Title: Asylum
Author: overlithe
Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Summary: Almost a decade after the end of the War, Azula returns to the asylum she left some years previously. This time, she is not a patient.
Characters/Pairings: Azula, minor OCs; gen
Prompt: avatar_500 prompt 16. Mad; fanfic100 prompt 090. Home
Word Count: 500
Rating: T
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and concepts created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and owned by Nickelodeon and various other corporations/people. I'm not making any money and do not intend any copyright or trademark infringement. It was also somewhat inspired by the film version of Shutter Island and Grant Morrison and Dave McKean's graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth.
Author's Note: This ficlet stands on its own, but it's set in the same universe as a series of (canon-compliant) fics I'm planning on writing about Azula's post-War years. In those stories she spends five years in the asylum following her breakdown. Also, you should be able to guess which occupation I have her stumble into in those fics. Sadly, it's neither "US Marshal" nor "the Goddamn Batman". ;)
Asylum
The storm was just coming in when the ferry dropped Azula off at Bochu Island. The director—the new director; she'd never met him—welcomed her, talked as they crossed the grounds. She instantly disliked him, but it wasn't personal; she didn't like anyone.
Fog clung to her clothes and to the building looming ahead. The Southwest Wing, for the difficult cases. The dangerous. The suicidal. The criminally insane.
History's assorted losers.
'I'll see her now,' she said, not a request.
Azula's escort waited in the corridor. The girl on the bed—patient 67—thumped hear head repeatedly against the padded wall. A thread of spittle hung from her chin. 'They say she's the same—not the same,' she whimpered, over and over.
She. Patient 68. The dead one. The one who used to calm 67 down. The one who, 67 insisted, had been switched with someone else before her death.
These delusions are not uncommon, the director had said, thinking he could explain madness to her. Some even fantasise that their own family members have been replaced by doubles.
Delusional. Fantasising. Insane.
Azula stared at the girl. People didn't interest her, unless they were dead, but there was something… refreshing about the mad. She didn't have to figure out what they were hoping to gain when they talked to her. Uncaring, uncompromising honesty.
The girl's family was powerful. And—far more importantly—there was an inconsistency in the records.
A spider-fly in the ointment.
A flaw.
67 lifted her head and stared, glassy-eyed, at some point above Azula's shoulder. 'No one believes me,' she whispered.
Azula said nothing, turned around. The girl resumed her rhythmic thumping.
Keys rattled, latches groaned. The door opened and she stepped into the corridor.
Everything was the same. Comforting, almost. The heavy thread of the orderlies—not guards, no, not here. The faint smell of mildew and sickness no amount of soap could ever erase. The moans and creaks of the building, as though it shared its inhabitants' haunted sleep.
And the voices. But those never left.
Leave. Leave while you can. Before—
Don't listen to—
She walked over to a window. On the other side of the bars there was only fog, the rattle of rain and wind against the glass.
As though the rest of the world had melted into the mist, and this lost chunk of rock was the only thing left.
I'm staying.
You've got to, don't you? A voice, the voice, the one she listened to, sometimes, even though she knew—
supposed
—none of them were real.
She wondered how the restraints would feel against her skin. Welcoming, maybe. Whatever that meant.
I'm the helpful type, she thought, but you couldn't be a good liar without always knowing where you put the truth. I can't let this place— She stopped, hardened. It wasn't home, but it was better than jail.
There. Only half a lie, she snapped, and went to hunt the spider-fly in the madhouse.
++The End++
Notes: The line "it wasn't home, but it was better than jail" is a nearly direct quote from the Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds song The Curse of Millhaven. Also, Azula is one of my favourite characters in the series, so I hope I managed to portray her adult self as being marginally functional and, well, older (in the "several years of character development" sense, not the "you damn kids, get off my lawn" sense ;)) while still being recognisable as the canon character.