Hi guys~ Another one-shot for Koneko, and my longest yet, since my muse was willing for this one. This takes place in the same universe as "This Old Coffee Shop," and "Of Epithets," the former being set a year or so after this, and the latter during the "six months" mentioned at the end of this one-shot, or something in the three years previous to it. I haven't quite worked that out yet. Let's see what Faniction thinks 3,400 words in Microsoft Word is, shall we? XD 9Apparently it says it's 3,500.)

Disclaimed: Avatar: The Last Airbender doesn't belong to me; it's the property of Mike and Bryan, as are Azula and Zuko, though Zhou and Yue are mine (though Yue is technically Koneko's). Oh! And Lucrezia Noin, from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, doesn't belong to me, either; she's property of Bandai/Sunrise/Sotsu/etc. The only thing I won here is that I've made her a doctor at a psych hospital.

Warning: Contains mentions of mental disorders, and of lesbian attraction and desire.

Prompt Set #1 - Prompt #5 - "Quitting You," by Band Perry, and Prompt #7 - [Her] tone questioned my sanity, but it only made me more suspicious. - Twilight (also somewhat Prompt #2 - "You need a healthy dose of fear. Nothing could be more beneficial for you." - Edward Cullen from Twilight, but mostly those two).

The hallways were long, and somewhat creepy, but the creep factor was somewhat down-played by the fact that the walls were pale blue, and the floors had alternating black-and-off-white tile. I sighed softly, as I tried to shove my hands deeper into the pockets of my grey skinny jeans, the soles of my black, knee-high lace-up boots making soft squeaking sounds on the tiled floor. Well, I couldn't help thinking, at least these hall ways weren't completely white, which would've really made this a place out of my nightmares. I had always known that there was something… wrong with my head, so I had always feared that someday I would end up here, too. But I also knew that so long as I took my meds – I was Bipolar, according to my psychiatrist – I would be fine. I wouldn't end up here because, so much as I hated to admit it, there wasn't quite as much wrong with me… as there was with the woman (girl? she was still only seventeen, after all…) I had come to see. I winced internally at that thought, but managed to keep my outward expression calm and placid; it wouldn't help matters if I freaked now, after all… Maybe I should've taken my meds before I left… But then I remembered what my best guy friend – and incidentally, the older brother of the person I had come to see – had told me.

"You need to see what she's become, Zhuo – you need to know why we keep saying she's no good for you."

I knew what he meant, I knew that he cared, but I also knew that he was right. So little as he visited her – holidays, birthdays, the obligatory anniversary of their Mother's death – I knew that he, Zuko, knew more about this than I did. I knew that he meant I needed to have a dose of fear come from the person I cared about most (I had cut ties with my blood family as soon as I could, just a few short months before this) even if only to assure myself that I did still care. I had cared for her since the day we had met in elementary school; no, I hadn't loved her then – because it would be stupid to deny what I felt – but over the years since, the compassion I had initially felt had undergone a few transformations. I had known with certainty by the time we were thirteen and twelve, respectfully, that she would always be my best friend; less than three years later, when everything fell apart… I knew that I had fallen hard for her. Of course, I also knew that, though I wasn't the only one who cared, her brother had already given up on ever having his sister back.

"Here we are, Room Six."

I blinked, the nurse's speaking shaking me from my thoughts. I glanced to the left, and almost flinched. A metal door, one that was probably bullet-proof and obscenely thick, and a keypad separated me from the person I had come to see. And then, I remembered that we had passed through a door much like this one, when we entered this wing of the psychiatric hospital. A chill raced down my spine; God, was she… was she really this dangerous…? I hadn't been there, the night it had all gone down, but I did know from what Zuko had been able to tell Yue and I – I wasn't going to let her drive herself to the hospital Zuko had been admitted to, not in the emotional state she had been in – that she had snapped completely. He had said that she, his sister, had been getting more and more paranoid, more cruel, more prone to lashing out over the months leading up to her complete psychotic breakdown. Their Father had been away for the weekend on a business trip; the two had ended up having a fight, his sister had snapped finally, and in the end, he had been rushed to the hospital with multiple stab wounds, and she'd been hauled off in handcuffs to the nearest psychiatric hospital.

