Chapter Text
She is alone.
Always alone.
Always in the dark.
She supposes that she could leave this place. She has found the door. It isn’t a physical thing so much as blanker space suspended in a blank space. It is a spot of darkness darker than the rest. And when she passes through it, light strikes her with violent aggression. Her eyes are not used to the light, Azula has grown so used to the dark. It is more comfortable.
Mostly she is content to just lay here. Lay here and dream. At least she thinks that she is dreaming. It is hard to say considering that she is awake. But images flick and flit, offering moments of respite from an otherwise empty world. Mostly she just hears words. But now and then she sees a lake or a trail. Now and then her visions come with sensations; the feeling of a hand taking hers, the flutter of flutterbat wings against her palm, a rush of cool water soaking her through and through is the most common of the sensations. It is a nice break from the constant dull burning that burdens her.
Save for the occasional searing, she supposes that it doesn’t bother her to be here. She thinks that it might have troubled her at one point. That it might have absolutely terrified her. It doesn’t anymore and she is probably better for it. She is perfectly alright with resting here with her cozy nothingness and with those occasional intrusions of somethingness.
But today she is feeling daring. Today she passes through that blank space. Today she squeezes her eyes shut and covers them with her hands until the brightness becomes more bearable. Her eyes sting and water when she opens them. And it is no wonder, the world beyond the darkness is filled with smoke and ash and popping embers that irritate her eyes and lungs.
Azula takes a few steps away from the door and tries to make out the shapes within the flames. Bookshelves teeming with scrolls upon scrolls. She swallows hard, her heart races. With a mighty snap one of the shelves buckles and a rushing gust of fire unfurls towards her. With a sharp cry, she leaps back and out of its way. Back and nearly into the other shelf. She hisses at the sudden rush of heat. She hadn’t touched the flame but she knows that she had gotten close enough for it to leave her back a vicious red and the hem of her robes slightly singed.
Azula swallows hard and creeps her way around the bookshelves only to find herself face to face with more bookshelves. She bites the inside of her cheek and wanders further, taking corner after maddening corner only to find the same endless insanity; a never ending stretch of burning bookshelves with the occasional sculpture, portrait, or piece of furniture to tell her that she has found somewhere new.
And after a while even those start to look the same.
Her breath quickens and her heart thunders.
She throws herself around another shelf and finds herself presumably back in the very spot she had just left. Over and over again, a never ending loop. There is a tightness in her throat and chest. A tickle in her belly born from a foreign sense of fear; the kind that converts itself into impulse and hasty, careless decisions.
She begins taking her turns and corners with a frantic sense of desperation.
But what else can she do? It isn’t as though careful decisions will lead to different results.
Why should she think rationally when this place, wherever it is, is so perverse from the natural, so far removed from any sort of logic.
If she takes a corner wrong she finds the world tilting and dumping her down from the ceiling. She crashes facedown onto a burning carpet where she lays and screams. Roars with the flames. She can’t find the exit and she can’t find the door that had brought her here, to this burning place.
Scraps of burning paper rain down around her. They fall from helpless scrolls and books. The flames finish them off before she can read more than one or two words. ‘Fire lord’, she reads and then that scrap is consumed. ‘Sozin’s comet’, and that one too is gone. She catches a third scrap of paper and pats it until the fire is out. It leaves a ring of blisters on her palm. She slips the singed paper into her pocket where it leaves a ring of blisters on her thigh.
She doesn’t know for how long she remains on the ground, weeping to herself before she numbly pushes herself off of the ground. It is entirely useless but she lets her shaky legs carry her through the maze until her eyes gloss over and her head empties.
Empties save for the sense that she has done this before.
And then the fire dims and its crackle grows quieter. She keeps walking one foot after another. She walks for ages. And after an eternity, the dim light is reduced to a weak glow. And then she is falling.
Falling.
Falling.
Forgetting.
Falling…
She never lands but her body comes to rest. Azula isn’t afraid, not particularly. She thinks that maybe she should be. But she is too tired to be afraid. Tired from what? She can’t remember having done anything particularly exhausting. But she must have; how else would she have arrived here? Wherever here is.
There is something wrong. So very wrong.
So why isn’t she afraid?
Why doesn’t she feel inclined to leave her unsettling but strangely comfortable dark world.
She wants to leave this place. There has to be something beyond it.
She knows that there is; if she listens hard enough, sometimes she can hear it.
Azula has nothing better to do. She closes her eyes and listens. “Have you ever tried seal jerky?” She knows that voice from somewhere. “Sokka, I don’t think that spirits eat seal jerky.” She knows this voice, she hears it often. And it is solace in its familiarity. She likes that voice very much.
