Guest: Thank you for your silent support :D And a friendly hello from America!
Therecklessone: That is a very realistic possibility. I had a few things in mind for this chapter. I was thinking of giving Ursa a cameo, but the writing kind of took itself in a different direction.
Azula slaps her her arm, she watches the mosquito-fly buzz away and resents that she has slapped herself for nothing. It is growing harder to focus on the map between all of the insects swarming her and the increasing heaviness of her waterlogged attire. Next to her Sokka is battling his own cloud of bugs and seems to be faring worse than she. His flailing does nothing to fend them off.
"It's not that much further, is it?"
"Sokka, we're not even close."
He groans.
The day is humid and muggy she can see it in shimmering waves in the air. Or maybe that is the beginning of the swamp's games. All around her, from within the tangled cicada-mantis sing their unrelenting drone. It is a constant and never ceasing hum that plays in the background under various croaks and chitters. Every now and again, some type of fish springs itself from the water and flops back in. On one occasion one smacks Sokka from behind leaving him to grumble, "and here I thought that nature hated you."
She shrugs, "it hasn't thrown a fish at me yet." She hopes that she hasn't spoken too soon. The carpe had struck Sokka hard enough to leave a scaly imprint upon his skin that grows increasingly red.
"If only Katara were here." He grumbles.
Azula must admit, some waterbending on her collection of mosquito-fly bites would be nice. The skin on her arms is growing quite lumpy with them. She has quite a few of them upon her neck as well.
"Ugg, If I have to pick one more elbow leech off…" she plucks a sizable one off of her calf. "This one didn't even aim right."
Sokka busts out laughing. She tosses the leech at him. He gives a little yelp when it splats on the back of his head and falls back beneath the surface. At his exclamation, she returns with a laugh of her own.
"This swamp is dumb." He grumbles. "I hate swamps." He tries to continue in a stomp but his feet suction into the mud.
"Come on, stop doing that." She rolls her eyes as she helps to free him from the sludge.
"This is so gross." He squeals. She can't exactly make fun of him for that being as she is about a minute away from doing the same. Frankly it is undignified to be stuck waltzing through bog water.
If Sokka had told her that she were a princess now, she wouldn't have bought it.
"Hey, so I need to make a stop, if you know what I mean."
"I'll wait here." She props herself up against a tree. As he wanders off to take care of himself, Azula inspects her nails. She cringes, they have so much mud caked under them. Though she doesn't think it would be worth cleaning them now when they will only grow dirty once more. When she grows bored with her nails she tosses a little flame around.
"You almost done?" She calls. Honestly, she isn't sure why it always takes him so damn long to go to the bathroom. Though this time, 'getting lost in there' is a very real possibility. "Sokka?" She heaves herself away from the tree.
.oOo.
Sokka jolts, "Suki?" He speaks just quietly enough to not draw Azula's attention. And then he collects himself. He pulls up his pants as Suki's image fades. "Ha. Ha. Nice try swamp, I know your tricks."
"And yet you fall for them anyhow." Comes that slick, sweet voice he knows so well.
"I thought that you were going to wait by the tree."
She rolls her eyes, and puts her hands on her hips. "You took too long." She shifts her weight from one leg to the other. "This way." She beckons him forward.
"I thought that we were going…" He points back they way they'd been heading before he'd gone off to answer nature's call.
"Your break gave me a chance to study the map better. It's this way." She slowly trails her fingers over his neck.
"What are you doing?" He asks. "Not right now."
"Boring." She sighs with another eye roll and a dismissive wave. He tags along as she slinks deeper into the swamp where the gloom is notably thicker. The hum of the cicada-mantis grows fainter and he shudders.
"Would you mind making a little fire?" He asks.
"We can make all the fire you'd like." She tosses a look back at him and winks.
"Seriously." He grumbles. He is beginning to think that he shouldn't have confessed his love for her, if he knew that it would be a go-ahead for this. "I want a real fire, it's really dark in here."
