Burn My Dread
An Azula Fanfiction
By Nagone
Summary: I'll shrug the pain and run until I see the sunlight again.
Genre: Tragedy, Horror
Rated: M
Trigger Warnings: Hallucinations, Mental Disorders, Suicide, Cutting, Gore
Author's Note: I decided to manipulate and alter the lyrics from Kawamura Yumi's "Burn My Dread". I wanted to portray Azula as how I see her, which is a very tragic character misled by her father's ambition and eventually ended up crazed because of her constant failures. Falling apart rarely is beautiful. I hope that you'll understand the Azula I see.
Azula hadn't dreamed in a long time.
She lay awake, listening to the ticking of the clock in her, the only sound in an otherwise soundless room. No wind blew outside, and the moon melted downward toward the horizon, dipping below the high walls of the Fire Nation Royal Palace. Ghost pale shadows flicked in the corners of the room under the lukewarm glow of the gloomy moonlight, shivering and dancing on the walls.
Azula felt her mind slipping. She knew she was slowly going mad, but she couldn't fathom why. Had it been her failures? Had it been her mistakes, her missteps? Her father's harsh words?
She couldn't even begin to wonder.
She turned over, pressing her cheek to her pillows. The shadows danced move vividly now, shifting and transforming. She clapped her hands over her ears as their cackling grew. She pinched herself as it faded to remind her that she was still alive, and still coherent.
She felt chained to her despair, chained to fear. Her biggest, worst dream was coming true: she was going insane, was tumbling down a slick slop with no end in sight. Her heartbeat sounded extraordinarily loud in her ears, and her body felt slick beneath the sheets. Sweat seemed to pool around her like a lake, and she swore she was sinking into the thick mattresses beneath her.
Feet padded outside her room, tapping across the wooden floors. She clenched her fists in the sheets, trying to keep tethered to the world, trying to keep her mind tether to reality. Yet she began to slip even more, mist falling about her mind, clouding her thoughts. She blinked and when she opened her eyes, she was no longer in her bed.
She was before a tower of pure black stone, the entire area bathed in white moonlight. She stepped forwards and shifted to the interior of a room and found herself walking, turning and turning and turning and turning and turning, lost in a maze without a known end. She blinked and before her stood a staircase. She pinched herself again, blinked, and stepped forward, the stairs still there, dark as obsidian.
Shadows crawled across her feet as she ascended the stairs. They curved about the winding staircase, screeching in Azula's ears. She clapped her hands to her ears, rushing straight ahead, chin tucked tightly against her chest. The screams seemed to seep into her mind. She tried to focus only on her breathing.
When she looked up, she was in her bedroom against, yet it was washed out in sharp, blinding relief. The shadows had disappeared, but the walls, the floor, her bed, her curtains, were all straked with blood. The bright red stained the floors so deeply that Azula could hear the squish of the fluid on the floor, could hear it seeping into the very cracks of the wood. She screamed and stepped back, her back slamming into a bloody wall. She shouted and closed her eyes tight, her body growing cold. She shook and pinched herself hard, but couldn't shake off the vision before her.
Somehow, laughter rose above her fear. She began to cackle and felt her knees go weak as she crashed to the floor, body flopping about the bloody ground. She shouted for her father, cried out her brother's name, begging for them to come and play with her as she felt her body sinking into the warm blood. Salt invaded every pore of her being and flooded her taste buds and she smacked her lips loudly, a content smile settling onto them.
Reluctantly, she closed her eyes.
The room shifted once more, this time into her father's meeting room. He was seated behind a silk screen, one that her mother had commissioned for him specifically. A small tea table was in the center of the room. A knife stood out in stark relief.
It seemed so inviting, yet so frightening. Azula walked forward and picked it up. Cold steel trembled in her hands, the seductive curve of the blade kissing her palms sweetly. She wanted to wake up, to end this. Without thought, she sank the knife into her forearm.
It ripped her skin apart, separating it down to the muscle. She screamed, moaning in both pleasure and pain, wrenching the knife from her flesh. Blood poured from her arms, the same blue as her fire. It crackled with electricity, burning her as it poured down to her feet. She did the same to her other arm, and then to her upper arms, and across her chest, and her palms and the backs of her hands. She drew symbols and sigyls and patterns, the electricity of her fire oh so enticing as it crackled out of her skin. She could feel her spirit drawing out of her, her life seeping through her very blood as it flooded the room.
Azula could here her father cackling, jeering at her, egging her on. She brought the knife up to her face and dug in deep, her eyeball popping as she cut across her temple. She felt her vision become less detailed as the organ lost sight. Everything became flat. Her mother's voice joined, as did Zuzu and Aang and Katara and Mai and Ty Lee's. She danced around, slicing her body for them as they laughed.
She felt her intestines pool about her feet as she sliced her belly. Yet she danced quicker, fingers dropping from her left hand as she cut the digits. She screamed her happiness, twirling about the room. She gathered up her guts and held them up, the organs glistening in the light of the room. Azula saw her father's head dip once behind the screen.
She drew the sharp blade up to her throat and smiled, jerking it across her neck.
And then she woke up.
Azula flew out of her bed, breathless and sweaty, and over to the window. The sun was just cresting the wall, rising higher and higher into the sky. Her hair fell down her back in tangled bunches, and her skin was clammy. Her heartbeat was unnecessarily quick, and she felt as if she was still dreaming. She held her hands up in front of her and blinked. Her arms were bare, her skin clear of those deep, seductive marks, body free of harm. She opened her gowns, staring at her taut, complete belly. She closed her eyes and focused hard, trying to recalling the fleeting night before.
No visions came.
She chuckled and walked backwards until she hit her bed, eyes wild with both fear and relief. Her laughter faded as she collapsed to the floor.
A knock sounded at her door. She called in her maid to help her dress. After all, tonight was her coronation. She was Princess Regent, the next in a long line of proud leaders, and Heir to the Fire Lord. There was no time to be bothered with peculiar dreams.
Azula dismissed her servants as soon as they were done. She would do her own hair and make-up, dressing herself to perfection for her people to enjoy. As she begin to run a brush through her hair, she shrugged her shoulders and felt the sun warm her back. Brazenly, she turned her face to the sun with pride. She was alive.
And no one, even these haphazard visions and night terrors, would take her pride from her.
She would trust no one. Trust was for fools. Fear, her fear, was the only reliable path for her now.
Even if she feared herself.