Not sure how I feel about this chapter tbh. I think that I've reached a point where I actually don't know what to do with this fic. Like I have several scenes in mind but I'm not sure how to get there without a bunch of chapters about aimless wandering, I feel like it would get a bit redundant so apologies if the time skip is jarring or lackluster. I usually don't struggle with show don't tell but idk; feel free to offer opinions on whether or not the pacing is weird.
Guest: Thank you :) I'm tald that you like it!
She stares for the longest time, he isn't sure why she is so surprised. But her face, a rather priceless expression upon it, is the absolute picture of delighted shock. It certainly isn't blue but her fire is alive. Alive and glowing around her hands and feet as she lands one final kata. Or so he thinks. She takes a deep inhale, deeper than the last few and she takes a stance. A much tighter one. She closes her eyes and holds her hands level with her belly button. He knows what she is going to do. Her stomach rises and falls with every breath and he is certain that she is focusing on each one. On that steady rise and fall of her chest and stomach. And then she makes her move; the gestures are wide and sweeping and at first there are only a few weak sparks. She pushes forward in spite of it.
And then it comes, a line of lightning. Two lines of them, one for each hand. She brings them together and thrusts them forward.
He is certain that she hadn't anticipated success; she jerks at the sudden roll of thunder. At the cracking of wood. She opens her eyes and sees it as well as he; a rather large and splintered tree branch. Both severed ends still smolder hotly. A jagged black line snakes up and down the bark.
He thinks that she might be crying, at least a little.
He almost hugs her but thinks better of it.
"See, all you had to do was stop thinking about it so much. Zuko said that you were a natural when you first started. You're a natural with resuming too."
She holds her hands in front of her face and flexes them, steam still rolls off of her palms. "I'm still going to need to get back in shape." Her voice isn't as laced with emotion as he thought that it would be.
"You seem fine to me."
"I'm drained, Avatar." She sighs. And perhaps that is it, she is too fatigued to be overly thrilled. "This used to be effortless but I'm sore and…" He takes notice of the slightest panting. "I'm not used to moving so much."
"I'm sure that you'll catch up quickly, we've got a lot of hiking to do and we can keep up a bending routine on the way…" he cuts himself off. "Sorry I forgot to ask if that was okay with you."
"It's a fine plan. I used to practice bending first thing when I woke up. I'd like to resume that."
He has to agree that it would probably be good for her to get back into at least a few old and familiar routines. He watches her make her way to their campfire, lay down, and curl herself up. He'll let her rest for a while while he extinguishes the flames. He supposes that they still have a decent amount of daylight. But really, what is the rush? Sangyul and his team have likely relocated the minute they resigned to that they wouldn't be finding he and Azula anytime soon. As far as he is concerned, the two of them have all the time in the world to get her comfortable and confident again.
.oOo.
Sometimes, he lays closer to her. When her nightmares are particularly awful-so much so that they bleed into her waking moments-when he thinks that she is still asleep or not entirely lucid. He keeps his distance although he is close enough for it to mean something.
Her hand is cupped over his. She strokes the back of his hand with her thumb and gives a soft purr.
"Azula."
Her name as it rolls off of his tongue...it's like windchimes in a gust.
She lifts his hand and rubs it against her cheek. The boy looks over his shoulder. Over his shoulder at the doctor. She supposes that the man is quite the looker himself when he isn't trying to make a case study of her.
"Avatar." She says there is a certain huskiness to her voice, some low reverberation that brings color to his cheeks. All the better, the boy is adorable when he is flustered.
And in waking, she is flustered. Beyond flustered, really. She is humiliated, disgusted. And thankful that he had done everything he could to snub her advances. On those nights she wanders to the other end of the clearing and sleeps there. On those mornings to follow, he asks her what he did wrong.
On those mornings she never answers.
He lets her firebend alone.
She comes back at the end of those days, worn far past her limits. Bone tired and ready to collapse. So she works herself harder, until she does collapse and he has to drag her limp body back to the campsite.
She doesn't dream when she is that exhausted...at the very least, she doesn't remember what she has dreamed. What miserably memory chooses to surface.
She stands in front of the mirror and she isn't sure if she is looking at herself. Something is off. She can't place it but there is something. She narrows her eyes and tries to scrutinize herself in as much detail as she possibly can. And yet she isn't sure what is different. She touches her face, runs her fingers through her hair, traces the frame of her body; she feels the same.
But something is wrong.
She knows that something is wrong.
She looks like her, but she knows that she is not her.
