Chapter 6: The Dragon

Azula was lucid.

Or rather, she was lucid enough.

It was a rarity these days, but not for reasons that one might expect. It was certainly not because of her so-called "insanity"; no, she had managed to overcome that (for the most part) by herself over the course of the year before last, thanks to her mental acuity (it was tremendous) and willpower (it was incredible), with zero thanks to all the "experts" they'd brought in to help her.

Indeed, a year was a long time for most people to spend alone with nothing but the company of their thoughts. But for Azula, who was not most people, it was so much more. She'd always been a thinker, and a particularly fast one at that. She could think about something in ten different ways with the time it took most people to think about it in just one way, and that one way was usually woefully incorrect. Thus a year, spent with nothing but her thoughts, was probably akin to a simpleton's lifelong thought-repertoire. Or at least, she assumed that was the case, because how can one truly measure the thoughts of a giant against those of an ant?

Such was the burden of being a prodigy.

Perhaps that was why it had taken so long to process all the information. She had mulled everything, literally everything, over and over again in her head for a year, and some of it simply hadn't made logical sense. But that was the tricky thing about logic; everything that wasn't, was illogical. And no amount of reasoning in the world could explain an illogical occurrence.

Azula had always considered herself to be logical, rational individual. But she did not always act logically or rationally, for reasons she herself could not explain. And since Azula's mind was far and away superior compared to those of most beings, they had a much greater tendency than her to act illogically or irrationally. Azula considered herself to be a people person, meaning that she understood people well and often used it to her advantage. But there were certain things that people would do that she could simply not explain or ration out, no matter how hard she thought about it.

She ascribed all of these irregularities, all of these conundrums, enigmas, and perplexities to one category, simply labeled: Love.

She understood what love was, but at the same time, she did not understand what it was.

Yet another paradox.

She knew its definition and she could usually recognize it when she saw it (for example, she knew her mother loved Zuko and that her uncle had loved Lu Ten) but she did not really know what it looked like, what it smelled like, what it felt like, what it tasted like. She knew that it was a motivator for some people, and that, like most objects in the world, it could be used against someone when applied with the proper amount of leverage. She knew that some types of it could be considered false, and she knew that some types of it could be considered true, and the true types were far and away rarer than the false ones.

Azula held many things in the universe to be true. The first was that the universe, much like her mind, was expansive but had a tendency towards chaos and irrationality, and that strict order had to be enacted in order to prevent this from happening.

The second was that not all things were created equal. Some were just better, and she was living proof of that.

The third was that life was not fair; a result of the irrational universe. She was living proof of that, as well.

The fourth was that water was wet, fire was hot, earth, though it could be broken down, was solid, and that air was all around us, except in the water. All of this had something to do with balance, and all balance had something to do with the Spirit World, which operated on a slightly different set of rules than the physical world.

The fifth, and the most important in terms of Azula's understanding of people, was that all living creatures act in their own self-interest. Self-preservation was a survival skill required of any creature that lived on this earth. Not even an ant would march willingly into a fire.

And yet, a human would.

This was the great mystery of the world, life, and the universe.

For all her intellect, for all her cleverness, for all her physical and mental superiority, Azula could not comprehend it. It was illogical. It made no sense.

Why would someone willingly risk their entire life for someone else?

Mai (Glum-Glum) had done it for Zuko (Dum-Dum). Iroh had done it for Zuko. Zuko had done it for that water tribe peasant. Her mother had done it for Zuko…The Avatar had been doing it for lifetimes for the entire world. And it was highly improbable that the Avatar, save for maybe the very first one, at any given moment in time, even knew a tenth of the people he was often running off and dying for.

Azula couldn't think of anyone she would do that for. Perhaps her father, once upon a time, had he ordered it (though arguably it was always implied), but only when she was younger and more easily manipulated.

She might have gotten hurt for someone else, a certain someone who continued to haunt a corner of Azula's mind all by herself, but that was also a long time ago, before a certain betrayal. And she certainly would not have died for her. That would be like a human giving up her life to protect a kitten; a superior being sacrificing her superior life for an inferior one.

And, to Azula's knowledge, a person had once upon a time given up his life to save a kitten. She had once read a factual account of a man who had leapt into the middle of the road to shield the useless little furball and, in doing so, took the full impact of a runaway cabbage cart. He died instantaneously, and the kitten simply got up and walked away.

To her knowledge, the kitten never made any remuneration to the man's grieved family for their loss.

That only made everything all the more strange and inexplicable.

Though, Azula reasoned, if one was stupid enough to risk one's life for that of a small feline's, then one deserved to die.

