gemsofformenos: *Is too broke to afford a good lawyer* guess I'm gonna lose to me. I know that I will not be merciful. It's a hard life. "A good horror fic is neat and I know you'll have a lot of morbid fun with this one" agreed and yes I will. :P "Azula finally has found some rest, food and company." She was able to catch a bit of a break. Tough her sanity is still a little shaky from the experience. "But how she still wishes, that all of this has only been a cruel nightmare." It would be easier on her if it was. "But she's still in a miserable state and has still no clue what really is going on." Yeah, she's kind of a work in progress at the moment. Like you said, she's going to need some help. "The Palace seem to be a more or less save place, but we'll see how long and who else has taken refuge within these walls." For the time being its a sanctuary. "Chan doesn't seem to mind, that they have found Azula. He seem to truly care for her, beside logical reasons." He's one of those people who realizes that humans are in trouble so they all need to work together. Also he may or may not still have a soft spot for her because he thinks that she is a pretty lady...even if she did burn his house down once. "A broken leg is a big handicap in the future," This is about to be a pretty big topic of discussion.
100NaturalBacon: I'm happy to have updated it! I agree, I love the kind of ambiguous horror. It's one of my favorite horror sub-genres. It was a mix of luck and foresight. There was a very mini scene in chapter 1 where it was mention that a gate was put up and that she heard pounding on it. However, if the gate fell she would have been in deep shit. It is indeed the same Chan & Ruon. There are going to be a few more familar faces popping up.
balrogdemorgothe: Yup. Though I think that it might be more post-apocalyptic at this point? Tbh I've always had trouble distinguishing the two as there's such a big overlap. Yeah, I can't see them being cruel enough to actually willfully leave her chained up.
Waking is hard.
She doesn't like doing it anymore.
Maybe if she were plagued by morbid nightmares of being chained to the grate and devoured by unseen forces, waking wouldn't be so dreadful. But her dreams are surprisingly pleasant. Mundane but pleasant; in them, nothing has changed. She is still Azula with a sharp and clear mind. She is still Azula with a crown on her head.
In some of them she had won the agni kai and ruled over her kingdom with a larger crown adorning her hair.
And so waking up is a terrible thing.
It is especially grueling when she wakes with her leg throbbing. She supposes that it is a good thing that her leg throbs with such fury. It means that it isn't a dead limb yet. She also supposes she should be lucky that she isn't bearing the telltale signs of an infection induced fever. Her leg has already rendered her remotely useless for the time being, the last thing she wants is for a fever to cripple her further.
She looks down at her hands, at her wrists, at her arms. Her arms are still bruised and both of her wrists have raw and scabbed rings around them. She makes a mental note to monitor them for signs of infection. And another to offer Chan a curt thank you for having the foresight to cleanse the wound-even if it was only to prevent having to waste antibiotics on her.
Leg aside, her main concern is her weight. If she was small enough to slip out of her constraints than she is small enough to have grown considerably weaker.
More fragile.
What a loathsome predicament.
No one has come to check on her and she is growing increasingly anxious. What if they had been attacked in the night? What if she is the only one left? What if they simply decided to forget about her and move on? Her stomach lurches at the thought. She never struck herself as the type to fear abandonment or isolation, and yet…
The only company she has is an image of her mother shaking her head from the corner of the room. Azula clutches her head, only momentarily before deciding that she has had enough. She sits up and looks about the room.
She ought not to, but she heaves herself to her feet-her one good one anyhow-and leans against the bed frame. She makes a clumsy one legged hop to her closet and pulls out several bundles of clothing that she had been meaning to get rid of. She tosses them in the middle of the floor before giving the room another once over. She finds a chair in the corner of the room. She hesitates only momentarily before splintering the legs with a blast of fire. She burns away the sharper edges before binding two the first two chair legs together with one of her old robes and the second set. She pries the armrests away from the chair next and binds those as well. With the remaining cloth, she makes a cushion, more for comfort than anything else.
She sends a silent prayer to the Spirit World that the makeshift crutches will be sturdy enough to support her weight. She takes a breath and gives them a test run. She makes it across the room and back twice before deciding to have a look down the hall.
The knock of wood against the floor verberates down the halls, reminding her of their apparent vacancy. She has grown to hate the silence. It leaves too much room for her mind to fill it. Punctuated by darkness her journey to the throne room is going to be dreadful. She wants to light some of the hall torches but can't risk dropping her crutches.
Azula isn't sure how she will approach the stairs.
She has the length of the hallway to figure it out.
By the time she reaches the stairs, the only plan she has is to lay the crutches across her lap and slid down the stairs, like an undignified fool, on her rear.
She scowls to herself, but has never shied away from what needs to be done in the past. She drops down and carefully slides herself down the stairs. It takes much longer than it truly ought to, but eventually she reaches the ground floor.
She breathes a sigh or relief at the sound of conversation and makes her way towards it. It would seem that these people, this gaggle of survivors has found the council room. Azula wants to be discreet about her entrance but there is nothing inconspicuous about the clunk of her makeshift crutches.
