A. N. : ... White Dragon, I summon you, in attack mode ! Although I guess in this case Azula's kind of in defense mode, huh. Getting the idea for this title really had me like "no I can't do this" and "but it would be so funny though", and in the end, I just can never refuse a funney. But man, if Azula's the blue-eyes white dragon, then would Zuko be the red-eyes black dragon ? This is definitely getting out of hands.
Azula watches.
It's been a few days since she started this new routine – wake up, observe the Doctor and the pirate, take advantage of the times they're absent to read more of the notebooks, ignore Ty Lee's smiles and Mai's presence and Qin's tea.
She lies, too, hides parts of her recovery from everyone, the fact that she can speak again – her voice is still low, and cracks at times, but it is now mostly under her control – the number of steps she can take before her body gives out – she counts them carefully when the pirate helps her exercise, makes sure to show some progress while always keeping a good margin between it and her real skills. She's taken to throwing small rocks to practice her aim.
The cold still won't leave, so keeping her edge is essential.
In the days since she started her routine, she has come to learn a few things. The first, unsurprisingly, is that both the Doctor and pirate used to be in the army.
As a firebender, the Doctor was a given, but as for the pirate… Azula can't decide if he was conscripted – which would exclude him from the list of potential diary authors – or if he joined of his own accord and learned to heal on the frontlines.
There is no doubt though, from the strength in his step to the way he flinches at nothing – this man knows the chaos of fighting, and has withstood wave after wave of this kind of storm.
The second thing Azula noticed is that neither men sleep well. It didn't strike her, at first, when she saw the pirate take medicine before going to bed – until she witnessed the Doctor doing the same.
Firebenders don't need help falling asleep. They rise with the sun and set with him as well. Staying awake through the night is possible, but requires more determination than for nonbenders. Even through broken bones and burned flesh, firebenders set with the sun.
If the Doctor requires medicine to sleep, it is not in order to fall asleep per se, but so he can rest.
This man – like that spouse of his, probably – has nightmares.
The two of them are well-regarded in town. Azula hasn't strayed from the shack and the beach yet, but whoever buys groceries that day will often come back with one or two free things. The pirate's house visits also regularly see him coming home with dumplings, or home-grown vegetables, or what have you.
The Doctor doesn't have any other patient. When he leaves, it is to fish or to take care of the scarab-bees he raises for their honey. It seems he hasn't worked in quite a long time. Azula guesses that when she leaves – when she decides to leave, when she is done playing here and grows bored of the notebooks and the shack and the hypocrites showering her with fake care and the healers doing nothing but their duty – he will go back to being some insignificant nobody wasting his doctorate.
He should be grateful, really, that she plans on staying here a while, whether he and the pirate want her to or not.
She will not be thrown away.