Still, it was this brand of irrationality that had been the bane of Azula's existence for the past two years. She could not wrap her mind around it, which only made it all the more frustrating, considering how many things she could wrap her mind around.

An ant was an inferior creature to a human. A regular human was to Azula as an ant is to a human. But ants cannot comprehend love, and thus they do not march willingly into a fire. A human can comprehend love, and might march willingly into a fire. Azula could not comprehend love, and would never march willingly into a fire because that would be stupid.

Unless she could firebend the flames, but that was beside the point.

And, to make matters worse, Azula did not know of anyone who would risk their lives for her.

There had been many who had done so during the war, but that was because the only other alternative was certain death by her hand, as opposed to a probable death by other circumstances.

That was a rational choice, one which Azula highly approved of.

But, if the threat of lightning were not there, would anyone willingly risk their own life to save hers?

Azula knew the answer to that, which only served to frustrate her further. Here were all these people falling over themselves to die for her vastly inferior brother, and yet she had no one?

If she died right now, would anyone even care? Isn't caring what usually happens when one dies?

She thought of one person in particular who might, the same individual who, no matter how hard Azula tried to evict her, remained embedded deep within Azula's considerable thinking grounds. She thought of that individual's big, doe-like eyes, her bright smile, her indomitable optimism, her unbreakable will, her soft brown hair which smelled of fire lilies after a summer rain…even after two long years, she still looked and smelled the same as Azula remembered. She had visited her today and yesterday, though today had proven infinitely more diverting, but Azula was not sure if it was in a good way or a bad way. She was never very sure of anything when it came to the topic of her, which was another source of constant vexation. The very thought of her was enough to send Azula's mind reeling for hours, and no matter which way she attempted to approach it, dissect it, and attempt to understand it or deny it, she never managed to arrive at any satisfactory conclusions.

Azula did not like to think of such things, since they imparted her with a feeling of utter impotence, which in turn left her irritable, exasperated, and displeased…but she did not have much choice. Her mind had a tendency to meander its thoughts these days, and she'd already thought about the sun and the stars and the earth and the moon and the tides, as well as spirits, time, war, life, hair, eyes, flowers, stones, birds, cats, and the mating rituals platypus-bears, to name a few.

Enough. Now was not the time to think about such things, inconsequential or not (she hadn't quite decided that yet). She was lucid for the first time in a while, and she knew it would not last. She would have to make the most of it.

For you see, lucidity was no longer an issue of her sanity. It was an issue of a rigid schedule enforced onto her over the course of the past year, one which she had no control over.

Azula despised it when she lacked control. Being in control (and controlling others) was one of the things she had been best at, after all, and, along with her natural born talent, part of what made her such a deadly firebender.

And losing control was what caused her momentary lapse into psychosis in the first place.

But that was all in the past. She was (mostly) sane and completely shackled now, and had been for two years, and no matter what her idiot of a brother said, had very little control over what happened to her. That fur-toad of a doctor had seen to that.

Every day, from eight hours and twenty-four minutes in the morning until four hours and forty-eight minutes at night, Azula was poisoned.

How ironic that only after her month-long paranoia had died down did someone actually slip poison into her food.

She had not realized it at first, probably because of all the wood-sloth extract in her tea and her underestimating the extent of the doctor's malice and underhandedness, which was a truly foolish mistake on her part. But all you had to do was ingest the poison once, and it was inside you, muffling your brain and dulling your senses, suffocating you with an unwanted euphoria.

She would lie catatonic for hours, too tired to move, too hazy to think, and too impotent to do anything about it. And then when it began to wear off, her body would rage against her mind, begging, screaming, sweating, and shaking uncontrollably until she gave in and fed it more of the vile white concoction.

She spent most of her day inundated in a sea of mind-altering drugs. Right now, instead of drowning like she usually was, she was merely floating.

Not quite lucid, but close enough.

But even now, she could feel the pain of withdrawal begin to prick at her. It felt like a hunger that started in your skin, seeped into your blood, and wrapped itself around your head.

Oh, how she loathed it, more than anything else she had ever loathed before.

She had tried to starve herself after learning the secret of her jook, since it was the only way to avoid being placed under the drug's horrible power. They had strapped her down then and force-fed her through a tube, which had been a thousand times more humiliating and painful than if she had just ingested the food regularly.

If only Zuko had been decent enough to kill her that day, she thought.

But no. She was not about to let some filthy peasant doctor break her. She was not going to let him win, and she had been doing a fairly good job of it, so far.

The drugs were only part of the doctor's regimen. They were to keep her weak and powerless while he continued, and failed, to learn exactly what it was that made Azula tick.

Just as a giant can never hope to understand the thoughts of an ant, so an ant could never hope to understand the thoughts of a giant.

