I saw the servant girl again some five days after the incident with Ty Lee and the fire whip. Sickened by both myself and my actions, I sulked in my own quarters for days on end, barely leaving to bathe and use the restroom, making servants bring food up to me rather than presenting myself at the family dining table, and sending my worried instructor's away with screeches and screams when they tried to make me leave. My hair was a huge knot atop my head, I had huge circles underneath my eyes, I wore disheveled, crinkled (not to mention, extremely informal) red robes, and my nails were overgrown.

Ty Lee attempted to approach me once, appearing in my doorway while walking on her hands, with a tray of sweets and chocolates balanced atop her delicate feet, and a blindingly bright smile on her face, but I made her leave. I took the tray from her, set it gently on my bed, and told her in a cracked, trembling voice that she should go away. I didn't raise my voice, and I didn't look as if I felt even remotely angry, didn't look as if I felt anything at all at the moment, but something in my voice, or perhaps in the flatness of the gaze I leveled on her, must have convinced her to leave me be.

The day after Ty Lee tried to cheer me up, I heard tentative knocks at my door. I had been lying on my bed with my head hanging off the edge, my tangled hair hanging down and touching the crimson rug, the blood rushing to my face and reddening my cheeks. At the sound of the knocks, I groggily opened one eye.

"Go away," I croaked, and squeezed both my eyes shut tight.

The knocks came again, this time slightly more insistent.

"Leave me alone!" I shouted hoarsely, kicking my legs against my mattress in a childish fit of rage.

The knocks came yet again, three of them, loud, harsh and distinct against the wood of my door.

Enraged, I jumped up and stalked haughtily to my door, yanking it open to the sight of the servant girl that had "checked up on me" after the incident with Ty Lee. She looked angry, of all things, with one hand on her hip, and a small lump of fresh, casual clothes tucked under her free arm.

She thrust the clothes towards me by way of greeting. "Here are some fresh clothes. I assume the reason that you smell like a common street rat might have something to do with the fact that you've been wearing the same clothes for days."

I openly gaped at her. I may have separated myself from the world for a period of time, I may have been lenient towards her on occasion, and I may not look very regal at the moment, but I was still the crown princess of the Fire Nation, and such a lowly peasant had no right to insult me in such a manner.

The servant impatiently prodded me with the clothes she extended towards me. "Take it already. Please. And if I were you I would take a shower before I put clean clothes on, or you will most likely smell exactly the same, albeit be slightly less offensive in appearance."

I was far too stunned to take offense at her words. I composed myself and drew myself up to what I considered to be an imposing height, looking down my nose at her and making my voice frighteningly cold when I spoke. "You have gravely insulted the child of great Fire Lord Ozai. You will be punished severely. What have you to say for yourself?"

The servant girl, Zelan, her name was, looked unimpressed with my threats. "Why? Because I interrupted your incessant, snobby, spoiled-brat sulking? Get your act together, princess¸ and perhaps you might actually intimidate me."

I attempted to interject at this point with a fresh string of curses and threats but she went on, angrily speaking over me.

"No, don't speak. It will only make you sound more pathetic, a shadow of what you could be, what you are, when you don't insist on spending every waking moment of your life feeling sorry for yourself. When was the last time you exercised in the courtyard? Associated with Ty Lee? Snuck into war meetings you were not invited to, made a servant grovel at your feet, destroyed an entire wing of the palace in a fit of righteous rage? Now perhaps who you are when you are not wallowing is not the most moral, genuinely good person there ever was, but it is far better than being a ghost with no personality, no life, no will. Where is your willpower princess? Where has it gone?"

By the end of her long-winded rant, Zelan seemed more exasperated than angry. She looked as if she were about to add something else, to break the stagnate silence that stretched between us immediately following her last words, but she simply shakes her head and stares at her feet. Another minute of silence in which I stare unabashedly at her, trying to figure out whatever could have possessed her to speak to me like she did, and then she looked up at me and met my gaze.

"I'm sorry, Princess," she says tiredly. "I don't know what I thought I could accomplish by coming up here. I just…cannot stand it when you act like this. I care too much for your well-being to allow this to continue."

She turns to leave, but I impulsively reach out and grab her arm. "Wait, don't go," I say before I can stop myself. "What you said…you care about me?"

And as soon as the words leave my mouth, I mentally kick myself. Of course she cares about me. She's a servant. If something were to happen to me, she would be out of a well-paying job, wouldn't she? It only makes sense that she wouldn't want me to get so depressed that I might kill myself.

So with these thoughts circling my head in the split second between my question and her answer, I didn't have time to anticipate that she might say something that would completely surprise me. I had no idea that she would look at me, smile broadly with a gentle blush coloring her cheeks, and say quietly, "Of course I care about you, princess. I love you."

Then she jerked her arm out of my grip and swept out the open door, slamming it behind her and leaving me standing dumbfounded in my room, with a set of fresh clothes clutched tightly to my chest.