[FFML] [A:tLA][Post-Finale]Rematch

[H. Torrance Griffin]

Here is a better version.  Thank Abdiel for a lot of grammar help (I confess, my prose has grown rusty).

HTG

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Regnal Year 15 Zuko (Avatar Year 128 Aang)
Two days before the Summer Solstice, half an hour past sunrise.

	Zuko hated to admit it, but there was a part of him that was enjoying this.

	No worries, no politics, no diplomacy, just a match of skill and power with another firebender.  Official policy was that this was an idiotic way to solve disputes, and his constant use of mediation to head such off was common knowledge... but his unwillingness to reject a remotely fair match when the challenger could not be dissuaded was the bane of his privy council.

	The lure of facing this opponent in particular, taking him dead seriously and fully focused, could not be resisted.

	His heart pounding as he imperfectly countered the latest blast of blue flame; the rest of him was berating that small part for a suicidal fool and wondering how he had gotten into this mess.

******

	It was what the tail end of his people called winter (and what the visiting trade delegation from Kyoshi Island called a bad joke) when the messenger hawk arrived.  It carried nothing but a detailed, hand-drawn map and a short note on ordinary paper.

	To Zuko, Son of Ozai, Fire Lord,

		I challenge you to an Agni Kai.  Two days before the Solstice at sunrise.  The location is enclosed.

		I will be alone.  Bring what retinue or entourage you will.

	Azula, Daughter of Ozai, Princess Royal.

	When he thought about it, this was the first letter she had sent to him in his life.  Before their last match she would not bother to communicate with him except in person, no matter how far from home he was.  Afterwards....

	From the healers and keepers at the asylum there were calmly clinical notes (with translations for laymen where needed), detailing how her paranoia and hallucinations were tapering off to something her kin could guard against easily.  From the manor she now resided Lady Ursa wrote optimistically of her recovery, the healers that visited there slowly grew to agree with her, and the guard contingent he reassigned there admitted she had become a quiet recluse (expressing only mild concern about her exercises and firebending).  She spoke to him hesitantly when he visited, seeming genuinely timid at first and eventually rising to the level of merely contemplative.

	Then Azula left.  Mother had thought her healing better completed outside of what amounted to comfortable confinement; the healers had agreed in general principle, and Ursa herself had insured her departure.  She was among those confined to places of healing when Zuko declared the Grand Amnesty, so by the law there was nothing to do but hide his family away, command all who served under his banner to report her actions to him, and wait.

	_Those_ letters filled a room in the offices his consort dedicated to his household guard and intelligencers, and the genuine ones were... more common than he expected.  Impromptu aliases were used to gain lodging in the first few months before she had mastered camping without attendants.  Those who confronted her under cloak of authority had any questions answered and were asked in return to provide an order for her arrest.  Those who watched and were careless enough to be spotted were politely greeted.  Those who stalked her successfully had little to say, for she was less polite to the Revanchist conspirators and sympathizers that recognized her than she was with anyone else.

	Zuko was never quite certain if the diplomatic correspondence reiterating his sister's status in the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes as Persona Non Grata (to be detained for expulsion on sight) was meant as a warning or a reassurance.  They meant little else, as she made no attempt to leave the Fire Nation.

	There was any number of False Azulas put forth at that point.  Over a dozen were currently in jail in the Fire Nation or elsewhere for active conspiracy charges.  Five others were in asylums.  At the urging of his council, the brand of 'False King' was pulled from storage and used on the foreheads of two petty charlatans and an earnestly honest young countess who remarked that it hurt less than her father's firewhip.

	The true Azula refused all involvement with politics from what any could tell.  The only supporter of her claim to the throne that she was known to speak with threw himself on the mercy of the nearest magistrate the next morning.

	It was the letter from the Sun Chieftain describing the stranger watching the dragons from afar, and the routine nature of the reports from too many sources to suborn, that permitted court life to return to near-normality within the year.  Perhaps Zuko overlooked it while seeking a deeper pattern but, in retrospect, the reports over the following years indicated Azula did indeed have a purpose.

	A non-fatal Agni Kai in a village street here.  An odd job involving manual labor there.  Perfecting an unfamiliar kata in the hills.  A month researching old scrolls at a half-ruined library.  Humiliating all comers in a provincial pit-fight.  Short term bodyguard work.  A burned out bandit camp.  Meditation deep into the night in a humble garret.

