Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender

A/N: To SBW fans, this is the rewrite. You may recognize this as new and improved Chapter 4.

-1-

She worked in proceedings of calendars she didn't have and was fairly certain time set the world around in its revolutions—if that's how it really worked—and all of it was under her name. It was all she really had to claim to it.

Nilima only heard her real name spoken in thoughts and knew that she shouldn't have heard it at all. Depending on whom you asked, a name being addressed in your head wasn't always a sign of good health. Nilima disregarded this. The Nations dismissed an oddity they had forgotten in yellowed pages of curling texts and wouldn't believe unless they could see. Nilima, at least, always knew to listen when she heard her name.

The runaway rut settled in at thirteen and at fourteen, she'd turned in any kind of map to the bottom of a rucksack and forgotten about directions and the things people said back in her residence of thirteen years. Because of course, a solo trip over countries warranted full self-discovery lessons in the form of a mind encompassing hubris. She claimed it was living outside of regrets. It was something like that. She carried it on through crooked habits and indiscernible cases of good and bad judgments and stayed clear of boundaries unless she had to.

But Nilima was really just a lot of talk and a lot of stories. Years erased depth in a clean erosion.

There were honest men making honest livings too; they just weren't the same as the ones with bows and arrows and washed away face paint. Neither Kumar nor Renshu ever pretended their methods were up to par with other well-intentioned men.

"The description fits," the younger one murmured low for Kumar to hear.

"The description is vague," his companion whispered back.

Kumar held up a hand and they did not continue, not with his bow raised like that. "Remember the code," he hissed. They did. At the wave of his hand, the formation commenced. A girl—and one who showed more concern in a hover-y sort of sparrow than herself, at that—was barely even a challenge. The arrow struck her sleeve and the youngest one, at twenty-something, knocked her out. He felt a bit bad about that.

She caused trouble only in waking up—and by the fact that she wasn't actually the description after all.

Nilima only thought of an underground lair as prison for as long as the negative sort of word association with 'lair' wore off. And when it did, it became a sort of novel thing. A dark, tight, damp—but new thing. It wasn't terrible once the initial throb of her head wound eased up and the sting of being so easily dragged into a rogue group of tracker's hideout wore off. Their 'laws' and society's happened to clash on issues, so everyone resolved to just stay put.

It was a clear, warm day when Nilima was relocated from cell to room—not that either had windows. It was still fortunate that Mani, one of the pair of non-archers, was sympathetic enough to grant her the change of pace. Kitchen hours may have seemed ill fitting to a girl who never cooked a day in her recollected life, but she was wise enough not to scorn.

"You'll want to hold the pot a little closer to the flame," Mani advised one evening. Outside the cave system, open fires were the best means of getting a meal despite the crick it put in her knee from kneeling too long. She looked at Jai a few yards away hunched over his own separate fire he'd built out of spite. His pot hovered barely over the tips of orange, his fingers a more than safe distance away.

"No hope left for him," Mani said, noticing it too.

Jai was her almost roommate, just one wall away. The hierarchy of five worked simply enough; there were three archer and two non. Kumar was first in command with Renshu and Gorou second and third respectively. They were noble Yu-Yans once, members of the elite and skilled in the arts of precision. Conflicting beliefs drove them out. Mani and Jai were picked up somewhere along the way. Power came from former glory so the pair lived without.

Runaway kids got their kicks from the advantages they could take. Cooking and sweeping was fine and nice and the thoughts that Kyo, the sparrow on her shoulder, relayed said kitchen work was good for her discipline. But Kyo was herself in most senses of the word and if she didn't agree, his opinions must have been foggy.

The first real adventure wasn't supposed to be cooped up in cavern rooms. It was supposed to be about the escape, not the unfortunate case of being caught off guard. Nilima wasn't good at handling terms she didn't set.

I found something, Kyo thought late one evening.

"What?" She whispered out loud, trusting the security of walls.

A room, he thought, It's stuffed full of weapons with the fire insignia.

"You're trying to scare me," she accused.

