part one
On the Firefly-class transport ship Freedom

Jet was facing near-mutiny. Bee and Longshot were on his side, and he thought that maybe that was the only thing that was keeping the rest of the crew from turning on him, since Bee was ten times the peacemaker he was, and she'd been the one to make the call in the first place. Toph had locked herself in the engine room and, after seeing to all of their wounds - which itself had taken hours - Haru had been trying to calm her down from her near-homicidal rage; Sokka spent all his time in the Infirmary with the enraged Suki and catatonic Ty Lee; Katara, Zuko, and Mai were in the latter's shuttle, repairing the interior and refusing to speak to anyone else; Pipsqueak and the Duke had each retreated to their own bunks and hadn't returned; Diana hadn't been seen since they landed in the Tower and was presumed dead. His crew were all furious, wounded, and worse, they had nowhere to go.

"Haven?" Bee offered, arms crossed, but Longshot shook his head.

"We don't have the fuel to get us there in under three months. We can go to the next quadrant, or straight through to the Core. Those are the only places close enough for us to go," he said, pointing to the map they were poring over.

"Problem is, none o' those places are safe," Jet mused, and Longshot sighed.

"No," he replied. "Nowhere is safe."

He took a deep breath and leaned forward on the seat. "What's closest? Georgia and the Red Sun are too far out, aren't they?"

Longshot made a face. "We'd be pushing it. Our best course is to go straight, take us into the edge of the Core. Persephone, Pelorum... I know we'll have enough fuel to get there and land."

"They'll be all over us at the Core," Bee said, pointing to the map. "That Tower's gonna make a straight shot for Sihnon and it's gonna need help to get there. The whole quadrant will be lit up with Alliance men, looking for us."

"But we have to go that way eventually," Jet mused, running a hand over his face. "Unless you plan on leavin' Aang to the wiles of the Fire Lord."

"No," Bee replied, and was probably the only person alive who wouldn't take offense to his tone - she knew him well enough to know it wasn't personal, he was just tense. "But we're no good to him dead, and we do have time, since the Fire Lord won't risk killing him. I'd rather we stop somewhere, lick our wounds, get enough fuel to get there, and let the air between us and the Core clear out some."

"Yeah, but where do we go to do that?" Longshot asked, pointing at the Kalidasa system. "Beaumonde is crawling with feds, not to mention all the enemies we have in this system. I like the Haven idea, but we just can't get there. Since we can't do the smart thing, we may as well just go all in."

"Did the two of you have a personality transplant or somethin'?" she asked, trying to lighten the mood, but it only brought a little smile to his and Longshot's faces; Aang's absence and their own recent failure still hung heavy in the air. Bee sighed. "We can't land anywhere in the Core, either. Maybe we should just drift for a while?"

"No," another voice said, an Jet turned to see Toph walking sullenly onto the bridge, followed by Haru. "Drifting won't do us any good, we can't fix the ship while we're flying. Make for Pelorum."

"You got information you wanna share with the rest of us?" he asked, crossing his arms. "Pelorum's full of Alliance sorts, and there's nowhere we can hide."

"That's not true," Haru said, and then gestured at Toph. "Tell them," he said quietly, and then under his breath, "they'll understand."

"The Bei Fong estate," she gritted out finally. Bee barked out a laugh.

"You want us to break into one of the richest estates on gorram Pelorum? You lose your mind?"

"Not break in," Toph sighed. "Walk in."

"All of Pelorum's estates are crawling with security," Jet said slowly, and Toph took a deep breath. Was she...? He'd thought, back at that party on Persephone, that she'd just picked a highfalutin' name to get through the door, but...

"You know how, a few years back, the youngest member of the Bei Fong family went missing?" she asked, and then gestured to herself. "Well, it's me. I can get us into the estate on Pelorum, and we can terrify everyone into keeping their mouths shut, 'least till we're gone. My parents crashed my account when I ran away, but I know where they hide their money. I can get enough to fix the ship and fuel her up, probably even get us a few new weapons, too."

He watched her carefully for a moment, and the way Haru had his hand on her shoulder: this was not easy for her to do. For some reason, the thought of going home scared her; it was a mark of Toph's loyalty to Aang and trust in him - in spite of everything - that she was even offering. He nodded. "All right, then," he said, "Longshot, make for Pelorum."

Suki stared at Ty Lee and refused to cry. She simply refused to; she hadn't yet cried for any of her warriors, and she doubted she ever would. Suki didn't get sad over loss - she got angry.

