Inhale.

Leaves crunch beneath her, getting caught in her hair and clinging to her clothes. They are all dead and of a dreary brown or a dying orange. Twigs and pebbles scratch the exposed portions of her skin, mostly nipping at her neck and cheeks.

Exhale.

The midsummer sun is too bright for her eyes as its rays beam through the tree-line. She can do little more than squint against them.

Inhale

And the bugs. They are dreadful, absolutely dreadful. They bite at and land upon her as if she's already dead. They tickle her skin in the most jittery and unpleasant way. She always hated spider-flies yet she can do nothing to brush them off.

Exhale

She can hear the rustling of the leaves and forest clutter as she is dragged along. And all she can do was is. Breath and maybe whimper. Azula doesn't cry, it isn't a look she likes on herself.

She tries to move again but to no avail. Some kind of poison courses through her veins.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale…

Her breathing grows rapid as the clouds in her mind begin to clear and the gravity of the situation finally sets in. She wills her arms to move but they drag limply above her head. She feels a rough hand around her ankle, the hand that pulls her forward. She almost wants to toss some of her pride away and scream. But her mouth feels like cotton, as though her tongue is too big for it. Where had she been? What had she been doing before finding herself in this position? She can't seem to remember, maybe her mind is still hazier than she thought. The smell of bamboo and mango are much to vivid, it makes her head hurt.

Her body is little more than dead weight for the time being so she drifts mercifully away again.

In retrospect Azula knows that she should have willed herself to stay awake, to assess her surroundings, to take note of those bothersome scents and awful insects just as she had been trained to do. Because of her thoughtlessness, she has no sense of where she is nor how far she has been taken. But in waking she finds herself bound helplessly. The manacles are of the molded sort, as opposed to two separate cuffs linked by a chain, these are linked by solid metal offering no room for movement whatsoever. The only chain fastened to the center between her hands is a long one that attach the cuffs to the floor. For it, laying on her back isn't an option, she is forced to either hunch over, lay on her stomach with her face pressing against the grime, or on her side. She lies on her side, cheek against moist rock that smells of mold and an earthy musk. The cuffs are cold on her skin. She drums her fingers against the floor, testing their functionality. She finds that she can move again, but it doesn't do her much good now that she is well and tethered to the floor. Her head is pounding, she can hear the blood beating behind her ears. She realizes that she is cold, a layer of goosebumps pimple her skin. With more discomfort it finally registers that she had been striped completely. Feeling startlingly exposed, she sits herself up. She might as well get familiar with her prison.

It is composed entirely of rock. She thinks that maybe she is underground, but that can't be so, because she can see thin beams of light through a slit in the wall opposite her. Form the way the rays fall, she discerns that it is sunset. Though she isn't sure if it has been only a few hours or if she just so happened to wake up at sunset a few days from her initial abduction. Her eyes linger on the slit, too narrow for an escape of any sort. She gives the room another onceover but there isn't much to see, it's just a craggy barren space. The only sound is the hiss of a draft through the slit and a constant dripping that comes from the ceiling. She must be in a cave or possibly a dugout. She thinks that she can make out bugs scuttling over the walls, her suspicions are confirmed when a cricket-ant flings itself onto her face. She is thankful that the shackles leave her enough wiggle room to bat it off.

Alone as she is, she allows herself to cry. The truth is she is afraid. She has always been the captor, only once has she ever been the captive and it was on the worst day of her life. That day comes back to her in full, bringing the tears on even harder. She tries to kick some fire, but the awkward positioning of her legs leaves her attempt fruitless. She could try anyways, to perhaps, propel herself up. But she has a feeling that she would rip her arms from their sockets before the chains from the ground. Were the chains rusty she might have given it an attempt, but they look fairly new. Fairly new and very sturdy. She feels so fragile in comparison.

The sun rays turned to moon rays by the time she finished weeping. And good timing too because the sound of heavy footsteps reaches her ears. Quickly she wipes the wetness from her eyes and cheeks and works to level her breathing. Eventually the person is close enough for her to hear disembodied and raspy breathing.

Her captor is a dark, seemingly shapeless figure clade in black and washed out by the surrounding shadows. She can still make nothing of its gender nor nationality. The silhouette drops a trunk on the floor, and unfolds a miniature table. Once satisfied with the arrangement of the trunk and the table, her abductor stares at her. As the figure nears, her attention is drawn back to her nakedness and all she can do is toss her head in an attempt to get her hair to fall over her breasts. In a very malicious gesture, her vicious companion sweeps it back over her shoulder. Those raspy breaths now fall close to her ear. "Hello princessss…" Hisses a hoarse voice. Azula thinks that it is female but she still isn't sure. She feels fingers on her shoulder and a body press up against her back. She goes rigid. "Say hello," spits the voice.

Azula holds her tongue.

"This is why you're here. Because you can't even say hello to people you think are beneath you."

She thinks for a moment, about telling the woman—yes, it is definitely a woman—that her lack of greeting had more to do with being bound and captured than any feelings of superiority. But Azula keeps quiet.

"I have a plan for you. Yes I do…"

Azula decides that this woman is either very old or very unhealthy. But could someone like that manage to imprison her like so? There must be two; someone to do the physical and someone to weave the plan.

Those bony fingers tap Azula's bicep, she shudders. "A monster, that's what they say you are. You act like one, banishing everyone and trying to burn everything to the ground. So that's what I'll make you then." The woman threatens. Azula swallows a lump in her throat as the uneasiness swells. "You want to be beastly on the inside then I'll makes you beastly on the outside too." The woman wrenches her hand away but Azula can still feel her invasive touch. Without another word, the woman slithers out of the room, leaving the princess to ponder exactly what she had meant.