I'm not. I'm trying to help.

But Nilima didn't know much about bearing arms and her captives did. It was no solution.

Unless she could learn.

Jai was left in primary watch over Captive #3. Of course, Nilima was the only captive these days but #1 implied too much importance for the case. Jai tended to not take minor jobs seriously in a rather superficial plight for more important jobs. Mani took over without contempt; though married, he had never had a daughter himself, only anticipated one for some length of time too long ago. In Jai's night guard role—he was a light sleeper—he often caught her tiptoeing outside his door in an impossibly uncanny ability to detect the slightest movement in nearby proximities. They exchanged whispered pleasantries ("You aren't leaving or anything, are you?" he would ask; "Oh no, just walking. I must have paced right out my door by accident," she'd reply) and he would decide to forget by morning. Nilima had enough respect for him not to escape on his watch. Renshu's watch would be more fun, anyway.

"Two hours of kitchen," he told her in his oh so rehearsed second-in-command leadership-ly charged tone.

"I already do three," she rebutted, "There's only three meals."

"Sweeping. There's a whole cave of floors," he said.

"One hour."

"Three."

"Arrowhead polishing?"

He laughed. "Dish duty—solo style."

She scowled. "Sweeping. An hour and fifteen minutes."

"An hour and a half."

"Deal." She extended her arm.

He flinched his away. "This isn't a… a game."

She shrugged. "Yeah. You just played along."

His buttons were too easy to push. And an extra hour of outside where she could make out the arrows arcing over grassy yards and into straw targets was easy to get when he played his cards. A dreadful bluffer.

She got into her first literal card games in the homey labyrinth as well. Long rounds strung on over torch lit back rooms. It was hard to see the suits with the too fast lights flitting streaks over the cards, causing lazy eyes, but she thought that maybe Mani, Jai and Gorou could play even without sight. At times she was a little in awe.

She went to speak with Renshu about her planning of accomplishing important matters during a noteworthy dry spell. The first step of her diabolical (a word she never used before until 'lair' started having a familiar ring to it and she realized anything goes) anticipatory actions was to get in a word with the big man—or as it ended up average sized mini-mustached man because Kumar wasn't huge at all. Renshu knew better than anyone how to squeeze in a meeting with his higher-up counterpart.

"You don't meet with Kumar," he said adamantly.

"But it's not like he's nobility," Nilima said; she grew a tad too used to picking word fights with the particularly significant commanding figure, "Anyone should technically be able to just talk to him. No assassination attempts, I promise."

"You'd do best without a smart tongue," he said.

Nilima breathed and centered the broom in front of her, maintaining proper, measured sweeps instead of the lazy hardly caring strokes that caught Renshu's disapproving glare. "Sorry," she said. His eyes slacked.

"Kumar doesn't have the kind of time you do to waste." Nilima knew she didn't waste time.

"I know," she said, "But a minute?" Just a short talk she hoped could formulate into something substantial. She already had a few convincing words to say on behalf of her argument. But really, it was just a few and not much an argument at all.

"A minute," he muttered, half a revolution away from a full eye roll, "You want the world."

She supposed in some universe somewhere, a minute measured a world.

She got what she wanted, anyway.

Kumar played dad in the quiet power struggle that was almost, on some dignified level a familial unit. He was the working dad. He held cards behind his back he refused to play too early.

In the afternoon he paid Nilima a visit and Nilima remembered she still only had a few words behind her back. In a fast thoughtless urge to get to the point, she used them all in one turn.

"Weapons are for archers," he said, his head still shaking as it had before she'd finished, "We don't need to worry about ensuring legacies or any of that."

"But what if you owed me?" she asked, "Guilty consciences are rough to shake." Or hers was anyway, considering it could fly and hover obnoxiously close to her ears and such.

"Would you be better off anywhere else?" It should have been an insult but to her, the interpretation could almost lie somewhere near 'getting it.' 'Better' really wasn't the right word for it. Even spoiled girls had an amount of logic behind a choice to leave the original 'anywhere else' where they belonged.