I knew she'd been completely deranged then, but… it had been three years. Could she really still be that dangerous…?

Shaking myself, I decided to stall – though usually one of the more level-headed of my friends, it seemed I needed some time to collect myself. I focused my attention on the nurse, who turned out to be a doctor, something it seemed I had missed when I was escorted inside the security door separating the lobby/waiting room from the hospital proper. The woman was tall, about an inch or so taller than I was, putting her height, if I had to guess, at 5'11". That was the first thing I noticed, but secondly, right on the heels of the first, I noted how her hair (cropped short in all places aside from her bangs, which all but hit her right eye from view) seemed to shine purple-black under the florescent lights. She seemed to be eyeing me almost warily, but what I found most unnerving was how her eyes were such a deep blue, they seemed purple as well. With her lean, powerful build that not even the blouse, trousers, and lab coat could hide, and her exotic looks – though pale, I could tell she was Mediterranean in ethnicity, perhaps Italian – I had to quickly look away before I started entertaining thoughts that wouldn't do me any good. Despite the fact that I knew my heart belonged to someone already, I couldn't deny the beauty of certain women around me, and I had always had a thing for the women that were both beautiful and had the ability to beat me in a fight (hence the crush I had had for a time on my martial-arts sensei).

Once more wresting myself from my thoughts, I offered her – Dr. L. Noin – a small smile, before turning my grey gaze to the door. Taking a breath, and squaring my shoulders, I nodded to the doctor, who then quickly typed the correct code to unlock the door into the keypad. "I'm well aware, Miss Fon, of your connection to this patient," Noin began, and it seemed I had been right; a slight Italian accent touched her words. "However, I must warn you – she is volatile at the best of times, so try not to make her mad. Even if we do have twenty-four/seven security cameras trained on these rooms, the patients they contain are still highly dangerous, and highly intelligent as well. Your friend, Miss Agni, is no exception to that."

I resisted the urge to smirk. Of course she was highly intelligent; she hadn't been taking nearly college-level courses at fourteen for nothing, after all… But then the mirth faded. Would she really be anything like I remembered her, after three long years here? I couldn't help but wonder, even if the opening of the door to Room Six in the Maximum Security Wing – sometimes simply referred to as 'Isolation,' or 'Solitary' by the other patients, from what I had heard – made my thoughts moot point: How much does a psychotic breakdown, followed by three years in a psychiatric hospital, change someone? Was Zuko right, and she was too far gone to be brought back? I would just need to wait and see, it seemed.

Noin gestured me into the room, and said simply, "I will wait here; you have one hour. If worst comes to worst," she grimaced slightly. "Well, let's just hope it doesn't come to that."

I nodded in response, suddenly wordless even if I had wanted to speak, and then slipped into the room. I really didn't know what I had been expecting, honestly, but it certainly hadn't been this. The room was far from bare, as I had expected it to be, and I guess that was what threw me off the most; I supposed I had been expecting something along the lines of padded walls , floor, and ceiling, but the room was far, far from anything even remotely like that. The floor was tile, just like the hall outside, and even had the same alternating pattern, but that was the least interesting feature of the room. It was really a simple set up – a small twin bed against the far and right-hand wall, a dresser at the middle of the far wall, and want looked like an armchair beside the dresser, with a standing lamp between the chair and the far corner – but it was everything else that had me reeling, even though it probably shouldn't have. The walls were painted a specific shade of sapphire (her favorite color, though no-one else would ever have believed it) with the bedding and chair being just a few shades lighter; but it was what covered the walls, from floor to ceiling, which really made me blink in surprise for a moment. I had always known she liked to read, as "knowledge [is] power," she would always remind me, but this… Bookcases, filled to the brim with books on every subject imaginable and then some, all arranged meticulously (alphabetically by subject, and then by author in the same way) filled every space that wasn't already taken up, and there was even a small stack on the nightstand beside the bed.

