Who: Azula, Clarice, Faiza, Iroh, Kitty, and Ty Lee Where: Azula's condo, then an undisclosed location What: healing Azula When: Wednesday Warnings/Rating: PG-13 for mentions of medical stuff and violence Status complete
Azula kept making fire with her right hand, the other one held close to her chest. Foom. Poof. Foom. Sizzle. She was starting to hyperventilate. She felt as though her hand wasn’t even there. channeling everything into one hand was difficult, and tedious. Azula wished she was dead, rather than have this constant reminder of her humiliation.
Ty Lee hugged Azula, trying to calm her. It didn’t matter. It truly didn’t. Azula was the same without her bending. “Let it go, Azula. You need to rest. You’ll feel better when you’ve rested.”
“I can’t..I can’t rest. I have to get better. I have to get stronger.” Azula wouldn’t be able to face anyone, until she was able to recover.
Ty Lee put her hands over Azula’s, very gently. “You have to rest.” She had learned to be commanding. It was somewhat against her nature, but she had to be firm with Azula sometimes. It was for the best, in the long run.
Azula blinked at her, then wiped some tears from her eyes. There was something awed in her expression. She liked when Ty Lee took charge, and so she stopped struggling. “Fine, I was going to rest anyway.” She eyedarted.
“I’m sure you were, Azula.” Ty Lee said, kissing her softly. “I’ll make you tea while you relax.” She stroked Azula’s face lovingly, and went to start the kettle.
Which is when Azula’s phone rang. Iroh was on the other side, pacing a little. It was worth it, whatever Kitty asked. He understood now, and he knew Azula must be quite beside herself without her bending.
She eyed her phone, then sighed and picked it up. “Gimp Azula.”
“You are not.” Iroh said, his voice even. “But you do need to get ready to go somewhere. You and Ty Lee both.” He paced as he spoke, hoping that Kitty was being truthful. He had to trust Kitty to be honest and Ty Lee to not suck at protecting Azula for once. Clearly things were desperate.
“I’m not going out like this.” Azula was aghast. She still had her hand in a bandage, she was bruised and beat up... “I can’t!”
“You must, Azula. There’s someone who can help you get the use of your hand back.” Iroh desperately wanted his niece to be whole again. “I know you must be having trouble with your bending, this will fix it.”
“...what’s the cost?” Things like that never came without a price, but Azula was willing to pay it right now. She felt so broken.
“To you? Nothing.” Iroh wondered what it would cost, in the end, but he didn’t care. He would make sure his niece and nephew were taken care of, damn it.
“Uncle...” Azula closed her eyes and tried to control her breathing. “I don’t...we don’t deserve you.”
“Next time have someone tell me when you’ve hurt yourself doing something stupid, Azula.” He couldn’t help but smile, just a little. “My contact said to be ready in ten minutes.”
“I don’t know about this..” She was already trying to get out of bed to dress. She wouldn’t be caught unready like this. She would be dressed, and her hair combed and she’d do it by herself.
“I know, it is a risk. Ty Lee is going with you, hopefully she’ll protect you.” Out of courtesy Iroh didn’t say, ‘for once’.
“I don’t deserve this. I deserve to be a cripple, Uncle.” She didn’t doubt that Ty Lee would protect her. The only times she hadn’t had been Azula’s fault.
“Azula, you deserve everything you have gotten, including this. Get ready.” He hung the phone up, and wondered how Kitty would contact him when she was ready to help Azula.
Ty Lee came back into the room with tea on a tray, smiling brightly. “What did Iroh have to say?”
She was halfway through getting a skirt on, since it was better than pants. She was also sweating profusely. “Someone is coming to fix me.”
“Oh, another doctor?” Ty Lee asked.
Azula nodded her head. “Help me dress, we have about ten minutes. Uncle seemed to think it’s a really...special kind of doctor.”
Ty Lee eagerly set herself to the task. “What kind of special doctor?” Ty Lee was wary of the idea.
“I don’t know, he wouldn’t say. He seems convinced they can help.” She let Ty Lee help her dress, and closed her eyes. The wound on her stomach seemed better than it was. Korra had visited, and tried to heal her too. If the Avatar couldn’t do it, she wasn’t holding her breath. Still.....
Ty Lee nodded. Iroh was an old guy, and he might be prone to weirdness and being stuffy, but she wanted to believe he had some kind of magic healer on standby. “What’ll happen in ten minutes? Will he show up here?”
“...I don’t know.” She sagged on Ty Lee’s shoulder, and a moment later there came a knock on the door. She looked at it with some trepidation.
Ty Lee frowned, hugging Azula for a moment. “I’ll go see who it is.” She kissed Azula’s cheek and drew a knife from the holster under her skirt. She opened the door, keeping the knife-wielding hand unoccupied.
Kitty was standing at the door, wearing her Shadowcat costume, complete with mask. Clarice stood to her right side, also in costume, though she didn’t really bother with a mask,because why bother?
“So I’m told I need to bring one of you to a healer?”
Ty Lee frowned. “He’s senile, I knew it.” She looked at Kitty and Clarice. “Uh, one minute.” She closed the door again and went to Azula. “I think your uncle was wrong.”
