Schizophrenia
By L. M. Boulevardes
She sees his face, stiff with hate, each night before she goes to bed. She trembles and screams in her sleep, and it frightens Ty Lee into sleeping in Mai's bed each night. She withers and whimpers and is convinced by the words spoken by girl in the mirror that black things will spew from her mouth at any moment because she is bad and deserves to be dying, crying, to flounder and drown.
Azula is always screaming because she can hear.
"I'm sorry!" she says, sobbing in front of the mirror. "I'm so sorry. I did everything wrong, and I'm so sorry," she says, tears falling down her face and making streaks through her white makeup. She punches the mirror and screams as the fragments pierce her. The black is coming, eating her viscera and killing her from the inside out. She screams and flails and shrieks.
All her life, she has been slowly crushed and suffocated. Everything is falling apart. Her brother betrayed her and the Avatar has the advantage and she will be killed sooner or later. It is only a matter of time.
He took everything from her. Childhood, innocence – everything, everything, everything. He molested her and raped her and beat her and berated and humiliated her and –
He did it all.
No, he did nothing you fucking worthless whore. You did everything! You did it!
Oh, Agni, the voices are back. They speak to her in a sweet lullaby. The girl in the mirror is sneering and laughing, reminding Azula how worthless she is. She holds her head and tries to shut out the noise.
"You did it. You know you did it. You fucking worthless whore," the girl in the mirror sneers. She is pressing a knife to Azula's stomach, and that's all Azula knows. The smell of blood, the feel of cold steel, the taste of metal. She can see the blood dripping everywhere, it pours from her bodily orifices. She cries and swallows, knowing what's going to happen. She knows that the girl in the mirror is her. This is a hallucination and she knows, oh does she know. And he's dead now, and probably no one will ever no what happened to her. She can't kill him;
So she kills herself instead.