The click of a metal gate behind her made her wince. She demanded the men guiding her to her room let her go, each one of her requests ignored. Azula was no longer allowed to interact with any of the other mental patients in the asylum, after severely burning a younge woman in the courtyard without explanation. Visitors would have to be monitored, although few people expected anyone to visit. When she was first put in the institution by her brother, he came to watch over her the first couple weeks. At first he was silent, only talking to the guards that watched her regularly and occasionally asking Azula how she was doing, how she felt, if she had any other visitors recently. These questions were all answered by a glare, sometimes a deep inhale that echoed through the room.
"How have you been?" He asked, taking a seat next to her bed, looking up at her from the floor. Zuko eyed the hospital gown she was dressed in carefully. It went down to her ankles, although as she sat against the headboard, Azula pulled it up to her waist, clutching it like it meant a lot to her well-being. Occasionally a finger would slip, and her brother took a mental note of every time this happened. Every breath she took that moved her chest more than the last, every quiver of her lip as he spoke, every shake of her wrist as her hold on her attire made her knuckles turn white. The princess glared at him, moving her eyes and mouth but not her neck. He looked pleadingly at the guard that watched them from the door. Getting no reaction, he sighed and put a hand next to her ankle, careful not to touch her and possibly upset her.
"You know, I only ask because I care," He begged, his words coming out angrier than he had intended. The bedding underneath his palm heated up. Azula looked away from him, instead staring straight ahead, jerking her head at random directions. She looked as if she had been crying. Her lips were just as plump and red as usual, but her eyes and cheeks matched the color. Her eyelashes were not wet, however, and she looked this way most of the times he came to visit, so he said nothing.
"I'm serious. There's a reason I put… Ozai… in jail, and not you. You don't belong there. And it's his fault you even have to be here," He choked, not able to find the strength to say anything. Azula's lips parted and the twitching of her neck stopped. Finally looking down to him, her eyes suddenly looked pinker. A bit frightened by the eye contact, Zuko looked down at his lap.
"That's disrespectful, Zuko," she said sternly. His head jerked up toward her, smiling widely at the fact that she had spoken. She had scolded him, but it had been weeks since he heard her do anything but breathe and sob. The workers in the asylum said she spoke to them, but only harshly. Zuko did not believe them. "What do you mean?" He asked hesitantly, still smiling.
"You called him Ozai," She swallowed. "You're supposed to call him Dad."
Zuko's smile vanished and his head dropped. "He's not our dad. The only parent we should even consider our parents is mom. Ozai—"
"Mom!" Azula cackled, suddenly gripping her gown tighter and pulling it higher up her stomache. Zuko looked at her movements with worry, seeing that she had not been dressed in anything but her undergarments underneath by the people that were supposed to be taking care of her. Hadn't they noticed her habit of pulling her dress above her waist? She was overexposed and he didn't want to think of who else had been visiting her and noticed this. He blinked, noticing that she had been speaking about Ursa.
"Mom is a liar," She spoke with a whisper. Zuko stood up straighter.
"What do you mean? You've talked to Mom?" He said with excitement and concern. The guard behind him cleared his throat. Turning around, he saw that he was shaking his head, and Zuko understood. One of the symptoms of Azula's neglect must have been hallucinating about her mother. Still, he was curious to what she imagined. Noticing that she had not been well looked after by the asylum workers with her clothing, he doubted they took much interest in finding out what was wrong
"She came to see me the day before my coronation," Her back arched in pride and she smiled. "Told me she… loved me or something. I wouldn't believe her for a second."
The already worried expression on her brother's face crinkled to show even more concern. She was taking her anger for being neglected out on her mother. Azula always had too much admiration for her father, or at least fear. She cared about him and he used her as a tool whenever he needed something done. Clearly nobody else bothered to ask her about her hallucinations. Nobody else even seemed to be concerned about her recovery. It was as if there was no respect for her anymore, like everybody now looked down on her. Zuko didn't understand it.
