After the war

No detail was missed in Katara's dream.

"Father? What are you doing?! Daddy!"

"You will call me master when you are here, child! Obey your master or face the same punishment your mother recieved! Do it! Do it, Ursa!"

"Daddy - I mean, master? It's me! Azula! Your pumpkin pie! Not mommy! Please! Stop! Leave me alone! "

Katara watched in horror as 6 year old Azula tried to run from her father, only to have him tackle her from behind. Dazed, she stared up into his gently smiling face.

"No! Fight Azula, FIGHT IT!! God, please fight it!"

But Azula stopped struggling and began weeping as her father did what he wanted.

"No! No!'' Sobbed Katara "I DON'T WANT TO KNOW!"

Then, Azula was 9 years old, watching her father from the ceiling of the palace. He was on his throne, and she was watching. She was trying not to cry, as she had been preparing for this moment. She had to do this. He was hurting her and he had to stop. I have to. But even though her precision, which she had trained so carefully so as not to miss for years, and even though she had the perfect oppurtunity, she simply couldn't.

She decided right there and then, she would never let her emotions get the better of her - never be imperfect again. She would force herself to be unmoved by petty emotions and hold silly notions about the sanctity of life. She quietly and lithely snuck out of the room through the ceiling beams. But she swore, right before she left, she heard her father say," Coward."

Katara felt the girl's mind beginning to slip even when she was only 11 years old. She would randomly turn and threaten imagined enemies in her room and shoot flame. When she would realize noone was there, she would quietly call her servants to put out the fire, with no explanation for how it got there in the first place, or why.

But perhaps the most horrible, disgusting thing that Katara painfully watched Azula go through, at 13,was when Azula came into her father's room, looking ill.

"What happened, dear?"

"Father.. I did not want to come to you wit this, but I was afraid to tell my nurse, and since mother is not here any longer... I feel very ill. I have thrown up many times today, but more importantly, my monthly 'occasion' has stopped. It did not come last month, or this one."

Her father's eyes popped, and he leapt from his thone. In a terrible voice he declared," I will take care of it! WE WILL NEVER TALK OF THIS AGAIN! Do you understand?"

Azula, terrified, agreed.

He took her into his room, and burned open her stomach. He carved her womb out of her, and cut it open. He wrenched an unborn fetus from it and burned it out of existence. Azula sobbed and screamed before passing out. He took her to his private doctor, and after she had been stitched and barely repaired enough not to die, he murdered the doctor because he mustn't have anyone hear of it.

Katara screamed in her dream, but she heard no sound.

"Azula.. No, no.. Azula.. Azula... AZULA, NOOOOOOOO!" Katara woke in a terror, wrenched from her wretched dream.

Azula had been raped by he father every single day after her mother left. Ozai had needs, too, and he could fulfill them with no meager ordinary fire nation woman, though he did have fun with them. He also had fun with the prisoners of war that were dumped at his feet.

Azula had learned the way things were, and Zuko had gone ignorant. This had angered Azula more than anything her father ever did to her. She had been quite pleased that her brother recieved a scar similar to the one she bore on her stomach. She watched with malicious joy as her brother wept, being vulnerable to whatever his father decided to do.

Katara sobbed in her room, alone, struggling even to sit up, she was wracked by pain and horror and nasea at the sick, twisted life Azula had led up till that moment. It seemed that her father had continued his raping all the way till he decided to become pheonix king. That alone had terrified Azula - She couldn't have cared less, in actuality, about Mai and Ty Lee. It was the prospect of being completely alone for the first time in many years. Although her father was not good to her, he was the best she got. He was her world, and he had abandoned her, like her mother, like everyone.

Katara, hiccuping and making strange strangled noises of hyperventalating, ran from her room, down to the lowest chamber of the fire palace, where she resided from lack of any where else to go. Aang resided there to, but Katara bedded no man, no woman.

Once she found Azula's chamber, she fumbled with the lock for a moment but then just busted it down. Azula was chained to the wall, never moving, and never let down. She was constantly in a standing - up position, but she had never once complained. In fact, she never spoke. Never spoke, blinked, moved, saw, heard. She was in a seemingly permanent vegetative state. But her eyes always remained open.

Katara stood in the doorway, suddenly unsure of her rash decision to come see the young woman.

What am I doing? I can't change anything - those things still happened to her. I can't exactly just burst out and cry, I know all of your childhood secrets, let me now help you somehow! Even if she could hear me, what would happen to the loose remaining fragments of her sanity? What good could this possibly do anyone?

But sometimes, one simply does not listen to common sense, when they feel they must do something.

Katara slowly walked over, and as she stared at Azula's face, she was suddenly back in the dream, watching Azula's 'abortion', and ran over to Azula's side and sobbed.

She became very quiet, and for some reason, began whispering into Azula's ear, " Silence left unbroken thickens over a broken soul. It deafens and defeats one, swallows and encompasses. Fight it, Azula!"

Katara stopped talking and realized she had no idea what she was talking about. Someone elses mouth had spoken through her. Katara then loses it and holds onto Azula, racked with sobs so fierce she could scarcely stand. She wailed and screamed such as a terrified child, with no restraints built into the phsyce - completely unreigned, wild lamentation. She began begging Azula to talk, to move, to see, something! To do anything at all. But Azula continued, to stare... to remain motionless... sightless... without hearing.

Kind of depressing, I admit, but I have the outline for the next few, and those are more fluffy and sweet. When it comes to Azutara, it seems to me, it is never anyting but depressing. That's just the general mood of thier love, for some reason. Look forward to some Ty-Letara, maizula, Toph/Zula, and, possibly, Yue/Zula! A total yuri special. I'm making yaoi special next!