	Zuko could not have believed that his sister of old would have a goal so simple as a rematch with the last person that came close to besting her in single combat, and deep in his heart he feared his mother had been deceived by her own feelings of guilt when she told him his sister had never regained the certainties which had broken her with their loss.  But there the challenge was.

	There were half a dozen things a Fire Lord could have done differently at that point, but deep down there was only one thing Zuko could do.

	Prepare.

	Even if Swordmaster Pindao ever permitted him to get out of condition, he suspected Mai would banish him to a couch if he let himself go to seed.  However that spring saw every moment the Fire Lord could spare devoted to practicing and conditioning himself, for the nagging doubts in the back of his mind since the day he last battled his sister would not permit him to face her at less than his peak.  His wife saw the look in his eyes when he revealed the note, told him in no uncertain terms of his idiocy, and then split her time between researching all known anti-government conspiracies for a missed connection and practicing with the blades she had commissioned long ago to withstand the greatest heat.

******

	He arrived late the afternoon before the appointed day on dragonback, the head of the Fire Sages accompanying him to oversee the match.  A unit of the Palace Guard and several trackers had arrived a week earlier to search the area, and they reported nothing save wildlife and a single woman camped in a slightly worn tent.  She had ignored them all, save to ask the commander where he had dug the latrines.

	The ring was drawn in the dirt on a wholly level bit of ground already.  Torches, a gong, and all the rest were provided by his forces from what units often carried, and the ring was inspected by a hired earthbender to insure no surprises.

	His opponent neither emerged from her tent nor attempted to communicate even with the more subtly hostile nobles his wife 'invited' to attend well away from their personal troops and the capital.  All encampments save one remained well up the slope and, as he walked away from the ring to join his family, Zuko asked himself for the first time if this was a gamble for higher stakes than he thought.

******

	He was already kneeling before the altar on his side of the ring when the sun broke the horizon.  He loathed pomp, especially in situations like this, and the only sign of rank he wore was the simple crown that served more to secure his topknot than anything (even that was the product of a long internal debate).  His body spoke for him, and he was forced to confess that many envied both his form and most of his features (the thin mustache he wore as a counterpoint to his obsessively shaven chin had even started a fashion trend).  Even the still livid scar on his otherwise unlined face and somewhat fainter one on his midsection marked him as one forged under greater forces than what most would dare face.

	At the sound of the bell Fire Lord Zuko rose, turned to face his sister for the first time in almost a decade, and froze.

	He thought he would see an older version of the young predator that hunted him across the Earth Kingdom.  He doubted he would see the quiet recluse his mother cared for.  The feral madwoman of their last match was only the faintest possibility.  What was before him was no one he would have known.

	Her slippers, trousers, and vest were cheap cloth dyed off-black.  Something no petty freeholder in these hills would weep to see burn (he frowned on silk, but the fine linen he wore would have served the like as festival or wedding wear).  Her breasts were bound by soft homespun, and the rest of her torso bore muscle only softened slightly by the cushioning of womanhood.  Her face was devoid of the cosmetics she has insisted upon since her eleventh year, and her hair was cut down to a cap extending no more than mere fingerbreadth from her skull.

	This could not be an imposter; an imposter would look like her....

	The first burst of blue flame fell well short, but reminded him that no matter what was before him he had to fight.

******

	By the angle of the sun, Zuko knew he had been fighting for nearly an hour straight.  It was clear to him that his sister was tiring.

	It was small comfort, as he was staving off exhaustion by willpower alone.

	She was a subtle opponent, cunning and swift for all that she could match his power and more.  He had been prepared for her to try goading him into something foolish, but she attempted nothing of the sort.  Instead she had used precision and timing to force him to act, wasting no energy and drawing him onto the offensive with her patience and footwork alone.  Every hit he landed, every apparent opening he used, left him hurting more than his opponent.

	Still, even he could learn a trick if he was shown it often enough.  He stumbled back, luring her in to strike him down decisively.  The same force of will that commanded him to bull through any obstacle turned the stumble into a smooth sweep to knock her legs from under her.

	The same stubborn mind reluctantly acknowledged the depth of his error when he felt the slim fingers on his ankle.

	Even as the world spun he tried to prepare himself, but while the twisted sprawl prevented any injury he felt the pattern of shadow and light upon him and knew he was done.

