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Sep. 8th, 2013 11:52 pmAzula is a perfectionist at heart. Not a hair out of place nor a motion wasted. Her father instilled these very high standards in her from a young age in his quest to mold her into the perfect daughter and weapon. He pushed her to always be better then her older brother, to always be better then she was and praised her successes, nurturing her ego and making her obsession for perfection a deeply valued center of her pride. This is both a positive and negative trait as it drove her to achieve amazing accomplishments at a very young age for example, conquering the city of Ba Sing Se. She derives great pleasure from being flawless and correct.
The drawback to this nature is that when she was forced to admit that she is flawed, that she is only human, it helped add to the eventual mental breakdown. When a perfectionist has failed completely despite all their efforts and planning it is common for them to fall into depression. Privately she is over critical of herself and worked constantly to improve on any imperfections, be it her fighting form, her emotions or plans. If any interfere in a way that she feels has ruined the perfection, she tends to lash out aggressively, over reacting even in a cold ruthless sort of way.
Azula has demonstrated her skills as a strong leader, using her positions of power or sometimes just her pure unfiltered self confidence to dominate the will of others and make them listen and obey her. Those she cannot bully, she manipulates like pawns on a chess board, finding ways to dig at them, to guide them into whatever position she wants. She has shown particular skill at manipulating the emotions and wills of her closest friends and brother. Her ability to issue commands and her tactical skills have proven themselves on par with weathered generals several times her age. Finally, as a leader she is not uncomfortable with getting her hands dirty. Some say the best leaders will lead from behind, others lead from the front lines. Azula is capable of both, showing her skill at micro managing as well as taking matters into her own hands.
We touched on her self confident nature before. This stems from the ego pampering ways of her father and the culture of the Royal Family of the Fire Nation she was raised with. She was brought up to believe that some people are simply born better, with a divine right to lead and superiority coming natural to them. She believes that benders are superior to non-benders and that fire benders are the strongest. Royal blooded people are above commoners and she is always superior to Zuko. Her father encouraged this behavior with such phrases as she was "Born lucky" while Zuko was just "Lucky to be born."
This hubris is another help and hindrance in her life. While it has allowed her the courage and self assurance to take calculated risks, or to act in such a way that everyone believes in her skills and abilities. An example of this was her confident tone and total control of her emotions was strong enough she was able to fool a particularly skilled lie detector while saying ridiculous things that were very obviously untrue.
Unfortunately it's that same confidence that led to her failing to take into consideration that her two closest allies, her best friends, would ever betray her. She believed she had them so loyal to her that they would aid in her attempts to capture her brother. But this turned out to be another step down the road of her undoing as her friends betrayed her, saving Zuko's life and shattering her trust in them. An interesting note in this is that when Mai was the first to betray her, Azula attacked with the desire to kill or at least maim her. She had never considered that Ty Lee would then betray her as well, paralyzing her and saving Mai from Azula's wrath temporarily. Unable to bring herself to command their deaths, Azula ordered the guards to lock them away where she would never have to see them again. Her confidence was dealt a critical blow that day and as we saw her progression after that, it never quite recovered.
Cruelty has long been a staple of Azula's life, be it setting plant life on fire and claiming it was due to the plant not being perfect enough or the way she treated her brother and friends. Her wickedness can very in degrees from jealously, shoving Ty Lee over simply because she was better at performing hand stands, to humiliating Zuko in front of Mai, knowing full well the two had strong affectionate feelings for one another. This behavior only grew as time passed on to the point where she had no problem ruining the lives of others for her own pleasure or progress. She takes delight in showing her superiority by inflicting cruel treatment upon others.
As mentioned previously, Azula is a constantly calculating perfectionist. Each day, each interaction is a military planned battle of wits to her, from how to carry out the orders of her father, to something as simple as a volley ball game. She even applies her strategic thinking to basic social interactions which sometimes comes off as awkward to normal people. Her aggressive nature makes this worse and in time she has intimidated and scared the target of her social warfare. It also makes it more difficult for Azula to make gut instinct based choices as she is so used to plotting and planning out every angle that she can. She has strong warriors instincts due to years of training and practice, but poor social instincts. She can manipulate, but she has trouble relating.
Which leads us to her lack of empathy. While she is capable of seeing and recognizing the emotions that other human beings feel, she finds it difficult to sympathize with them and has little to any compassion for them. Especially if she views them as imperfect creatures, failures or mistakes. This does not help things when she herself eventually cracks and spirals into depression and madness as she finds herself unable to have compassion for herself. She does not show regret for the awful things she has done, though the hallucinations of her mother hint that she may be harboring guilt over them.
