Thanks for the reviews. They are helpful, back to the story.
Three days later
Zuko and Aang were practicing his firebending. He was much improved from his early days, but he was still not showing the mastery that he had with air or fire. It was arguable whether or not his firebending was on par with his earthbending.
"You still don't focus well enough," Azula snapped at him.
"What?" Aang turned to her.
"And now, you just turned your back on the enemy. That's how I shot you last time."
Katara was about to yell at her for mentioning that when Azula said, "You need to remember who is behind you at all times. When you turn to me, step back so you can still see Zuko. My father rarely fights his own fights alone. You have to be ready for a second party who might try to ambush you."
She started correcting his form and instructing him on how to move around a ring. "Can you see with your feet too?"
"What?"
"Take off your shoes."
Aang frowned in confusion, but he did it anyway.
"You can use your earthbending to keep an eye on what's behind you while you fight. You need to develop every advantage that you can."
Azula ended up taking over Aang's training for the day.
Zuko was fine with taking a step back.
Azula was called the prodigy for a reason. "No!" She said "No" to him often, but as the day went on, she started to say "better" and "do that again."
Meanwhile, Ty Lee was trying to get to know their new group. "So what was it like living in the tribe," she asked Katara.
The waterbender was wary of Azula's friends. It was hard not to be weary of three girls who almost killed you, numerous times, who seemed to have joined Zuko, who was also questionable, on a whim.
Ty Lee seemed nice, bubbly. She probably would seem trustworthy if she hadn't made Katara's arm a limp noodle that one time.
"It's like a big family. Everyone knows each other and we were all pretty close. We're smaller than the Northern Water Tribe."
"How come you're not a princess?" Ty Lee asked her.
"What?"
"Your father's a chief, and Yue was a princess."
Katara shrugged. "We just don't have any titles other than Dad's."
Titles were such a big deal in the Fire Nation. As soon as Ty Lee's father found out Azula would be in her class, he ordered Ty Lee to become friends with her.
"Everyone cares about titles in the Fire Nation, whether they are royals, nobles, or military."
"Why did you come here?"
"Azula did, so I followed her."
"That's it?"
Ty Lee shrugged. "Well, I was in the circus before she recruited me to help arrest her brother and then well, I figured if she left Ozai, I might as well too. There wasn't any other reason for me to stay, and he's probably burning everyone he thinks helped her get away."
That sounds horrible. "Like?"
"Probably the royal doctor and maybe Lo and Li if they didn't flee in time."
"He sounds horrid."
"Well his is, but it's not like Zuko and Azula picked their parents. No one would have picked Ozai for a father."
Katara furrowed her brow. She never thought about that. Katara wouldn't pick any other parents if she had all of the parents to pick from. She got the luck of the draw. They didn't.
Mai was throwing knives at her target, which had been Momo before Aang complained about animal abuse. The lemur monkey always dodged them well enough, so she figured she was training him for free, but the monk disagreed.
Suki approached her, trying to make conversation. "Does your family know you're with us now?"
"Seeing as my uncle is the warden, yes." Mai always had the same blank expression on her face.
Suki laughed. "I guess that was a stupid question."
"That's alright. We all ask stupid questions sometimes."
Suki wondered if Mai said that to make her feel better or worse. "Have you thought about what you want to do after the war?"
"First, I want to survive to see the end. Then, I'll have to think about it."
Suki wondered why she didn't try talking to Ty Lee first; she seemed the most normal out of the trio.
That night, Azula had trouble sleeping. Her sleeping schedule had been off since she started showing symptoms of pregnancy, but it was even worse without a bed. She got out of her tent, well the tent she was sharing with Ty Lee and went to the campfire.
Aang was still sitting in front of it. "Couldn't sleep either?"
"Nope."
They sat in front of the embers, neither of them saying anything for a while
"Does he know?" Aang eventually asked her.
Azula knew what he meant. "No, he doesn't."
"Shouldn't he?"
"Why, so he can say he didn't sign up for this and take off?"
"What if he wants to be a Dad?"
"I doubt it and even if he did, no man would choose me to mother his child."
Aang wanted to disagree, but he couldn't say he would ever pick her to be a mother. "He must have liked you somewhat?" Aang offered.
"He liked me enough for one night of fun."
"Maybe you could send him a letter?"
Azula looked down at the ground, "I don't know where to find him."
Aang hadn't thought about that problem. He didn't say anything else about it.