Seeing Ty Lee pale and half-burned to death from Azula's superheated bending brought up horrible memories, the last time she'd been looking at the only other Kyoshi Warrior (even though Ty Lee only barely qualified), when On Ji had been shot full of holes, fans broken and guns shattered. That was right around the time that Shadow's terraforming had finally collapsed, and she'd already been running for it - she wasn't even able to bury her last warrior. She remembered vague images from that last battle, the taste of dust and iron and salt, the blood haze over her mind, the bodies left in her wake.

To this day, over seven years later, Suki still didn't know how many people she'd killed to avenge On Ji.

Sokka sat on the other side of the Infirmary, watching her with calculating eyes, but she refused to look at him. She should have been there, in the fight - it shouldn't have been Ty Lee going in with her fans, untrained and unprepared. But her gorram knee... Katara and Haru had both told her that she should be glad she could even still feel her leg below it (they claimed it was a good sign, that it meant she'd probably still be able to walk, albeit with a limp) and distantly, she was aware that it really was lucky - but she just - she should have been there.

The captain's voice came over the intercom, and Sokka glanced at it, but she continued to stare at Ty Lee. "We're making for Pelorum, Toph's family's got a house there we can crash at. We're gonna patch up the ship, restock, pick up a few new weapons, and give the Core time to settle down a bit before we make for Sihnon. I'm guessin' it'll be another two to three weeks 'fore we're ready to go down that path. If you got anything to say against that, you can come up to the bridge and say it now." With that, he cut off the feed, and Suki tried to stand - two weeks?

The Leader in her recognized the wisdom in laying low for a bit, in licking their wounds and preparing for the assault, but the Warrior inside refused to be held down for two weeks while those - while they - while those wángbādàn just got away -

She couldn't even think straight through the haze of livid fury; there was blood in her mouth but she wasn't sure where it was from.

"Suki," Sokka said firmly - when had he reached her? - holding her down and sitting beside her. "Calm down."

"I am calm," she snapped, and he shook his head.

"No, you're not," he countered, "you're pissed - and you're right to be. I understand. But we have to recover - you and Ty Lee, plus all the scrapes rest of us've got, and the ship's barely still holding together. There's nothing to be gained from a suicidal charge right now."

She was shaking so violently she could barely speak. "I should have been there," she hissed, teeth clenched, vision blurry as she stared at her newest recruit. "It shouldn't have been her."

"What could you have done?" he asked her, voice hardly louder than hers. "You did all you could to protect Aang - "

"And I failed," she cried, voice breaking with something like hysteria. "Just like I failed On Ji, and mother, and - and - and Kyoshi. It was my fight to lose and I failed!"

"We all failed, Suki!" he shouted at her, taking her by the shoulders - her vision slowly cleared, and she could see tears in his eyes. "But it is not - the end. Ty Lee's gonna pull through, and Aang is gonna be fine, and - and you and me," he said desperately, "we're gonna start back up the Kyoshi Warriors, together. It's not over."

She shook uncontrollably as he pulled her tight to him, and for the first time in longer than she cared to remember, Suki cried.

"You don't have to go," Haru said quietly, and Mai looked around the hallway to make sure that no one was coming. Inside the Infirmary, Ty Lee and Suki were asleep, but she didn't know how long they would be that way, or when one of the restless crewmembers would pass by - but she'd missed one dose already in the chaos of the day before, and she didn't want to miss another.

"Yes, I do," she replied, matching his low volume. "I need - I can't stay."

"Have you told anyone else?" he asked, injecting the medication and then taking off his gloves. "That you're leaving?"

"Not yet," she breathed, sitting on the couch while he put away the vial and syringe. When he returned, he stood awkwardly in front of her. "What is it?" she asked. "You haven't told anyone?"

"Of course not," he said immediately, and then sat next to her. "I just - how will the captain take it, when you do tell him?"

Mai looked away; she chose not to think about that most days. Her relationship with the captain was tangled-up and knotted and wrong in so many ways... and there was no way he'd take it well. He'd try to find a way to save her (there was none) and then he'd get angry and blame her for all the things that never happened, and then he'd shut down entirely.

She would rather not ever do that. "I suspect he'll try to make me stay," she replied, knowing that it wasn't what he meant.

"Mai," Haru said softly, "you know that wasn't what I meant."

She closed her eyes. "I'm not going to tell him," she said firmly, shaking her head. "I just - " can't face it " - won't burden him with that. Please, even when I'm - " dead " - not on the ship, don't tell - anyone."

"I won't," he promised, "but I think... Mai, they're your friends, they deserve to know."

"That's precisely why I'm doing this," she whispered. "They are my friends. You know the - " she took a deep, calming breath and focused hard on the rug. "You know what's going to happen to me. It would hurt them too much to watch."

