you're so pretty in the city where you're nothing to anyone

[frith_in_thorns]

Give me an interesting word, a canon, and (if you like) a character. I'll write you a ficlet.

(I guarantee to fill the first five prompts, after that I will still do my best but historically I fail a lot.)

Comments

[magibrain]

ethology, A:tlA, Azula.

[frith_in_thorns]

Other people are inefficient. They require a great deal of manipulation to function properly.

Azula came to this conclusion when she is very young. The rest of her childhood was spent refining it.

It worked until she was fourteen, and she still can't work out what went wrong.

Zuko had always been weak, and she had factored into her plans that he would betray her and Father. She had counted on it, in fact — and she had been there, waiting, the perfect Fire Princess, to step into his place and show by contrast how much more suited to it she had always been.

Mai and Ty Lee were another thing. They were supposed to have been hers, through blood and bone. What was the point of putting work into friendships if it didn't, after all, guarantee loyalty?

Her jailers are the only people she has to study now. They are cold towards her, though they frequently gossip with each other. "Tell me how the kingdom fares," she demands.

"Your brother rules well," the female one says.

She snorts, disbelieving. Zuko will be a weak Fire Lord.

"He's a far better ruler than you," the other one adds, insolently.

Azula snarls blue flames at him. They flicker against the metal bars without melting them. (She has tried that, but the metal is too thick for her to burn through. She was exhausted before she could do any damage, and two days later that stupid blind girl showed up and made them twice as thick again, and added a second layer of bars in front. She'll just have to wait for her loyal subjects to rescue her. Some of them will be put to death for making her wait this long already.)

"Come away," his superior orders him. He obeys without fear. But without fear, why does he obey?

Without fear, how did the Avatar raise an army to crush her and Ozai?

When she's rescued, she will order her subjects to make her understand.

[magibrain]

Oh, Azula. And her intelligence and inability to empathize.

This was quite lovely; thank you!