“What? How?” Azula frowned, leaning against the wall and glancing at the door, glaring at it a bit.
Outside, Kitty was scowling. She phased her head through the door. “Ride’s about to leave, so are you coming or not?”
“Because all that’s missing from our door right now is the amount of money we’d get for bringing her in alive.” Ty Lee noted, motioning to Kitty’s head.
“The deal is, I bring you to the doctor, doctor fixes you up, Iroh owes me a favor,” Kitty said, calmly, still eyeing them. “We have a sort of truce. For god’s sake you can make fire.” She pointed at Azula. “I think believability went out the window a long time ago.”
“Ty Lee is just trying to protect me.” Azula pushed off the wall. She looked at Ty Lee. “We’re going. I trust you to protect me.”
Ty Lee took a deep breath and nodded when Azula made her choice. “Then I will.” She took Azula’s good hand and went toward the door. “Okay, where are we going?”
“To a safe place.” Kitty pulled Clarice in with her. “This might feel a little weird.”
There was a flash of light, and the four of them were standing in a metal lined room. A woman in a white doctor’s coat, wearing a hockey mask. Her voice was distorted when she spoke. “You know I feel really silly wearing this, why can’t I just bloody help them without the mask?”
“It’s for your protection,” Kitty said.
The doctor sighed. “Have a seat, duck.” She gestured at a medical bed. “You poor thing...”
Azula was trying to not throw up.
Ty Lee kept Azula steady, and fought the urge to throw up as well. “She wasn’t kidding.” She knew Azula didn’t need help to sit down, so she just stayed close, trying to keep her eyes on all the not-Azula occupants of the room at once.
Azula was no sooner seated than Faiza had pulled her apart. She actually cursed, “What happened to you!? Why were you even let out of the hospital!” She started to get to work. Azula’s hand visibly started to knit back to her wrist, and the wound on her stomach started to close. She did work on her lungs, too, and several other organs. “You’ve some old bullet wounds too, that didn’t heal well. I can help with that.”
Ty Lee stopped giving a damn what Kitty and Clarice were doing the moment her wife. . . exploded. She just stared in shock and horror. She almost intervened, but. . . well, it seemed to be helping. She frowned and blinked. “What is that?”
“We’re mutants. We’re different like you, but instead of bending..fire... She bends flesh and bone, knitting it back together and repairing it.” Kitty folded her arms. “I wish I knew what caused that kind of damage...”
Ty Lee pursed her lips together, her expression becoming very dark. “A monster.”
“We’re used to monsters.” Clarice walked around Faiza, trying to get a better look at Azula’s injuries. “But that’s pretty bad.”
Azula couldn’t explain what this felt like. She’d fallen to pieces and really, really was trying to not freak out. No one else was freaking out. She wouldn’t freak out. These people though...kind of scared her. Except for the doctor they seemed so...hard.
And to Azula, that was extra disturbing, all things considered.
“He’s a bad monster.” Ty Lee clarified. Coming from a former Yakuza bodyguard, that was saying a lot. “I don’t think the doctors realize how much he hurt her.”
“A lot of the damage is subtle, but very …. spread out,” Faiza explained. She glanced at Ty Lee. “Did anyone else fight this monster?”
Ty Lee looked awkward for a moment. “Uh, not yet, that I know of.”
“Good, I’d wear myself out right now if I had to help anyone else, but I’d need to.” She nodded her head and started to close Azula up. “There, you poor dear. Better than new!”
Azula blinked her eyes. She wasn’t looking at herself anymore, that was nice. She rubbed her hand then looked down at it. Her wrist was swollen, but otherwise looked almost as good as before.
“Rest it over the next couple of days and you shouldn’t notice any permanent nerve damage,” Faiza said, smiling behind her mask.
Ty Lee went over to examine Azula’s wrist as well. It was more acceptable than pulling her shirt up to look at her side. Though that was destined to happen too, just not yet. “Wow.”
Azula knew better than to cast lightning inside a metal room, but she did something unexpected. She hugged Faiza. She was never going to be a bitch again!
Okay that might last all of a week.
Kitty pretended to wipe at her eye, but she was smiling. “Way better than monsters.”
“There’s not much that isn’t.” Ty Lee noted with a laugh. She was happy to see Azula so happy, and that her wife was safe and whole again.
Faiza shook her head and hugged Azula back. They didn’t seem like bad people at all, but Kitty was incredibly paranoid. “You’ll be fine. If you find out anyone else who’s been hurt by this bloke, let me know.”
“What, should we put up a post on the network to the autotuned goalie?” Ty Lee asked, though she was mostly being silly. It was great to see Azula happy again.
"Yes, actually," Faiza laughed. Really. Hockey. Couldn't it have been a cricket uniform? She would have loved that. It wouldn't have covered her face though.
Azula wrapped her arms around Ty Lee as well. That was done. Great. They just needed to deal with other things, now...
Clarice rubbed the back of her neck. "If you're ready to go, I can send you back."
“Yes.” Ty Lee hugged Azula. “I think we’re both ready to be home.”
Clarice waved her hand, and there was a flash of light. The two girls were sent home.