The water tribe savage looks **beautiful** with the orange glow of the flames reflecting in her eyes. She has her teeth bared and she looks like she's going to try bashing Azula's head in with her bare fist. Azula would honestly love to see her try. It obviously wouldn't hurt her, but she wants to see how the water tribe savage *moves*. She takes these lumbering steps as if she's expecting snow to meet her knees. And yet, she is as swift as the water she commands. Azula cannot help but be intrigued.

 

This time it wasn't Azula who lit the flames (a rare occasion really, so rare that they should perhaps hold feasts when it happens) yet she still benefits from their warmth. She breathes in the smell of smoke and of fire dominating all and she is... not at peace, but she knows where she is and what she has to do.

 

She knows she's not in the imperial palace because the flames there smell different. Caustic and acrid, it had nearly driven her mad. She *recognizes* the smell. Some part of her hindbrain is screaming about it, but Azula is always in control and she will not give in to baseless fear. Humans burn the same, Azula knows from copious experience. So whatever is going on in the imperial palace that her father is making sure to keep it away from her, it can't be good. And Azula will not be a victim of circumstance due to ignorance. Azula will not be a victim to anything.

 

Ok, so canon adjacent au where Azula is like Ozai is crazy cause he's leaned into some human experiment shit and she doesn't want to be the next 'project' [The natural next step for all evolved firebenders, her father had said. Our greatness and might will increase and prosper even more. Azula doesn't even think about the number of their citizens he must have burned before he got satisfactory results. And she knows his standards, what he considers satisfactory is a weapon that when backfires will kill 100 allies rather than 1,000 allies. Plus, Azula doesn't think about the little people. She's too busy carving out her place in the world.]

 

Maybe this is a sci fi AU where benders are still a thing, just spread across planets on a Federation system (like in star trek) and Ozai is a conquering warlord from The Caldera planet whereupon sits the seat of power that governs firebenders, and colonies under their Jurisdiction. Maybe Azula's line are like Klingons in that they are war mongering nomads with one solid seat of power. Katara's bloodline is like Vulcan types of ancient, but they didn't really do the whole record keeping thing considering they were too busy trying to survive a fucking ice planet. Plus she has some 'gifts' cause her grandmother gave her some recessive genes from the Northern coalition of Waterbenders. Everyone has a lot of genetic diversity and a little bit of tweaking to certain bloodlines here and there, and Bada Bing Bada Boom, evolution. [It would be so fucking hilarious to call Azula's bloodline The Pale Ones or The Pale Death Bringers as long as it involves the word 'Pale' because they're like obnoxiously white😂😂😂😂]

 

Check star trek species database

Scrapped

~~Maybe modern AU where Azula has burned a lot of bridges and she's now trying to reach out but there isn't anyone who will help her, so she's internally falling apart~~

 

The 'feathers' belong to the creature that blessed them with this 'gift'. It always changes its shape when it talks to them. Every time it spirits them away to its realm, it is always a showy thing full of glowing feathers, leaves, or dust. Ziyuan had asked him why all the bullshit once and he had responded that they were the elements of nature in their natural habitat, viewing their contract. Ziyuan called bullshit. She didn't believe in anything she couldn't punch throw Zidian at.

 

"What would you do different, I wonder. It would be ever so amazing to find out."

 

He sounds like her grandfather. She had hated the sorry bastard. Her grandfather, not the creature, although she did hate the creature too. But news of his death had filled her for a brief moment, and emotion that could almost mistakenly be called happiness. So now there's a shapeshifting idiot who is sending her back through time. With a *Wen*. And not even one of the good ones. Her ally to be was a fucking toddler. Yu Ziyuan was going to tear the sky from the heavens and force the gods she didn't believe to fucking explain themselves.

 

But that had to be put on hold, because *toddler*. It's not that Ziyuan hated kids. She just finds them sticky, and gross, and they are somehow *always* moist. It's incredibly unseemly. And having been through the childbirth process, she disliked them all just a little bit more. There was a reason that she had put her foot down after A-Cheng. She had given JFM an heir and a spare, and had thus fulfilled her marital contracts.

 

And for a while it's good. She rescues her family and lives through the sunshot war until one day she wakes up and she is not home. She is with the infernal creature.

 

"Do you know what an enormous boon has been granted to you?" He hisses angrily. "You foolish naked baboon. Remember there are more people in the world. Try again."

 

She storms into Qishan herself, 'stealing' Wen Qing because she is tired. She is tired of fighting a war she wasn't meant to live through. She's tired of having to see her children suffer. She's tired that J&Y aren't as well off as they could be. She would always leave Meishan and she would choose to go back for vacation, but she can't live in Meishan again. That would probably lead to her mass killing all her family members. And she hasn't tried that. *Yet.* But she's keeping the idea on a back burner.

 

Somewhere along the many repeats, they become attuned to each other. They change little things, it's kind of like a game. And there are no consequences. (Besides the mental and emotional pain of having to repeat the worst and final moments of her life on a loop.)

 

And then one day, she is kissing Wen Qing. More accurately, Wen Qing is kissing her. She would hardly say that she was a coward, but that's not a choice she would have made any time soon. Wen Qing leans back. "You can say no, it's ok"

 

And Ziyuan finds herself in love. It's lovely, beautiful, and lighthearted. It's another thing that the creature could choose to take from her.

 

Most of the time they have to conduct their affairs in privacy because they both have reputations, but they start slipping. The first time A-Cheng walked in on WQ' arm wrapped around her waist and kissing her, he turned as red as a tomato and actually *fainted*. Then they had to wait for him to wake up and then have the conversation of why his mother was kissing someone who was roughly his age and *a girl*. Apparently he thought she only liked men. And of course she wouldn't be jumping from the roofs for everyone to see this. She's no JGS.

 

The only reason she doesn't have JFM assassinated is because the children are fond of her and if she has to hear the shitty creature whine about 'the value of human life' she will absolutely impress her teeth upon one of its body parts/appendages (bite him). Just because Zidian and normal human forged weapons didn't work didn't mean that there were other things that could hurt them. And at this point she was more than willing to risk the consequences.

 

Wen Qing is hardly silent either. She regularly snarls at the creature but her needles have no effect on it. In short they must keep this farce going to entertain it otherwise it would do something like 'oh probably devour the universe' he flipped onto its back as a lizard (Ziyuan fiercely wished to step foot on it, but she held herself back.) 'Everything is just so boring, you know, but you guys are making things way more fun.'

 

Notes, write Wen Qing as less passive
Various possible titles:

Ready for action (they'll never beat me)
Flying without a cape (time to change how we live)
Save the day
A call away (ready for action)
Leveling up
Let me come guide you
They forgot (remind them)
No contact (I could save you too)

Chasing the continuation of a dream
Searching (for what we lost)
Labyrinth
To escape (this thing called reality)
Living to make our wish come true
No place to go back to (too long a life left to erase)
Take me back (I'm on the way)
I couldn't say it right (even pain like this is a welcome feeling)
Closed my eyes (to understand)
Burn my heart (with irritation) 
Open the next door

No Exit
Make our hell (From the Oscar Wilde quote: We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.)