Another face appears in the mirror, it comes to cover her own. It bears resemblance to her. The sort of resemblance only family can have. And when she touches her cheek, she touches her father's cheek.
When her aura fans out around her it is…
Whose aura is this?
It chills her.
This foreign aura chills her. It has a physical weight as it coils itself around her wrist. She looks back up into the mirror and now she can see the differences. The woman who looks back is terrified. Small. Her face is hollow, cheeks sunken, skin pale…
And she seems to grow frailer and frailer as the frigid, bleak aura grows larger, thicker. A hand closes around her wrist. She tries to burn it away. But her fire isn't quite searing enough, it clings tightly…
"Azula!" Her father...no it is Sangyul…
It is both.
"What are you doing?"
Sangyul's aura wraps itself around her fire.
"No." She whispers. "No! Father don't let him do this!"
"You let him do this." Her father sneers. "This is your fault. It's your fault because you're weak."
Her fire is dimming. She strains herself, trying to flare it back up. It won't rise, her body is too meek. Her mind is too fragmented. Her vision distorts and blurs and she doesn't remember anymore. She doesn't remember what's happening, what she is doing. But she is surrounded; there are twelve faces and ten of them are her own.
Her vision blurs again and she is sitting on a bed with the Avatar. She is leaning in for a kiss. As he pulls his head back her world spins again. Spins and shifts and the twelve figures are closer.
"Go on, Azula. Do it." Her father says, his voice wrapping with Sangyul's. "You want this."
"It's alright." Ten voices assure her.
"I don't want to do this." She mumbles.
"Don't you?" Sangyul asks. "I think that you do."
They do the shoving but it is her own hand that stains red. She feels a burning under her eye and a white hot flare in her belly. Her breathing is erratic as it pours out of her; her fire, her aura, her essence.
The ten figures close in around her.
They all look like her.
But they are all wrong; one of them wears a smile that is much too joyful, one of them has a face permanently twisted and lined with rage, and another is somehow duller, muted. There is another who wears her robes several sizes too tight and several inches too low cut and another still who never looks up…
She doesn't observe them all.
She doesn't get the chance because they all reach out and consume her before she can. What they leave of her is scattered. Unsalvageable.
"Disappointment." Ozai remarks distantly.
"That isn't quite what I had in mind." Sangyul mutters.
She's dying, can't they see that she's...
She knows that he has heard her but he has heard her whimpering softly to herself but he has the decency not to ask. The sun hasn't yet risen. Even she doesn't fancy being up so obscenely early, but she cares even less to slip back into that nightmare. She hadn't even thought it possible to feel more fragmented than she does in waking.
She wanders towards the singed and splintered tree. She catches Aang observing her, she pretends not too. A part of her-the part that yearns for release-hopes that he will approach her. He keeps his distance, he pretends like he is sleeping.
She throws her first fireball. Admittedly, it lifts her mood some. Despite the incessant nightmares, she is feeling significantly less helpless. Her blasts are more on par with what she is used to, her coordination is better. Daily hikes with Aang have brought at least some definition back to her figure.
It is quite reassuring.
And yet she feels as though there is still something missing.
Some key part of her.
She takes a deep breath and shakes the thoughts away. If this goes right then she will find herself with a clearer mind and the Avatar will no longer have to pretend to be asleep. She closes her eyes and draws upon her inner flame. Feels the sparks running through her veins.
The electricity runs from her core to her chest, she pulls it down her arms and to her fingertips. It hums pleasantly around her chipoints. And her disjointed mind is quiet again.
She hears Aang yelp and has herself a small chuckle.
.oOo.
Azula holds herself higher, her eyes are much clearer. Every now and again they betray confusion and confliction. He isn't certain exactly what it is born from but he has his suspicions.
He is almost certain that her conflict is at least connected to him. To what he represents. The truth is, he thinks, that she isn't ready for change. Not yet, not under such unconventional circumstances.
"I don't hate you, Avatar." She mentions on occasion. "I think that I should. But I don't. I can't."
"Do you want to?" He had asked on one of those occasions.
He remembers the way that her brows furrowed. The slight parting of her lips. "I think that I should want to."
For a change, she walks ahead of him. He doesn't know where she is leading him. He isn't sure that she knows either. He thinks that she is walking to give herself something to do. "Where are we going, Azula?"
"Sometimes I just want to walk, Avatar. We've been in the same place for weeks. It's stagnant. I need to at least feel like I'm making progress."
He laughs, "you are! I think that that's obvious. Before you could barely light a candle, now you're blasting holes through trees."
Azula shrugs.
"You can't run away from your past, Azula."
"Maybe I'm trying to walk back to it."