thing she had feared for years had finally come to pass? What could she do when Zuko was every bit as good a firebender as she was?
    Azula hadn’t wanted to see what would follow. She hadn’t wanted to see Zuko surpass her, moving on beyond her reach. The decision to simply let herself vanish had been an easy one to make. And so she had stayed in place when the lighting had struck towards her, allowing it to erase her from existence.
    Only she hadn’t been allowed to perish. She had already sunk into the darkness of non-existence when she had been jerked back by something so bright that it burned away the shadows of death. And then she had felt it. Completeness. Her missing half had been joined with her and she felt whole, for the first time in her life.
    The light would have pulled her back forcefully, but Azula had actually allowed the pull. She hadn’t wanted to resist something that would take her to her missing half, the half that she had been missing without ever realizing just what was the cause of her agony.
    She had woken up without her missing half, her hands and feet bound in shackles of thick metal that spread from her wrists to her fingertips and from her ankles to her toes. Trying to bend them off would not have been wise, as the heated or, worse yet, exploding metal would render her limbs useless afterwards.
    All in all her captors had done an excellent job of restraining her, Azula noted. There wasn’t much, if anything she could do with her hands locked behind her back and ankles trapped under her body. This all made a guard rather useless and pointless, considering that all the way out here there would be no one who would actually consider freeing the imprisoned princess. That was the way things were when you lacked allies.
    Despite the fact that it was pointless, Azula had still been given a guard. The girl had woken up in pain, a rare event, as no one before had been strong enough to injure her so much, and the first thing she had seen had been the woman sitting at the entrance of the tent she had been placed in.
    The stranger was pale, like a member of the Fire Nation, but her eyes were dark, an Earth Kingdom tendency. Azula suspected the latter inheritance was more likely than the former one. Despite the strange coloring, the woman held a certain beauty to herself even in Azula’s eyes. It was the charm of a fully grown woman, and the sight made Azula feel like the young girl she was, for the first time in a long while.
    Neither of them had spoken, even though Azula knew that the woman had noticed her wake up. Azula hated the thought of relinquishing any more power by being the first to speak, but at the moment there wasn’t much power for her to lose. In the end she decided to break the silence.
    “What, no taunts?” Simply because she had to be the first to speak, didn’t mean she had to be polite.
    The woman shot her an uninterested look. “That’s not why I was placed here.” She smirked, and Azula noticed that she was almost as good at pulling off the expression as the princess was. “I suspect prince boy wanted me to keep those who would taunt you away.”
    So Zuko had put the woman up for this? That meant Zuko had decided to spare her. But that thought was not completely correct. She could remember how she had been dying. Could it be that Zuko had not only spared her life, but saved it as well?
    Azula scoffed. “That’s exactly like my pathetic brother.”
    “Oh?” The strange woman actually seemed to be slightly interested by that statement. “I wonder why you feel the need to say that out loud…”
   It was true that Azula rarely said anything without a reason. The reason for those previous words had been a bad one; it was her own weakness that had her speaking the thoughts that had been plaguing her mind for quite some time now. “Zuko is sentimental. He resembles our mother in that.”
    “Do you resent him for it?” It was such a strange question to ask, and yet somehow fitting. It seemed like this woman could guess how Azula thought. That, however, did not mean that the princess would answer.
    The dark eyes gazed into Azula’s amber ones sharply. “Do you resent him for loving you?” The full, painted lips curled into an ironic smile. “He can do great things with that power.”
    “The power of love is nothing but a load of rubbish,” Azula snapped heatedly. “Zuko is a fool who lives inside a fantasy world where everyone can get along.”
    “Oh?” The woman was still smiling, but this time it was in humour, and the joke seemed to be on Azula. “Are you telling me your brother’s feelings don’t affect you?”
    It was such a ridiculous claim. Certainly that was the woman’s first mistake in her guesses on the contents of Azula’s mind.
    “I couldn’t care less about his feelings.”
    The woman kept smiling, and Azula wondered when she had lost the ability to lie convincingly.
To be continued...
- 51
- 52
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Memories from Western Airtemple