Disclaimer: (IdnoAtLA) Page 4 is up thanks again for all your feed back

Please Read and Review All Constructive critique Welcome. Enjoy

Book 4: Spirit

Chapter 1: Azula's Lost Days

Page 8 – Nightmares and Terrors

Azula screamed when her brother exited her cell and she was left alone. She poured all her rage and all her anger as she kept making bending motions to the door. Her screams rose even higher as her body lost what little energy she had left, and she collapsed onto the ground crying. "I hate you!" she screamed at the door. "I hate you! I hate you!" She screamed over and over until she could not speak anymore. She crawled her way to the corner of her cell and tucked her knees under her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. Her eyes darted around her new cell again. Everything was as she saw it before. The only thing she did not notice originally was a second gate in the corner she huddled in. She saw some sort of room with a drain in the floor and a spigot. It must be a showershe thought longingly and with a hint of trepidation.

She wiped her face with her hand and took stock of her situation. Something is not right Azula thought with worry. As she looked around her new cell, she knew Zuko was up to something. The new cell was much too nice; it was much too big. Azula realized Zuko was trying to lull her into a false sense of security. For some reason Zuko wanted Azula to think he actually cared about her.

She ran a hand through her mangled and matted hair and winced at how stiff the normally silk like strands felt. She was tired, she could smell the stench of the past few days on her, she was hungry and she just wanted to sleep. She felt so weak right now. She had gone days with no real sleep, and had barely anything worth eating, but she could not trust the food. She also could not trust her brother enough to sleep. She would just have to cat-nap where she could and eat as little as possible to avoid what ever they were putting into her food. Maybe it was just some sort of drugs that stole her bending.

She pulled her hand free of the stiff and matted clumps that used to be her hair and stood up wearily. She looked to the toilet confused. Azula could not fathom why the commode would have a privacy curtain. Maybe it was so the guards would not have to watch her… do that? Azula shook her head. That could not be right; guards were well trained. Azula was sure they had seen a prisoner squat before. She tested the barred door that separated her from the shower. It was locked. Damn it! She thought. It was something else to tease her with.

She turned abruptly as she heard the door opening. She had a cutting remark on her tongue for her brother, but it died in her throat when she saw someone she did not recognize. She was a woman. Azula guessed she may have been in her early thirties. She was carrying a tray with a bowl and a stack of cloth. She smiled when she saw Azula. "Good morning." Azula cringed at the almost syrupy-like sweetness to her voice. Ty Lee would have approved; Azula thought bitterly.

"Who are you and what do you want?" Azula snapped. She did not want to deal with anyone right now. She looked to her suspiciously as the woman set the clothes and the tray down by a slot on the floor Azula had not noticed before.

"My name is Ming." She said pleasantly. Azula noticed with annoyance that she did not react to her scathing tone. "I'm just here to bring your lunch and a change of clothes. Also, to let you know in ten minutes the door to the shower will open up."

Azula just glared at the woman as she set the tray down. She stared at it. The bowl contained some sort of thin stew, and two lumps of rice were on the tray next to the bowl. Hardly the fare she was used to, but compared to the gruel she had been forced to eat the past few days it smelled like a banquet. She heard her treacherous stomach growl. Real food! She thought. She winced disgusted at herself. This was not something to celebrate or be grateful for. "What is this?" She snidely commented as she picked up the bowl and examined the diced vegetables and meat in the mixture.

Ming shrugged. "Koala-lamb and vegetable stew..." She said in that annoyingly chipper voice that Azula was quickly beginning to hate as she sniffed the sickly red colored soup like stew. Hunger must indeed be the best spice as it did not smell that bad to her. "…I did manage to sneak an extra serving of rice for you." She said in that overly helpful way.

Azula felt herself bristle. How dare this commoner pity her? How dare she think she could do Azula anything even close to a favor? She was the rightful Fire Lord, and this commoner walks right up to her as if she could offer anything of real value to her? She narrowed her eyes more. She wanted Azula to think that. Ming must have been sent by Zuko to catch her off guard. To make her think the food was safe. She gripped the tin bowl so hard her nails dulled along its surface. "You eat it then!" She screamed and threw the bowl right at Ming. The bowl hit the bars and bounced up, but the stew continued through the bars and splattered all over the startled commoner.

Ming yelped and staggered back. Azula only regretted the stew wasn't any hotter as the woman turned and rushed out. Azula sighed and felt her stomach growl in protest of her actions. "Traitorous organ." She said and she gripped her stomach hard until her nails bit into her skin a bit. She was starving, but she could not take the chance the stew, if it indeed could have been called stew, was tainted. It was too easy to hide 'extra ingredients' in the taste.

Azula eyed the rice wearily. They were simply clumps of rice that had been steamed and pressed into shape. It would be very difficult to hide a second taste in the otherwise bland rice. Still, Azula was sure there were some poisons that had no taste. Her stomach's last vicious growl told her she had to eat something. She picked up a clump of rice in each hand and ate them both quickly. Her stomach finally settled down enough that she wasn't feeling sick, or was taking commands from her belly.

