The Legend of Percy: Book 2 - Through Grief

7. Facing the Fire Lord (Some Father Lord He Is)

A/N: **TW** Depiction of both parental emotional abuse of a child and an anxiety attack. Both will be bracketed (the abuse is **CA**)

The late morning light slid its way through the cracks of her window to wake Azula up. A knock on the door followed, which could only be a summons to the Fire Lord. The princess' bedhead was quite severe after the first good sleep in her own bed in weeks. She'd forgotten how much easier royal life became when she could sleep.

As soon as she'd gotten up, using her sharp nails to brush down her hair to make it at least presentable to people, she put on her Fire Nation garbs and straightened herself up. Azula brushed aside her servants, who would've just fussed about. She needed to clear her head without the presence of other people before talking to her father.

The situation all came rushing back to her. She'd failed. She'd been unable to capture Percy.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. Azula hadn't ever really tried to capture him. And there was something about that idiotic waterbender still being out there that made her feel like the whole journey wasn't a failure in the slightest, but she knew her father would see it very differently. The princess also couldn't really justify why she felt okay about Percy being not captured to begin with.

You did fail.

The deep voice echoed in her mind as her footsteps bounced across the hallway walls and columns.

At the arguing in her brain, Azula began to seize up once more. Her hands clenched tightly and her breathing quickened. She forced herself to count in a whisper, as she'd just arrived outside the curtained doorway of her father's throne room.

The swaying noren gave her glimpses at her near future. The eerie firelight blazed in front of the Fire Lord's throne. Images of that fire overwhelming her flashed into her mind as she desperately tried to keep a lid on her heartbeat.

She turned away from the entrance and finally began calming down. Remembering the sound of the soft waves crashing over the shore helped ease her mind. Squinting her eyes so she could almost feel the water coming over and washing away everything.

Finally, after bringing everything back to a much more comfortable position, she swivelled and entered the room. At her entrance, the flames surrounding the throne leapt up, almost completely blocking out her father from her view.

The princess strode forward until she kneeled completely in front of the raised platform.

"Daughter." The cold, assertive voice of her father rang out around her. "I have been informed you were unable to capture the waterbender. You failed me."

He spoke with such certainty it crushed her. She felt the weight of his words pushing her deeper into the ground.

"And now you return home, with nothing."

Every sentence, every scathing indictment, stabbed into her.

"At least your brother killed the Avatar."

Azula was shaking, her palms were nearly bloody with the indents from her nails. Her greatest fear was being realised, and there wasn't anything she could do about it.

She was close, oh so close, to revealing who actually killed the Avatar, but she didn't. Not for many reasons, the main one was that it wouldn't have really gotten her very fair. She'd seem like she was making excuses and not bringing honour upon herself. It would also ruin her carefully laid plans to keep her brother by her side and beneath her. But all that almost went out the window with the sheer terror of what her father was implying.

She heard her father's footsteps, leading him down from the throne and to her. Azula's heart was threatening to explode as her chest throbbed uncomfortably. She couldn't look up, out of fear and the perceived challenge that might incite in the Fire Lord.