Hours later, Azula fights for sleep. But it's a battle that she can't win. She can't sleep with such a bitter chill dancing over her skin nor with that constant dripping nor the centiworms falling on her. Even harder is finding sleep knowing that, that woman could be back at any moment. As she lies awake staring, she notices a series of loops fastened to the ceiling. Something about them is sinister. Still she expects that exhaustion will claim her despite it all. But it never does and she watches the sky, through the slit, transition from black to deep blue, through shades of orange and gold, and then to the blue of morning. But the woman doesn't show up again until later that evening and with her she brings something putrid.

She hears something drop onto the floor near the table with an ugly slosh. The smell to follow is absolutely rancid. So much so, that she can taste it. Azula feels the prick of a needle, the woman waits until her head dips to clasp a metal piece around her mouth. With this accomplished she motions to the corner of the room; a man steps forward and undoes the princess' bindings. He must be quick in his task, Agni forbid the girl wakes up midway through. He links a new set of chains into the loops on the ceiling. When finished, he replaces her old restraints with the new and shackles her feet with the old. "Is this what you had in mind, ma?" He asks.

The old woman nods. Now she must wait for the princess to rouse.

Azula comes to a few with a worse grip on time than before. Her breathing is shaky and her lip trembles. This woman is going to kill her. The X position she now holds is uncomfortable tenfold in comparison to her former bondage. Her soft noises of discomfort are muffled by the metal piece.

The woman takes a handful of her hair and jerks her upright. She looks into her eyes, and sensing nothing but distress, grins. Azula is willing to bet that the woman is getting a kick out of being able to initiate fear into someone who formerly intimidated others so. The woman moves to the table and withdraws something from the sack she had placed there, in the process splashing a goopy sludge of chunks and bits of meat. It takes a moment for Azula to register what she is seeing. The sack flops over spilling limbs and blood. A tiger-monkey head reveals itself, its tongue lolling out. The fetid odor worsens, her eyes water. This time she does empty her stomach, though there isn't anything to empty. The woman hunches over the table and begins to skin the tail of a mongoose-lizard. After some muttered 'hmm's' she holds the peeled skin up to Azula. The princess can see stringy strands of muscle tissue and tendons still clinging to it. The woman decides that the skin is satisfactory and goes back to the table to retrieve something from her box. She wheezes a chilling laugh as she smooths the layer of skin atop Azula's right shoulder.

She tremors at the slimy cold. Foreign blood trickles down her arm and that foul odor starts to leave her dizzy. It is so close to her nose. Her mouth curls in disgust. Disgust that turns quickly to dread. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to focus on the sound of the dripping as another needle breaks her skin.

This one is threaded.

She zones in on her own breathing. One inhale, one exhale and repeat. In her mind she speaks it; inhale, exhale, 1. Inhale, exhale, 2. Inhale, exhale, 3…

Until she no longer feels the needle weaving in and out of her arm.

She can't bring herself to assess the damage yet. She doesn't want to know. But she feels. She feels that the mongoose-lizard's skin covers her own from the top of her shoulder down to the outside of her elbow. She feels another ripple of unfamiliar scaly flesh against her own, this time on the inner arm.

One sharp inhale.

The needle is nipping her skin again.

It works to mold her skin with the mongoose-lizard skin and she can do nothing but let it happen. Each pierce brings a teeny burst of pain.

One shaky exhale.

Her skin is growing uncomfortably warm beneath the beast flesh. She chews on the inside of her lip and hopes that it's almost over.

Once more, she opts not to look at her ruined arm. But the choice is not hers. The woman tugs at her hair again and holds her head at an awkward angle until she opens her eyes. The sight makes her stomach lurch. Patches of her own skin still show through where the mongoose-lizard skin couldn't stretch enough to cover. And those places were read and swelling at the stitch marks.

A pool of mongoose-lizard blood is collecting in the air pockets between her skin and its own, but the blood has nowhere to go so it simply rests, waiting to go stagnant.

"Well?" The old woman asks, letting Azula's head drop.

"Well, what?" Azula rasps, it is the first thing she's managed to say since her capture. She admits that it feels well to user her voice again.

"What do you think?"

The woman is mad, Azula decides. Completely so, if she expects her to praise her for her grisly handiwork. "It's vile."

The woman's lip curls up into the kind of cruel smile that makes Azula's blood run cold. "Then it suits you."

"I think that it would suit you more." Azula dares to spit.

That wicked smirk transforms into a nasty scowl. With a feral growl the woman reaches into the sack and whips a handful of rheumy animal guts and pieces at her. Azula thinks that she may retch again but holds back, she doesn't need to dirty herself further.

The woman returns to her sack and pulls out the dismembered claw of a tiger-monkey. It looks as decayed as it smells. The fur is sticky with blood and in some patches, missing altogether. She fits this over Azula's hand like some hellish glove. And the needle is back.

The metal cuffs dig into her skin, leaving it raw and aching, but she can't stand holding up her own weight anymore, in this position it is becoming too much. In the same way, she doesn't have the strength to hold her head up so she lets it droop limply. She wishes that the old woman and her son would at least put her back in the bindings she started it. She thinks it may have only been a few days, maybe a week at most, but she is already crumbling. Azula can't figure out how she had let this happen to herself. She thinks it over as she tries to sleep but can't come to any answer. Her memories from the day of her capture are so fuzzy. Instead she tries to think about something else. Something pleasant. Something that may as well have happened ages ago. She thinks back to a time when human contact was a pleasant thing; when soft fingers tentatively brushed her cheeks and lips. To a day where she where it was nothing but tender touches. She clings to the image of her lover's face, she fears that she will lose it if she doesn't.