Chapter Text
Azula doesn’t think a thing about what she just heard.
Grandfather was always like that, making demands that couldn’t reasonably be met whenever he lost his temper. Zuko’s life was just another in a long line of them. So she left after hearing that and went to bed because there was no way in the world that Zuko would be dead the next morning. She had considered going to him and telling him, they both knew that father had something against him, but she supposed she could just do it in the morning.
She got up early the next day to do exactly what she had planned the night before. The sun barely rose and she was out of her bed and walking down the halls to Zuko’s room.
The smell was the first thing that should have tipped her off as she thought back on it.
It was the day that Azula learned that burning flesh all smells the same. That just because Zuko was human didn’t make him immune to that fact. That a human being burnt smelled no different than burnt meat.
Azula didn’t think anything of it though, just kept walking towards his room and the smell of something burnt. She brushed it off as someone bringing something cooked near his rooms - she should have asked herself why before she ever walked in - and stepped up to the door.
She opened it without a word, she had never had to announce herself. Zuko didn’t really care, no matter how upset he might get with her sometimes when she randomly invaded his room. She had always had the silent permission that he’d never taken away from her.
Her mouth was open on a question - a taunt -, but it was quickly replaced with a scream she couldn’t quite contain.
She didn’t stop screaming, standing stock still for only a moment before she ran to the charred remains of Zuko’s bed. She looked at the twisted embers that were long cold at this point. Her hands fluttered near her chest and she screamed louder.
There was finally the sound of someone else in the room and she couldn’t understand the words, but she found herself being picked up. The sharp edge of armor under her hands told her it was one of the palace guards as she thought back on it. A guard that tried to take her away from a sight she should have never seen.
She had twisted in their arms and stared at the blackened remains of the bed - of Zuko, a darker part of her mind had supplied - and kept screaming.
“Zuko! Zuko!” Azula had finally found her voice, but all words failed her except for one.
Before that day, just that would have been enough for her brother to appear. Frazzled and worried or laughing, all depending on the tone she had taken. The way she had screamed his name would have probably brought everyone’s attention to her even as he ran up to her.
Now it just called the attention of everyone they passed. Soon there were quick steps and she could hear her mother’s voice, confused and the strained tone of the guard. She still couldn’t understand, but she couldn’t stop calling out for Zuko. Almost as if she screamed enough that he would come out of somewhere, face streaked with ash and crying, but alive.
She watched her mother’s retreating back as she was brought back to her own room. Her voice was just barely a rasp now, still staring over the man’s shoulder as he slowly placed her on her own bed. Waiting for her to run.
Azula’s voice failed her finally, staring at the door. Suddenly quiet and blank.
Someone would come by. One of the servants. Mother. Father. Maybe even Grandfather. They’d come in and tell her that she worried them for nothing. That Zuko was fine and he’d be trailing right by them. He’d crawl up on her bed and sit with her as he asked what had happened.
Zuko was fine because Zuko was always fine.
So she waited, perfectly patient as she knew she was supposed to be. When her door finally opened she waited to see who it was.
Her mother walked in, eyes wet and cheeks streaked with more tears and something in Azula felt like it was shattering. She didn’t know what it was, but she didn’t move or react as her mother sat with her and picked her up to sit in her lap.
“Azula, what happened?” Her mother choked voice rang in her ears.
“I just went to his room,” Azula’s voice sounded hollow, “To talk to him and wake him up. When I opened the door, the fire was already cold.”
She quieted down, staring up at her mother’s tears as they fell and she wondered quietly to herself why she wasn’t crying. Her mother’s hand on her cheek told her she had cried before, but she wasn’t crying now.
“Oh, Azula…” The tone of her mother’s voice was so strange to hear.
She slowly crawled out of her lap and stood up.
He wasn’t dead, it was a ridiculous thought. Her mother was freaking out over nothing. She turned and walked out of her room, but away from Zuko’s.
“Follow her please,” Is barely heard, but the steps of the guard following her are ignored.
