Sorry for another delay, real life has been crazy. Not exactly in a good way either.
gemsofformenos: It is for now lol. Though I'm not quite sure exactly when/if it will go down again. I may or may not have run out of outline lol, now the story is gonna be writing itself an a sense. But yes, Azula's getting there at least a little bit. She's lucky to have Zirin.
Death Fury: Thanks!
They pull her wings half-out and leave her to bleed.
They laugh at her and mock her.
She finally had something beautiful and they have taken it again leaving her to feel as ugly and scarred as before, possibly more so. She can see herself muscle tissue spilling from the open wound. It trails out and she doesn't dare move for fear of dislodging the wings even more. After all of the work Okon had put in. The wings themselves are cracked and broken. The delicate bones they had been so carefully placed in are torn from their sockets and she can see blood bubbling through the cracks. It is pooling around her as Li sneers at her.
She hovers over with a barrel of something. "Go on, boy."
And her son lifts the barrel and pours it over her. It smells like centuries of rot and decay. A hoof hits her in the face, it is not attached to any limb. A slush of liquefied organs fills her nostrils. Her face bunches in disgust because some of it has slipped between her lips. She gags and tries to spit it out but that only gives an opening to take in more of the stuff. Her stomach flops, the taste is absolutely putrid.
When she looks up she sees the drill. It flashes in Li's hand, she breathes heavily like an animal on the fringes of its demise. Li's son is standing over her leering.
Li brings the drill towards Azula. "I don't deserve this, I really don't." But she thinks that maybe she does. Deep down, some dark part of her almost feels satisfaction. She doesn't want to admit it, but after everything she'd done—to Zuko, to Mai, to TyLee, after stealing the Avatar's life from him—she feels as though it is only right. She had gotten Lo killed.
"You do deserve this." Li hisses. The drill digs under her fingernail, popping it from its bed with a fleshy ripping noise. Azula flinches and yelps. It happens a second time. A third. A fourth. Ten times.
A dragon has been declawed.
She is woozy but she can't seem to pass out, that would be a mercy. Her whole body aches. She yearns for release. Release that never comes, but at least Li is willing to spare her the sights. With a most wicked and curling smile, Li thrusts the drill into the princess' left eye. As that one bleeds, the other cries. With the second attack, Azula is blind.
So it is a surprise when Li pours something on her. She thinks that it is more sloshy meats and innards. She doesn't know what it is until it begins to burn her. She can feel her skin blistering and melting away. She thinks it is acid until it starts to harden.
Molten gold, she thinks.
But Li says that it is only iron. That the princess isn't worth gold.
Li severs her new wings completely and fills the holes with more iron. It leaks under her skin and festers, arousing blisters and blood before it settles over her bones. It eats through part of the way and begins to harden, turning bone to iron. Azula screams louder than she has ever. It lies somewhere between a wail and a shriek. It is almost in human and grows even more so when Li drizzles some molten iron into her mouth. At first it lands only on her teeth and burns them away almost completely. It meets her tongue and she can no longer yell properly. Li pours in more and it slips down her throat.
.oOo.
Zirin hasn't heard Azula cry out like that in a very long time. Her dreams must be particularly distressing this morning. She doesn't know if she should wake the poor woman or if she should get up and prepare a nice comfort breakfast for when she wakes up on her own.
Eventually she decides that she will prepare something special for the princess after all. She makes her way to the garden and picks out a few ripe apples and pineapples. Some bananas, grapes and mangos as well. She avoids cherries, the princess had said that she is no longer fond of them and told her a rather compelling story about banishing her servants. Zirin, not the most socially graceful, had laughed. Apparently, it had been too soon for it to be looked back on and laughed at. She assumed that Azula wasn't ever going to let that one go.
She slices the fruits and arranges them into fruity starbursts. And over the bloom made of pineapple, apple and mango wedges she sprinkles some cinnamon. She sets it on a plate and then borders her creation with grapes and bananas.
She is rather proud of her work.
When she gets back, she finds Azula trembling and rubbing at watery eyes. "Hey now, don't do that." Zirin tries hushing her. "Yer awake now so, you ain't got nothin' to worry about." Ignoring a plentiful slew of protests, she pulls Azula into a hug and rubs her back. She can no longer see it, but the princess' grumpy, partly-dismayed pout is burned into her mind.
She is still topless so Zirin lets go and offers to fetch her a shirt. Azula declines and reaches for the wings. She is rather adamant about wearing them again. "Well I'm glad that you like 'em so much." Zirin notes. It dawns on her that she is probably going to have to help the princess modify her wardrobe. Perhaps that will be the task of the day.
She watches Azula take a slice of pineapple in her shaky hands and slowly nibble on it.
"Taste good?"
Azula nods.
"I jus' picked 'em."
She nods again.
"So are you going to tell me about yer dream?" Zirin asks.
Azula looks at her and simply takes another slice from the fruit platter. She is growing visibly calmer and Zirin assumes that this is just another, 'don't wanna talk about it' thing. She supposes that if the princess ever wants to share, she will. So she grabs a bite herself and eats in silence.
.oOo.
The dream is still buzzing in her mind late into the afternoon. It replays itself in gory detail and she wishes she could forget it. She thinks that the dream is possibly worse than the reality she had lived. The dreams are always much more vivid and come with torments simply not survivable in the waking world.
She wonders if they will ever leave her. Azula just wants sleep, untroubled sleep where she doesn't find herself back in that damn cellar. It might be too much to ask for, but she'd like to dream of pleasant things again; of glory and power and of riches and luxury. And perhaps, of love and passion. Even just one of those would be heavenly.
She misses good dreams.
She finds herself a quiet spot in the garden and sits down. Faintly she misses the elaborate and extravagant palace gardens. She hugs her knees to her chest. The tattoo prickles irritatingly, reminding her that she still has to cleanse it.
The act of cleaning it requires little thought at this point, so her mind wanders. In most of her dreams Li, without the mask, looks hurt and tormented, almost psychotic—it is a replica of the expression the real Li had worn.
And Azula understands.
Something had snapped in the woman, probably in the same way something broke within Azula herself.
And she had caused the break.
As a girl, Azula heard tell of twins. Tales that if one died the other perished as well. In others the living twin wandered with only half a soul and a crippling depression. She wonders it this is what happened to Li. The souls of twins are interwound. Azula finds it hard to fathom losing even a part of her soul. Her spirit. Her life-essence.
And she realizes that she isn't mad at Li.
She feels almost bad.