Eventually, Azula went back to her tent. She wondered if she should try to find him. She quickly decided against it. "I'll only earn him Ozai's wrath. There's no reason to get him killed over my carelessness."
It seemed like it should be easy for Azula to hate her baby. It caused this mess for her, but for some reason, she couldn't blame the little bugger. If anything, she thought being born to her was punishing him. She didn't know what the spirits thought he did to deserve it, but hopefully this would make him stronger if he lived to be born.
Despite the lack of sleep, Azula woke up at sunrise. She did her meditation and greeted Agni before she started training.
Zuko was the next to rise. He never would have guessed she was pregnant if Aang hadn't told him. In hindsight, the vomiting was probably morning sickness, but who would expect Azula to get pregnant.
Honestly, it sounds like something Ty Lee would do. She had run away from home to do Agni knows what. It would not have been a surprise at all to see her come home with a baby, but this was almost unbelievable.
Zuko wanted to find this guy and punch him, but chances are, he didn't even know about the baby. If Azula wouldn't tell anyone who the father is, Zuko had to assume she hadn't told him.
There was once a time when Zuko and Azula were really close. He was her big brother. He was supposed to protect her. Ozai made sure those days were short lived, pitting them against each other at an early age. Zuko wondered what would have happened if they had a different dad.
He waited for Aang to wake up before he started training. Already, the Avatar was thinking more quickly and more aware of his surroundings. He and Zuko battled for a good part of the morning.
"You're much improved," Zuko told him as they finished the round.
"Thanks. Yesterday was rough."
"Well, Azula's a perfectionist."
"I can see that."
Every move and every strike she did was flawless. How did she get pregnant? Both boys wondered as they watched her train solo. It seemed so unlike her.
Ty Lee and Mai were up now, and they were training together.
The assassin threw knives at her friend who twisted and turned to miss them. No matter how quick Mai was, Ty Lee was always a bit quicker. The girl was spacy and often acted like an airhead, but she had her own depth of knowledge that was second to none.
When they were done practicing, they went to get breakfast. Seeing none, they started to make it.
"Are you hungry Azula?"
The Princess had been lost in thought before Ty Lee interrupted.
"What?"
"Food," Mai said.
"Oh thanks. Do they have any fruit?"
Mai threw an apple at her.
"Shouldn't she be eating more?" Ty Lee questioned.
"I think the goal is to get her to keep food down right now," Mai answered.
The rest of Team Avatar woke up to see their Fire Nation comrades already done with their training for the day.
"What time did you get up?" Katara asked sleepily.
"A couple of hours ago," Ty Lee said. "The others were already up."
"I prefer the night time."
"Most waterbenders do," Mai commented. "We're more of a sun-loving people."
People? Katara had usually considered Fire Nation to be creatures that go bump in the night.
The two groups remained segregated by sleeping habits, which meant Aang trained with fire in the mornings and earth and water in the afternoons and evenings.
"I'm tired," Aang fussed at Toph when it was time for his afternoon earthbending session.
"You're tired. Will Ozai care if you're tired, Twinkle Toes? I think not." She launched a boulder at him. This was often how their training sessions went.
After the next few days, Aang was looking forward to having a morning off.
Unfortunately, they saw red balloons almost at the temple and his morning off was no more.
"That's not a good sign," Azula said to the group.
They scrambled to pack their bags and get going, but the soldiers launched explosives at them using ballistas before they reached the temple. They then jumped off the balloons with jiis, and team Avatar knew it was in trouble.
Azula threw up a fire wall to buy some time. Haru made a tunnel to escape, but Appa refused to use it. The earthbender guided the people closest to him while everyone else had to jump on Appa.
Azula struggled to get on Appa. She woke up this morning not feeling so great and didn't seem to have the strength to jump. An enemy soldier charged at her with a kanabo. She tried to conjure lightening, but her mind was too muddled. Would throwing lightening hurt her baby?
Zuko grabbed her and pulled her aboard.
Appa took off, and they were gone.
The Princess was shell-shocked. She couldn't figure out why she couldn't jump, why she couldn't summon her lightening. She was helpless right now, and Zuko of all people saved her life. Her confusion made her catatonic.
Zuko clutched to her, scared that he might lose her that she might slid off Appa or something. Their relationship was so confusing. She always seemed to make his life hell, but she understood him in ways no one else did. She was like a cyanide-laced peanut butter sandwich when you might starve to death if you don't eat it.
After making sure the soldiers had lost their trail, they found a new hideout. With Aang were Katara, Sokka, Ty Lee, Zuko and Azula.