The turtleduck pond? That was somewhere Zuko would fall asleep. She nodded to herself as she walked out and into the garden. Past the panicking servants and guards. She ignored them, the looks they were giving her. They were panicking over nothing after all.
She walked up to the pond, finding the little animals in the water, but she didn’t see her brother’s familiar form at the water. She checked the bushes quietly, wondering if the noise had just made him hide. She found nothing though.
Where else? The library. She headed towards it with a new purpose. It wouldn’t be the first time Zuko had gone there and fallen asleep reading. It was fairly common, enough that she felt ridiculous for having checked the pond first.
As she walked in she looked in each aisle of scrolls and books. She went and checked at the tables next, under them, and at their chairs. She went back to the little alcoves he hid in to read in peace sometimes. They were all empty.
That didn’t matter though. Zuko wasn’t dead, he was just asleep somewhere in the palace. He had lots of little spots like that. She would just check them all until she found him, either asleep or hiding.
Because Zuko wasn’t dead.
———-
What finally broke her out of her search was finding Grandfather standing in front of her, blocking her path. She pauses, taking the time to bow in front of him.
“Hello,” She looks up at him expectantly.
“Azula, what are you doing?” He asked, watching her carefully.
“Looking for Zuzu,” She said in a bored way.
The flicker of emotions that crossed her face made her chest hurt. Why was he looking at her like that? Why did he look like he was pitying her? Why shouldn’t she look for Zuko?
“Azula, your brother died last night, burnt to death in his bed,” His words are clear, but his tone is careful, “You saw that this morning.”
“Zuko’s not-” Azula pauses before she can say it.
Grandfather didn’t lie. He wouldn’t lie. Especially not about that. He could be cold and distant towards Zuko, but that didn’t mean that he would lie about his death.
Which meant that Zuko was dead.
She paused for another moment, then nodded. She looked around slowly, wondering where she was supposed to go. Lessons would be canceled, the death of a royal would do that. She barely heard the words of her Grandfather telling the guard to keep an eye on her, but to allow her to wander anywhere but Zuko’s rooms. She had no duties for the day.
“Can I go to Mai’s?” She asked suddenly, “Right across from the palace?”
Mai’s house was directly across from the palace, not even worth a palanquin.
“That might be for the best, this guard will escort you,” She heard.
She turned, thinking about how soft Mai looked when she saw Zuko. She’d be devastated. She walked, deciding that she shouldn’t be the one to tell her. She’d just hurt her worse.
Azula could still smell something burning.
———-
Zuko’s funeral felt odd. She wasn’t really sure why, but something was wrong. It wasn’t even just that it was her brother’s funeral. Something about it seemed wrong.
She glanced around without moving her head and found it.
The pyre. Why was there a pyre? Zuko had been burnt to death and this felt like both a mockery of that and useless without a body to be on it.
Azula stared at the flames, the steady and almost unnatural golden color and she didn’t let her gaze waver.
Azula didn’t know if she’d ever get used to the smell of something burning again.
———-
The time after the funeral was when it really sunk in what happened to Zuko.
The official report was that an assassin, a dissenter from the Fire Nation, had snuck into the palace and killed her brother.
Azula couldn’t fathom how anyone believed that, but then again, she knew something they didn’t.
She had heard Grandfather call for Zuko’s life - he didn’t mean it, she knew he didn’t, it was just his temper getting the best of him - and she had ignored the tone of her Father’s voice as he had spoken after.
Father had killed Zuko.
Azula wondered suddenly if she had gone to him that night instead of in the morning if something would have changed. Would she have been there when Father walked in? Would Mother have somehow known she was there and appeared?
Azula realized that she could have gone straight to her mother and maybe things would be different.
Azula had known that Zuko was in danger… and she’d done nothing.
Azula wondered if she had as good as killed her brother herself.
She sat in place, scowling at nothing as she heard a little giggle. A familiar noise that soothed her anger and made her look around quickly. No one was there, but when she looked in the mirror she saw a familiar pair of golden eyes watching her with the same all too gentle smile.
The tension eased from her shoulders and she watched until they disappeared.
Zuko was always there.