#azula alone

[nemesisazura]

[the-badger-mole]

When You Burn a Bridge

It had already been an awful week. Finding his sister sitting outside of his apartment building was just the latest on the pile of indignities he'd had to suffer that week. Zuko considered turning around and heading back to his girlfriend's place, but Azula spotted him before he could make his escape.

"Big brother," Azula drawled, her mouth turning up into a smirk. "It's been too long."

"Azula," Zuko grumbled. "What are you doing here?"

"I was in the neighborhood." The sarcastic edge of Azula's voice grated on Zuko.

"After three years, you just so happen to find yourself in my neighborhood? At midnight? What do you want?" Azula's brow drew downward and she scowled at Zuko. He scowled right back. What kind of reception did she expect, though? It was late, Zuko had studying to do, and oh yeah, his sister's mere presence was unearthing traumas from his past he'd spent years in therapy working through.

"Fine," Azula huffed. "I need a place to stay." That Zuko wasn't expecting.

"Excuse me?"

"I can't stay with Dad anymore," Azula explained, pushing her immaculately styled hair back. "He's become an absolutely nightmare about how he wants me to run the company, and he refuses to hear my ideas on how to modernize it. So, I just decided I don't want to do it. He threw a hissy fit and told me to get out, so here I am." Zuko noticed for the first time the suitcase beside the bench Azula sat on. Her words spun through his mind over and over until it became a hum of white noise.

"He's become a nightmare?" Zuko repeated. 'Become? I've got news for you. That man has always been a nightmare. You were just too busy playing Golden Child to pay attention. It sucks that you had an argument with him, but I fail to see why that should involve me. Why don't you go stay with one of your friends?" Azula's mouth pinched tightly, and she forced a nonchalant shrug.

"Mai is abroad with her parents," Azula explained. "Ty Lee has been avoiding me because she can't take a little constructive criticism."

"Okay, and what about someone else?" Zuko pressed. "I'm sure someone's willing to let you crash on their couch."

"If anyone else could take me in, don't you think I would've called them?" Azula's eyes flashed furiously. "You think I'd be at this dump? Dad cut me off completely. I can't even get a hotel room for the night. I can't let anyone else know what's happening. I'd be humiliated! I just need somewhere to lie low until Dad's hissy fit is over."

"You can't stay with me," Zuko said firmly.

"Why not?" Azula demanded. She actually stomped her foot. It would have been comical under any other circumstances.

"Azula, you made my life miserable for 17 years! You stood by and laughed while Ozai treated me like dirt. You set me up to get me into more trouble whenever you could. You used my first girlfriend to spy on me and used what you got to get Ozai to kick me out! You wonder why I don't want anything to do with you?"

"Why won't you just let that go?" Azula demanded. "It was years ago! I was a kid! You're really going to hold that against me? I'm not that person anymore!"

"I was a kid, too!" Zuko snapped back. "Azula, you tortured me for years! On top of what you knew I was getting from Ozai. I'm glad you've turned over a new leaf, or whatever, but I don't want anything to do with you. Best of luck, and have a nice life."

"So that's just it?" Azula demanded. "I come to you for help and you're just turn me out into the cold?"

"What do you want from me, Azula?" Zuko threw his hands up. "To take you in, let you sleep in my apartment? Pretend that you weren't part of the reason I got thrown out of my own home at 17? You never reached out to make sure I was okay. You won't even acknowledge how messed up what you did to me was! I don't owe you anything! You can't burn bridges and then get mad that people won't cross the river for you!"

"Cute," Azula snorted. "You get that bit of wisdom from dear Uncle Iroh?" Zuko felt heat rush through him. His uncle was the only reason he hadn't ended up homeless. Azula had never showed Iroh any respect, and it had always infuriated Zuko. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of crumpled bills.

"Here," he said shoving it at Azula. "That should be enough for a night at the hostel. I suggest you take the time to figure out your next move. I'm done with you." Zuko brushed past Azula and started to open the door to his building. He paused with his key in the door, and glanced back at his sister. She stood looking shocked, and maybe just a bit afraid. Zuko sighed.

"Go see Uncle in the morning," he said. "He probably won't let you stay with him, but he knows a lot of people. He can help you find someplace to stay."

[hello-nichya-here]

The more you dig into Azula and try to understand things from her perspective, the less "crazy" she becomes. All thanks to your metas. Needless to say, if Azula was explored and was given more screentime, she wouldn't be so misunderstood and hated by the fandom. Which is why I wanna ask, how do YOU visualize "Azula alone"? What would you want from it and what kind of conclusion would Azula come to by the end of it?

I feel like more screentime could have helped Azula be better understood... but only if it meant more episodes like "The Beach" in which she is still flawed but is shown in a much more sympathetic light and we get an honest look at her motivations and struggles. If we had gotten an extra season, but it was just more of her chasing the Gaang and Zuko, without anything else to ballance it, it'd do more harm than good.

As for "Azula Alone" I got sort of a basic idea for how it could happen. It’d be post-comet, in Book Five (Book Three was way too rushed and it would have been best to split it in two) with Azula at psychiatric hospital (an ACTUAL HOSPITAL, not that bullshit the comics pulled).

We’d get a few episodes focusing on the protagonists first, and getting a few glimpses at how Azula is doing: aka not great. She’d be constantly switching between slightly hostile, completely panicked and paranoid, and just depressed and indiferent. Zuko would visit occasionally, but Azula barely even looks at him. Overall the episodes before “Azula Alone” would make it clear that she is very miserable - to the point that she is trying to come up with a plan to escape, even if she fears she has nowhere to go.