Suki and the others (Hakoda, Bato, Mai, and Teo) were with Haru.
"What about the others," Ty Lee asked.
"Mai's very resourceful," Azula said. "She'll find a way to get them to the Earth Kingdom." At least she still had her shit together, unlike the princess.
Azula was right. Mai was able to get ahold of her cousins, and they procured her a sky ship.
"I love my cousin Meng!" Mai said as the ship came to them a few days later.
"Are all of the girls in your family given names that start with M?" Suki asked.
Mai frowned. "No, however everyone in Ty Lee's family has a name that starts with the letter T."
"Are you being sarcastic?" Suki questioned.
"No. Ty Lee has six sisters, Talia, Ta Mina, Ty Laura, Tina, Torra, and Tulip."
Suki made a face. "Why?" That sounded really hard to keep straight.
Mai shrugged. "Her mother is crazy."
"She has six sisters?" Haru questioned.
"And they all look alike."
"So they're all hot?" Haru laughed.
Mai rolled her eyes. Boys are such simpletons!
Ozai did not take to failure well. Not only did Azula escape, but also, they didn't capture or even wound anyone.
"We won't fail again, my Lord."
"See that you don't." They would not get a third chance.
Zuko was talking to Ty Lee. "Has Azula said anything to you about the father?"
"She won't say who he is or when it happened."
"Was she (raped)?"
"She says she wasn't."
"Do you believe her?"
"I don't know." If she had been, she wouldn't tell anyone. It would be admitting weakness.
Zuko knew something was really wrong with her, other than being pregnant, but he couldn't figure out what it is. She was so quiet and withdrawn. She didn't seem like herself at all.
No one else knew how to read her either. Zuko tried the others for advice. Sokka said, "maybe she'll talk to you when she's ready," which sounded like it would be never.
Aang suggested that it might be hard for her to have to turn against her father. "You said they were always close and knowing that he's trying to kill her is probably upsetting."
Zuko wondered fi that was it. He hadn't had an easy time deciding what to do, and Azula didn't really decide; she just got pregnant.
Zuko tried talking to her by the campfire tonight.
"Do you miss Ozai?" he asked her.
"What?"
"You've seemed gloomy lately, and I was wondering it it was because you missed him."
Azula didn't miss him at all, but she was gloomy. "There's so much uncertainty now. Before it was simple, win the war, conquer the world, and pass it down to the next generation. Now I don't know what's going to happen to me or my country or my child. I'm not use to having a muddled path. It's not exactly comforting."
"I know. It's why I didn't join Uncle in Ba Sing Se. Your offer was clear. Go home, be the Crown Prince again, but I spent three years watching how our military treated people under Ozai's direction. It wasn't right."
"If Ozai knows how to do anything, it's be brutish and punish those who disobey." Azula never considered it wrong before, unpleasant obviously, but it was just how things were."
"Yeah, and for a long time, I didn't know anything else."
"Do you think our country will accept us after the war? We're about to undo 100 years of work."
"That's the thing. I think the work we did was for the royal family and the nobles. I don't think the average Fire Nation citizen benefited from it. I think the people will welcome peace."
"I hope your right."
Over the next few days, Azula was starting to come to peace with her decision to leave. It was too late to go back and beg Ozai's forgiveness, so she had to move forward. Even if the odds were against her, she had a shot at making this work. She had to give it everything. She would likely only get one shot.
The other group was taking the sky ship to Ba Sign Se. There were plenty of small towns they could hide in outside the wall until they could come up with a plan to overthrow the Fire Nation.
Suki was in charge of reading the maps. "We're need to go west," she called out.
"Stop over there," Mai instructed, which was the opposite of what Suki said.
Confused, Hakoda slowed down the ship. "What are we doing?"
"Those people over there, I want to talk to them."
There was a group of men hiking in the distance.
Hakoda brought the ship down and Mai got off.
Bato wondered, "Should one of us go with her? They might be dangerous."
Haru looked with his binoculars. "She seems fine."
Mai was doing most of the talking. The men followed her back to the ship.
"We have new allies," Mai told them.
"Is that?" Haru started to question.
"That's right. We have the Dai Li." When Mai first saw them, she could tell they were officers based on their formation, but they clearly weren't Fire Nation. She was hoping they might want to team forces and when they turned out to be Azula's agents, it was perfect.
"Why are they with us?" Bato questioned.
