"Shall I start from the beginning?" Azula asked with a half smile.
"Yeah."
"Listen, Ayame." She looked at me square in the eye. "With me, everything around her comes with a price. I'm not giving you this information for free. One day when I need your help, you'll help me. And when I start, the deal will be struck."
"Whatever," I jutted out my chin, crossing my arms over my chest. "Will you please start?"
"Of course. Basically, your mother grew up in the Wter Tribe—"
"Northern or Southern?"
"She grew up in the Northern."
"Was she a waterbender?"
"No." Azula said, annoyed. "Now let me finish."
"Okay."
"And your father worked for my grandfather, Azulon."
"But I thought you said—"
"Sozin?" Azula laughed. "I was wrong. And so were you. Your father would've been a child in Sozin's time. He was but a teenager when Azulon became Fire Lord. Around the same age as my father."
"Ozai?"
"Fire Lord Ozai," she corrected.
"Whatever." I scoffed. "And then?"
"And then he found out that my father was going to kill his own son—"
"Zuko?"
"Yes. Your father thought that was insane."
"Well it was! And what did my father even have to do with it?"
"Will you let me finish? Your father was close to mine alright? And then, he left. He just ran away to restart his life, thinking that the Fire Nation was messed up and cruel. And he married your mother." Azula smirked. "Isn't it a sad, sad world? She left you behind and ran away."
"But . . . but she went with my father, right? He went after her since she thought that he found out about her and since he was Fire Nation he brought them here," I said. "But they died together. She believed him at the end."
She raised an eyebrow. "Is that what you heard?"
I could almost feel my heart sink to the pits of my stomach. "What did you hear?"
"She never died there." Azula laughed. "She escaped, remember?"
I was so confused. "Is that what you meant when you said—"
"That she ran away? Yes. She left him there to die."
"No she didn't," I said, my eyes filling up furiously out of anger. "You're a liar."
"Why would I lie to you? How is it going to help me." she rolled her eyes.
"Exactly." I gritted my teeth. "Why are you even telling me this?"
"Look." Azula said, standing up. "You're a smart girl, I can tell." She put her arms behind her back, circling around me. I watched her, hawkeyed, ready to attack any second. "And I can tell you have something against the Fire Nation—our nation. But you're blind to the things that go on around us. Your own mother betrayed her husband's nation, letting him die as a traitor, and I'm betting everything I own that she even got remarried. That shows that the Fire Nation are treated as the weaker nation, and that's why my great-grandfather Sozin started this hundred year war. Don't you understand? Your mother was the traitor. She betrayed your father."
"I understand that you're wrong, Azula." I snapped. "I'm part Fire Nation and I have respect for them, but they are just cruel. I've seen so many victimized by your nation. I'm not falling for your tricks."