However, once the focus was fully on favorite princess, we’d see her slowly getting used to being at the hospital even though she doesn’t like it. She isn’t exactly fond of the doctors, but she isn’t afraid of them anymore. We get a few scenes showing how they deal with any issues with the patients, how they motivate them to keep trying to get better, how they are supporting them as best as they can - and then we have flashbacks showing how Azula’s life was. How much pressure Ozai, her firebending masters, and her teachers at the royal academy put on her. How even though she was a prodigy she had to work hard to constantly out-performe herself to earn any amount of respect from the adults around her. How her grandfather never cared about her, because she was the daughter of the wrong son, so she was worthless in his eyes. How her mother, brother, and uncle never seemed to even notice what was happening and so did nothing to help.

Finally, one of the doctors would manage to get through to her just a little by pointing out that she really has nothing to lose by cooperating with them, because, even if she believes Zuko will just give her an unfair trial to have her either imprisoned for life or killed, he doesn’t have to wait for her to get better for it to happen, and if she doesn’t get better she’ll just be making herself more vulnerable. Besides, playing along with what the Fire Lord wants, even if she doesn’t plan on ever truly accepting his friendship (that she believes to be false) is going to at least make it more likely that he will focus on dealing with some other “problem” before dealing with her. Basically the doctor would appeal to Azula’s pragmatism and survival instinct. Cooperating is the best, most logical, safest option.

She then gets the chance she was waiting for. She finds some way of escaping the hospital, and she almost does it... but instead she comes back and lets the people in charge know where they to add more people making sure the patients don’t go do something dangerous.

She doesn’t like the life she has now. But it is still better than the one she had before. And maybe, just maybe, her brother is being sincere when he says he is sorry for everything that happened and just wants to help her have the same chance his friends and their uncle gave to him.

[f0xfordcomma]

Hello friend and happy FFWF! what is the darkest headcanon you have for a fic? If you don't have one, what's the fluffiest? Or both?

ooooh dang! my first ever ffwf ask 🥰 🥰🥰

(and this one's a doozy, wow!)

ummmmm

okayy I'm going to answer both questions: dark for atla (bc i typically think fluffier thoughts about that) and fluff for miraculous (bc it doesnt need any more dark head canons at the moment 🥲)

okay so for atla:

this one is dark DARK and I'm not sure if I'm ever going to end up actually writing it because its a toughy to think about, let alone write about, but its part of a wip I have called Azula Alone in which I've been trying to figure out Azula redemption in a way that doesn't excuse her villainy, but allows her to grow and eventually make peace with Zuko...

after she makes a break for it in The Search she spends a lot of time drifting about and essentially gets tangled up with some not so healthy habits and some not so savory characters. a lot of drinking, a lot of self-destructive promiscuity, an awful awful awful boyfriend... a pregnancy (bc of awful x3 boyfriend)... the end of a pregnancy (bc of awful x3 boyfriend)... a lot of pain for Azula.

When she finally returns to Caldera, Azula is the MOST doting aunt to Izumi. (Which is a big feat when your competition for doting-est aunt is Katara.)

anddddd as a palette cleanser, some miraculous fluff:

post-reveal, pre-relationship

Adrien makes it his goal to sample every Dupain-Cheng pastry and reports back his reviews to Marinette after every sampling. Okay, so maybe his visits to the bakery coincide with the times that he knows she will be there helping her parents. So what? It's not like he has her schedule memorized or anything. Nope. No siree, not him.

(I think one reason i love writing for miraculous so much is because i get to shamelessly daydream about pastries.)

[azuwulastan]

All That Remains Is Smoke chapter 7 just dropped. Azula meets a normal person and gets gently mocked. Enjoy

[the-badger-mole]

Will we get to see more of Azula alone?

I don't know, but maybe? I do want to explore Azula more, but I don't know that I want my first Azula centric story to be a modernish AU.

[f0xfordcomma]

happy ffwf!! what's a pairing/dynamic you never thought you'd write for? what convinced you to write them? make sure to link a fic highlighting that relationship! (- thinkingisadangerouspastime)

HIIIIII!

okay so it has taken me a bit to respond to this because life got ~le busy~ but also because I think i have an answer but the fic is no longer on my ao3 and I've been debating reuploading it after making a few edits and i dunno its been a whole thing.

BUT

to actually answer your question

Iroh and Ozai

I wrote this little oneshot/ prologue thing for a longer fic I had an idea for but ultimately have scrapped/ put wayyyyyyyy on the backburner...

essentially, in an effort to set up a semi-redemption story for Azula (called azula alone, which I've talked a bit more about here) I wanted to compare the sibling relationship between Iroh and Ozai with that of Azula and Zuko and point out the places where, whereas Ozai's choices made him a lost cause and beyond redemption, Azula's (though reprehensible) are choices made by a traumatized teenager and there is still hope for her yet with the right kind of guidance. But MAN! It's HARD to write Azula redemption in a way that is both honest about her... ya know.... war crimes.... AND gracious about her trauma. I just didn't quite yet feel capable of handling it appropriately, especially because this was the first long fic I was trying to write and that whole process in and of itself is QUITE the undertaking.

I think I ALSSSSOOOOOO got scared away because once I published the first chap/ the Iroh and Ozai prologue (my very first fic on ao3 ever) the very first comment i got was like WAY critical (something about the way i portrayed Iroh). I dunno. It's just like a really hard and heavy topic to navigate and write well and I was a baby fanfic writer and felt like I had failed sooooo it isn't on my ao3 anymore.... BUT I think it is a worthwhile dynamic to explore and i wish there was more fic and met about them because the brotherly relationship (conceivably with several years between them) that led to Iroh being who /he/ is and Ozai being who /he/ is is something really fascinating to ponder!

thanks for the ask! @thinkingisadangerouspastime