"Then it's a no," she said.

"An easy one," he said, "Even with the means to supply you a bow."

But she concluded on a second thought that it didn't quite add up. He was already leaving but she smiled. "Yes you can."

"I can what?" His fingers tapped beats on her door.

"Supply weapons," she said, "What with a whole room of them." And that made Kumar's miniature brain gears grind away at stubborn strengths. The door shut.

"I forgot there may be one lying around," he said when he turned around, sounding impossibly calm. "I expect you won't damage it."

So it wasn't easier than she expected, just luckier. Once her gain was secure, she started looking into a better adjective to fit than luck.

She thought a lot about solo things outside, as if the outdoors fully signified outside the way it used to be. Common thieves didn't have hearts for things that weren't useful people (in terms of coins and their color, food or a barn) or useful towns, woods and fire kindling. Caves had their uses and so did kitchen flames. She didn't know much about company.

Until company taught about wielding bows and arrows. Gorou knew more about his trade than she'd ever thought it possible for any street merchant or blacksmith to even care about their work. She thought they made a good pair, if archery could breath like he thought it did.

"The original description was that of a mid-forties, foreign man," he said—he said a lot that meant little when her concentration reached peaks, "I find this situation ironic."

The arrow landed far from true—farther from it even then before. "What are you talking about?" she asked.

"The situation," he reiterated as if there was only one in her entire existence. When she gave him a look that wasn't entirely respectful, he continued. "The one we were supposed to track. Hasn't anyone told you about him?"

"No." She understood why; the miscalculation was entirely embarrassing. "I feel a little bit insulted."

He grinned. "If it's any consolation, we didn't find him."

"It wouldn't be," she said.

"It should be. He was too good for us. It's nice to know ones captives can be outsmarted. Transferred vindication, if you will. Or at least, Mani and Jai saw it that way. Theirs were captured, unfortunately."

So the foreigner was better at life than herself, Nilima didn't really care. She cared about targets and arrowheads and picking up all the spare ones that got tossed from their vessels.

Kyo got to talking more and more; he didn't approve of such violent sport. And she really should have listened as hard as she did to her new master but Kyo wouldn't give up on her or claim she wasn't trying if she didn't repent her every misdemeanor. It was a simple life, if nothing else. There was something to be said for endless drills to cluttered heads.

"The vault opens when we go." Renshu said it when he knew he shouldn't but she thought he wanted very badly to say something of it for a long time—not to give out advantage, but steal away a little more with someone easier to was tired because she was tired a lot after abandoning bed times and senses of time at night. In the morning she could have forgotten all about it because she was good at that. Only, she remembered it like a dream that twitched in your head all morning and afternoon, trying to determine the real and fake parts. Because everyone looked like they were getting along. The occasional dispute among ranks did not warrant distrust and conniving acts of scheming behind backs of the lesser. Nilima liked to think it just didn't happen.

"The way people talk around here is boring and too important for what their words really say," she told Jai one evening while he cleaned up the remains of dinner, "Is it because there's not much of a point?"

He laughed a little and snapped his fingers for her to help with the piled high stack of plates. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, but she didn't really believe him.

"Did you end up here like I did?" she asked after a minute. Since Gorou had brought it up, she'd started wondering how common it was to make a mistake and how much they all must have liked being reminded of them in the eyes of their cooks and back up trackers.

"Yes," he said.

"When?" she asked.

"A year ago, maybe more."

"You should leave," she said as if the notion wasn't obvious or naïve in the slightest, "A year's too long, I think."

He smiled. "I don't think so."

She was left to assume leavings just weren't the same frequent and comfortable change of pace to everyone. She didn't really understand how things could not be so simple, but she was trying. Still, she decided not to question Mani about it, because she never really got the same impression with him as she did with Jai—that he liked being a part of an elite tracking crew.

It was bad when a captive not only knew about things within that would be dangerous outside, but also things deeper within that would be dangerous to those a little less within. Nilima was never supposed to come across a door with a high narrow vent that looked inside a room full of stolen property, just like Yu Yan archers weren't supposed to split from their ranks with weapons not belonging to them. Kumar wasn't usually a fan of bribery; it was too nice to the undeserving. Threats were better suited. When the good wore off, he wasn't afraid to stoop to that level.