He questioned her further about the subject, but she would no longer speak to him. After a few hours, he left. He came back the next day as he always did and asked her more questions, but she had gone right back to glaring and sighing as a response. Eventually, Zuko stopped coming. He had been neglecting his work as Firelord and moping around the house, and his wife, Mai, had advised him to stop going to see Azula. Having been Azula's ex-friend, Zuko trusted her.
Mai had never liked Azula. She did not fear her as Zuko did and did not see the good in her as Ty Lee did. Behind her back, Mai talked badly about her 'friend'. While chasing down the avatar's friends, Ty Lee immediately followed them into the waste container for the drill. Perhaps Ty Lee was afraid of Azula, or perhaps she was just following orders. Either way, Mai was not afraid of her. She did not follow Ty Lee into the wall sludge, and rolled her eyes at Azula's lectures afterwards.
Later, in Ba Sing Se, she and Ty Lee had been in charge of watching Bosco, the pet bear of the Earth King. King Kuei was emotionally attached to this bear, so it could have become crucial if they later needed to use Bosco for blackmail. When the avatar's friends once again approached her, she surrendered the bear without any hesitation, thinking of her own needs, and not Azula's plot.
Lastly, was her final betrayal and interaction with Azula, where she had defended Zuko, despite Azula's warnings. Ty Lee had defended Mai and Azula had sent them to prison. After the war, they were both released and let out of jail. Ty Lee spoke of keeping in contact with Azula. Mai did not.
In honesty, Zuko had questioned some of the workers who guarded Azula's room. They said she had only one visitor, a water tribe girl with long, brown hair. Despite his curiosity in this girl, he asked if they had seen another girl with brown hair, possibly in a braid. They said once again that he and the water tribe girl were the only ones. So he asked about the water tribe girl.
Katara was her name. The one that guarded Azula's room said she came to apologize, only to be scolded by Azula and left immediately after trying to reason with the princess. It almost made Zuko smile. That was exactly his friend's nature, to apologize to an enemy after she had practically done nothing wrong. It was a wonder to him that she had not tried to apologize to Ozai. Then again, nobody was allowed to see him without being monitored closely. Perhaps this made Katara uncomfortable.
Azula held her hair in one hand, the other grabbing at her gown as usual. She pulled at the uneven bangs, looking around desperately for a pair of scissors. Slowly regaining her sanity, she had started to notice little things in her appearance that drove her mad. Crawling off the right side of her bed, the blankets and loose sheets fell off the side with her. Ignoring the mess she had made, she scrambled to the wall, to her bedside table; to the small mirror and dresser she had been given. Unable to get a good grip on the top drawer of her dresser, she gripped the edges of the dark wood with her long nails. She vigorously tugged at the sides, pulling the drawer completely out of its place, cringing at the bang it made as it hit the floor. Inside were a small black pen and a paperclip, surrounded by heaping piles of dust and dirt. Azula poked her head into the hole she had made in her dresser, looking down at the drawer below her chin. There were no scissors.
She cried out in frustration, not bothering to check the other drawers before collapsing to the floor in violent sobs. Holding her knees close to her face and rocking back and forth, Azula's black, unwashed hair fell in front of her face. Her hospital gown tied behind her, leaving her entire back exposed as she hunched over in despair. She inhaled deeply and held her breath in as she heard a loud, rhythmic knock on the metal door. Her guard, who had been shaking his head at her breakdown, undid the lock and inched open the door, letting the stranger in.
Lip quivering and breath unsteady, Azula looked up from her knees, expecting to see Zuko, or maybe even Katara once again. In front of her stood a girl of about her height, in a dark green dress. She could tell this Kyoshi Warrior was not in her traditional makeup, having had to wear the uniform while invading Ba Sing Se. However, Azula still did not recognize her in this foreign clothing. Turning around to thank the guard who let her in, she found some resemblance in the dark braid falling down her back and looked down before this visitor would have a chance to say something to her.
Seeing her still crying, the girl raced over to Azula, instinctively patting her back and attempting to comfort her.
"Go away, Ty Lee."
Author's Note: I'm planning to have this be two chapters. This one was based off Zuko, the next one will be Ty Lee. Maybe I'll do a couple more with some other members of the Gaang. Meh.