AN: I wrote this forever ago. One day I just wondered how it might have been from Az's point of view and this came tumbling out. I hope someone else finds it interesting.
How much of it was me? I don't know anymore. I was so ANGRY at first, at you at mother, at everyone who saw me, but didn't see her. How could they not see? I was trapped in my own mind, powerless, and scared, and no one could see me. They readily accepted the personality change. Oh you knew, and mother knew. But mother did nothing. Instead she pampered you. Sweet child, the savior of the other daughter, and you had no clue. It was soon after that, that I stopped hating you.
You don't remember Deeg, but you tried talking to me, the real me, the hidden me. She wouldn't let you touch me of course and she said that most awful things, but you tried. The things she said to you, and you would cry and still face her saying "that's not MY Az that's her, Az, Az, I know you're in there. Please sister come back," and I found myself loving you again.
She hated you for that of course and knew you were competition for the emerald. That's when she knew she had to kill you. How I fought her! I screamed and clawed at the fissure of our minds, but it was no use. I watched, aching like fire, as she choked the life out of you in that bedroom. On that day I truly died. I knew I was lost. My baby sister was dead, and I had killed her. Coldly calculated, viciously achieved and you were gone, and I knew I was trapped.
As I grew, I learned from her. My more than bosom companion. I grew stronger yes and fought. Because I still hated her. She was strong and vicious, and we shared everything. I learned to sleep through some of the worst of it, if you could call that sleep. I could not watch as my body was used like that. I had no hope, but a fools hope.
As we learned of the emerald I guarded my thoughts with an iron will, the will that had grown with her. I knew I might have some release if the emerald was stronger than even she knew. Oh she thought if the Gale women could use its power than she should handle it well enough, but she cared not about the properties of the stone.
Of the light it represented, and the Gale women who had channeled such hope through it; their longing for good, their inner love of the land and its people. That had to make an impression on the stone. It was not always solely the emerald of the eclipse. It was the heart of the O.Z. Called forth from the power of the land and broken off from the emerald that was the true power behind this side of the rainbow.
So I waited, watching one empire crumble under her rise, our rise, and I dreamed of swings and heart shaped rocks.
"Az, I'm scared."
"Don't let go."