A. N. : Even somewhat bedridden, Azula is a menace. Sorry about the missed update last time by the way, I was fighting for my life (writing a paper).
That afternoon, Azula stays inside.
Perhaps being in the sun would do her good – it almost certainly would – but right now she cannot bear to look at any of the hypocrites surrounding her. If Mai and Ty Lee want to train outside, good for them, but Azula would sooner die than watch them.
Especially when she herself cannot move the same way anymore.
Qin offered to stay with her, but she kept him away. She doesn't understand that man, and honestly doesn't care to. His true goal doesn't matter, since Azula refuses to pay him any mind. Let him try to play nice, let him serve her tea, she knows that ultimately, he is the same as everyone else. Worthless and untrustworthy.
Trust is for fools. Love is for fools. Fear and power are the only way to keep anyone by her side. She's learned that long ago.
A breath, to try and chase the pain away.
The Doctor left her with a pot full of some overly sweet, warm drink that might be tea, but the only taste present is that of honey, so who knows. He's gone to look after something or other outside of town – hives ? Azula didn't pay attention to the details, only knows for sure that he won't come back until late in the day. As for the pirate, he's gone to do some more in-house visits.
Which leaves Azula alone, the way she should have been from the start.
She can hear Ty Lee's encouraging shouts outside, the cheerful exclamations she reserves for when she witnesses a particularly impressive trick, can hear Mai's usual grumblings about how she doesn't like hand-to-hand and Ty Lee should really get a different sparring partner and let her do some target practice instead –
It's easy to tune them out.
If Qin is with them, he can spar with Ty Lee once Mai's patience runs out, the way Azula used to, the way she would if her body wasn't – no, even then, she would have no reason to join in anymore, just like Ty Lee wouldn't have a reason to want her either.
What fear is there anymore ? What power ? What control ?
There is none, and so Azula will never again spar with Ty Lee, nor will she have contests with Mai where the only price is another serving of whatever confection accompanies tea this time.
Azula won each one, but that was just par for the course. It wasn't the fun part.
She shakes her head, trying to chase the pain away. It doesn't help one bit.
What she needs is a distraction.
The shack is small, and absolutely barren. How can people live in these conditions ?
The only bright side to this is that she doesn't need to walk very far at all to reach the drawers in the back. Surely there must be something entertaining in there, a book or a scroll that isn't filled to the brim with medical jargon, or a wooden puzzle she could solve, hopefully not too fast, or an embarrassing secret she could hold over the Doctor's head.
That would provide entertainment for days, and maybe get Azula the opportunity for a few favors – not that she knows what she would even demand of him, but it would be something.
The medicine drawers contain nothing of interest, just the expected cloves and roots and crystallized tree resin. The next thing she opens is the clothes box – sliding her hands down to the bottom doesn't reveal the presence of anything odd, no unexpected solid object or hidden compartment. Same for the box full of cooking utensils.
Tsk. Azula lets her eyes go over the various scrolls out in the open, thinking maybe secrets might be hidden in plain sight, but no. Nothing but medical texts.
Which leaves only the large drawer at the bottom of the clothes box. Given the pattern, it probably holds nothing but sanitary products, maybe even camellia oil for the pirate's hair – if these peasants can even afford it – or the kind of skin care preparation Li and Lo used to protect their old hides.
She doesn't know how much time she has left. As bored as she is, and as much as she would love to find something to taunt the Doctor with, getting caught shuffling through their private belongings would probably get her in trouble.
Although, with that said, Azula doubts either of them could truly do anything to her – both seem to hold a strict code of professional ethics, and neither a basic healer nor a medical Doctor would consider abandoning the treatment of a yet-to-recover patient to be something proper.
And Azula doesn't have anything but her life left to lose.
Wincing in pain, she opens the drawer. In it are piles upon piles of notebooks.
Bingo.
She picks up one. The cover is annotated with two dates, as is every other book. A diary of sorts, maybe ? Digging deeper to try and find the first one, Azula quickly notices the sorry state of a lot of these. Most covers are stained with what she assumes to be mud, some notebooks have had their pages filled with so much liquid that they have nearly doubled in volume. And this one… the stains are too dark, the shape of the hand that held it too distinct for it to be anything but blood.
She might have just found her golden goose-fox.
There – it took stupidly long, since for some absurd reason the notebooks are placed with the older ones at the bottom, filling the drawer completely before getting to the next row, and who does that ? On top of this inane storage system, Azula made sure to keep the books the extracted in chronological order, to make reading them later easier, and that also took time.
The ink on the cover of the oldest journal is barely legible, too old and faded, and the paper itself has seen better days. The era bled together into an unrecognizable stain, but the year cannot believably be from anything but Fire Lord Azulon's reign, placing this notebook squarely in the times of the first conscription order, even before it was extended to non-firebenders.
Interesting. This period was one of great military achievements and still inspires a number of current strategies, but outside of military history, Azula's classes barely touched on it. A first-hand account will no doubt be somewhat interesting.
She opens the notebook.