All things considered, Azula could have been so much worse. After all, she had been left alone. With her father and the row of women who weren't her mother. With a huge, empty house. With a circle of friends she learned to treat as servants. The ingredients were all present, and there had always been that something in Azula that burned a little too hot, a little too clean. Ozai looked at his daughter and saw a diamond; Iroh looked at her and saw the hardest substance that pressure could create.

In the years since dragging one child, but not the other, away from that environment, Iroh had questioned himself without leniency or forgiveness. There were moments when he would stare at the space beside Zuko and imagine his niece filling the gap, gazing up at her father with her clever eyes while her brother looked up with frightened ones. Iroh would watch the place where she should've stood and wonder if he couldn't have tried harder to take her too.

It is still there in his niece's eyes when they meet again, that gleaming hardness that burns away doubt. Yet to Iroh's relief it is no longer a diamond, only steel. It has been tempered: by time and by friendships, by mentors that cared enough to find the part of her that wasn't hot to the touch.

Iroh sees her now and he knows one day she'll make a brilliant businesswoman, a vicious wife, and a selfish mother.

But, all things considered, she could have been so much worse.