Every head in the room turns. Of the twenty of them she recognizes only the faces of Chan, Ruon Jian, and Generals Bujing and Shinu. She doesn't know them well, but they had always held respect for her.
She hears footsteps behind her. Part of her expects to have a run in with whatever 'things' have these people cooped up in her palace. Instead she sees three more familiar faces. First, and most notably, is the wrinkled face of Lo...or maybe it is Li. Either which way, she finds the woman's presence reassuring.
Only until she recalls that the last time they had conversed involved her banishing one of the two. She swallows.
Azula doesn't have names for the other two girls, but she recognizes them as two of her serving girls. Like the generals, she knows little of them, but they had treated and served her well. "Lo?" Azula guesses in way of greeting.
"Li." The old woman corrects. She detects a hint of bitterness.
"Is Lo dead?"
"Yes."
Azula feels a pang of guilt. She, until her mind frayed, had trusted the twins. Was, perhaps, even fond of them. She assumes that the guilt was a little more than just a pang. It might have been something notable because Li continues.
"We never left the palace, Princess. We hid away in the serving quarters-you never venture there-and waited for your…" she pauses, "for your mood to get better."
"Then what happened to her?"
"At the moment when Sozin's comet reached zenith, there was a great sound. A horrible one. We thought that it was the sounds of war finally reaching our soil. We decided to find the source of the sound…"
"And."
"We found it, princess." She replies sadly.
"What did you find?"
Li presses her thin lips together. "Something beyond what I can describe. It is more like a feeling than a physical being."
Azula crinkles her brows.
"It does things." Ruon Jian speaks up. "To mind."
Azula swallows, "Does that mean…?"
Li cuts her off, "no, you aren't infected."
"Possessed." Chan corrects.
"Call it what you will," Li shrugs, "the point is, your mind broke of its own volition."
"How can you tell?" Azula asks, barely above a whisper.
"Madness comes in many forms. You weren't right that day, but you weren't feral and animalistically violent like the infected."
Azula would beg to differ, but she isn't fool enough to say as much.
"Forgive our impoliteness." Shinu cuts in. "Have a seat, you need it more than I." The man stands and Azula slips into the chair.
Bujing rolls his eyes, "always the gentleman even when society and its expectations are dwindling." He slams his fists on the table. "You know what I think?"
"What do you think, Bujing?" Chan asks.
"I think that its a bad idea to have her around. You should have seen her on the days before the comet. She wasn't possessed. No, sir, she was way ahead of them. Beat 'em to it."
Azula's lip twitches into a scowl, only for a flicker before she wills herself back into a composed state. She supposes that the lapse in stability is still working its way out of her.
"She's already crazed without their help. Look at her…"
"Have you ever been chained to a grate for nearly a week. Dehydrated, starving, making a mess of yourself-if you understand my less pleasant implications?" She pauses. "I can provide the experience if you'd like. We can see how long your mind can stay healthy." She pauses once more. "Though you'll have the comfort of knowing that someone will be coming back for you. It's much more maddening to think that you've been forgotten."
Bujing swallows. She has to admire his persistence and honestly, "you were breaking before then."
She shrugs. "I assure you, I am fine now." Now if only she can assure herself.
"What are you getting at?" Shinu asks.
"I'm just wondering why are we keeping her around." Bujing replies. "When she can snap at any moment. She's a danger to us all."
Azula might have been happy to hear that she is intimidating even with a broken leg was he not discussing kicking her out of her own sort of audacity will have to be snuffed.
"She will be when she heals, anyways." He clarifies. "Right now she is just dead weight and a waste of resources."
Azula gives an indignant sniff. "Clearly I can craft my own resources."
"Then you'll have no problem out there."
Azula's stomach heaves again. "Have you forgotten whose home you are in?"
"Have you forgotten that the world has ended. Your title is null, Azula." Bujing smirks.
"We're not kicking her out of the group, Bujing." Chan says.
"I have given you a few reasons to be rid of her. And I'll give you another for good measure; she isn't just a waste of resources but she's useless. She can't fight them off and she can't go out on supply runs. If we have to make a hasty retreat she will only slow us down. Dead weight." He finishes. "Tell me why she should stay?"
Chan is quiet.
"She's clever." One of the serving girls speaks up. "We have a lot of fighters and scavengers here and we have a doctor. But our strategy so far has been...uh…"
"Balls to the walls." Chan finishes.
The serving girl nods. "We go in with no plan at all, make it up as we go, and get lucky. We aren't going to be lucky every time."
"And when I do heal…" Azula looks from face to face. "It will be worth your while to have me around." She holds out a palm full of fire. Should they try to evict her she has already made up her mind to torch the palace in her wake. She doesn't wait for the discussion to conclude. She doesn't need to, she already knows the outcome. "I will be in my room." She preps her crutches and begins to stand.
"Have dinner with us." Shinu offers. "It it's no royal banquet, but it's something."
"I suppose that dinner is a good time to begin discussing a plan. You seem to have this place well fortified. You can start by telling me what you have already accomplished and what we are facing." She looks to Li. "Tell me about the day of the comet."