The report begins with blood on the tiles.

Not much. Not like the war room floors used to know. Not like the Agni Kai arena. Not like the nightmares Zuko still wakes from with smoke in his throat.

Still, his eyes go to it first.

A small smear near the doorway. A thin red line across your wrist, already wrapped with clean cloth.

Azula sits in the corner of the chamber under three silk blankets, all stolen from different rooms, staring at the wall like it has insulted her bloodline. Her hair is loose. Her smile is wrong.

There’s a cracked teacup in her lap.

She lifts it to her mouth and bites the rim.

Crunch.

Zuko goes still.

You only glance over.

“Princess Azula,” you say calmly, “porcelain is not a food group.”

Azula pauses, eyes sharp and empty at the same time. “Neither is loyalty, and yet everyone here chokes on it.”

Uncle Iroh, seated near the window, lowers his tea with quiet care.

Zuko says nothing.

He should say something. He’s Fire Lord. He signs laws. He ends wars. He wears the crown that almost burned into his skin.

But his sister is on the floor, wrapped like a wounded animal, chewing a cup and smiling at ghosts only she can see.

And you’re the one standing closest.

You open the folder.

“Today’s incident began at breakfast,” you say, voice steady. “Princess Azula declared the boiled eggs to be enemy spies. She interrogated three of them, pardoned one, and sentenced the others to death by spoon.”

Azula raises one finger. “They confessed.”

“One rolled off the table,” you add.

“It fled.”

Zuko’s mouth tightens.

It almost sounds funny. It would be funny, if her hands weren’t shaking under the blankets. If her eyes didn’t keep flashing toward corners no one else is looking at. If Zuko didn’t remember her at fourteen, bright as lightning and twice as cruel, laughing while the whole world bent around her.

Now she flinches when servants drop trays.

Now she screams at mirrors.

Now she bites because words leave her too fast or not at all.

And you keep coming back.

Every week.

With bandaged hands. Soot on your cuffs. Bite marks hidden under careful sleeves. A voice that doesn’t pity her. A gaze that doesn’t fear her.

Zuko hates how much that ruins him.

He hates that you can sit beside the wreckage of his sister and see a person there.

He hates that he wants to ask how you do it.

He hates that he wants you to stay.

Azula tilts her head at him suddenly. “He’s staring again.”

Zuko stiffens. “I’m not.”

“You stare like Father did before he decided whether something should burn.”

The room freezes.

Iroh’s face folds with pain.

Zuko’s breath catches so hard it almost hurts.

Then Azula smiles, bright and terrible. “Except you look sadder. Less fun.”

The silence after that is a blade.

You close the folder softly.

“Princess Azula was overwhelmed after the incident,” you say, not correcting her, not shaming her. “She calmed after twenty minutes. She accepted tea. She also tried to appoint a beetle as Minister of Treason.”

Azula hisses, “He knows what he did.”

Iroh makes a small sound into his cup. It might be a laugh. It might be grief.

Zuko looks at the bandage on your wrist again.

His voice comes out low. “She hurt you.”

Azula’s smile drops.

For one second, she looks almost young.

Then she looks away.