A/N This could be a drabble, or it could end up being a full blown FF depending on what you guys (the reviewers) think of it/how interested you are in it!

I dont own ATLA.

Word count: 1,200

There was some sort of eeriness about the walls that creeped her out. For hours she'd been nothing but half curled in a protective position. Clutching desperately beneath rusted shackles at her sides and pinning her eyes shut.

They are closing in on me, she thought. They are trying to suffocate me, fall on me, and destroy me. And I cant escape.

And as if the fire nations poised poster child, the perfect azure flower had never even towered, she'd felt for the first time a very vivid fear. And wilted with it, petals spiraling to the damp stone floor.

If she was an onlooker, some curious guard watching. Or maybe even herself looking in she would've laughed at the ridiculousness and irony of it all. Irony because she hadn't feared failure. Failure was just another obstacle, another test of her strength. She hadn't even feared death. Death for her country, for her father in battle was honorable. But suddenly these walls. Dainty surrounding walls of the jail cell struck her with so much fear that she couldn't even move to hide her face in the shadows of the crooked corners.

It was pathetic. This she knew. Cowering like a newborn rabbit rat. But fear was an overwhelming emotion. A drive. And it drowned out all else. Her father had taught her to never feel it, but it was instinct, a precaution. Something nobody could take.

And her days sped on like this. She was hardly lucid enough to be aware - she figured she'd been drugged during her first meal. She hadn't been completely crazy or stupid enough to overlook that. But she was too tired, to slumped, to really let it matter anymore. It wasn't like anyone would particularly care if she starved to death.

Especially not Fire lord Zuzu.

For the first month he'd been too busy to visit. No doubt handling the various nations demands on repairs and damages caused during the war. Demanding some sort of compensation for the amount of casualties and playing the sympathy chord for those who lost things in the war. And if that failed, threatening to bite the nipple of peace. The night Ozai had been defeated, and Ba sing se taken back was the night they'd more than likely lost their force. The fire nation was nothing now but sniveling puny soldiers. More importantly "all talk and no game" the Avatar had taken their credibility, and with that fear, and with that, respect.

This is why Azula would have just burned them all to the ground if it had been her sitting on the throne. She would have kept true to her country, her people, and her father. It was simply in their blood to be superior. Evident by their gold eyes - gold representing regality, strength, and honor. But Zuko could never grasp that. Her father was right to snuff out his weakness and exile him. Azula knew she had been dong wrong during the war. At least to a outsiders perspective. She could see how soldiers treated people, prisoners, but it was all for good reason. To protect their home land. To plant fear, and have that blossom into realization of weakness, of lack of control. To have the fire nation burn bright and prosperous. If that meant wiping out everything else, that was a price. A cheap one, but still the only price to pay. To ensure their immortality. If they weren't the bad guys, someone was bound to be. Suddenly she wished Ozai had done far more than just burning half of her brother's face. In these brief moments of lucidity, Azula remembered blue fire. And that she breathed it.

Any guard who'd come to close, or anyone who tried to talk to her had suffered. It was a known fact within a few days that even drugged, Azula valued her privacy. Back when she'd first been chained Zuko had told her she was lucky he was letting her keep her fire bending. And that Ozai's had been taken from him by the Avatar. She'd felt disgusted that Zuko was able to play god like that through Aang. If she'd found the Avatar, and not the peasant water tribe girl and her insufferable brother, or somehow gotten him on their side would she have been able to use him as a card like that? But Azula had felt even more disturbed by Zuko's mercy. Mercy was weakness. Mercy had gotten him hit with lightening, and mercy had put her in this god forsaken jail cell where these damn walls were always attacking her.

Mocking her.

Azula hated him, and his compassion more than anything. She would prefer death, she decided, to this. But burning the guards, or spitting fire at them, or scaring them shitless had made her feel better if only slightly. Vaguely, she was still impressed with the control, the level of fear she held over people. Even in rags and chains. It meant that beyond these walls she still had followers.

It was only a matter of when, really. And if she'd been sane enough she would've hatched out a plan. She was infamous for them after all. She was a perfect strategist, a skilled aristocrat. The hatched little prodigious blue dragon of the great Fire nation that could not fail.

In theory anyway.

But Zuzu was smarter than she liked to admit. And besides, immediate escape would do her no good. She would be snuffed out too soon. Too many hours would be devoted to her little manhunt. She should wait until she was forgotten here. Long assumed buried and never sticking her head above ground again. It was smarter to do, and then strike a surprise assault.

Look before you leap for snakes among sweet flowers do creep, she'd read somewhere. But that's what she kept telling herself at first, and then she could suddenly hardly remember what it was she was waiting for.

And sometimes, she couldn't remember who she was, or where she was, or why these people were asking her these weird irrelevant questions. How are you feeling today? Anything you want to talk about? What does this inkblot tell you?

It was somewhere in the long months, somewhere along the way someone had come to visit her little shit-stain confinement on the map. There was a lot of babbling, a lot of questions, and a lot of returned silence. But the person had been absolutely relentless in their prodding. Azula had gotten so fed up with it; even with her lack of reason and sanity told the person to go fly a kite or something and that if they didn't go away she was going to boil herself in the toilet. That had gotten a laugh. A familiar upbeat giggle and the stranger had agreed, waved, and promised to be back perhaps soon.

Azula didn't care. She couldn't care. And she hadn't been able to particularly place a face either. Something had been entirely wrong about the person who came. And that's all she knew before she slumped back into her loopy heavy stupor and tried to hide from the walls. Curled up like a animal.