Her aggressive nature speaks for itself, having shown herself willing to hurt people physically, mentally and emotionally to get what she wants, even willing to kill them if needed. She does not take well to being told she cannot do something. This nature is another example of the double ended swords of her emotions. On the one side her passion has given her the strength and take charge attitude needed to be a strong leader and to intimidate others. This aggression also took charge when her paranoia and anger got the best of her. It led to her making rash decisions when she was beginning to crack and ultimately that aggressive ruthlessness led to her making mistakes in her final duel with Katara and Zuko. These mistakes led to her defeat and capture.
While we have covered Azula's manipulative nature earlier in this discussion it bares to repeat how incredibly tactical and careful she is at twisting the emotions and desires of others to get her what she wants. From making her brother do what she wants while still thinking it was his choice, to convincing an elite squad of fighters and spies to follow her instead of their leader due to her obvious superiority.
As is common with those of a privileged upbringing, Azula is both possessive and selfish. Her strongest cravings have to do with power and the respect and admiration that comes with it. If she cannot make those beneath her admire her superiority then she will make them fear her wrath. She believes that trust is for fools and that fear is the only reliable method of control. She does not wish to share this power, not with her friends, nor her brother. Only her father is worthy enough in her eyes to share the power that she believes they were born to wield.
This is as good a time as any to bring up her issues with her parents and brother. Azula loves her father as much as she is capable of due to his praise and encouragement while growing up. He praised her aggressive behavior and nurtured her feelings of superiority and the drive to be perfect. She believes him to be the perfect example of just what she should be striving for. And when the day came where he was to set out on his conquest of the world and would not have her by his side, she was heartbroken. He attempted to placate her by giving her the title of Fire Lord, so that she may rule the kingdom while he took his place as world ruler. But deep down Azula saw this as his way of getting rid of her, pushing her to the side the way he did with Zuko.
Her mother meanwhile was forced to admonish Azula's misbehavior as her father saw only her promise and potential. Because of her mother's constant scolding and punishment, Azula thought that her mother simply did not love her and saw Azula as a monster. When her mother vanished to protect them both, Azula saw this as further proof of the woman's treachery. As her sanity began to crack and her grip on reality slip, Azula began to hallucinate seeing her mother in reflections and shadows. The image of her mother was kind and gentle, promising that she always loved Azula. This perhaps betrays Azula's deeper desire to be loved by the woman she has taught herself to hate. Unable to accept that her mother could love her (and that she could in fact be wrong about something she's believed for so long) Azula began to think that all of the recent failures of her life had somehow been orchestrated by her mother. This paranoid delusion is a quick trigger of hers and will often send her into a hyper aggressive state of rash decision making and lashing out violently in an attempt to drive the visions away.
Azula's paranoia began to settle in after the betrayal of her two closest friends and became worse once she held the weighty title of Fire Lord. She began to lose faith in everyone around her from her servants to her guards. Even her teachers whom had cared for her and guided her for years were no longer trust worthy. She began to fear assassination at all times which likely led to loss of sleep. And the less sleep, the more irrational, paranoid and prone to hallucinations she became.
Azula has been shown to fear death by assassination once her life began to crumble around her. No longer in absolute control of her emotions and unable to accept trust, fear crept into her heart and made it difficult for her to focus herself. Death is the great unknown, something she cannot plan for nor train herself to overcome. It comes for all inevitably and Azula does not hold a strong belief that the spirit world will be welcoming to her considering her relationship with the Avatar.
Underneath it all, it's possible that Azula has guilt for disappointing her mother all those years ago and more recently, guilt over being dismissed and cast aside by her father. Perhaps if she was more perfect he would have had her join him. Perhaps if she had been a better daughter he would have had her by his side when he set out to take over the world and things might have turned out differently. It's also reasonable that she feels lonely and closed off from the world, especially once she could no longer trust Mai or Ty Lee. Her own brother was a traitor to the family so she could seek no comfort from him and to admit such weaknesses to her father, let alone herself, would be inexcusable.
Despite her emotional breakdown and her many failures she still has some degrees of pride in herself and who she is. She is still convinced that everything she and her father did was for the good of the Fire Nation and ultimately the world. She loves the Fire Nation, its culture and history. Though she has fallen out of love with its people after months in then Mental Health Treatment Center convinced her that they had accepted Zuko as the Fire Lord and there would be no rebellion of loyal supporters who knew her as the true Fire Lord.
