"Did anyone in quarantine make it?" Azula asked.

"A few." Zuko replied.

"And what happened to them?"

"It varied. Some of them are still just as bad as before, some of them are recovering. I don't know much beyond that…"

"You're the Fire Lord how do you not know much?" Azula cut in.

"Whenever I request to go have a look myself my advisors among others yank me back and tell me they don't want their Fire Lord to catch it. Honestly I don't think anyone really knows any more than I do…I haven't gotten any word from Aang either." Zuko paused. "Some people think he caught it too."

"It? You mean the council still hasn't come up with a name for it yet?"

"They were thinking of calling it The Scorch Virus since many people seemed to have burning sensations. But not everyone got those. Some people went cold instead. Others felt a sense of what they described as dizzy weightlessness. And some got the opposite. A lot of people experienced a combination of two or three symptoms...a handful felt them all." Zuko explained. "Basically what's giving the council trouble is that other than it only affecting benders, there isn't one common ground. And so everyone's just been calling it 'it' or 'the virus'."

"And what have they been saying about me?"

"Nothing really. I stuck to our plan and told them we were keeping you here in the palace because you had a relapse."

"And they bought it?"

"Yes."

"Everyone must think I've absolutely lost it…" Azula murmured.

"Better that then locked away for real."

Azula shrugged. She just wanted to get out of the palace and do something…anything aside from lying confined to her bed. Moreover she longed to get back to her bending. She missed watching the fire bounce around on her fingertips. Missed feeling its lingering warmth over her palms.

She felt as though she needed to firebend again—to burn away the emptiness that hung heavily over her since the night of her collapse.

It would be two weeks before she found herself well enough to bend again.

The heavy feeling never truly did leave Azula's body though she'd grown used to it, now able to mentally work herself through it as though it were some illusion to be broken.

Azula closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying her hardest to will the feeling of flame forward once more. But the spark just didn't seem to come; she dropped into one of her many stances anyways. She bought her arms up, charging up her lightning…rather trying to charge up her lightning. Not even a spark followed her fingers.

Nothing.

Perhaps she'd done it wrong…no. She never got her forms wrong. She gave it another go. Just in case. She managed to generate just as much lighting as she had in her first attempt.

Azula's heart drummed, mind racing. Alright, maybe she just needed to start simpler. She fell into one of the most basic bending stances she could think of. And yet her body refused to produce any flames. Brushing all forms and stances aside she settled for just trying to produce even a small fire in her palm.

Not a single blaze. Not blue nor orange.

Azula could feel the emptiness more intensely than before—rather she could pinpoint exactly where that feeling of emptiness came from. It was gone.

Her bending was gone.

Her bending was everything to her, and it was gone.

Flushed from her system along with the virus.

Her mind went numb, barely lifting her feet off the ground she made her way back inside, down the hall, and back to the room.

For a while Azula couldn't bring herself to do anything at all aside from trying (in vain) to bend every few minutes. With each failed attempt came another higher level of denial. She couldn't have lost her bending…that was impossible. With each try she came up with a new explanation; she just needed a few more days to recover, she just needed to focus more, it'd come back when the fever passed completely.

Azula could lie to everyone else, but she couldn't lie to herself. Well she could. But she didn't believe herself.

After a good while she sulked over to her bed and lie there doing and thinking of nothing at all.