The Prodigal Sister | Closed RP
@insolxntprince
Azula hadn’t expected to ever see the sun again.
She still felt ungainly, gangly, like she was too big for her own skin. Overall, however, the feeling of wasting away that had gripped her while in the Earth Kingdom cell she’d called her own for the better course of a year had disappeared.
Maybe it was that she was able to bask in the sun again (despite the absence of her bending, the flame that had always lived at her core called her to the rising and setting of the sun like a tide to the black-sanded shores of Ember Island), or maybe it was just that she could wander back and forth over the vast expanse of the Fire Nation destroyer’s decks under guard. Whatever it was, she felt...stronger...Even if she was plagued by the constant shadow of her looming return to her homeland after fifteen years away.
She wondered how different Caldera would look; what awaited her in the palace once she was once again in her brother’s custody after so many years.
Was it just to be another cell? The mental institution she’d escaped from so easily at fifteen?
Beside her, Iroh stood silently, watching the approach of the gates of Azulon as their ship slowed its course, readying to dock in the palace city’s wide bay. She swallowed against a dry throat, and clenched her fingers at her back.
The motion caused her shackles to squeeze at the jutting bones of her wrists.
“Not long now, Azula,” said Iroh, “are you ready?”
No matter the things which had passed between them in her youth, no matter what her uncle might think of her, the old man had at least been relatively unfailingly kind...Even if he had made certain to make unnecessary threats when he’d first taken her into custody.
(If you hurt your brother or his family, you will have me to answer to.)
“Define ready,” she intoned blandly in return. The old man chuckled, and allowed her to return her attention to the ever encroaching shoreline.
They passed beneath the gates, the statues of her grandfather casting a great shadow over the two members of the royal family standing at the bow of the ship. It only took twenty more minutes to dock. There was a small party waiting for them below. Azula tried not to look at the faces.
“Come on,” Iroh said, taking a gentle hold on Azula’s elbow.
The old man’s head came up to the bottom of Azula’s jaw, as it ever had. She’d barely grown at all, she realized, in the years interwoven between them. Malnourishment maybe. Or just genes. Her mother, father, and grandfather had been tall, but Sozin had been short. Iroh was short. Maybe they were closer to Sozin than any of the other people they were related to.
She took a deep breath, and kept in step with her uncle, the two of them descending the plank toward the stone dock below.
Azula’s stomach felt hollow, her ribs a cage which housed the humming of her heart in something akin to panic. Alright. Maybe she didn’t want to be here. This was what she’d dreaded for the better part of a decade and a half. She wanted to stop, to retreat back onto the ship and take up residence there, never to step foot on land again. Despite the fact that she’d barely touched her breakfast, Azula felt her stomach roiling, threatening to empty itself at her feet.
She swallowed once, twice, convulsively. She let out a shaky breath. She tilted her chin upward, and tried to remember how to assume the haughty air of the princess who had once reigned the halls of the home she was now being forced to return to.
Azula braced herself.