I think they're in trouble, she told Kyo in the safety of silence, Mani and Jai.

I'm not saying you're wrong. He was never quite that bold.

I don't think it was a dream, she continued.

Okay, he thought, but you need an idea.

A departure plan was, of course, high on lists of priority. Nilima sat outside the entrance of the scenery eaten hideout, realizing just how similar the inside lines were to the out. Even without a physical roof cutting things off, there wasn't a whole lot she could do under the scrutiny of surveillance. She waited there anyway before lessons whenever she could. Air, at least, was highly literal and very abundant in tangible outside. Gorou was an archer, but she trusted him for his artistic views.

Kyo just didn't like anyone. He didn't like her bow or her handcrafted arrows. He was just picky about everything these days and Nilima didn't know if she should feel guilty or not for not trusting his judgment. It was also okay to listen to her own, even if it was weak or slightly overused, an excuse maker over time. She liked the wooden shaft between her fingers and didn't think it made her a killer or a breaker of morals, what with them being old, anyway. Kyo was terribly old fashion. Nilima was the sort to not even keep names for too long. It was an exciting contrast in retrospect. Some things were just overrated.

The call went out on a Thursday, the Thursday marking the three-week, five-day anniversary. Nilima wasn't a fan of celebrating things by even week increments, especially when it was on the long titled anniversaries that Kumar came back from a long excursion of tracking-job tracking with a trail. Women and children were not allowed to tag along on trails—they made that rule three weeks and five days prior. As it was, Nilima happened to have dirt on the half she didn't like. As if that secured a ticket out.

Gorou was heading the small group and Nilima gave her own two bits on whom to bring, whom to leave behind. She determined it was a good thing she wasn't planning on being left behind without her three favorites—the three she suggested.

"You really have literally no say," Gorou replied to her input.

"And you really need to do something about that mustache—it's getting out of hand." She'd only been thinking it for the past three lessons.

"Grooming habits are irrelevant," he said lightly, "I suppose you want to come?"

Nilima looked at him and he did not pause in stroking the hairs above his lip. "Yes," she said.

"No," was his response.

"What if I could tell you something you didn't know but would undeniably want to know?" she asked.

He laughed. "Is that a bribe?"

"Yes."

He shook his head. "No."

"You know what else is a bribe?" she prompted, "Do you remember how you didn't believe Kumar would hand me over a weapon just because I was cute? He didn't. I could tell you why."

"That's alright," he said.

"That's stupid."

"Really, the spite far outweighs the cute."

She couldn't wrap her head around such disregard. "Well, I tried." And she was far from finished, just easing up.

"Then you're done?" he asked.

"Sure," she appeased.

"So would you like to come?" He didn't look up from his bottle of arrowhead polish.

"Yeah," she said as if it were far more exasperating than it was.

"Good," he said, "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

"No," she said.

Gorou was quickly becoming her favorite, if only for him keeping her on her toes. Yes's and no's never seemed so complicated. She still hoped to say what she wanted to say because Kyo kept insisting on the rightness of truths and how neglecting them was as good as lying. If she got the chance, she would say it. It was important, always, to say things.

She found the cumulative store of odd pointers exchanged amongst trackers to be useful. In a real outside, there was something to be said for knowing things, and different things than that of a solo trekker. Looking after your own two feet was easy without worrying about stumbling over the two feet of others, but taking advantage made a clearer step for her, for everyone even, as long as she was neat about it. She could keep up alright.

No one really asked about future consequences; they were all just in the moment. They lived for stacks of single moments and she didn't think Mani and Jai were mistakes at all—they were trackers through and through.

By evening of the first day, they had walked the daylight's entire passing. The sun perched suspended on the gray-spindled branches, dipping through sharp silhouettes. Nilima knew the sun's habits and the wood's correspondence with it. She watched it all the time and didn't mind the monotony. It was okay to be in the graces of a clock. The routines didn't change—they played cards with the last light over a rock in the ground.