After her mental burnout, many of her more dominant personality traits, most notably her cold, in control attitude weakened in favor of aggressive, rash behavior. When her fears or angers are triggered she finds it much more difficult to avoid acting on those emotions to an extreme degree. Her paranoia has been shown to spring up, seemingly apropro of nothing in particular. This is especially the case in anything she can blame on her mother.
Being locked away has given her time to reflect and she did not like what she saw. Much of it she is still in denial of. The time also allowed her to regain enough control that she is not a raving lunatic or primal ball of uncontrolled emotions. But she still needs time, effort and healing to be able to make progress. Unable to trust the Fire Nation doctors, she was not a model patient and often refused her medication or meals. Sometimes she refused the meals simply because they were not up to her standards, other times it was out of paranoia for what might have been put in them. Eventually, of course, she would have to eat but with her stubborn determination she could go a long while between meals if needed.
****************************
This world was not her world.
Everywhere she looked, every sound she heard was like the banging of a hammer in her skull to remind her that she was so completely out of her element. Each monster was a twisted form of madness with teeth and claws, or beady little eyes. And they possessed elemental powers, sometimes powers that defied explanation.
And how unsatisfactory were the explanations offered to her? Beings made up of pure information? That she herself was a construct of data now?
And so when the stress of all this change began to overwhelm her she would lock herself in her room for hours. A single door, easy to fortify against intruders.
And in her room she could light candles. The dancing flickering flames proved to center her and give her something soothing to focus on. Even as she felt an ache in her chest for the inner flame that had burned there and always reminded her of her superiority as a fire bender...the candles would serve her in finding peace, despite it being temporary.
Here in the privacy and protection of her room she let the gears of her mind tick away processing all the information she had gathered. Each day more of it made itself known via the D-terminal. What fools these Chosen were to broadcast every petty worthless detail of their lives for all to see. Some of it was more useful then others, but all the information gleamed from this device no matter how apparently inconsequential at the time...could potentially be useful later.
If there truly was no escape from this madness then she would embrace it. She would not only be a part of this world where the basic laws of science seemed to have no jurisdiction, but in fact she would use it to her advantage. She would grow strong again, she would piece her shattered mind back together and become even greater then she had been in her own world!
Rising from the floor where the flickering candle sat she drifted through her room like a ghost. The straight jacket she had arrived in was wadded up and banished to a corner of her closet, but despite not being able to see it, she knew it was there.
"Never again." She promised herself as she shut the door to the closet as if locking that part of her away.
Bare feet brought her to the vanity mirror on the wall. The woman that greeted her in the reflection was almost a stranger. Her gaunt features and the dark circles under her eyes almost made Azula recoil in disgust. But sure enough it was her own reflection and not some ghoulish apparition.
Her arrival in this world had been...messy. The first impressions made upon those who were aware of it were not the best. She would need to find a way to over come that either by making it out to be less then it was...or being so impressive no one would remember it.
She stiffened as a familiar voice whispered to her.
"Just be honest with them. Let them help you Azula."
Her eyes narrowed and the muscles in her body began to tighten like a wound spring as she gazed upon the image of her mother looking at her with those sad watery eyes that had so often been filled with disappointment.
"Oh yes, I'm sure that would make them respect and fear me so much faster wouldn't it?" She spat with venom dripping from every word. How could she have followed her here?! It simply wasn't fair! She had thought she was finally free from her mother and her tricks!
"You don't need to control them." Her mother gently corrected her. "You only need to regain control of yourself."
Unwilling to hear her mother's wisdom Azula lunged for the mirror digging her nails at the place where it clung to the wall and wrenched it from it's holdings sending it crashing to the carpeted floor. It did not shatter so Azula wasted no time in stomping on it from behind till she heard a satisfying "CRACK!"
Again and again she stomped on the larger pieces till the weight and force of her foot on the carpet wasn't enough to crack it further. Now in pieces the simple mirror's non-reflective back seemed dull and lifeless and the exhausted former princess moved to sit on her bed and catch her breath. Her temper had jumped so sharply and her body had become weak from time spent locked away. This breathlessness was another weakness, an imperfection that required ironing out.
The tickling sensation of something wet running along her foot brought her attention to the cut she had received during her quick tantrum. It was a thin slice but deep enough hat droplets of crimson ran along the arch of her foot to drip off the heel onto the carpet. Her eyes were dull and glassy now that the fire of her anger had burnt itself to embers once more.
