She is visited every day.

At first She is very sarcastic, hoping to make them angry, maybe even in the insane hope that they'd become angry enough to throw open the inner cell door in a fit of rage.

Sometimes it is Zuko, sometimes it is Iroh, and sometimes it is even the Avatar, and they just sit and talk. When Her patience begins to fray and She can't stand them—can't stand it—anymore, She throws lightning, but it is always calmly redirected. Her cell faces the open sky and sea for that very purpose, and they always leave the outer cell door open for that very purpose, too. When She throws blasts of pure, intensely hot flame, they always deflect it to harmlessly warm the stone walls.

And then she comes.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. As soon as She sees Mai, a bolt of lightning is going right for the traitorous bitch's heart. Lightning travels extremely fast. There is no way even the Mai who is quick enough to dodge sheets of flame could avoid this attack.

But she does. Mai dodges the next one, too, and the next one, and how is that POSSIBLE?! and Mai is walking forward, passive face unchanged.

Mai opens the inner cell door, and She backs against the wall, because of stupid pride and rage and damned if I—

She finally manages to catch Mai, and the hot flame brushes her sleeve, and it should have been enough to set the damned traitor's clothes on fire, but Mai just calmly reaches up and extinguishes the flame with her fire-resistant glove.

Oh, she's come prepared, the traitor has, but does Mai remember She can fight without Bending, is she prepared for this—

But she must have become faster. The fist is caught in a gloved hand and what—the texture of fine clothes brushes Her arms where Her own sleeves don't reach and strong arms are around Her and this is surely a death trap, but hell if Mai thinks she can strangle Her.

"You. dirty. traitor." There is no shaking in Her voice, and She prides herself on keeping Her voice steady even while Her body shakes—Mai must have loaded up on a poison needle, damn her, and—

Mai holds the sobbing bundle in her arms without flinching until Azula stops struggling. When she speaks, her voice cracks, "I don’t think you’re a monster."

Azula pulls away, but if Mai is anything, it's fast. The inner cell door closes before Azula can do anything else, and the outer door closes with a very definitive click.

-

Ty Lee is brave enough to come into the inner cell—not that that means anything; she has her qi stop technique to rely on.

But she still looks timid when she walks in, which is a joke. And she closes the inner door behind her, as if She couldn't have beat her there before she'd even started closing the door.

"Hey, Azula," she says, risking a limb by choosing to sit down beside Her. Flinches when Azula tenses up.

"Listen. I know you think, well—" Ty Lee takes a deep breath. "Threatening me into coming with you—taking me away from the circus where I was happy wasn't a very nice thing to do. But—" Ty Lee turns her head to look at Azula's half-hidden face.

"But if—well, if you’d asked a little…better, I would've gone with you willingly."

The pause between them is empty. Empty like what-ifs and could-have-beens.

>After a while, Ty Lee gets up. "I just thought you might want to know." She casts a look behind her before she closes the outer door, and only when She hears the door locked and bolted does Azula let herself slide to the floor with a hollow thump.