"...I hope to contact you again soon..."
The Kioshi warrior frantically scrawled on the paper as she heard footsteps approaching.
"...Love, Suki"
She rolled up the paper and slid it inside the tube strapped to the back of a messenger hawk perched nearby, quickly whispering some instructions into its ear. She then sealed the tube and watched the bird fly out the window, through the cloud of steam, and out of sight. The footsteps got louder, and Suki quickly ducked under the table she had been writing on as the heavy steel door creaked open. As they entered, she caught the end of his conversation.
"...Chit Sang in the cooler again? Ha! That figures! What's he done this time?"
Suki tried to settle her breathing, but the knowledge that she might be caught at any second was making her heart pound in her chest.
"You can tell me the rest of the story later, I have to write this letter to my wife or she'll kill me!"
Suki heard a muffled reply from the other side of the door and then a loud clanging noise as it shut. She realized now that she was trapped in the room with the man until he left. He stood at the desk and she heard him writing right above her head. She was holding her legs and was curled up in a ball, hoping that she would avoid detection. Suddenly, the man dropped his pen and it rolled under the desk, finally stopping after hitting Suki's foot. She squeezed her eyes shut and readied herself to be discovered.
Four days earlier, Suki had been mopping the floors with several other prisoners. She always heard people talking about escape plans, but of course they never went through with it. The Warden said it all the time: no one had ever escaped from the Boiling Rock. Besides, where would someone go after getting out of the prison? They couldn't simply swim across the lake. All the prisoners agreed that it was impossible. Except for Suki. She knew that it wasn't about breaking out, it was about someone else breaking in.
She had been working on plans to contact Sokka ever since she was imprisoned, but every idea she thought of always resulted in one result in her mind: failure. There had to be a way to contact him. The prison must have some contact with the outside world.
After finishing her mopping, she was heading back to her cell when she overheard a group of guards talking.
"...so I'll be sending my daughter a hawk to deliver her birthday present." a male guard said.
"That's sweet." a female one replied. "What'd you get her?"
"Just a jade bracelet imported from Ba Sing Se."
Suki had heard that they used hawks to deliver messages, and that was all she cared about. She finally had a way to contact Sokka! Now all she needed to know was where these messenger hawks were kept. She waited until the group of guards disbanded, than followed the male guard down several hallways and past the cooler. Every time she saw another guard, she'd quickly duck into the shadows. Fortunately, it was near noontime, and most of the guards were taking their breaks.
Finally, they reached a long spiral staircase that lead up a stone tower to a large room. Suki watched the guard pull a ring of keys off his belt and filed through them until he reached the one he wanted. He used it to open the heavy metal door, than shut it behind him. Suki pumped her fist in victory and headed back to her cell as quietly as she could.
Author's Note: This chapter's definitely going to be the shortest, but the whole story will probably only be a couple chapters long. I'm also planning on having this story intersect with my other Avatar fanfic...so keep an eye out for that.