Begrudgingly she rose from the bed to go and prepare a makeshift bandage. Stepping around the broke glass she knelt down to blow out the candle and scooped it up setting it on her night stand.
She had so much work to be done. And it was more apparent every day that this was just the beginning of what would be a long and difficult journey.
The drawback to this nature is that when she was forced to admit that she is flawed, that she is only human, it helped add to the eventual mental breakdown. When a perfectionist has failed completely despite all their efforts and planning it is common for them to fall into depression. Privately she is over critical of herself and worked constantly to improve on any imperfections, be it her fighting form, her emotions or plans. If any interfere in a way that she feels has ruined the perfection, she tends to lash out aggressively, over reacting even in a cold ruthless sort of way.
Azula has demonstrated her skills as a strong leader, using her positions of power or sometimes just her pure unfiltered self confidence to dominate the will of others and make them listen and obey her. Those she cannot bully, she manipulates like pawns on a chess board, finding ways to dig at them, to guide them into whatever position she wants. She has shown particular skill at manipulating the emotions and wills of her closest friends and brother. Her ability to issue commands and her tactical skills have proven themselves on par with weathered generals several times her age. Finally, as a leader she is not uncomfortable with getting her hands dirty. Some say the best leaders will lead from behind, others lead from the front lines. Azula is capable of both, showing her skill at micro managing as well as taking matters into her own hands.
We touched on her self confident nature before. This stems from the ego pampering ways of her father and the culture of the Royal Family of the Fire Nation she was raised with. She was brought up to believe that some people are simply born better, with a divine right to lead and superiority coming natural to them. She believes that benders are superior to non-benders and that fire benders are the strongest. Royal blooded people are above commoners and she is always superior to Zuko. Her father encouraged this behavior with such phrases as she was "Born lucky" while Zuko was just "Lucky to be born."
This hubris is another help and hindrance in her life. While it has allowed her the courage and self assurance to take calculated risks, or to act in such a way that everyone believes in her skills and abilities. An example of this was her confident tone and total control of her emotions was strong enough she was able to fool a particularly skilled lie detector while saying ridiculous things that were very obviously untrue.
Unfortunately it's that same confidence that led to her failing to take into consideration that her two closest allies, her best friends, would ever betray her. She believed she had them so loyal to her that they would aid in her attempts to capture her brother. But this turned out to be another step down the road of her undoing as her friends betrayed her, saving Zuko's life and shattering her trust in them. An interesting note in this is that when Mai was the first to betray her, Azula attacked with the desire to kill or at least maim her. She had never considered that Ty Lee would then betray her as well, paralyzing her and saving Mai from Azula's wrath temporarily. Unable to bring herself to command their deaths, Azula ordered the guards to lock them away where she would never have to see them again. Her confidence was dealt a critical blow that day and as we saw her progression after that, it never quite recovered.
Cruelty has long been a staple of Azula's life, be it setting plant life on fire and claiming it was due to the plant not being perfect enough or the way she treated her brother and friends. Her wickedness can very in degrees from jealously, shoving Ty Lee over simply because she was better at performing hand stands, to humiliating Zuko in front of Mai, knowing full well the two had strong affectionate feelings for one another. This behavior only grew as time passed on to the point where she had no problem ruining the lives of others for her own pleasure or progress. She takes delight in showing her superiority by inflicting cruel treatment upon others.
As mentioned previously, Azula is a constantly calculating perfectionist. Each day, each interaction is a military planned battle of wits to her, from how to carry out the orders of her father, to something as simple as a volley ball game. She even applies her strategic thinking to basic social interactions which sometimes comes off as awkward to normal people. Her aggressive nature makes this worse and in time she has intimidated and scared the target of her social warfare. It also makes it more difficult for Azula to make gut instinct based choices as she is so used to plotting and planning out every angle that she can. She has strong warriors instincts due to years of training and practice, but poor social instincts. She can manipulate, but she has trouble relating.
Which leads us to her lack of empathy. While she is capable of seeing and recognizing the emotions that other human beings feel, she finds it difficult to sympathize with them and has little to any compassion for them. Especially if she views them as imperfect creatures, failures or mistakes. This does not help things when she herself eventually cracks and spirals into depression and madness as she finds herself unable to have compassion for herself. She does not show regret for the awful things she has done, though the hallucinations of her mother hint that she may be harboring guilt over them.
