Vivisection
Chapter 53 - Ice Queen
It was peaceful, in a way.
Azula lay on her mattress in the prison cell, looking up at the ceiling.
No one expected anything of her in here. Ever since she'd been young, playing people like musical instruments to do her bidding had been her true strength, much more so than her firebending. Despite that, Azula didn't feel the same sense of helplessness that she had in the mental asylum. Strangely, she didn't even feel the desire to escape.
It was just as well, she supposed. Azula knew perfectly well what the rest of her life would look like. She had attempted the murder of a Fire Lord, and the last thing she saw before she died would be the inside of a Fire Nation prison.
She felt empty, but not depressed. Azula knew she should feel depressed - the coup she had planned for the last few months had failed spectacularly, leaving her not on the throne of the Fire Nation but instead in a holding cell.
Nonetheless, somehow she felt finished. There was nothing else she needed or wanted to do with her life. Azula had no desire to fight against her pending imprisonment.
But she knew Nemi Turunen didn't feel the same way.
She had heard the Avatar and the waterbender girl talking to Nemi. They had promised to fetch her Captain Aizen to serve as a witness. Clearly Nemi wasn't about to lie down and let Zuko seal her fate.
In a way, Azula respected that, admired it even. If anything else, she had miscalculated. Putting the blame on Nemi for Zuko's death would probably have backfired on Azula eventually.
Especially since she seemed to have the ability to access Azula's mind.
Azula flinched, remembering the intrusion of it, the flash of stark white light and the figures with scalpels. Her brother and uncle, upon hearing that she planned to murder Zuko and blame Nemi, had probably rejected Nemi's words as a lucky guess or even a clever deduction.
Azula knew better, and briefly wondered how long it had been going on for. Then she shook herself. Of course she would have felt it, had it happened before. Azula very much doubted it had been intentional on Nemi's part, mainly because the access hadn't been one-way.
There had been a dead girl, sitting in a chair and bleeding from stab wounds. There had been a pair of sharp, unfamiliar-looking blades lying on a floor, clotting blood rendering them black and crimson as well as shiny silver. And then there had been a hand, Nemi's hand, with blood on the fingertips.
The stream of images had been too rapid, too intense, for Azula to decipher their meaning straight away. She had realised later that the girl must have been Nemi's younger sister - she'd had the same bizarrely coloured hair.
Had Nemi killed her sister? Been blamed for the death of her sister? Azula couldn't be certain.
She heard a sigh from across the room, from the direction of Nemi's prison cell.
Azula cleared her throat, feeling almost as if she was about to jump into a void. She told herself she was being ridiculous. Why was she feeling nervous? As she'd once said to the warden of the Boiling Rock, she was a people person. Admittedly her skill with people was limited to making them dance like puppets to whatever tune she happened to be playing, but still -
'I set it up, you know. To make it look like you tried to murder Mother.' Azula felt as if she was talking to thin air. And the sentries were in the room - they could hear every word she was saying. Nemi, if she was even listening, was silent. Azula felt a little silly, but continued.
'It's because of me you're in here,' she said, each word falling only a short distance into the silence. 'Aren't you going to say anything?'
Clearly Nemi didn't intend to.
'I'm sorry.' Azula heard her voice saying the words, but didn't shape them with her mind.
She was astonished at herself. She'd never regretted anything. The only time she could remember having ever apologised for anything was to Ty Lee at the beach house on Ember Island, so long ago.
'You're only sorry because your plan failed.' Nemi's voice was a monotone, sounding as if it had almost fallen out of use. 'You calculated it all very carefully, but still you fell down in the end.'
She paused, and went on.
'You forgot to consider Iroh, you forgot to get him out of the way. You would have had to kill him as well, wouldn't you? I doubt you could have done it.' She laughed humourlessly. 'And what about Jilan? Were you going to have her quietly assassinated once you were Fire Lord? How many people were you going to kill, just so you could have what you wanted? Christ, I bet you killed Jun.'
'I didn't,' Azula replied, quietly.
'Oh, that makes it so much better.' Nemi's voice had risen in volume. 'Did you expect me to be surprised that you did it? I kind of guessed that. You were going to frame me for murdering my boyfriend.' She spat out the last word in disgust. 'I hardly think you'd lose any sleep over letting me take the blame for hiring someone to beat up your mother. Your mother, for God's sake! Is there anything you care about?' Her voice lowered again, almost to a whisper. 'Azula, is there anything you want to protect, anything you feel any sort of attachment for? You know, I don't think there is.'
Azula remained silent.
'You don't have any morals, any regrets at all,' Nemi went on. 'You seriously thought your apology would mean anything to me? Well, it doesn't. Because I know it's fake.'
'It isn't.' Azula was surprised at herself. Those two words were the only self-defence she'd put up during Nemi's tirade.
You're not defending yourself because you know it's true, she thought.
'Go apologise to Zuko for standing there and watching your dad melt his face off, then,' Nemi snarled. 'No, on second thoughts, don't. Zuko isn't any better than you are, but I'm sure you already know that.' She breathed in, painfully loud against the silence in the prison cells. 'Just fuck off, Azula.'
Azula drew her knees up to her chin, and closed her eyes. The silence drilled deep into her head, unbroken except for the breathing of the other prisoner in her cell.