It fades quickly at the realization that she has recognized it for what it is; a sound from the outside rather than some vague image projected from nowhere. Azula’s heart quickens. Yes, that’s right. There is a world outside of all of this and she had been trying to get there.
Azula sits herself up and lightly knocks her fist against her head, some feeble attempt to dislodge the memory that had been so recently lost to her.
She had been doing something before landing here again. But what?
Azula wraps her arms around herself.
And then she feels it, something jutting from her pocket and scratching at her ribcage.
She reaches into her pocket and her fingers find a brittle slip of paper.
Maybe it could tell her how to leave this place.
She could read it if only it weren’t so dark.
.oOo.
The Avatar is here and he has brought some creature with him.
It keeps its distance and looks upon her with innocent eyes. She doen’t trust those eyes. They seem to hint that they know something that she doesn’t. But what could some silly spirit know that she does not?
“Hello, Azula.” The Avatar greets plainly, methodically. It is unlike him, doesn’t match his usual demeanor. The cheerful demeanor that she remembers from the world outside of this dark place. At least she thinks that he had, had a cheerful demeanor. She could be mixing him up with someone else, attaching his face to a personality just because it is there for her to do so.
Azula massages her aching head.
Her head always hurts when he comes around. She sees him and things start to shift…memories stir. They make her head pound as they fight to break through whatever barriers keep them from reaching her. Sometimes a few manage to wiggle free.
“Avatar.” She returns the greeting. “Avatar, it’s getting worse.” And she is becoming more terrified as her fuzzy memories continue to erode. “I…I almost didn’t recognize you.” But it is coming back to her. “We’ve done this before?”
“Yeah.” The Avatar confirms. “We have.”
.oOo.
Azula’s cheeks are burnt, Aang notices. Azula does not, or maybe she has noticed long before he got here so the alarm isn’t there. It isn’t as though she has a mirror, she can’t see how painful those burns look. Her left cheek is a very bright red, the other is swollen and slightly blistered.
“What happened?” He asks.
Azula furrows her brows.
He points at her cheeks. Her brows knit tighter as her fingers graze her cheek. She flinches and gasps. He is getting used to seeing fear flicker in her usually composed demeanor. These days the fire spirit is less jittery than she. Likely the product of familiarity, the fire spirit remembers the things that Azula seems to struggle to recall. The spirit has gotten quite used to Azula and her distaste for her. But Azula is no more comfortable with the spirit than she had been when they’d first seen each other.
“I—”
“Did you try to leave on your own again?” He asks.
“Leave?”
Aang nods. “We talked about this last time…” He doesn’t know why he bothers, she never remembers. “It’s better if you don’t try to enter the maze without me.”
“The maze…” She murmurs. She lifts her hands to rub her face but thinks better of it. “Avatar, I don’t—”
“It’s alright. Just follow us. The spirit seems to have a sense of where we’re going.” It is strange, he thinks that the spirit is adapting, becoming knowledgeable while Azula diminishes. It could be that her instinctual hatred of the spirit might not be unfounded; maybe, just by existing, the spirit is feeding off of and consuming her. Whether it means to or not.
“Do you remember any of this?” Aang asks, gesturing to the maze.
Azula shakes her head.
Aang sighs.
“No wait…” She frowns. The crease in her brow is becoming very familiar. By the end of this he is almost certain that they will become permeate wrinkles on her forehead. “I think…yes. I was here. I…what did I do?” She trails off into a string of murmurs that are meant more for her own ears than his.
The spirit cocks her head and reaches for Azula’s robes. Azula snarls and snatches them away. “Are you trying to set me ablaze!? It’s bad enough that I have to avoid touching these burning shelves, I don’t need to be worrying about…” Her eyes widen. “The shelves. Yes, that’s right.” She reaches into her pocket. “I found this. I have been here before.”
Aang takes the sheet from her hand.
“I don’t know why I can’t remember.”
“It’s probably a security measure. Whoever built this maze built it with a fail safe; it keeps you from remembering so that you can’t find your way out.”
Azula nods. “Yes, that would make sense.”
Aang allows a sense of relief to wash over him. Maybe Azula’s mind isn’t going dull. She just needs him to jog her memory whenever he visits.
“This isn’t the first time that I’ve talked to you?”
Aang shakes his head. “I’ve been here three times before now.”
Azula nods.
“Do you remember that?”
She shakes her head.
“You don’t remember anything about the spirit?”
“I remember that I don’t like it.”
“But do you remember why?”