"A real fire?" She cocks her head and a small smirk plays at the corner of her mouth. A feral, vicious smirk. Her voice dips into a growl. "I'll give you a real fire." She holds her fingers up to a low hanging strand of ivy. It is as tiny as a match flame, but the world around him is ablaze in an instant.
He cries out.
.oOo.
Azula snaps her head in the direction of the shout and curses. Of course the dolt has wandered into what has to be the gloomiest, dankest, most inhospitable part of the swamp.
"Sokka, where the hell are you?"
He doesn't answer, leaving her to wonder if the swamp is muffling her voice. The acoustics of the place are dreadful. She pushes her way through the thickets, towards where she thinks that she his voice may have come from. But it is very plausible the the swamp is distorting its direction.
She scans the dimness around her, finding reassurance when she spots a path of battered vines. Sokka must have taken his machete to them. She follows the path of chopped vines until they fall short. She rubs her temples in agitation.
"You foolish girl." Comes a voice, though she can't place from exactly where. She shudders, she thinks that she knows this voice. At the very least, she is sure that she should know it. She rubs her temples as it comes again, "did you think that you could get away from me."
The voice must belong to the head of the Vine Research Facility, or at least one of the many that have operated on her.
Her tummy flutters with anxiety. How had she downplayed that she is in their domain? Back in the tundra it was all that she dreaded, them emerging from the snow to drag her back to the facility. Somehow it had slipped her mind to fear them emerging from behind one of the mangroves.
"It's that boy." The voice scowls. "He distracts you." It finds a new part of the mire to lurk in. "Come back to me and we'll get you back on track."
Her stomach sinks further still. "Perhaps I could if you'd stay still."
"But of course." It replies smoothly. "I'm over here, just in front of you."
She pushes back a curtain of hanging moss and vines.
.oOo.
Her laughter echos in his ears as he shambles out of the ring of fire. He finds himself waist deep in cloudy brown water. He tries to catch his breath, to calm his unease. But that smirk, that cruel smile and that wicked glimmer in her eyes...he can practically see it reflected in the water.
He slumps down against a tree stump, trying to remind himself that it wasn't her. Not the real her.
"But it can be." Her voice is suave and cunning as she stoops down to drawl lazily into his ear. "It will be soon." Her hands trail down his neck and over his shoulders. She massages them carefully. "Do you really think that I'm going to let myself be buried? Do you think that a few massages and backrubs are going to be enough to keep me at bay?" She brings her hands down his arms. "I'm much stronger than that." She purrs
"You're not her, you're not…"
"But I am." She carefully moves her pointer across his chest. "I was here first and I'll be here again."
"That's not true, it doesn't have to be."
"Honestly." She says flatly. "What you have is fake. It means nothing."
"How do you know?"
"Because I'm me. Who knows me better than I?"
He swallows. "Right now, I do."
She chuckles it is a low and sinister thing. "Well aren't you bold?" She asks. "How about this, take me there and we'll find out whose right." She nods her head to the left.
He follow the nod and finds himself face to face with a drainage pipe.
"Follow that and you'll find the compound. You'll find yours truly?" She gestures about her body. Her dainty and measured chuckles break of into a wild fit of laughter. The swamp water around her bubbles and boils.
.oOo.
Azula peers up at the man. He is large and imposing and built like a soldier. His hair ripples down his back in lush black waves. He boasts a beard that is just as pampered and pomp. He reaches out and pushes her bangs to the side, "look at you, you're filthy." He tsks.
"I'm in a swamp." She points out.
"So am I."
She is certain that she should know him. She brings herself to look him in the eyes and her stomach turns all over again. Those eyes, their hue, their shape…
She swallows.
His hand brushes over her hair. "It's time to stop acting like a child."
"Father?"
His lips curve up.
"You burned Zuzu…"
He pinches the bridge of his nose. "I suggest that you don't disappoint me or I might have to do the same with you."
"You won't." She shrugs. "You can't. You aren't real."
"At least you still have your wit about you. For now."
"For now?"
He beckons for her to follow. But she keeps herself rooted in place.
"Don't be so stubborn." He growls. "I'm trying to help you."
