A/N: A little shorter than the one before but writing for me right now is a little slow and gosh, I despise fillers but they exist for a reason. Sorry about the wait! Between finals come up and work Ive had zelch inspiration. And if I do I have to waste it all on a 6,000 word essay.

I want to thank you all for the reviews, remember to keep hitting that button and sending me your thoughts!

Word count: 1,081

Springing from the damp cool cell she could have swore she saw spiders.

Not spider-scorpions or spider-wolves but just spiders. They crawled all over her food when she wanted to eat. They attached to her legs and looked at her through a vast amount of eyes. They waited in the corners for her to let her guard down and wrap her in their webs. And they always succeeded. She wasn't as scared of the spiders as she was the walls but she certainly hesitated to look at them. And never ate her food or drank her water if they touched it. With little hairy legs they tainted whatever they crossed and she was afraid if she touched it she'd be tainted too. As if reaching out and laying her palm against a small ration of bread would sicken her, weaken her, until she evaporated into the stone floor like them.

Because of these hallucinations she'd spent three whole days starving and slowly lucid. And Azula lucid was never a good thing especially for the guards. She'd managed to burn through armor the first time she opened her eyes and realized where she was. The second time she'd managed to send a guard off into a tantrum and then get said guard dismissed, tears streaming down her cheeks, because of her foul mouth. Azula may have been dulled at one point but she could always return to being sharp at the edges. It wasn't in her genes to be a circle. Curvy and swayable. She was a square, sharp and angled, and stubborn.

But eventually three days lucid spiraled off into food being coerced down her throat by guards. Heavily drugged food and whatever progress she had made in that short time – whatever plans she had come up - with were forgotten and buried beneath a thick foggy haze.

But she knew someone visited her again. In the blurry borderlines of hallucination and reality they stood on that thin line, teetering back and forth on pointed boot heels. She couldn't tell if they were mocking her, or whispering terms of endearment. She just knew they were there. Disturbing her silence – keeping her company, annoying her, comforting her. And although Azula had never been the sentimental type (she liked to think she was driven by conviction and ambitions and never emotion) she reached out blindly and shakily for them once. The rings on her wrist clittering and jangling and preventing the full reach of nimble arms. They fell back to her sides as weakly as they'd called out. And Azula realized that she couldn't remember why'd she'd done it in the first place

Was it to burn them, to beckon them, to touch them? But it was only once, and never more. So she forgot.

But they returned a lot more frequently than before. They wouldn't let it past, they wouldn't let her forget. Annoyed, Azula once strained past messy muddled hair obscuring a face frame to regard them with gold eyes but she couldn't see past shadows – and after one failure she decided to perhaps never look again. Looking, and finding out, meant that she would have to fight them. It would mean the bitterness would have to rise and although it was a part of her under normal circumstance when she was in prison she didn't want to feel anything, but she did after a while, and she mostly felt fear, and sorrow. And she didn't know if she could handle any more of these emotions. She didn't know if she would break with it or hold fast. The first seeds of doubt planted with that stranger and with their coaxing and visiting bloomed into lack of self-confidence. When she heard their familiar voice again– no longer distinguishing or concerned if it was real or not – she hid and brought her knee's to chest, face covered by thinning legs and long fingers covering her ears.

And finally said stranger sneaked past the bars of her cage and touched her shoulder. Her first reaction was to cower. And like a dragon backed into a corner she blew flames. A frenzied defense mechanism, her aim was horrid and veered off to the right. Small flames flying like spittle from her lips. Lighting up the cell in a onslaught of blue fire. Shadows ceased to exist, and she saw flashes of her torturer – of her friend flicker for a brief second before she screwed her eyes shut. Azula only knew she succeeded when she heard a muddled screech and the echoes of a hasty recoil, and abruptly she ran out of fuel and sputtered like a broken bulb and went out. The cell was shrouded in darkness again

And for a while, utterly silent besides the small amounts of heaving and heavy breath that betray salty sobs but Azula couldn't tell if it was hers or her visitors.

She didn't have long to wonder before the cage was suddenly crowded with guards, hustling the person out and tending to her and at the same time slamming the former Princess into the dirty ground and reprimanding her. She struggled at first, frightened they were here like the spiders to taint her. But after they slipped something, no jammed it, into her bottom her energy ran short and she went limp.

"DON'T HURT HER. ZUKO SAID YOU CANT HURT HER."

Someone screeched, fading, and fading, until she was in nothing but black.

But when she woke up, she was clean and where she had fallen. A new set of clothes hung loosely from her frame. She fingered the fabric of the shirt, running calloused tips over the smooth texture like a child would in amazement. Slow moments of recognition between the valley of her breast and around her abdomen brought notes that even beneath her cracked fingernails there was not a stray speck of dirt. But it was only after all of this other curiosity was sated that she noticed a new shiny muzzle wrapped around her head and knotted in the back with a strip of hide, and poorly, she could feel the dull throb of a headache and the weight forcing her neck to sink. And lifting her fingers to touch the restraint in horror she realized it was fashioned out of metal.

And that the spiders rested in the clumps and volume and creases of her hair and mask.

She only cried when the therapist saw her not a hour later.