Chapter One: Locked In
Crazy. Insane. Demented. Twisted.
That is what they call Azula. She hears them, hears the hurried whispers, sees the fear in their eyes as they enter her room, shoving trays of food at her before running from the room. They are terrified of Azula, as they should be. But they are not afraid of her for the right reasons. They aren't scared of her power, not anymore. Now, they are afraid of her mind, the darkness that lives in her.
Azula screams and screams until her throat is raw and she is spitting up blood. She rattles her chains, and the insanity in her eyes would make even the stronger warrior halt in fear. Sometimes though, Azula is quiet. Sometimes she just sits and cries. And that scares her captors more than any screaming or empty threats ever can.
They don't see that Azula sees. The monsters that cling to the calls of her prison, the demons that live in the shadows, waiting to pounce. They don't see Lady Ursa, standing over her quaking daughter, holding a blood-stained knife. They don't see two charred bodies laying on the cold stones, just barely recognizable as Mai and Ty Lee. Only Azula can see the blood that drips down iron bars of her cell.
She is chained and drugged like an animal. No one wants to talk to Azula. No one will meet her eyes. No one will show her an ounce of kindness, a scrap of caring. Why should they? She is the insane princess. No more safe that a mad dog. Why should they treat her right? If she was Fire Lord, Azula would most certainly not treat them as people. She would treat them as animals, below her. Why should they treat Azula properly. She wouldn't.
None of them understand what it was like for the tortured princess. None of them understand that she too was once human. None of them can know what it was like to be hated by her mother, feared by her brother, and seen as only a weapon by her father. They say Azula was born cruel. Maybe she was and maybe she wasn't. She was born different, that much is true.
But who can say? Maybe if Azula had been accepted by her brother, and had been loved by her mother, maybe then things wouldn't be like this. Cruelty does not just happen. Cruelty is fed by anger, regret, loneliness, depression. All of these things Azula has. That is why she is insane. That is why she is cruel.
Things could have been different, but they weren't. So here the exiled Princess sits, locked and chained. Without hope, without love. She is locked in.
It takes Azula a month to realize that she isn't locked in the prison.
She is locked in her mind. And from that there is no escape.