She shakes her head as the spirit guides them around another corner. This one is unfamiliar. His heart leaps, they might finally be getting somewhere! “It’s because the spirit is a part of you. Deep down, you know that and it scares you. It scares you because you don’t understand it.”
.oOo.
Azula balls her fists and bites the inside of her cheek. She spares a glance at the spirit in question. It still keeps a very good distance from her. It is afraid of her as it very well should be. She can sense that much. Perhaps that is why it is less chatty today. That’s right…it is usually talkative. Not that it ever uses its own words. It likes to imitate her. Mock her. That is why she resents it…
“You don’t like the spirit because you don’t understand it and that makes you afraid. You don’t like things that frighten you.”
“Don’t tell me how I feel, Avatar!” She snaps.
“Just listen to me, please. I don’t think that we have a lot of time. We’ve been through this twice, eventually you wrap your head around it and remember but I need you to do that a little faster if you want to get to the end of this maze.”
“Avatar…”
“Just listen. Please.” He urges.
Azula swallows whatever remark had been on her tongue. But the spirit speaks, “don’t tell me that I am afraid!” The remark has no bite nor command coming from the spirit. But it chills her all the same.
It reminds her that, in spite of her stolen words, she is very much terrified.
Her terror is dashed with a spot of relief as comprehension dawns upon her. “It…she…that spirit is me.”
Aang nods.
“Does it…does she understand? Does she know what she is?”
“I don’t think so. She knows how to navigate the maze and she seems to be better at latching onto the memories that do come to her. She can remember having walked around this maze before even though you don’t. But she doesn’t seem to understand the things she remembers.” He pauses. “Like the komodo rhino thing, it's a detail from your life that keeps her tethered to you but she doesn’t know what it means.”
“It’s just a stupid fact. From when I…” She falters. “From when I was a child. I used to love komodo rhinos.” She tries not to get to giddy over the recollection. She probably won’t retain it. “It’s not really important.”
“Maybe it wasn’t before. But right now it’s something that ties you to her and keeps you from fading away.”
Azula’s small smile diminishes again.
“I’m not going to let you fade away if I can help it. But that’s the thing, I don’t think that that’s in my control.”
Azula cringes.
“It's yours. You like to be in control, so that should be good news.”
The spirit comes to a halt just as she does. They both look despairing at Aang. “Avatar, I don’t know what I’m doing.” They say in perfect unison.
“Don’t worry. I have a theory.”
“Keep navigating.” Azula demands the spirit. It offers her a rude gesture that it had probably plucked from somewhere in her mind but it does resume leading them along. “I’m not like that, Avatar. I have manners.”
Aang laughs. “Well that didn’t come from nowhere. She probably found some repressed desire.”
She is thankful that she has the red of the burn to cover her blush. She folds her arms. “State your theory, Avatar. You mentioned that we don’t have much time.”
“Right.” Aang replies. “Well I’m thinking one of two things needs to happen. You either need to accept and embrace the spirit as a part of you and then merge with it or we need to find the end of this maze.”
“Wouldn’t finding the end of the maze cause the two of us to merge?”
“I don’t think so. I think that if we reach the end of the maze and exit before you merge, only one of you will get to leave. This maze is part of a spirit curse and it’s meant to get rid of you, Azula. I think that the only reason you, the human you, still exists is because you refused to just give in and forget.”
Or because he had gotten to her just on time; she had been getting terribly content in her quiet dark place. Azula shudders and the fire spirit’s flames flicker.
“You’re supposed to be a prisoner in your own mind, losing bits of yourself until you fade completely. If we get to the end of the maze before you and the spirit become one entity, one of you is going to have to stay behind and fade away.”
“Well there’s an easy solution to that, Avatar. I’ll leave because I am the real me and the spirit can disappear. She wasn’t supposed to be here to begin with.” But what would that mean for her? If the fire spirit is part of her, which part will she lose if she lets it fade. “Avatar, since it is a fire spirit, would I…would I lose my bending if I choose to leave it behind?” Or would she lose much more than that.
“I don’t know Azula.” He frowns. “I’m not even sure if my theory is correct. I just know that it would be better if you merged.”
“Well get that over with then.” Azula slows her pace to a halt. “How do I merge with the spirit?”
“You have to remember, Azula.”
“Well I do, I remember now. We’ve talked about this before, we’ve had this discussion!” Only twice but they have had it and she does remember it! She remembers it quite clearly now. And she remembers how it always ends; Aang gives her a sad smile and shakes his head right before the fire begins to close in on them. Before he has to make a swift and hasty retreat. Before they have to start all over again.
It is, in fact, the very same smile and head shake that it is giving her right now.