"I could make good money off this," Jai said when he won again.

"Exactly why we don't play for it," Gorou said, tossing his losing hand into the middle.

She wouldn't really miss the games, not that much. On ordinary circumstances, she would have slept well through the night with so much walking but as it was, she hoped not to sleep at all. She used Jai's win as an excuse to give up and turned in, hoping they would soon too so she could leave quicker. It only took an hour or so.

But she wasn't as quiet as she gave herself credit for.

"Better yet, I should make money off of catching you and all your weak get-up-in-the-dead-of-night escape plans," Jai said, a finger linked in the rim of her collar at the back of her neck. "I wonder if mid-day or morning wouldn't suit you better, what with everyone expecting it by now."

She just scowled like he could have imagined any other naïve kid to do. You had to start somewhere. He didn't really feel terrible about knocking her out in the beginning anymore, just amused that it was always so easy even when it didn't have to be. Because Jai saw potential—he just didn't see a legitimate runaway act yet. She could have at least thrashed or bit; angry children were much like rabid animals when they were doing the angry child scenario right.

By then the others had woken too. They both saw the embarrassment level rising with turning heads and Gorou saw it too—he understood it an ounce more as he plucked a folded note off the charcoaled stick from the dead fire pit. Nilima watched and stiffened.

"I don't need to read this," he said, "I can paraphrase it off the top of my head."

"Try it," she challenged.

"Alright," he said, "Ignoring the bits about swearing honesty and saying goodbye, it says there's a 'hidden' vault somewhere within the lair, stuffed with hot weapons being used as a contingency security plan. The point is, if some angry Fire Nation soldier stopped by and found a trio of ex-Yu Yan fighters scheming against them, these said archers have a backdoor out and a distraction to leave behind. A load of stolen goods and two not-so-innocent looking men left behind would last long enough for at least three to escape and the 'mistakes' get sold out. And this plan, you probably add, is a monstrosity—or what have you—and should be addressed immediately, resulting in mass rebellion and the destruction of a good team of trackers, which, no matter how flawed, is a way of life. See, your solutions aren't actually so simple."

She heard a few of her words in there; although monstrosity was a stretch even for her mouth. "You're good," she said and thought it a high compliment.

"An understatement," he replied.

"Maybe," she said. It was trivial, but she hoped they would burn the note rather than read it; handwriting presented a distinctly personal revelation of oneself that she only shared in goodbyes. The script-y characters were better set in flames. Besides, she'd played the note card before, in the room of her house from some time ago.

"Anyway, we'll come up with a decent excuse later on," Gorou continued in his formal bluntness and waved a lazy hand in the air, "Carry on."

Nilima didn't move, didn't understand. Jai gave her a small nudge; he and Mani had been listening the whole time. "Go go go," he muttered in a low mock encouragement. Gorou handed her the bow and sling of arrows. "The sooner the better," he added. Mani nodded in the way of the deeper wood, away from the trail.

Nilima got it and in no such seconds spared for contemplation, she scanned their eyes for deceit and spun on her toes. She was running at once, whirling up a tailwind much smaller than the one she liked to picture in her head.

You'll owe them in the future, Rayma, Kyo droned. He droned because he said the same things over and over as if he didn't know Nilima had the endless exteriors at her disposal and how she knew a great deal about the functions of human heads.

But she did not have the world under her thumb.

A/N: Again, to SBW fans, if there are any out there (hi!), Fusa is now Nilima, Gauri is Gorou, and if you were a die-hard fan, you may not like this as much. You should like it more, but just because I like the reworking of it, that doesn't mean it's everyone's taste. I would have continued on with Split, but it was getting too monstrous and I need to learn to quit rambling. Of course, this is probably useless because I was a terrible updater and probably hated by reviewers so I'm not expecting many (if any) returnees.

That aside, this chapter may have been confusing as hell. I'm sorry. Suggestions and critique would be super cool.