Her aggressive nature speaks for itself, having shown herself willing to hurt people physically, mentally and emotionally to get what she wants, even willing to kill them if needed. She does not take well to being told she cannot do something. This nature is another example of the double ended swords of her emotions. On the one side her passion has given her the strength and take charge attitude needed to be a strong leader and to intimidate others. This aggression also took charge when her paranoia and anger got the best of her. It led to her making rash decisions when she was beginning to crack and ultimately that aggressive ruthlessness led to her making mistakes in her final duel with Katara and Zuko. These mistakes led to her defeat and capture.
While we have covered Azula's manipulative nature earlier in this discussion it bares to repeat how incredibly tactical and careful she is at twisting the emotions and desires of others to get her what she wants. From making her brother do what she wants while still thinking it was his choice, to convincing an elite squad of fighters and spies to follow her instead of their leader due to her obvious superiority.
As is common with those of a privileged upbringing, Azula is both possessive and selfish. Her strongest cravings have to do with power and the respect and admiration that comes with it. If she cannot make those beneath her admire her superiority then she will make them fear her wrath. She believes that trust is for fools and that fear is the only reliable method of control. She does not wish to share this power, not with her friends, nor her brother. Only her father is worthy enough in her eyes to share the power that she believes they were born to wield.
This is as good a time as any to bring up her issues with her parents and brother. Azula loves her father as much as she is capable of due to his praise and encouragement while growing up. He praised her aggressive behavior and nurtured her feelings of superiority and the drive to be perfect. She believes him to be the perfect example of just what she should be striving for. And when the day came where he was to set out on his conquest of the world and would not have her by his side, she was heartbroken. He attempted to placate her by giving her the title of Fire Lord, so that she may rule the kingdom while he took his place as world ruler. But deep down Azula saw this as his way of getting rid of her, pushing her to the side the way he did with Zuko.
Her mother meanwhile was forced to admonish Azula's misbehavior as her father saw only her promise and potential. Because of her mother's constant scolding and punishment, Azula thought that her mother simply did not love her and saw Azula as a monster. When her mother vanished to protect them both, Azula saw this as further proof of the woman's treachery. As her sanity began to crack and her grip on reality slip, Azula began to hallucinate seeing her mother in reflections and shadows. The image of her mother was kind and gentle, promising that she always loved Azula. This perhaps betrays Azula's deeper desire to be loved by the woman she has taught herself to hate. Unable to accept that her mother could love her (and that she could in fact be wrong about something she's believed for so long) Azula began to think that all of the recent failures of her life had somehow been orchestrated by her mother. This paranoid delusion is a quick trigger of hers and will often send her into a hyper aggressive state of rash decision making and lashing out violently in an attempt to drive the visions away.
Azula's paranoia began to settle in after the betrayal of her two closest friends and became worse once she held the weighty title of Fire Lord. She began to lose faith in everyone around her from her servants to her guards. Even her teachers whom had cared for her and guided her for years were no longer trust worthy. She began to fear assassination at all times which likely led to loss of sleep. And the less sleep, the more irrational, paranoid and prone to hallucinations she became.
Azula has been shown to fear death by assassination once her life began to crumble around her. No longer in absolute control of her emotions and unable to accept trust, fear crept into her heart and made it difficult for her to focus herself. Death is the great unknown, something she cannot plan for nor train herself to overcome. It comes for all inevitably and Azula does not hold a strong belief that the spirit world will be welcoming to her considering her relationship with the Avatar.
Underneath it all, it's possible that Azula has guilt for disappointing her mother all those years ago and more recently, guilt over being dismissed and cast aside by her father. Perhaps if she was more perfect he would have had her join him. Perhaps if she had been a better daughter he would have had her by his side when he set out to take over the world and things might have turned out differently. It's also reasonable that she feels lonely and closed off from the world, especially once she could no longer trust Mai or Ty Lee. Her own brother was a traitor to the family so she could seek no comfort from him and to admit such weaknesses to her father, let alone herself, would be inexcusable.
Despite her emotional breakdown and her many failures she still has some degrees of pride in herself and who she is. She is still convinced that everything she and her father did was for the good of the Fire Nation and ultimately the world. She loves the Fire Nation, its culture and history. Though she has fallen out of love with its people after months in then Mental Health Treatment Center convinced her that they had accepted Zuko as the Fire Lord and there would be no rebellion of loyal supporters who knew her as the true Fire Lord.
After her mental burnout, many of her more dominant personality traits, most notably her cold, in control attitude weakened in favor of aggressive, rash behavior. When her fears or angers are triggered she finds it much more difficult to avoid acting on those emotions to an extreme degree. Her paranoia has been shown to spring up, seemingly apropro of nothing in particular. This is especially the case in anything she can blame on her mother.