It looked… honestly, like her entire book collection had been transported from her room and the library back at the manor, but that was impossible. After all, the last thing she'd done before the cops got there had been to burn the place to the ground. It had been rebuilt by now, but still… her books had been one of the first things to go up in smoke that night, but even I knew they hadn't been the only things. Of course, then I realized that I was stalling again – sensei would've been ashamed, since I usually faced everything else, even head injuries and broken bones, fearlessly – and forced myself to look at the girl I had come to see. She looked both the same, and not. I berated myself; it had been three years, so things were bound to change, even if only subtly. She was paler than I remembered, but three years without seeing the sun would do that to anyone; her eyes were still golden and sharp as ever, though, so I found myself wondering if she had really snapped at all. Her dark brunette hair had finally evened out, it seemed, since Zuko had mentioned that her bangs had been the first thing she'd attacked in her deranged state of mind (and then she'd smashed her mirror because she'd been hallucinating their Mother, apparently) and was now worn in a simple braid, as opposed to the severe, complicated bun she had taken to wearing it in, once she had turned thirteen. As per usual, her clothing was black and red; some might have called her punk if she hadn't always been so meticulous about things like her appearance and her grades (she wore black skinny jeans and a red Flyleaf t-shirt, amusingly the exact color-opposite of the black Evanescence t-shirt I had on). She was seated cross-legged in the armchair, and looked like she was reading an Advanced Calculus textbook.

I would have laughed at the normalcy of the situation, had it not still been painfully obvious that we were in a mental institution.

Her voice – still sharp and uncaring as ever, though with a strange, emotionless quality to it – broke me from my thoughts and observations. "So, are you just going to keep staring like an idiot for the rest of the hour, or are you actually going to say something?" She didn't even so much as look up from her reading when she addressed me, and again I was struck by how surreal this was, how normal it was, and yet by how completely not normal it was at the exact same time.

My lips twitched into a smile for a moment, at her words. Well, at least she hadn't changed too much, if she had really changed at all. "Looks like your wit is still as sharp as ever," I mused, allowing myself to relax a fraction. If anyone knew me well enough, they would know that I was just naturally high-strung and tense, but that when I was nervous or anxious or anything like that, it would just get a thousand times worse. So, the fact that I was allowing myself (well, more like forcing) to relax in this situation meant either one of two things, or both. One, I was crazier than I was willing to admit, or two, I was actually comfortable around her – around Azula – something very few people could truthfully say.

I was beginning to think that both were correct, but mostly that the latter was a direct result of the former.

"What, did you assume that just because I had lost my mind that I had lost my wit as well?" Azula drawled, and for the first time, I saw just how much emotion she really lacked. To anyone else, she might have been charming and cruel and somewhat daring, but I – and any of the other few people who could say they were close to her – knew that it was all fake, was all a mask. A sham and charade put on to impress and manipulate. Or, rather, I had just realized it, and I felt pretty stupid for not noticing it before.

So, like the idiot I tend to be most of the time, but especially when I haven't taken my meds yet, I blurted, "It's all fake, isn't it?"

That was when Azula finally looked up at me, and I felt like a mouse looking into the eyes of the snake that was about to eat me, pinned by that sharp, cold, emotionless golden gaze as I was.

"Is what all fake, Zhuo?"

It seemed, even after three years, she could still make me melt with just the way she said my name, but this time, I forced myself not to react to it. I managed to keep myself steady, and pretended that this was just the time before and after I was called for a match in a martial-arts tournament – nerve-wracking and horrid, but requiring the use of all the discipline I had learned over the years to keep myself from showing any sort of weakness, as I waited for the judges to make their call. If I showed anything just then, I knew Azula would know she had won (unless this was all in my head?) and know that she could still wrap me around her little finger with just a word. Now I really understood what Zuko had meant, though I had thought I knew before.

