Title: Firebird
Author: overlithe
Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Summary: Madness is a borderless country. Azula in the asylum.
Characters/Pairings: Azula; gen
Prompt: avatar_500 prompt 028. Free; fanfic100 prompt 020. Colourless
Word Count: 500
Rating: T
Warnings: Depictions (hopefully realistic) of severe paranoid schizophrenia from the inside out. Also, involuntary commitment, obviously, and psychiatric treatments that are not exactly considered best practices nowadays.
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.
Author's Note: Inspired by too many films to list here, but I guess a mention should go to Pan's Labyrinth (which I highly recommend, btw). I've also drawn a little on my own experiences when I was admitted to a psych ward in my late teens, though luckily I didn't have anything nearly as serious, and my experiences with the mental health system were in the late 20th century rather than in a steampunk-ish/magical fantasy world. ;)
Firebird
She'd slept under a black flesh-leaf, one even wider than her curled up body, and when she snapped awake, old rain dripped down from tooth-ringed flowers. A scorpion-bee buzzed by, stinger fat with poison. She struck it down one-handed.
(The first thing is a needle-prick in the soft skin in the crook of one arm. Right, left, right. She could count the days by it, maybe, but then the fog rolls in.)
She went through her forms, leapt and jabbed and dodged amidst leaves that'd send you to sleep with a single touch, under the gaze of eyes lurking in damp holes, branches with steel claws hidden under a froth of moss. Everything here would rend and tear. Everything here was dangerous. Everything here was deadly.
She found it easy to be even deadlier.
When she was done, she wiped off the sweat and rubbed mud on her skin so They couldn't find her by scent. Her fingertips brushed the characters on her flesh, each stroke a reminder of her mission.
(Her hands lie on her lap. Two of Them strip her, dress her again. Her eyelids droop as she touches the welts on the inside of her wrists, and in the ridges of puckered flesh, there is the Before, even in the fog. When she had fire. When They needed chains and Their eyes were bright with fright even as They circled. They wouldn't dare to clean her drool with a well-practice wipe, chat as They keep her hair madwoman-short, no, no, no.)
The sunlight had turned orange when she came across the river—
(They wheel her to glass and steel and brightness, and on the other side there is the rushing of—water—and she must strike, but she can't run, can't even crawl, but maybe she can bite, yes, bite clean through, do it, do it, do it already, spray blood on Their faces, on eyes bright with mockery at the viper with one head and all its fangs gone. Then nothing.)
(Better than being dust.)
—when she came across the labyrinth of bamboo trees and stone stained with old blood, carved eyes that lingered on her back. When she defeated—
(The leather's embrace comes back, tighter. She does not mind the cold room, the dark room. It has no eyes.)
(No mirrors.)
—the thing in its midst, it asked for her name in its death throes. She smirked as she cleaned black ooze and the stench of charred flesh off her hands, and lied.
She'd been told she would have a name when she was done. When she was victorious.
Then she would
(burn)
(Fingers push pellets into her mouth. There's a trace of salt and bitterness on her tongue. The fog thickens again.)
She had never dreamed of dragons. She had never, she was sure, dreamed of anything at all.
Now she dreamed of being ready, and of wings of fire ripping through the skin on her back.
++The End++