Azula wasn't allowed any visitors. The nursing staff did not want her to have any more outbursts.

"What are you going to do?" Aang questioned. They knew Azula set the fire, but not that she had poisoned herself.

"I don't know. She won't willingly come home, and I don't want her to burn down the palace trying to escape, but she can barely walk. I can't just leave her here."

Azula would eventually make a full recovery, but she had been severely weakened from the poison.

"Does she have anywhere to go?"

Zuko shook his head. "Not that I know of."

Aang suggested Iroh, but Zuko vetoed. "She'll definitely burn down his house." She might even lock him in before she does it.

Unfortunately, there were very few firebenders who could handle Azula. "Who else could handle her, other than Jeong Jeong?"

Azula didn't even know him, and once she learned he was a friend of Iroh's, she might burn down his house out of spite. "She doesn't fit anywhere," which of course was her biggest complaint. "I don't know what to do."

No one else had any brilliant ideas either. Where do you send a war criminal turned vigilante hero who has a death wish and hates pretty much everyone?

"I think it's safer if she's alone," Mai said.

"For who?" Suki questioned.

"Everyone. You saw what happened when she felt boxed in. She'll fry anyone who tries to contain her. She managed to stay out of trouble on her own. Maybe she should just be left alone."

Zuko couldn't do that. "What if she got poisoned again?"

"That could happen in the palace too. It's not much safer."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Suki complained.

"If she's in the palace, she's easy to find. If no one knows where she is, then it's hard for someone to poison her."

Zuko and Mai talked privately afterwards.

"You don't think she'll try again if we leave her alone."

"I don't think the location will make any difference. There's an abundance of ways for her to kill herself in the palace. Either she finds something to live for or she doesn't. I doubt dragging her home kicking and screaming will do anything other than give her more of a reason to try and jump off the roof."

"So what I give up?"

"This isn't your fight Zuko. It's hers. Only she can win it, and only she can accept allies. I don't want her to die anymore than you do, but you'd have to be a fool to think you can watch Azula 24/7."

Zuko knew she was right, but he had to do something.

The Fire Lord got advice from an unlikely source. "Sparky, let's go get beers."

"You're not even old enough to buy beer here." In the Fire Nation, the age was 16.

"Good thing you can pardon me!"

Zuko rolled his eyes. 20 minutes later, they both had pints.

Toph took a big swig. "So what's the game plan? Wait out Azula until she comes home?" Eventually, she'll get sick of the hospital.

"I don't know what to do with her."

"She seems self sufficient. Why not cut her loose?"

"She's better, but she's still not well."

"Peh. Most of the adults I work with aren't all there either. I doubt she's much worse than Kuei."

"It's not the same. Azula doesn't trust anyone. I don't know who's care I can leave her in."

"Why doesn't she trust anyone?"

Zuko took a sip before answering. "She was raised to wage a war just to get jailed for waging it. Everyone in her life either turned on her or left her behind."

"You're still here."

"She doesn't want me here. She told me to stay out of her life."

"Isn't that what you wanted?"

"No? Why would you say that?"

"It sounds like you're only sticking around because you feel obligated to, not because you want her in your life. If she were well, we wouldn't be having this conversation because you would have already gone home. You can't expect her to welcome you with open arms when all you feel for her is pity. She's much too proud for that."

Toph was right. Azula wouldn't accept what he was offering because what he was offering just wasn't good enough.

Azula had more energy than she let on. She took her bed sheet and tied it to the bed frame, using it as a rope as she lowered herself out of the window. The port was about three hours away. From there, Azula could stow away on a boat to Fire Fountain City.

An hour after she ditched the hospital, the Gaang was out looking for her.

Aang took Appa and went north. Toph and Suki went east. Mai and Zuko went west, and Sokka and Katara went south.

"For someone who supposedly couldn't walk," Toph complained, "she sure moved pretty quickly."

"Azula always lies," Suki told her.

"So Zuko said." Maybe he was selective about what he wanted the truth to be.

"You don't believe him?"

"I'm sure he believed it, doesn't mean he was right."

When Azula first saw Appa, she thought he was a big cloud, but then he moved too quickly through the sky.

"Of course, Zuzu sent his stupid friends after me."

When Aang didn't find Azula, he circled back around.

"Go away. Don't come this way," Azula said as if he would hear her and then change course.

She decided down the cliff was the fastest way out of sight, so she ran towards it.

Aang didn't see her, but Toph did. She used her earthbending to hasten the hike she and Suki made following Azula's tracks.

"She's going to fall off that cliff."

Toph raced to stop her. Azula leaped off the cliff, just to see that it extended, forcing her to land back on the ground.

"What's wrong with you?" Toph snapped. "You were about to go off the edge."

Another fool. "That was the whole point you Blind Bumpkin."

"Do you have a death wish or something?"

Azula's silence said it all.

"Whatever you're going through, death is not the answer."

"What would you know? Aren't you like 10 years old?"

