<div class="floatleft">(http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2013/074/4/3/azula_on_the_iron_throne_by_kissyushka-d5y518a.jpg)</div>Well, he'd certainly calmed down quick enough.  She'd had an entire speech prepared on the sins of the ancestor and the judgment of the scion.  Then, it wasn't even for the numbers around him that he changed his tone.  She'd gone to all the trouble of greeting him with the combined force of three nations… three of the greatest mistresses of bending the world had ever known stood before him… and he lacked even the courtesy to cower before her?  For all his thunder and rage, the Avatar turned out to be just a scared and lonely boy?  The concept would have almost made her feel sad, were she genuinely capable of it.<br/><br/>"Your people," she frowned.  It wasn't sincere, of course, but she could fake sincerity better than most girls could fake an orgasm.  There was a long pause and a slow sigh, but so perfectly timed before she spoke again that it never felt like she was reaching for words. "I imagine if you've come all the way here, you're likely aware of the worst news, of course."  She placed a hand on his shoulder, warm and soft and the shadow of supportive, her eyes peeking into his soul with just the glimmer of apology and tears upon them.  "It was my great grand-father.  Sozen the Mad, we call him, now.  Though, Sozen the Jealous may be more appropriate."<br/><br/>She gestured to her wife to guide Aang to a seat, and took well note of how the avatar's eyes lingered - even in such time of sadness - on the girls of the water tribe.  Her mind danced over an old saying her cousin had.<em>The best part of travel is the girls.  Girls of the Fire Nation are hot, girls of the Earth Kingdom are dirty, and girls of the Water Tribe are always wet.</em>And then Lu Ten would fill the room with that infectious laughter of his that everyone always loved him for, but she had always found more annoying than endearing.  She wondered what he would have said about Air Nomad girls...<br/><br/>"Some say he coveted the power of the Avatar," she said, with a tone of lamentation on her voice. "Others that he wished to surpass you.  Not that his behavior is your fault, of course," she said.  Though there was a twist in her voice that might have planted a seed that it was.  "He wasn't especially clear in his reasons," she explained. "He was fond of saying, 'There is no right or wrong apart from what the Fire Lord decides.  What the Fire Lord chooses is, by definition, right.'  A belief he managed to instill in his sons, I'm sad to confess."<br/><br/>"He killed your people," she finally admitted. "Near as we can tell, you're the last airbender."<br/><br/>"The war lasted a hundred years, and atrocities were committed on both sides.  I was fourteen when a band of Earth Kingdom rebels - terrorists really - flooded a Fire Nation colony, killing thousands… not even a garrison of soldiers, mind you.  A colony.  How we were all swept in the rallying cry.  I regret how long it took me to see through the lies we told ourselves," she said.  Though, what lies they might have been she wasn't clear on.  She could make quite the convincing lie of the idea that she didn't buy into the superiority of the element of fire.  But, as easy as a lie would be to bake, if the avatar would eat his fill on tiny grains of truth, then all the better.  "A new balance was required."<br/><br/>As Aang was escorted to a seat set for him in the empty, dusty chairs reserved for the Air Nomads they'd never found, Azula returned to her own golden chair above all of them.  The phoenix's wings wrapped around her not unlike an embrace. "There was no avatar to restore it," she explained and opened her arms to address the rest of the room. "So, I did."  She was polite and even in every word she said, and clever in the way she wrapped up her subtext.  The words were not so important as her meaning…<br/><br/><em>You abandoned the world.  So I did your job for you.</em>