The doctor was clever in his methods and techniques, what with the drugs and the games and the room with the spinning lights, but Azula was cleverer. She feigned madness, delirium, and catatonia. She spoke plainly and in riddles, to everyone and to no one, especially when she knew the doctor was watching (though he did not know that she knew he was). She weaved elaborate lies and tales, sprinkling in truths and half-truths that would take decades for even the most brilliant individual to pick out. You had to include some nuggets of truth, after all, just to keep them guessing. It frustrated the doctor to no end, which was one of the small consolation prizes in all of this.

She had to take her victories where she could get them, these days.

But the longer Azula kept up with her charade, the harder it was to distinguish the truth. She played her part so well that sometimes it was hard to tell where the line between fake madness and real madness began and ended, especially when she was under the merciless influence of the doctor's poison. And now, to make matters worse, he had discovered the glaring weakness in all her carefully constructed defenses. She was running out of time, in more ways than one, and now was certainly not the moment to wax poetic about it. There was work to be done, and she only had until the start of the morning shift at seven to do it.

First, she had to escape her bed, to which she was tied down every night. It would have been a bit of overkill for any normal patient who already had shackles on their hands and legs, but for her, this was probably a smart decision on the doctor's part.

Not quite smart enough, however.

With well-practiced precision, the former Princess of the Fire Nation deftly slid out the small piece of wire she hid under her right cuff. It used to be a hairpin that belonged to one of the nurses, but Azula was fortunate and quick enough to pilfer it when no one was looking. Years of watching Mai sullenly practice sleight-of-hand tricks enabled Azula to master the technique more quickly than she would have normally.

Well, at least her so-called friendship with Mai was good for something.

She worked swiftly to undo the restraints on her arms, then her legs. She knew she only had so much time to do this delicate work before the withdrawal-induced shaking set in. Thankfully, it only took her a matter of moments, due to all the practice she had doing it over the last year.

Once she was free of the leather restraints, she made her way over to the padded wall and pulled off one of the cushions. She had worked meticulously to make the cushion removable, but still look untouched to the untrained eye. Behind the cushion was a stone wall with a very small chink in it, blocked by a rock that was only slightly bigger than her fist.

She removed the rock carefully, exposing a small compartment of the various goods Azula had managed to hoard during her time here. There was a wooden toothpick, a small scrap of paper from Min's journal, a tiny glass pill bottle, a scrap of cloth, the Pai Sho tile she had palmed during her game earlier today (the guards had been so busy screaming and examining her first hand that had moved that they completely failed to notice when her second hand slid the tile under her cuffs…misdirection was such a wonderful trick), and a small candle. To others, it would look like an assortment of junk, but to Azula, they were glittering keys.

She would get to those in a little while. For now, she had to send a message.

She reached into the hole in the wall, careful not to get her manacles caught on any uneven surfaces, until her hand came into contact with a slick, rounded metal surface. Carefully, with her middle finger extended, she tapped on the pipe.

A-R-E Y-O-U T-H-E-R-E

She waited.

Y-E-S

Y-E-S

Y-E-S

Y-E-S

Y-E-S

She smiled.

T-O-M-O-R-R-O-W N-I-G-H-T A-W-A-I-T M-Y S-I-G-N-A-L

She waited.

Y-E-S

Y-E-S

Y-E-S

Y-E-S

Y-E-S

Azula nodded.

S-P-R-E-A-D T-H-E W-O-R-D

With that she retracted her hand, careful not to make any noise with her chains. Now, it was time to work on her second message.


A/N: Did you know the phrase "chasing the dragon" is Chinese slang for drug usage? Specifically opium, but I'm going to stress that the drug Azula's been poisoned with is fictional.

Thanks for all the reviews/favorites/follows! You guys rock. This is probably my favorite chapter so far, and I hope you all liked it, too. A brief but revealing look into Azula's slightly damaged psyche. This is Azula. This is Azula on drugs. Don't worry too much about that, though; she has a plan. She always does. Just wait and see! And no, she's not actually a super genius with 10x the processing speed of a normal human…she just kind of thinks she is in comparison with most people (It's more like, 2-3x, max). By now it should be apparent that what each character thinks, observes, and says is not necessarily the truth.

And yes, Azula's character development will be slow, but it is coming, I promise. These first few chapters are just establishing my version of her while trying to stay true to the series.

If anyone is curious as to how exactly she "got over" her "insanity" (I believe it was more of a psychotic break than anything else), I may or may not write a companion ficlet at the end of this story. Mostly humor, and a little sad. We'll see how things go. Next up; more Ty Lee and some Mai.