"Help me?"
.oOo.
"I think that we can still make it work." These are her parting words. "Really, we're the same, you and I. We're both monsters. We're both killers." It is a harsh whisper and it echos faintly as her body shifts.
The muscles in her arms twitch grosequely as her lean frame swells. The muscles she has now are too bulky for her otherwise petite frame. He follow the length of her right arm, it ends in glistening metal.
When he looks back at her face, he finds a different one entirely. Three eyes burn into him, but only briefly before his body contorts and finds itself buried beneath the clouds and flames of an explosion.
Sokka backs up, tripping over a rock he lands hard on his tailbone. Water soaks into his which doesn't invade his clothing begins to gurgle and bubble. A dozen faces rise with glassy eyes and gaping mouths. They look up from the waters, expressions strained as they fight to keep at least their noses above water. They reach out desperately and grasp at the air.
"What did we do?" They chant in unison. "What did we do."
"It was my birthday…" He might have laughed at the absurdity if he weren't so thoroughly disturbed.
Suki shakes her head. "I can't be with a murderer."
.oOo.
"Follow me."
"Not a chance." Azula stands with her hands clasped behind her back.
His face bunches up in rage. "You dare defy me."
She shrugs, "you can't do anything to me. Nothing real, anyways."
His face smooths once more, this is when ice works its way into her veins. "Oh, I can do things that are very real." He throws back another curtain of vines, pleasuring her with the view of a hunched figure.
Her father steps to the side and continues to hold the vines parted. If he could hold them in place they must also be a part of the illusion. She watches the figure shift, its shoulders tremble. They tremble violently before the figure looks up. Azula meets her gaze and goes tense. She doesn't like the unhinged look of those eyes.
The figure screams. The sound of it is drowned beneath a fountain of blue flame. Azula bunches her hands and holds herself up right, looking away only to meet her father's merciless stare. She turns back feeling dizzy and ill. "It's not real." She repeats.
"Oh, but it is, just not in this moment." Her father shrugs. "This is who you are. You are an animal." Another voice wraps itself around her father's. It is a soft feminine one, "a monster."
And in the same way that she knows that he is her father, she knows that what she is seeing is a manifestation of the truth.
"I can give the rest of your memories back to you."
"I don't want them." She shouts, sounding almost as shrill as the screaming figure in front other. It is the first time she has managed to admit it out loud.
"But you will take them. It is what you came here for." He replies evenly, unphased by her outburst. "You are persistent, I've almost never seen you walk away from a mission with it left incomplete."
He offers no further warning. Her head whips back as visions fill her mind. She sinks to her knees gripping her head as she exerts all of her energy into throwing her walls up. A few more memories leak in-a fight with her brother, "you should have feared me more", a white room and a straight jacket-before she is able to block them out.
She lays in the stagnant water, breathing heavily. Her head beats from the onslaught of memories and the effort of keeping them away. This mission is a mistake. She has made her decision; they will make the arrests and she will burn the research notes away. Her vision goes fuzzy.
.oOo.
Sokka sits with his head buried in his knees and his hands clutching his head. He can't help but think of Azula who tends to assume the same position when in distress. He wonders if she is doing it right now.
He is trembling so terribly that he can barely lift his head, let alone get to his feet. They are still around him chattering and begging for mercy. Please becoming more wet and gurgly as water fills their lungs.
"Stop it!" He screams. "Stop it!" He doesn't know how long he'd been screaming it.
Long enough for him to be tracked down and found.
He watches her drag herself out of a tangle of vines. He knows that it is her-the real her- because she is shaken and her eyes are watery. Even still, she is in a better state than he. She approaches as quietly as the marsh will allow and drops herself down next to him.
He thinks that she wants to be held and talk about what is troubling her. Instead she wraps her arms around him and squeezes him tighter than anyone has in a while. He isn't sure if she is trying to comfort him or herself.
He can't bring himself to hold her back. He wishes that he could, but part of him is still afraid. She is holding him now and burying her face in his hair. But as soon as they follow those pipes, her hands will move from abdomen to his throat.