Aaaand here it is, we've reached the inevitable boring exposition/transition chapter. The next chapter is going to be more exciting.
100NaturalBacon: Thank you, it was fun working with Lo and Li as I don't think that I've ever written from their points of view. And yes, Lo was patient zero. "How he didn't just leave Azula and she was on his mind." I can't imagine that, even if they don't get along, he'd leave her to die.
gemsofformenos: "At a closer look you're right. It offers perfect scenarios for apocalypse, starting from Agni's wrath of using one of his blessings to destroy balance up to your great idea" Exactly, or like something the comet colliding with their Earth and destroying it. "I love this chapter. I love flashbacks and this one gives insights of what has happened and how things escalated, still it leaves the mystery about the true reasons." I had a lot of fun with this one as well, just developing the nature of the affliction a bit more is really fun. But like you said, the for every answer, there is another question. "But I have to say I really love this little episode all around Lo and Li, how you draw this close relationship of the twins, their plans how zo deal with Azula's harsh reaction." As mentioned to NaturalBacon, it was really nice to work with Li's point of view as I don't work with the twins often. They are underused characters. "My favorite chapter so far, because of the way you show us the sisters here. Great job, keep on having fun with your stories." My favorite is still chapter 1 but that chapter comes really close! Thanks again!
.5:
"This sounds a bit like an old horror movie called Life force. (an 80's movie about space vampires)." Dude, there was this one movie that I watched a really long time ago that I only vaguely remember and I wanted to watch it again but didn't know what it was called. I think that this is the movie? I am excited! I'm gonna have to see if I can find a place to watch this movie now. "It isn't what you see and hear... Its what you do not see and only occasionally hear... That drives your fear and sense of horror." Honestly, this is one of my favorite kinds of horror. I like that sort of chilling and makes you think type of story. "Bella, you rule. I cannot wait to see where you go with this one. (I'm thinking this will be a "leave the light on" type at some point)." Thank you so much! I hope that I'll be able to deliver and have this fic reach its full potential.
Azula sits rigid as she listens to Li recount her story. "So this...whatever it is, came from the comet?"
"That's the leading theory." Shinu replies.
A sickness of soul that decays the body, Azula cringes. How unsettling. Clearly it isn't spread through the air, otherwise she would probably be melting away. She thinks for a moment that she could be sick and simply not displaying it yet. But, if Li's story has any credibility, the disease-possession, whatever it is-seems to act fast. If she were sick, her skin would be peeling already.
"How does it spread?" She asks.
"The best way to get infected is to go out there and face off with one of the rotters. But if you're feeling adventurous, you can go directly to the source." Bujing says. "We had a few brazen dumbasses try to destroy the thing. Thought that if they got rid of the space rock, it would get rid of the madness."
Azula nods, "and exactly how do the...rotters spread this? A bite?"
Her former serving girl shakes her head. "It's worse than that. You don't even see it coming."
"You can feel it." Chan puts in. "But by then it's too late. If you're lucky, you can hear it coming."
"If you feel it, then someone is going to die, you just have to hope that it's not you." Ruon adds.
"They don't even have to touch you." Shinu replies. "Don't even have to get particularly close."
Azula finishes her lackluster meal, she doesn't complain because her appetite has been diminishing with every revelation. How can she fight something that no one seems to fully understand? Something that she has yet to witness for herself? She grows painfully aware that her ignorance and her broken leg make her the weakest link in the group. She is disposable.
Sacrificable.
"Is it reasonable to assume that this is a worldwide plight?"
"It could have spread, yes." Li replies. "But one of the first things they did was evacuate your brother, the Avatar, and friends to the Earth Kingdoms."
"Have you tried to make it to the Earth Kingdoms?"
"We can barely manage a supply run." Chan confesses.
Azula ponders it, the more thought she puts in the less appealing the Earth Kingdom sounds. With mass panic and fleeing, it would have been embarrassingly easy for one of the infected to board a ship and carry the plague over. "that's probably a good thing." This earns her a scoff from Bujing. "The Earth Kingdoms are of no use. We need to go to the Tribes."
"The Tribes?" Bujing asks.
