Between IRL stuff and other fics I almost forgot about Femslash February this year. But better late than never. I probably won't be doing all of the prompts this time around as I am busier and already missed sixteen days. Anyhow, here's day 17's prompt.
Azula flexes her fingers but no flame comes. It leaves a sickly tingle in her belly. A cold hollowness where dread has taken root and bloomed in the place where warmth once radiated. It has been several months since her own lighting rebounded and fried her chi points and she still can't bend a single spark.
She is well aware that she has made her own misery.
She was a fool to try to bend lightning with her mind in such a state of disarray. A fool to take Zuko's bait.
A fool plain and simple.
She looks over the raw and raised veins that fork up and down her abdomen and back, a hideous physical reminder of her failure and idiocy. She holds her stare upon the scars and considers that, perhaps, it is for the best that she can no longer bend.
She has only ever caused anguish with her fire.
This time it happens to be of the self-inflicted variety.
At the sound of her bedroom door opening, she looks up. "Here you go." TyLee sits a cup of steaming tea on her nightstand and takes a seat at the foot of her bed. Azula's head dips, she still can't fathom why the acrobat is still talking to her after her demand to have her locked up and left to rot. It somehow hurts to have the girl around, it is a reminder of who she is.
Of what she is.
Yet, Tylee smiles softly at her and gives her a soft hug accompanied by her daily vow that she will massage the blockage from her chi as soon as the scars heal in full. Azula has her doubts, and a lot of them. She'd rather bask in the coldness of in her core than allow the warmth of false hope to seep in.
"I think that they're kind of pretty." TyLee remarks. It takes her a moment to realize that the girl is talking about her scars.
Azula scoffs, "they're symbols of shame."
TyiLee gives a sympathetic frown. Azula bunches herself up, feeling terribly small and weak. "I need my fire, TyLee."
"You'll get it back, I know you will."
Azula wipes at her damp eyes with the back of her hand.
"And even if you don't, you still have a different kind of fire.:
Azula doesn't believe it for a moment. "I've rendered myself useless…" she adamantly insists. In one day she has lost both of the things that made her powerful; her mind and her flame.
"That's not true!{' The volume of her exclamation causes Azula to jolt. She apologizes with a wince before continuing. "You have lots of other skills." but at the moment, Azula feels anything but skillful. She, in fact, can't name one good thing about herself. Not a thing that she likes.
"I had a lot of skills. What do I have now?"
TyLee gnaws on her cheek. "You have me."
Azula's breath catches and her eyes go momentarily wide, because, until then, she was certain that she had no one and nothing. She shifts uncomfortably at the prospect of a real chance at companionship.
"I know that I left you before…" and Azula is plenty aware that she had earned the abandonment. She thinks that TyLee deserves better than to fuss with her. "But I'm going to be here now."
Azula somewhat unsuccessfully fights back a pathetic little sob. If she weren't so desperate for comfort and reassurance and for a reason to keep fighting, she might have rejected the girl.
Prolonged a grudge.
Instead, she squeezes TyLee's hand. The girl smiles, "you're going to be alright. You always are. And when you do get better you'll have more than you started with...and a cool story!"
Azula swallows as TyLee gently traces the lines of her lightning tree scar. "Fire or no fire, you're still you.' She pauses. "And I like you."
Azula wants to weep again but this time it isn't out of sorrow-not completely anyhow. She cures herself for being so fragile and emotional. "Thank you, TyLee." She manages and squeezes her hand tighter. "I like you too." But she thinks that it is much more than that.
Until she finds her own again, TyLee will be her fire;the warmth to keep her going.
And maybe that is better than her own fire.