Being locked away has given her time to reflect and she did not like what she saw. Much of it she is still in denial of. The time also allowed her to regain enough control that she is not a raving lunatic or primal ball of uncontrolled emotions. But she still needs time, effort and healing to be able to make progress. Unable to trust the Fire Nation doctors, she was not a model patient and often refused her medication or meals. Sometimes she refused the meals simply because they were not up to her standards, other times it was out of paranoia for what might have been put in them. Eventually, of course, she would have to eat but with her stubborn determination she could go a long while between meals if needed.
****************************
This world was not her world.
Everywhere she looked, every sound she heard was like the banging of a hammer in her skull to remind her that she was so completely out of her element. Each monster was a twisted form of madness with teeth and claws, or beady little eyes. And they possessed elemental powers, sometimes powers that defied explanation.
And how unsatisfactory were the explanations offered to her? Beings made up of pure information? That she herself was a construct of data now?
And so when the stress of all this change began to overwhelm her she would lock herself in her room for hours. A single door, easy to fortify against intruders.
And in her room she could light candles. The dancing flickering flames proved to center her and give her something soothing to focus on. Even as she felt an ache in her chest for the inner flame that had burned there and always reminded her of her superiority as a fire bender...the candles would serve her in finding peace, despite it being temporary.
Here in the privacy and protection of her room she let the gears of her mind tick away processing all the information she had gathered. Each day more of it made itself known via the D-terminal. What fools these Chosen were to broadcast every petty worthless detail of their lives for all to see. Some of it was more useful then others, but all the information gleamed from this device no matter how apparently inconsequential at the time...could potentially be useful later.
If there truly was no escape from this madness then she would embrace it. She would not only be a part of this world where the basic laws of science seemed to have no jurisdiction, but in fact she would use it to her advantage. She would grow strong again, she would piece her shattered mind back together and become even greater then she had been in her own world!
Rising from the floor where the flickering candle sat she drifted through her room like a ghost. The straight jacket she had arrived in was wadded up and banished to a corner of her closet, but despite not being able to see it, she knew it was there.
"Never again." She promised herself as she shut the door to the closet as if locking that part of her away.
Bare feet brought her to the vanity mirror on the wall. The woman that greeted her in the reflection was almost a stranger. Her gaunt features and the dark circles under her eyes almost made Azula recoil in disgust. But sure enough it was her own reflection and not some ghoulish apparition.
Her arrival in this world had been...messy. The first impressions made upon those who were aware of it were not the best. She would need to find a way to over come that either by making it out to be less then it was...or being so impressive no one would remember it.
She stiffened as a familiar voice whispered to her.
"Just be honest with them. Let them help you Azula."
Her eyes narrowed and the muscles in her body began to tighten like a wound spring as she gazed upon the image of her mother looking at her with those sad watery eyes that had so often been filled with disappointment.
"Oh yes, I'm sure that would make them respect and fear me so much faster wouldn't it?" She spat with venom dripping from every word. How could she have followed her here?! It simply wasn't fair! She had thought she was finally free from her mother and her tricks!
"You don't need to control them." Her mother gently corrected her. "You only need to regain control of yourself."
Unwilling to hear her mother's wisdom Azula lunged for the mirror digging her nails at the place where it clung to the wall and wrenched it from it's holdings sending it crashing to the carpeted floor. It did not shatter so Azula wasted no time in stomping on it from behind till she heard a satisfying "CRACK!"
Again and again she stomped on the larger pieces till the weight and force of her foot on the carpet wasn't enough to crack it further. Now in pieces the simple mirror's non-reflective back seemed dull and lifeless and the exhausted former princess moved to sit on her bed and catch her breath. Her temper had jumped so sharply and her body had become weak from time spent locked away. This breathlessness was another weakness, an imperfection that required ironing out.
The tickling sensation of something wet running along her foot brought her attention to the cut she had received during her quick tantrum. It was a thin slice but deep enough hat droplets of crimson ran along the arch of her foot to drip off the heel onto the carpet. Her eyes were dull and glassy now that the fire of her anger had burnt itself to embers once more.
Begrudgingly she rose from the bed to go and prepare a makeshift bandage. Stepping around the broke glass she knelt down to blow out the candle and scooped it up setting it on her night stand.
She had so much work to be done. And it was more apparent every day that this was just the beginning of what would be a long and difficult journey.
