"A very dark and very haunting chapter. It's truly horrible what Azula had to endure" She went through a lot and that's not quite everything either. "They're searching for her source of fire I think, they try to take this fire from her but still it's not clear why and who is behind this torture." An interesting theory. That is to be seen. :P "It lines out Azula's iron will and her strength." Azula is a very persistent and resilient person. She's not one to just lay down and cry. "the traditionalist from the South Pole." Another interesting theory! There are quite a few possibilities. "Poor Azula has been through hell and as long as these group is out there she'll still be in danger." Yeah, she has gone through a lot, but (for now) the worst is over. "try to assure she cannot gain back her memory to reveal the identities of persons who have done this to her." Her memories are rather dangerous for them. If she knows who they are then everyone will.
Thanks! Best of luck to you both off and online! :)
Her dash is a mad and frantic one. She doesn't know where she is going and she hasn't much time to figure it out. Her only advantage is that they hadn't expected her to make a move. That they have to regain composure as she tries to slip away.
She rounds another corner and another after that, throwing door upon door open. Some of them refuse to budge and the ones that do aren't particularly useful; a kitchen, a supply closet, and an empty white room are among them. She pries open one more and finds herself another closet. This one is full of coats and furs. Her eyes light up, if only for a moment, as she hustles to find a coat the will fit her. Most of them are several sizes too big. And the one that she ends up pulling over her arms leaves a lot of excess sleeve.
She reaches into the pockets and finds a pair of mittens, she fusses with stuffing her hands into them as she continues her directionless sprint. She finds that they are also at least a size too big.
She takes another corner.
The man lurches at her so fast that she can't weigh the pros and cons of firebending. The flames burst from her hand before she can call them back. They have done their part, the man finds himself sprawled out on the floor with a trail of smoke rising from his chest. But they have also burned a decent sized hole in the mitten, near her pinky.
She hasn't the time to spare it a second thought, she can hear their footsteps growing hazardous close.
A whole stampede of them.
If they catch up she hasn't a chance at all.
Her lungs burn by the time she reaches what she thinks is a lobby of sorts. She can hear them shouting various things. "Azula!" And, "if you surrender now, we will show mercy." Or, "turn back and we will keep treating you with the kindness we have been."
She shudders. If what they had been doing was kindness…
Azula pushes herself forward despite the searing pain in her middle. She doesn't remember taking any damage in her flight, it must be one of the many things they had done to her before taking her to the room. She doesn't have time to fight for the memory, even when it is in reach, so she lets it go.
Ignoring all calls to stop, both internal and external, Azula crosses the length of the lobby, begging the universe to let it be that it truly is a lobby. She knows that it must be, otherwise they wouldn't be yelling so frantically.
She can hear them behind her. They call her mad as she yanks the door open and steps into the swirling blizzard.
But she thinks that it would be twice as mad to stay in a place where she knows she will only find torment. At least in the endless white expanse there is a chance for something else. Somehow the white of the landscape seems more merciful than the white of the room she had been imprisoned in.
She had thought that it had been frosty in her little white room, this…
This is on another level.
It is a frigidness so piercing that she thinks it has penetrated her very soul. It is so dreadfully biting that, though she has only stepped just out of arm's reach, the men behind her refuse to pursue any further.
"Azula, get back inside!"
The wind slams against her cheeks and tosses a burst of white into her face and she almost listens.
Instead, she takes a defiant step forward.
"You absolute lunatic, come back here where it's warm." Demands a different voice.
"The tundra is no place for a firebender!" Calls another.
His voice is growing distant. All of their shouts are. They grow softer and softer until they are wholly buried under the shrieking howl of the arctic storm.
Though it is hard with the cold practically freezing her face, she smiles. She has won.
She is free!
She drags herself further out into the flurry. With the jubilations of victory wearing off, the cold begins to register more potently. It is more relentless than she had anticipated. It stings, she didn't think that it would or could. Perhaps if she had remembered what it was like to be cold, thoroughly, unforgivingly cold, she wouldn't have fled. No, she knows that this isn't true. She thinks that death by frost is better than death by whatever means they have planned.
But death is death…
It is hard to walk between the force of the gusts that spit flakes into her face-and, occasionally, shards of ice-and the general depth of the snow already on the ground. It would burden a person of average height. Azula is well aware that she is small, as so, the snow comes up to her knees. In some places, when she steps wrong, she finds that it comes to her hips.
When this happens she is filled with a panic like no other.
She is stuck, lodged within the ground. She claws furiously at it and snow fills her gloves, entering through the hole she'd burned through it. Her pinky begins to burn with the cold. She yearns to heat it, pines to summon a burst of fire to melt the snow trapping her. But her body heat has plummeted so significantly that it is a lost cause.
After a breath stealing effort she manages to claw her way to freedom once more. For a good while, she simply lays there, panting heavily, watching the snow drift onto her cheeks. They are now a bright red. She picks herself up, for fear of being buried alive if she lays for much longer.
The world around her is so completely and unrelentingly white that, for a good while, she can't see any more than an arms length away. And the wind whips at her so violently that she can hardly breathe let alone make any further forward progress. She doesn't even have a destination.
She isn't sure that there is anything out here at all; maybe the world is just one large and cold white expanse and she has just left the sanctuary of the only human territory that there is left in the world. She pushes herself forward, some part of her wishing that she hadn't been born into a world that is only varying shades of cold and different degrees of pain.
It grows harder still to move about as her legs begin to sting with cold and her muscles begin to ache from fighting against mounds of snow. She thinks that, perhaps, she hadn't had the opportunity to use them much during her imprisonment; they are so stiff and sore and weak. She is stiff and sore and weak.
For a moment, the snow relents some and she can see ahead of her with a little more clarity.
But with her wobbly, aching legs, she finds herself growing clumsier, stumbling more often and taking longer to recover from each fall. She thinks that soon she won't have the energy to get up at all. She feels like she is made entirely of ice. That if she moves the wrong way, she will break, crack and fall to pieces. She continues her froward stumble until it becomes a mantra in her mind, left foot, right foot, left again. And then even that background noise dies away.
She doesn't think that she has much left in her.
How long has she been wandering?
Left and right lose meaning.
North, south, east, and west never existed at all.
Her body shivers uncontrollably, she can no longer feel her nose and pinky. Her toes are growing numb too as wetness soaks into her borrowed boots. And she is tired, oh so mercilessly tired.
She can swear that she sees a fire in the distance. She thinks that this may be the product of a mind broken by fear and stress.
In the back of her mind she knows that she should keep fighting her way to it, but the forefront of her mind and her prone and spent body protest. She takes one more step and her body can endure no more. She topples.
And this time she hasn't the strength to push herself back to her feet.
The snow begins falling harder again, the breeze biting and unsympathetic.
She begins to succumb, the cold embeds itself more deeply into her bones.
And yet, she doesn't regret her escape; the cold is kind in the sense that it is just doing what it has always done by nature; blustering and howling, wholly indifferent to anyone caught in its path. Her captors had a choice. They are so willfully evil that it is hard for her to comprehend.
At least this death will be a quick one.
Not the deliberately slow and drawn out one that they had in mind for her.
At least she will die as Azula.
She may not know who Azula is, but at least she will die with a name.
She closes her eyes.