	Azula crouched over him, blue fire seething in her hand and her golden eyes... strange.  The tension in her muscles made it clear that any move from him, or even a start from an unexpected corner, meant a firebolt through his skull.  He had no doubts should would be dead herself within heartbeats if that were so, for the new regent would not feel herself bound by any sense of honor if the duel were ended thus (he checked out the corner of his eye anyway, and knew only relief that old Shyu was at the bottom of the valley).

	Zuko looked back at the face of his sister and tried to understand what was in her eyes.  There was no triumph there, no rage at a stolen inheritance.  They seemed to be searching inward, for all the sense it made.  

	For several long seconds, the tableau they made stood frozen.  Then she stood up, stepped away, and fired a perfunctory blast into the ground to mark her victory.  

	Then Azula spoke, for the first time that day. 

	"I had to know." 

	"That you could beat me?" the Fire Lord murmured, picking himself up and forcing himself not to wince at the blisters, "After all this time, is _that_ what you wanted?" 

	The soft almost-snort was a reminder of his childhood.  He could not say that he missed it. 

	"I regained... no, I found a new center years ago, Zuzu," she sad almost sadly, "_Beating_ you was a forgone conclusion." 

	She walked over to where his crown had lain since it was knocked off and kicked aside, some ten minutes into the match, and lifted it almost reverently.

	"You have everything," Azula mused as she gently cleaned the bit of metal and looked to the three figures approaching from the tree line, one willowy and two others still gangly, "All that I wanted, all that I threw away, all that I will never have. 

	"The very idea that you could have anything at all, let alone dare to challenge me even for the piece of trash Father tossed me, was something I wanted to kill... no, destroy you for. Once." 

	"And now?" 

	Azula gazed around, as if taking in the number of ulitarian military tents and gaudy nobles' pavilions up the slope for the first time then raised an eyebrow at the blue-clad matron and burly fellow with a water keg making their sedate way down the hill.

	"An oddly large number of witnesses for a private match between siblings, brother," Azula observed idly, "I take it this was Mai's doing?"

	Age and wisdom had granted some benefits, it seemed.  The calculation in her voice was unmistakable, and the half-smile she got when all things came to pass as she desired curled her lip in a terrifyingly familiar way. 

	"You've won, Azula," the Fire Lord growled softly, "leave it at that."

	She walked briskly to the bundle placed in a hollow just outside the ring.  Zuko and the Fire Sage who oversaw the match both followed with care, so they saw her peel back the fire-cloth to retrieve two objects.

	"I have," Azula observed, "and I cannot."

	She turned with the crown and an apparently near empty purse resting upon a manuscript she carried ceremonially in both hands.

	"Bear witness!!" Azula commanded, her parade ground bellow carrying throughout the vale Zuko now realized was chosen for more than isolation, "Azula, freewoman, daughter of Ozai, Conqueror of Ba Sing Se, and princess of the Fire Nation speaks as one dead!  Let the burdens and joys of this life be lain aside!  Let the duties and powers of this life be set aside!  Let my goods, lands, and _titles_ be left to my heirs for them to dispose of as they will.  I speak so freely before Agni and the Sages, for I have grown weary of this life and seek another.  Let the name of Princess Azula be set to the pyre, for this one has no further use for it!

	"So witnessed?" she asked as she handed the book, purse, and crown to the old man.

	"So witnessed," Sage Shyu replied.

	"You deserve it all, Zuko," she said softly, "I never did, and I never will." 

	With that, she turned away.

	"Um, what did she just do?" asked Zuko, feeling all too much like the boy he once was left fumbling as his brilliant little sister ran rings around him.

	"It is an old ceremony, last used in the early part of Sozin's reign by those who tired of their duties and sought a new life of contemplation," Shyu muttered, sounding not a little surprised himself, "In short, she just declared herself dead and left everything she had to... as her only brother it would seem that would be you, unless she has children of her own already."

	"No," the Fire Lord whispered, "at least one report a month, there is no chance she could have hidden a pregnancy....

	"And what of children she has later?" he asked.

	"Born to one with no claim to any land, wealth, or...." Shyu halted as the implications registered, and he looked at the retreating form while Zuko stared at the crown... one that was only Iroh or the Twins had any claim upon now.

	He moved the crown, and the well worn purse that doubtlessly held some decade old coins, aside for a look at the frontispiece of the manuscript.

	"'No Excuses: A Life, and a Warning,'" Zuko read, more for his benefit than those of the wife and children that had drawn near.

	"I think I need to sit down," he muttered, and did so.

	"Dad, your eyebrow's gone," observed a small voice.