She pulled the change of clothes into her cell and unfolded the bundle and winced. They were simple clothes, a rust red shirt and a pair of pants. It was a standard prison shift. The cheap koala-sheep wool was thin and coarse. It would probably chafe her she realized with disdain. The fabric was nothing a princess would ever wear. She sighed and looked down to herself. Her current clothes were a dirty and torn mess. She let the prison shift drop to the floor and rubbed her stomach. After days of eating all that paste-like gruel her stomach was having slight issues with anything close to being solid.

The metal door sliding up caught Azula by surprise and she raised her arms in a bending motion in instinct. She cursed herself and kicked the wall in frustration at her actions and saw that the shower stall had opened. She stared longingly at the water as it started to stream down onto the grate. What if it was a trap? What if the water were poisoned as well? Memories of being trapped in ice surfaced and she shuddered. Zuko may well have the idea to attack her vanity and know she would desperately want to be clean. She looked back down to herself and in a very un-princess like manner raised her arms and sniffed. She winced. She hadn't bathed in days. She winced again as she lowered her arms and felt the stubble rub coarsely under her arms.

She was a mess, and she knew it. She did not know how long she debated just taking the damn shower when she looked up abruptly at the noise of the spigot turning off and bit her scabbed lip. She had missed her chance. She had no idea when the shower would start up again. She slumped down a few minutes later when the door to the shower shut and she laid her back against the wall and wrapped her arms around her legs again.

xxxxxxxxx

The one thing that Azula could say for prison was that it was predictable. As the days stretched she became very accustomed to the routine. In the morning her breakfast was delivered. She only guessed it was breakfast since, typically, it was a piece of fruit and some sort of boiled porridge. Dinner was delivered much later in the day and usually was some sort of not-as-good-as-peasant soup or stew with some rice.

Her shower opened up a few minutes after her morning meal every third day. She made sure to use the shower when it opened up three days after her first day in her new cell. She could barely tolerate her own smell, and the horrible sticky and dirty feeling covering her skin. She almost swooned when she saw soap in the stall. Even though it was crude soup, barely more than ash and fat, she lathered herself and scrubbed the whole time until her skin was raw, before she realized she never inspected the soap to make sure it wasn't poisoned.

She cleaned herself as best she could, without her usual assortment of lotions and oils and winced when she saw she had no shampoo for her hair, and made due by rinsing it out as best she could with just water. She at least was able to get the majority of the oil out of her hair and she brushed the water off as best as she could before slipping her prison clothes on while she was still slightly damp. She was utterly disgusted at herself when she looked into the polished stone and saw her reflection. Her hair was damp and plastered to her face and without her brush was beginning to get clumpy looking and matted; she was dressed in the rags of a traitor. That hurt most of all. She was an absolute failure. She lost everything even her dignity. She grabbed hold of her dirty and torn robes and shoved them under her cot. She would at least have them to remind her that she should be Fire Lord.

She eventually realized she had to eat something. Her stomach's demand for food returned with a vengeance since the first day of solid food. She knew she couldn't trust the food so Azula did what she always did. She found a way to manipulate the guards. She would dump the soup or porridge down the toilet and only eat the rice and raw fruit she had, the items she knew would be difficult to slip poison in. Sometimes she would break down and have some of the stew, when the dizzy spells and the hunger pangs were the worst. She grew to hate it when her meals were delivered for one reason: Ming.

The one thing she noticed that was not consistent was who brought her meals every day. None of the guards had a set schedule. She assumed it was so she could not predict when certain guards would be on duty. She hated Ming the most. The other guards just came in, set her tray down and left. Some would openly scowl. She could at least respect their honesty in their contempt of her. Ming would always have something nice to say. She always had a 'Good morning Azula!', 'It's dinner time!' or the one she hated the most 'I slipped some brown sugar in your porridge!' or some other such nonsense.

She could not stand being placated or lied to. She knew no one cared for her. Her eyes narrowed when she thought of how all those years Mai and Ty Lee pretended to care. Her eyes burned every time, and half the time she could not stop the tears from falling. She would often scream at Ming when ever she 'did something nice for her'. She didn't know why but many of the times she screamed at Ming, she would feel like she was screaming at Ty Lee and she would just pour her rage on the woman as much as possible.

"Traitor! Bitch! Liar!" She would typically scream at the guard. With the little bit of sleep she was able to get at night, she would sometimes swear it was Ty Lee standing before her. Sometimes she would be wearing her new uniform. Often she wore the same garish pink acrobat's ensemble she seemed to prefer. She could even hear Ming speak in Ty Lee's voice and by the time the guard had delivered her food and left, Azula would be kneeling down grabbing the bars for support and crying out in anguish at how pathetic she had become. She was just a monster on display in the zoo.

She was slipping horribly, she realized, in the start of the second week of imprisonment. She was unable to sleep anymore. Nightmares kept her awake almost all night. Sometimes they were memories; father telling her she wasn't coming to burn the Earth Kingdom down, when Mai and Ty Lee had betrayed her on the Boiling Rock, or the Agni Kai that had been her ultimate defeat. Sometimes they were distortions of her life. Times she saw Zuko and Mother walking the garden, but instead it would be her by Mother's side without Zuko or the time she had told Zuko what grand father Azulon wanted their father to do, but it was Zuko saying gleefully "Dad's going to kill you!" Still many times she kept having that horrible dream with the black ocean and the dragon things.

