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It doesn’t hurt, at least not at the beginning. She has long since learned how to lock her jaw and bare her teeth, to make her expression cold enough to soothe the burning behind her eyes. Convince everyone she never felt anything at all. Convince herself the same.
"You should have known that I was lying to you, Mai. Why else would I say that I loved you?"
She can taste blood in her mouth, coppery and salty; she had bitten her tongue when Mai had slapped her. It tastes like coins and tears, money and abuse. It drags her by the hair back into her childhood. She imagines this is what hell tastes like.
"Azula always lies, Azula always lies, do you never learn?"
Her hands fumble in her pockets for a cigarette, their shaking the only crack in her façade. She would have to shower to rid herself of the smell before her father came home, otherwise the smoke would stick to her clothes, her hair, her hands. Sometimes she contemplates quitting. She doesn't know if she could if she tried. Some things hurt you when you hold them, hurt you when you try to put them down.
"If you don't leave my house right now, I will call the police.”
She knows she has done the right thing. Her mind conjures images of what would have happened had her father discovered her experiment, had he noticed the girl with sharp eyes and sharp knives slinking into the house after dark, but she lights these images aflame and focuses instead on the hollow in her chest. She hears the door slamming downstairs.
“I never want to speak to you again.”
She tells herself that it is hunger causing the ache between her ribs, thirst that is causing the shards of glass in her throat. She doesn’t care that she is alone now, that the one person who never looked at her with fear or pity is gone, that she no longer has anywhere to hide. It’s better this way, it’s smarter this way. She was weak, and now she is strong. Now she is happy.
She puts out the cigarette on her thigh.