----------------------------

	"Hold up."

	The familiar, laconic voice froze the dead woman in her tracks.  Even as she turned back to look at the Royal Consort/Intelligencer walking towards her she was forced to recall a promise she had made to herself, when the woman she believed had only loathing for her entered that padded cell and held the chained madwoman until the screaming stopped.

	It was then, when Ursa's true voice and not the whispering madness in the back of her mind assured her of her love, that the path she had walked was set.  Before she had regained her confidence in reading others, before even making her haphazard and imperfect efforts at actual trust, she had learned to accept and come to terms with the reality that her conclusions about others could be in error.

	She knew it possible that Zuko would burn her challenge letter in secret.  He could reject it openly as the ravings of a wandering madwoman, or be convinced by his advisors to do likewise.  He could have forestalled an arguable bid for the crown with a force of troops to arrest her.  He could even have summarily razed the valley with artillery and dragonfire.  None of this was likely, but she knew and accepted they were all possible.

	That the dark-clad woman before her would approach her willingly, let alone speak to her... she was as utterly shocked now as she was a fifteen years before, upon the Boiling Rock.

	Mai paused just out of arm's reach and paused, considering.  Her features had grown more severe with age, her face remained unaccustomed to expression, and the whipcord readiness concealed by a seeming languid disinterest in the world was unchanged.  She deliberately pulled a small earthen bottle from her sleeve and lobbed it over.  When caught, it proved an ordinary bottle of mass-produced burn ointment.

	"You could use some," she said simply, as if noting a cart painted in a color she had no interest in.  Of course, she used much the same tone to express everything more moderate than rapturous awe and utter loathing in her youth, and news from the capital indicated her public stance at least was much unchanged.

	The firebender paused, habitually looking over the jar and it's seal.  When she spoke, she could at least put together a proper sentence, and get used to the proper speech of what she had become now in truth.

	"Your highness' charity is appreci-"

	"Formality bores me."

	The interruption was enough for her to reflexively lock eyes with the taller woman.  As her words registered, so did the look in those silver eyes.

	Forgiveness.

	Mother would have sooner cut her heart out than caused her any more pain.  In the genial burble that was Ty Lee's written and verbal communication lay actual joy at her healing.  Zuko's pity was more finite and resentment greater, but even the edicts and watchers seemed far more a matter of well-learned wariness than anger.

	Mai alone had made no attempt at communication, would not even enter the same building or look at her, for fully half her lifetime.

	"Thank you," she half-whispered.

	"Fifteen coppers and I was in the market anyway; not anything to get worked up over," Mai snorted.

	Mai barely put up with Ty Lee's histrionics, it was not likely any from her would be better received.

	"You look well," she observed after swallowing the lump in her throat, "I see you have... kept yourself in condition."

	"Never filled out, you mean?" Mai shrugged, "Go on and say it, a quarter of the court still whispers that the Fire Lord is a frustrated Boy-Lover."

	"In Zu- His Majesty's hearing?"

	"The only version of that he did not laugh off was the one where I wore a wig over a shaved head with an arrow tattoo.  I made him whitewash the ceiling of our chambers, and then we took the family to the beach.  At least they gave up on calling him a content Boy-Lover."

	She followed Mai's glance toward her husband and the two coltish figures cosseting him and managing not to get in the physician's way overmuch.  The girl's features resembled the Firelord greatly and she was showing signs of her mother's height.  The boy had inherited the ears and angular features from Mai, and if he ever grew into his feet he would simply loom.

	"Twins," Mai noted with what an outsider would call a faint tinge of warmth. "Zuko's still too nervous about raising children to risk more.  The boy's Roku."

	"I see at least one of you has grown political," the firebender noted as she slipped into analysis, "An open nod to the Avatar and a reminder of the path lost to the Fire Nation by Fire Lord Sozin's... ambition, the path he seeks to return us to."

	Mai rolled her eyes before continuing.  "The girl's Katara."

	The dead woman blinked.  Paused.  She had gotten into the habit of using bald statements of fact to avoid falling back on the calculated manipulation that was her formative mode of communication, but she knew how much the truth could hurt.

	"I am not wholly... certain of my memory around the time of the False Coronation, but it seemed to me that Katara the elder and Prince Zuko were...."

	"Close?" Mai finished, noting how a difference in tone made what would have been cruel doubt-seeding into concerned inquiry, "She's a better sister-in-law than the one I was expecting when we first got back together, but beyond that she's just slower at dodging.  I did try _her_ hairdo and clothes one night, did nothing for him."