"More than it'll hurt them to know that you died alone?"

Her throat burned - the doctor's blunt words were cutting her deeper than they should, but she would not cry in front of him. "I watched my mother succumb to this," she breathed. "It destroyed her - I would rather she died quickly and painlessly than - " She shook her head again, clenching her teeth and swallowing the desire to hurl herself into someone's arms and sob. "I won't do that to them. I just won't."

"It's your decision," he said finally, leaning on his knees. "You'll wait until we've sprung Aang, I trust?"

"Of course," she replied disdainfully, covering her pain with the court mask. "Do you think me entirely callous?"

"I think you're one of the most emotional people on the ship," he answered shortly, and she raised an eyebrow - she'd been called many things in her time, but that had to be the first time anyone had dared to call her emotional. At her critical glare, he went on. "You simply don't show it - but you feel it, much deeper than the rest of us. That's why you really can't stay here. It isn't about us having to watch you die, it's about you having to watch us watch you die. You care, I just... hope that they realize how much."

"Me too," she breathed, glancing down.

Zuko had been strangely distant since Azula had walked in and taken Aang from them, and she wasn't sure why - at first, she had thought it was just because he, like all of them, was pushing to save Aang, but now that they had failed... he was still distant and tense. She brewed a pot of tea and poured two cups, even though she was alone in her shuttle.

She didn't understand - she'd been almost frighteningly sure that his feelings for her ran deep, much too deep for a simple Companion to handle, and as flattering as it was to be the object of a prince's affections, it also terrified her. What if she wasn't good enough? What if he changed his mind? She wasn't even sure she knew what love was, let alone if her attraction to the prince added up to it; she had been comfortable in the knowledge that she, as a Companion, would never find love. It hadn't made her happy to think about, but it was safe.

Nothing about Zuko was safe - he was dark and brooded a lot if she wasn't there to keep his spirits high (which was sure to get old) and he took a lot of effort to simply be around. He exhausted her almost as much as he built her up; it couldn't last.

But he had seemed so sure that it would, and there was something exhilarating about being the one that the prince had chosen - only now, it was as though he'd suddenly realized all the things that had held her at a distance from the start, like he suddenly knew that they were never meant to be, and had withdrawn.

She was surprised at how much it hurt. Zuko had become a part of her life, as frustrating and exhausting and irritating as he was sometimes, and she... missed him.

Agitated, she picked up her tray and left the sparsely decorated shuttle that had housed her (and Zuko) for almost six weeks now, making for the dining room to share the tea with someone - and she caught the tail end of a conversation outside the Infirmary.

"I just..." Haru was saying, although she didn't know to whom, "hope that they realize how much."

"Me too," another voice said, and it was quiet and hoarse and it tugged at something in her memory - please don't ask me that question - and she swallowed hard, straightened her shoulders, and walked into the little lounge area.

"Mai, Haru," she said warmly, and they both looked at her with something akin to fear. "I was just looking for someone to share tea with."

Mai stood abruptly and smiled, but it looked forced. "I was just leaving," she said, "but I think the doctor was planning to stay awhile. Until later," she breathed, bowed shortly, and then swept away in an awful rush. Haru watched her go, face blank, and she slowly set the tea tray on the table, eyes never leaving him. Unfortunately, he wasn't giving any ground.

"What kind of tea is it?" he asked, as though Mai had never been there at all.

"Passion flower," she replied, sitting next to him and handing him the rapidly-cooling cup that she usually drank from; it somehow felt wrong, that Haru should drink from Zuko's cup. "What did Mai want?"

"To see Suki and Ty Lee," Haru answered calmly, and Katara wasn't sure why, but she felt like he was lying - she looked for all the usual tells, but everything in his demeanor said that he was telling the truth. She hesitated, and then decided not to press him for information.

"How are they?" she asked, and she wasn't really talking about Suki or Ty Lee.

"Ty Lee is... well," he replied, "I think she'll pull through. Suki - you saw her earlier with me. She's recovering rapidly."

And Mai? she wanted to ask, What's wrong with Mai? But if Haru were treating Katara's best friend for some unknown illness - oh, please, she thought, let it be something unknown, let it not be what she feared - then he certainly wasn't going to tell her. Even this far out of civilization, Haru believed in his morals, in the codes laid down by the original healers thousands and thousands of years ago: do no harm, tell no lies, keep your patient's secrets. Although he would give everyone basic reports on the health of someone in the Infirmary, it was only ever the bare minimum, and she knew he didn't like to give even that much.

She swallowed her tea in one lukewarm gulp and stared at the Infirmary like it might have an answer.

She received nothing but silence.