The worst dreams were the dreams that she could not tell if they were real or dreams. Dreams such as that Water Tribe Bitch walking into her cell, and with a motion of both her arms, the water underneath would suddenly spiral up into Azula's cell and freeze spearing her like a pin cushion as her blood froze on the icicles, dreams where her father would storm into her cell with his crown, with Zuko standing behind him with father saying "You were right my son. She is a failure. We should leave her to rot." One dream she swore she woke up and feeling weak and tired, she barely dragged herself to the polished mirror and looked up and saw an ancient and wrinkled old woman greeting her from the reflection.

She had awoken from that one with a start and had tried to do a few push-ups, hoping to clear her head, but she was barely able to do three. On the fourth one her arms pumped her half way up and she collapsed. Dizzy, weak, hungry and exhausted she screamed, pounding her fists impotently on the floor and huddled in the corner and cried herself into another troubled sleep.

She lacked almost any energy near the end of the second week. Often she would huddle against the wall with her knees tucked under her chin. She barely had the energy to mutter her vexation against Ty Lee when she came to deliver her food. No, when Ming delivered her food. By the beginning of her third week she only had the energy to mutter to herself and barely walk wobbly to the shower, toilet, or to get her food.

In the middle of the third week or was it the fourth or fifth? Azula was too exhausted to notice how many cycles she went through in her routine. Azula was laying on the cot staring up at the ceiling murmuring a lullaby to herself that her mother used to sing. To me? No she had to be singing it to Zuko. Mother didn't love me enough to help me sleep. By the spirits she didn't love me at all! She heard a commotion outside her cell. She limply turned her head to the door and saw the door open and it took a while for her eyes to adjust as more crystal light came into the cell. It looked like Ty Lee. It couldn't have been, but it was! She could tell by the way the shadowed figure moved as a guard charged, and three short jabs left the guard on the floor. Ty Lee ran into her cell and to the door of her cage. With less distance Azula could see it was Ty Lee and she was dressed back in her pinks and reds.

"Azula?" Ty Lee asked worriedly as she knelt down by the cage gripping the bars looking into the cell.

"I'm here." Azula responded too weak and in shock to be nervous as she tried to pull herself off the bed and managed to not quite fall onto the floor.

"Well hurry up! We have to get out of here!" Ty Lee shoved her arm through the bars to Azula.

Azula couldn't stand, but she did manage to crawl on all fours to the offered hand, not caring about her dignity she just grabbed Ty Lee's warm hand. "I thought I'd never see you again. Why did you come back for me?" Azula couldn't stop the tears or the awed smile as she cried.

"Azula? Did you actually miss me?" Ty Lee had that wide eyed and friendly smile she always wore. Her voice was just as bubbly as Azula remembered it.

"Yes… I have. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I never knew how much your friendship meant to me." Azula felt Ty Lee's grip grow stronger to help support her as she cried openly. Her best friend was back and she was going to help her escape this awful place.

Ty Lee's face saddened a bit. "That's not true. You told me you never wanted to see me again."

Azula's eyes lowered in guilt. "I know, but I learned in here that…"

Ty Lee cut her off. "That's a lie too. You said you never wanted to see me again!" Ty Lee gripped Azula's arm tightly and jerked. Azula suddenly felt her face slam against the bars hard, and she found herself unable to move.

"Ty Lee what are you doing?" Azula struggled vainly to pull away as she looked to Ty Lee's face. The look was one she never saw on the acrobat before. It wasn't a kind smile. It was the smile Azula practiced in the mirror for years, when ever she wanted someone to know just how worthless they were.

"I am going to give you what you want." Ty Lee said cruelly as she held her free hand up and slowly closed her fist. "You'll never see me, ever again." Azula's eyes widened as a small flame ignited a few inches from Ty Lee's fist, and she screamed as it grew and lanced out striking Azula right in her eyes.

Azula screamed in terror and pain as she flew back clutching at her face. She felt the impact on her back as she struggled, her nails digging into her face as she tried desperately to smother the flames. She screamed and thrashed until she realized there wasn't any pain and pulled her hands from her face. Nothing but darkness greeted her. No open door. No fallen guards and no Ty Lee. She had fallen off her cot in her nightmare and in a fit of adrenaline induced despair she grabbed the stuffed mat that served as her mattress and threw it hard in an attempt to destroy something to vent her emotions. Her rage grew as she staggered to the bars and gripped them until her pale knuckles turned whiter and she screamed. "I don't care how many times, you, the traitor or your Water Tribe bitch kill me!" She shook in rage. "I don't care how long it takes!" She shrieked. "I will get out of here and I will kill you!'

Azula's fit of emotion caused her strength to give out as she slid down the bars to numbly mumble as she passed out. "Every last one of you. Every last…"