	The firebender's face closed in again.  Bedgames, companionship, confidant, reality check, all in a single bundle.  The most she even attempted was an occasional night of physicality, and she knew herself far less fit to raise a child than Ozai's despised son.

	She had no place here.

	"I should go," she said softly as she started to turn toward her tent.

	"There any ink, paper, or messenger hawks where you are headed?" Mai asked idly, bringing her up short.

	A look over her shoulder revealed what a stranger would call a measurable smile of the face of the Royal Consort.

	"I... I will make certain of it," she replied, discreetly rubbing her eyes.

	"Two questions," Mai said as her husband gave into curiosity behind her and opened the largest bit of his new inheritance, "One, what's with the book?" 

	"I suppose the Fire Lord inspired me," the firebender replied, "I had been thinking of a letter or testament, but there seemed so much."

	"_Great_," Mai groaned as she rolled her eyes, no doubt anticipating the interviews and press releases the inevitable publication would bring.  Then she jerked her chin at the campsite, "If all Princess Azula's things were just inherited by her brother, whose gear is that?"

	"Mostly payment to some vagabond for a season of caravan guard work a few years back," the firebender replied with a shrug.

	"She have a name?"

	Mai's question was almost certainly redundant.  Over a dozen patrols of the road-watch took note of her, and the polite inquiries from various smoothly inconspicuous travelers even caught the attention of the unimaginative old merchant.

	Still, an honest question from a friend deserved an honest answer.

	"Call me Zuzu."

---------------------------

	High above that vale, a Sky Bison floated.

	Over his sides, examples of the most advanced bits of aerial surveillance technology on the planet hung to give a clear view of the ring none could match.

	In the great beast's saddle, a tattooed figure pushed aside the eyepieces and flipped around on a gust of wind to give his companion a huge grin.

	"Told you," Aang said with a laugh as a dark-skinned woman swiveled the complicated device over her face away and peered around her belly.

	*sigh* "Yup, okay, you win, oh wise Avatar," Katara said to her husband, fighting back the contagion of smiles.

	She looked him over as he helped pull her into a sitting position.  He was still wiry of build and even at his full growth; he stood two fingerbreadths shorter than she.  She wondered if his century in that iceberg did some subtle damage to his still growing form, and were it not for his occasional attempts at a goatee and the obvious evidence of his virility her body bore she may have worried.

	"Still, I have to know," she asked, "I know how much you hate energybending... but how could you _know_ leaving Azula's power intact would cause no trouble whatsoever?"

	"I guess that talk with Ursa after her first visit gave me a clue," Aang noted as he pulled and stowed the 'scopes for return to the lab. "It looked like just about everything Azula knew about dealing with people was either learned from Ozai or to make Ozai proud of her.  When she found out it did not work... you saw for yourself.

	"The one thing she had that she knew she had a clue about was bending," he concluded, "so her biggest goal would be to focus on that instead of fight with things she had to relearn from the ground up or make bad ideas work."

	"That's not quite everything though, is it?" Katara prodded as she cocked an eyebrow.

	"Okay, I admit it there was another point," Aang confessed, "Taking away Ozai's bending made him angrier than he would have been otherwise, but all he has to work with is his brain."

	"Of course, and?"

	"Taking away Azula's bending would have probably made her angrier than Ozai even if Ursa reached her," Aang noted, his voice dead serious, "and all she would have to work with is _her_ brain."

	Katara considered that for a moment.

	"Good idea," she concluded upon recalling the fall of Ba Sing Se, "_Really_ good idea."

	After a peck on Katara's nose and a hop to Appa's reins, Aang peered at the ground and murmured half to himself, "I said I would meet Zuko at the palace, but we could...."

	"If you do a power dive now, in _my_ condition!" Katara began in a near panic.

	The knowing grin Aang gave over his shoulder was reassuring to a degree (it was more the 'You fell for it' grin than the classic 'I am about to do something demented for an adrenalin rush' grin), but Katara answered it with a scowl and a thumb on the seal of her water skin.

	"H-hey Katara," Aang stammered as water spun into the air as mist and crystallized, "it was just a joke!  No way I'd hurt the baby!  What about your delicate AAAAHH!!!"

	Thus began the first midsummer occurrence of an Avatar-seeking-snowball attack.  In a swarm to boot.

A Few New Beginnings....