"Your emotions," I said simply, firmly, locking gazes with her, though it felt like I was looking at the sun. "You don't really feel anything, do you?"

My mind was racing even as she responded, putting together the pieces that were repeatedly smacking me in the face, and should have been obvious a long time ago. Damn the fact that I hadn't paid that much attention to my psychology classes (though in my defense, they had just been electives I had taken for fun, since it had been that or Spanish).

"Whatever gave you the impression that I did?" She sounded bored, and maybe annoyed, but I also knew that she must have been a really good actress, or just really good at faking emotions. Normally, I wouldn't have even known that her emotions were fake, if I hadn't just realized it, and she hadn't just confirmed it.

And then I said the words that would probably change a whole damn lot about that way I thought of and viewed this girl.

"You're a sociopath, aren't you?"

She just looked at me like I was stupid.

I knew it was probably going to have her trying to rip my head off, but once I realized something and started talking, the words all but tripped over themselves and each other to get out, especially when I needed to take my medication. "You're a sociopath, and normally… normally, you're like this – cold and cruel and completely devoid of emotions, but able to fake them so well most people wouldn't even know the difference – but when something or someone – like Zuko, right? or Mai and Ty Lee – sets you off, you just… you lose it completely, and you end up deranged and psychotic and…" I all but forcibly shut my mouth by that point, since Azula really would try to rip my head off if I kept talking about that, if the look she was giving me were any indication.

There was a long few moments of silence between us, as I collected myself as best I could, and Azula just kept watching me like a hawk watches its next meal.

"Look, Zula," I finally sighed, feeling suddenly very tired, "you know I like to play poker, and sometimes I'll bet with your brother, just to rub in the fact that I'm better at cards than he is, but…"

Her expression clearly read, 'Get to the point already,' so I continued.

"But I don't gamble in any real sense of the word, and – damnit, Zula, I care about you," I could've sworn she rolled her eyes and murmured, "Really?" her tone questioning my sanity and intelligence, but I forged ahead anyways.

"I care about you, but this… you… You're a gamble, you're stakes far too high for my comfort level… I fold. I quit. I concede to the fact that I can't do this."

What I didn't say was, I'm quitting you because you're a bad habit, and I don't want you to take me down with you, no matter how much I love you.

Then, without so much as a good-bye, I turned around and knocked just loud enough for Noin to hear me. Just as I left, I could've sworn I heard Azula mutter, "So, even you've given up on me…" but I really wasn't sure. At any rate, before I could turn around (had I wanted to) to see if I had heard correctly, the door had shut behind me, and my visit with my best-friend-slash-unrequited-love was officially over. I tried not to think too much about the conversation we had just had, as Noin led me back out to the lobby. Almost numbly – what was I supposed to feel after something like that? I had no fucking clue – I marked down the time I left in the guest log, and then exited the psychiatric hospital.

I spent the next hour allowing myself the depressive episode I had felt coming for the past hour or so, and then took my medication before driving back to my apartment. Thankfully, there wasn't too much traffic, so I didn't have too much time to think about the visit. For the rest of the day, and, really, for the next few months, I buried myself in schoolwork (once school started, as it was the end of August) and my part-time job at the local bookstore as best I could, begging off contact with my friends outside of school as much as was possible. And then, in April, six months after I had visited Azula, Zuko called me. It wasn't unusual, since my friends were persistent about my not being completely anti-social, but what the conversation was about… that threw me for a loop for a bit.

He told me that Azula was being released, as it seemed that she was cured – or at least mostly sane and the rest medicated – and they were having a little get-together the night she came home. The thinly-veiled offer of an invitation was something I wanted to decline right away, since I knew I was like an addict where his sister was concerned, but I could also hear the pleading in his voice, no matter how he tried to mask it. Normalcy was needed, and so I decided to give in. I wondered if it had been my visit that spurred Azula to actually make an effort at getting better, but I supposed I would never know one way or the other.

Not that she would've told me, anyways.