She tosses the idea around in her head, speaking her musings aloud, "the cold could freeze a rotter where it stands. A frozen host is a useless host." She pauses. That sounds about right. "At the very least, the snow can slow them down. It's hard for a healthy individual to trudge through that much snow…"
Little does the idea of living the rest of her life out in a frigid world-cut significantly off from her firebending-please her. But living her life as a plague-riddled shell is less enticing. "Not much can survive in the poles, maybe the sickness will die too."
There is a soft murmur about the room.
"That's an option to consider." Shinu replies. "A good one."
Azula holds her head high, she must make herself worth keeping. "I know the quickest ways from there to the port. Give me some time and I will have a plan. We will make it to the tribes."
"Give us any plan that you'd like, but we'd have to leave you behind." Bujing gestures to her leg. "We need speed."
"You will receive the plan and directions only if I can accompany you all." She holds her ground.
"What good is a faster route if you'll be there to slow us down?"
Azula grits her teeth. The audacity of the man! But she knows that it is true, at least to some degree, she can't say that she wouldn't elect to leave him behind if he acquired a crippling injury. "I'm not very heavy, I'm sure that carrying me wouldn't…"
Bujing laughs. "You're no princess anymore, you're worth just about as much as the rest of us in this world. Your palanquin bearers are dead and no one is going to carry you for them."
Her fingers tighten around the edge of the arm rest.
"Then we will just have to hold the palace until she recovers." Li declares. The woman slowly comes to stand next to her and curls gnarled and bony fingers over Azula's shoulder.
"What value does she have to you?" Bujing grumbles.
"I've watched over her since she was a babe. It was my job, let an old woman maintain one thing from her old life."
.oOo.
Azula leans her makeshift crutches against the bedposts and rests her head against the pillows. She strokes them with careful fingers. She is going to miss them among other things. Things like baths and changes of clothes.
All the same she is eager to heal and to make for one of the Water Tribes. She can't imagine that the palace will remain unbreeched forever and she doesn't want to be around when their gates topple.
She sighs to herself and stares blankly at the ceiling.
To think that the world had lost its sanity alongside her.
They don't need to know just how severely she has snapped; they don't need another reason to want to cast her out.
She laughs bitterly to herself. They don't know just how damaged she is. She wears a bracelet of raw scabs that still throb and twitch every now and again. Her throat is just as raw and her head...she can sense that there is a knot there. How foolish she was to have bashed her own head against the ground; really they ought to leave her behind.
She has thought of sieges before, of being caged with a group of strangers and familiar faces. Every siege needs one madman, one person who snaps and vanquishes the whole group. For all of the scenarios she thought up, she never conjured one wherein she was the madman.
She winces at a particularly sharp pang from her wrist.
Chan doesn't knock, he just enters. "You doing okay?"
"Just wonderful." She mutters.
He looks her over with what can only be pity. "I thought that you should know that the rest of the group has made a decision."
"And?"
"Bujing is the only one who really wants you gone. He's been outvoted."
So she'll get to survive for just a little longer. But for what? The more she lets her mind wander the more her survival instinct wanes. Even if the world hadn't gone to shit, she had still been reduced to a howling, crazed animal, chained to a grate. "Did he. Did Zuzu even try to get me? Or were those just empty words?"
Chan shrugs, "I don't think so, his advisors evacuated him almost right away after his conversation with Li."
"But he had time to put up a gate and lock it?"
Chan shakes his head. "That was my dad. The gate was put up to make it that much harder for them to get to the capital square and the palace." Chan explains. "You just so happened to be within the walls." He pauses. "I don't think that anyone realized you were there."
"Clearly." She replies. In the chaos she had been forgotten, that is all that she needs to know as far as her value goes. Had she been important, she could be safe with Zuzu and his merry band of peasants.
Instead she is trapped within a broken palace in a lawless land and further confined within a broken body. "Bujing is right, you should go…"
"We aren't going to abandon you, princess." Li appears in the doorway.
"Don't worry, I'm used to it." Azula replies plainly with a nonchalant hand wave that doesn't match the pout on her face.
Li lowers herself onto the bed and takes Azula's hand. The woman's hand is cold and wrinkled, almost uncomfortable. It shakes slightly. "You may have lost everything first, but the rest of this nation wasn't too far behind."
She always was one step ahead of everyone.