serenity
(it's just an object. it doesn't mean what you think.)
Azula is having a crisis.
The demons aren't actually there, but she is picturing them anyway, laughing darkly at some personal joke, their fingers wrapped around her neck and she wants them gone. It isn't a hallucination - the drugs have made them go - it's something much more personal than that, something that runs deeper and hurts far, far worse. It's herself, twisted into the person she's become, an overdose of perspective turning her against her own mind, against the torture that is her life now.
"Azula, please - "
Whispers, they whisper where did she get the knife? and who was stupid enough to give her that? and put it down, Azula, please, but they all blur into one. She's heard this tone before, a thousand times before. It's the tone Mother always used with her, that pleading tone, begging her to reconsider, to change, to stop being such a monster. She backs away from the therapist and the nurses, holding the knife aloft tightly and with less control than she's used to, threatening - what, she doesn't, but she's damn sure they'll get it if they come closer.
"Azula," Lily the Therapist pleads, "just put the knife down. You don't want - whatever your planning, this isn't what you want."
"How do you know what I want?" she cries back, voice raw as though from screaming. Her thigh is bleeding heavily, and she hopes vaguely that she severed something vital. "What if this is what I want?" she screeches, and Lily pales, holding out her hands placatingly.
"Please, Azula - "
With a hoarse cry like a wounded animal, she rushes forward and slashes wildly, catching Lily on the open palm. The therapist cries out and stumbles back, and three nurses immediately run to block Azula from doing any more damage, but she's holding the knife too tightly and attacking too sharply for them to take it from her, so they all back off warily and watch for her next move. Tears of frustration fall from her eyes, stinging on raw scratch-marks she's made on her own face.
It's a bad day. And everyone's tensions are running high because the Fire Lord visited today; she half-hopes that he'll return and walk in on this scene, because maybe then he'll stop coming around and telling her how much he cares and how he's going to find Mother and she'll say the same thing and maybe he will learn to never fucking bring Mai here ever again because this is one of Mai's knives she slipped out of the dark girl's sleeve and maybe he'll just - just stop, maybe they will all just stop this stupid game they're playing with her head.
"Azula," Lily pleads again, "Azula, I know you don't want this. You want - you want freedom, don't you?"
"I'll get my freedom," she hisses in response, lunging at the nearest nurse, who yelps and backs away. Azula smirks cruelly; that's more like it. "One way or another, I'm getting out of this fucking place now."
"But you're doing so well..."
"Well?" she howls, "Does this look like well to you?"
"Not now, but you've been doing much better. You can control this thing - "
"I am controlling this thing," she shrieks, "this is how I'm controlling it!"
"No, Azula," Lily cries, "this is you letting it control you! The Azula I know - the Azula you were - she would never consider suicide!"
It's as though she's been punched in the gut. Instead of the intended response, however, she reacts with fury: how dare this woman talk about the Azula she was, how dare she claim to know anything about her.
"Go away!" she screams, attacking blindly again, but missing.
"Not until you give us the knife, Azula," Lily says, as calmly as possible, wrapping a bandage around her wounded hand. Behind her, a nurse comes in with a cup filled with that thick syrup, but Azula wants nothing less than she wants that syrup. It'll only sedate her, and they'll take away the knife, and they'll take away her chance.
"Get that - that stuff away from me!" She indicates at the nurse with the knife and Lily nods hastily.
"Okay, Azula. We won't sedate you. Just... please give me the knife."
Throw it at her, she is struck suddenly with the thought, speaking in that familiar voice she hates so much - throw it right into her stomach like Mai would.
But she doesn't want to do that to Lily. Lily promised her she would never be alone, and she's worked hard to keep that promise. Lily doesn't deserve to die.
That wouldn't have stopped you before.
"No," she croaks, half at Lily and half at herself, "no, just - just go away. Just let me go."
"No, Azula," Lily says, trying to step in front of the nurses, eyes pleading. "I promised you that you wouldn't be alone, didn't I?"
Azula shakes violently, and the knife almost falls from her slackening grip, but she clutches at it again in frustration. "Give me one reason," she whispers, turning the shaking knife to her own chest, "one reason not to."
For a long moment, nothing moves. Dust swirls the air, her new chair overturned and smashed, the drawers of her desk ripped out and smashed against the wall, the blanket torn and discarded, window broken - except for the sound of the wind outside, the room is silent. Finally, Lily takes a deep breath.
"Because you're stronger than that."
Azula blinks.
She drops the knife.
A/N: Quick removal-and-edit because &^%$! I had a stupid with the tenses. I started this in present tense and then thought "wait no I've done all the others in past tense fix that" and then I posted it and looked back and went ARGH YOU IDIOT, so I had to re-fix the tenses. Quote at the beginning is still from River Tam of Firefly and you should still watch it.