I'm not that short! "I'm 14!"

"Fourteen year olds don't know anything."

"Didn't you conquer a country at 14?"

"And where did that get me?"

"So what? You lost a war and now you're going to just die."

"You wouldn't understand."

"Try me!"

"No one ever's expected anything from you. Your parents probably just kept you inside on fluffed pillows. Your biggest chore was probably just putting your clothes on the right way."

Toph frowned. Her parents were just like that. "I made my own expectations. There was nothing for me at home."

"There's nothing for me on Earth."

"You have an entire palace!"

"It's just a gold plated prison. My whole life I've been shifted from one cage to the next, and at the end of the road, there's nothing at all."

"Your brother is worried about you."

"My brother has a guilt complex. He likes feeling guilty, so he can tell himself he has a conscious. Once he feels like he's done enough, he forgets all about you and moves on. I know he's just going to leave in the end like he always does. I'd wish he'd just hurry up already."

"Maybe you should give him a chance."

"I gave him nothing but chances, and he blew every one. I warned him when Ozai planned on killing him and he called me a liar. I got him a boat when he got banished, just for him to complain it wasn't new enough. I got Dad to end his banishment, and he stabbed me in the back as payment. Zuko's out of chances, and I'm out of time."

Before Toph could stop her again, Azula used her flames to vault off the cliff. Azula only saw one chance at freedom, so she took it.

Beneath the cliff was a canal. Aang and Katara searched it thoroughly, but they couldn't find her body.

"It's possible she got pulled into the ocean before we got there."

"Or she could have swam away," Zuko said.

"Maybe," Katara said, but she was pretty sure Azula was just dead.

It was all too much for Toph to handle. She walked off alone.

Sokka followed her. "This isn't your fault."

"I know it's not," she told him, even if it was a bit of a lie. "But it doesn't make me feel any better."

"She was crazy."

"That's just it. I don't think she was crazy. I think she just gave up."

"Sane people don't jump off cliffs."

"They do when they think it beats the alternative."

Azula woke up with a horrible cold.

Somehow, she was inside of a barn house somewhere.

"Oh good you're up," the woman said to her. "My husband was about to cross the canal when he saw you fall off that cliff. It's lucky he was there to save you."

Damn. How can it be so hard to die?

"It's lucky alright."

"What's your name?"

"Rei."

"Hi Rei, I'm Fei Fei."

"Thank you for taking care of me."

"Of course. If my daughter fell off a cliff, I hope someone would help her too."

"Hopefully she has better luck."

"You seem to have pretty good luck considering. You got another chance."

She said it so casually, but she really had no idea. It was as if Azula had nine lives. She had already used four of them. She best be more careful with the rest.

Zuko refused to declare his sister dead. There was no body. There wasn't any blood found at the scene. He had flyers sent throughout the region and in every port, asking the public for help.

Fei Fei's husband saw one of the flyers and showed it to his wife. "Do you think this is Rei? Maybe she has amnesia from the fall."

"She could," he agreed. At dinner, she asked Rei about her family.

"My father's in jail, and my mother died in childbirth." It was partially true.

"You don't have a brother?"

"Do you think I have one?"

They showed her the flyer.

"As far as I'm concerned, Azula drowned that day."

"You don't want to at least tell him you're alive."

"No. He won't leave me alone. If I'm dead, he'll have to let go."

Unsure of their loyalty, Azula left the next day.

She knew there would be flyer all over the port, which would make it hard for her to catch a boat. Instead, she walked away from the port, hoping to get into a city large enough for her to blend in with the crowd.

Two days after Azula left, Zuko got a letter confirming she was alive, and she was still reluctant to come home.

He couldn't wait around for the military to fail him at finding her. He had to find her himself.

Eventually, he got a break. Someone reported seeing her in Caldera City. Zuko ordered the police to stand down, and he went to find her himself. She had been camping in the woods, foraging for fruits and meat and stealing whatever else she needed from stores in town.

She was on her way back to camp when Zuko appeared.

"Not you again."

"Just give me five minutes and if you want me to leave, I'll go."

"You get two minutes," she told him with her arms folded over her chest.

"I know I haven't been much of a brother to you, and I don't have any excuses, but I think we should start again. We could have been just fine without Ozai for a father. He pitted us against each other since day one because if we had united, we would have taken him down ages ago. You do have a place, in this family and on this Earth, if you want it."

"What could I possibly do?" she scoffed.

"I do need a Director of Intelligence, and you figured out more about the New Ozai than my entire agency put together."

"You would trust me with a spy network?"

"I'm willing to give you a second chance, if you're willing to give me one."

Azula realized it was the best deal she was ever going to get. "But if this is some type of hoax, I swear to Agni."

"It's no hoax."

"Good because I'm tired of camping."

"How did you pay for all this stuff?"

"Two finger discount."

"You told them you only had two fingers?"

"I stole it, dum dum."

"Azula!"

"What? I was broke."

Zuko paid for all the stuff she took before they went home.