RL with Azula

[bluespring]

Karen had only seen bits and pieces of the Fire Nation royal palace before. On both of her previous trips here, she'd been too preoccupied with saving Azula to make note of much that wasn't immediately important. And she only really remembered the first one, anyway

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[peoplesprincess]

Azula was meditating. Well, sort of. She did regular breathing exercises to help enhance her firebending, but on occasion she also used them to focus herself. Though really, it's always a bit hard to perform a deep-breathing technique when one is lying face-down on their bed. She had tried doing it sitting up, cross-legged, but she had kept catching sight of herself in the full-length mirror across the room- more specifically, she had kept catching sight of her slightly red and puffy eyes, which really defeated the purpose of this entire exercise. She had contemplated just breaking the mirror, but that would have been childish

[bluespring]

Aqua glanced around. "You really do have a nice view from... your..." She trailed off as she saw Azula on her bed. That was a position Karen knew well... she'd been there herself with some frequency over the years. Never when there was anyone to see her (not even Jiiya, though he'd probably seen anyway when she was younger), but nevertheless it was familiar. Seeing the princess like that, it was obvious she really was upset, as Karen had thought... but at the same time, it was about the last thing she'd expected to actually see. It was a little unsettling, actually.

"Azula?"

[Well, she would have made a sound like a footstep, probably, but it'd be easy to miss if she wasn't paying attention.]

[peoplesprincess]

At the sound of Karen's voice, Azula immediately came out of her reverie and jerked upright. In the space of a second or two, her expression turned from slightly disoriented confusion, to instinctive anger, to indignation- and then to a cool, calculated glare. When she spoke, her tone perfectly matched the last expression.

"What are you doing here?"

[bluespring]

Now that was the Azula Karen knew... sort of. The expression was right, but her eyes looked like she'd been crying.

"I'm listening to you," Aqua said as she walked towards the bed, "as you tell me what's really going on."