"Because the enemy of the enemy is thy friend." Apparently, threatened their heads when they let Aang get away during the invasion and when Azula fled, they did too, not wanting to be accused of letting her get away too. It was pretty easy to get them to join. They needed Azula's side to win, whatever side that was. She had been the only ally they had up until now.
The agents were quiet. They didn't seem to have distinct personalities. They just formed this one unit.
It was ironic that they would be on a team with the leader of the Kyoshi warriors, especially since they helped overthrow the city Suki had been trying to save. Neither of them commented on the bizarre situation.
"Do you ever take off the masks?" Haru questioned.
They shook their heads, all with the same cadence.
"Food rations will run faster," Hakoda mentioned.
"Good thing they came with money," Mai retorted.
"Well we could always use more of that," Bato muttered.
Mai had been the only one with any money, which meant she controlled how it was spent. Bato wasn't sure how she became the leader of the group, but it seemed undeniable now.
He just hoped they made it to Ba Sing Se in one piece.
The other group was mostly getting along, other than Azula and Katara. The two girls were both opinionated and bossy, and if Azula didn't like something, she'd let you know it.
"Oh that smells awful," Azula said of Katara's stew.
"How rude!"
"Sorry if I offended your peasantry palate, but that is an abomination." Azula was sure this went beyond her pregnancy-related sensitivities. She thought Katara's cooking was possibly lethal.
"Why don't you cook?"
Azula laughed. "You think I would cook for a group of misfits and peasants?'
"If we're such misfits, why are you here?"
"Well, I was going to steal Zuko's war balloon, but Sokka was already trying to escape, and it seemed easier to join him than to race him to the balloon."
"IT SEEMED EASIER!"
"Well yeah. Pregnancy makes me tired. In my prime, I just would have stolen the balloon."
Katara couldn't believe her coldness. "Don't you feel bad for what you've done?"
Azula pursed her lips. "What did I do?"
"Well first of all, you killed Aang."
"He's right there, try again."
"You shot him with lightening!"
"Because he turned his back to his opponent. If I had turned my back on you, would you have waited for me to turn around before attacking?"
"That's different."
"How?"
"I can't throw lightening."
"If you could, wouldn't you have thrown it at me? I can't freeze people to stuff or merge with spirits and drown hundreds of soldiers. What I knew about Aang was that he was capable of turning into a giant and killing hundreds with one blow. I wasn't going to take any chances."
Her lack of repentance was disturbing.
Later, Katara was complaining to Toph about Azula's abrasiveness. Toph, however, seemed to understand the Princess, well she understood, "she must be scared senseless."
"What?" Katara said to her.
"She's fourteen and pregnant. Who knows where the father is? Even if she does make it out without any prison time, she's going to basically be ostracized from the only world she knows." Toph grew up with nobles; she knew how they dealt with unmarried pregnant women. Azula would be lucky to be sent away for several months and to have her baby clandestinely adopted.
Azula made fewer snide remarks, but she was a stray dog hiding in an alleyway.
Katara never thought she'd be afraid of anything. The girl seemed to epitomize fearless just a couple of months before. She tried to reach out to the difficult firebender.
"Did you want to be a mother?" she asked.
"Not like this. I thought I would have been married or at least Fire Lord first. Now I'm just a 14 year old with a bastard prince or princess inside me."
"But you still have your family?"
Azula scoffed. "My brother's scared of me, my uncle hates me and my father is trying to kill me. I'm going to be all alone on this." She couldn't imagine Mai and Ty Lee sticking around for too long. Their fearless leader was gone.
"You don't know that. Maybe the father will come for you."
He doesn't know who I am. "I doubt it."
"Was he your boyfriend?"
Azula frowned. "He was a guy I met at a party."
Katara was shocked.
"Yeah, that's right. I'm the Crown Princess, and I had a party baby. This should have been Ty Lee. Who knows how many times she didn't use protection?"
"Maybe the spirits wanted it this way."
"Why?"
"If you hadn't gotten pregnant, you wouldn't be here. Maybe you need this baby too."
Azula refused to believe the water peasant, but maybe she was on to something. Azula envisioned her life if she hadn't gotten pregnant.
She would have been punished when Zuko defected. She would have been angry with him when Ozai had sent her to kill him. She would have gone to Boiling Rock to take him out, which would have cost her Mai's friendship. Who knows what Ty Lee would do? It sounded like everything would have gone to hell. "Even if I did get the crown, I'd be all alone anyway." At least now she had someone, even if it was only until the winter.
