Azula had thought she'd only closed her eyes for a few moments on that table, she thought she still had two more miserable hours to go putting up with noisy, complaining customers and a jealous co-worker but when Azula awoke she didn't find herself in that tea shop. She'd woken with little fuss, no startling awake or anything of the sort, just the simple parting of her eyes. Azula had been tucked into a futon and laid on the floor; a cold compress had been laid over her forehead and so not to jar the comforting thing from place she inspected her environment with the same subtle curiosity.

It was a modest little home Azula had wound up in, the room she was in not even closed off from the main body, like an inlet had it been a body of water. A rice paper folding screen served as a makeshift wall for privacy but past that Azula could still pick out a few things peasants were likely to own and that didn't surprise her but one thing puzzled even her. Azula squint at it, unsure if the fever was distorting things, but it didn't become any clearer. The closest she could gauge was that it was a great lumpy boulder but instead of moss it was afflicted with some kind of fuzzy growth.

"What…?"

Looking at it closer made the cold compress slide to the floor.

"She's awake! She's awake!"

Where she'd been focused on the one side of the screen Azula's attention flashed to the other as two little girls clamored over the other to be first past the screens. It was such a jumble of little legs and feet to get in that it took Azula a moment longer to see that they were twins.

They knelt down beside her, the faster one with the nearer seat.

"Hi!" the first one to reach her exclaimed. "We're so glad you're okay! We didn't know what was the matter when you were out in the street like that but Mommy, Mommy said-"

"Mommy said that we should be good sam…sammat-…" the second girl struggled over with her tongue but Azula gave her no help, "uh good people and help you out. Mom's a good nurse and she's been training us and…"

"And-and Mom's real busy so she gave us a job to take care of you and…"

"You're part of that kiddie group yesterday that broke your teapot," said Azula when she felt like cutting in on them. "Is it really a nurse's place to be going about breaking things?"

Where the two sat side by side their inner eyes hesitantly crawled to meet the other and while they sat so close it could be seen that there was little difference between them to be found. Eight years old, two short bobs of brown hair with two thick braids at either ear, they appeared completely identical as far as looks went and on, seeing as they unconsciously even clenched their knees in the same guilty way.

"That was Shang, not us!" one of them suddenly spoke up when her sister didn't. "He was being a show-off, saying he was such a great bender and that he could suck up all the pot's heat into his little pinkie finger."

"Yeah but Shang was showing off for you! You didn't try to stop him!"

"Why should I get hurt too when he's being a dum-dum?"

"Because he likes you!"

"Shang's such a goof he doesn't know which one of us he likes! He went to all the trouble of getting that rare spider-rose that only grows on the side of cliffs then he gives it to me and he calls me by your name!"

"But-but-" her sister protested for the sake of that boy, "it was sweet anyway. And that teapot was still more your fault than mine!"

"What was I supposed to do?"

Thus far Azula had taken the girl's squabbling lying there with only a crease to her face but as the fighting continued that crease deepened and she had to speak her view. "It doesn't matter to me which of you is more responsible."

The girls turned from each other to her. "Really?"

"Really," Azula confirmed but not in understanding, "because you're both a couple of twits."

They were noticeably put out by the put down, shoulders sinking in unison, but that gloom evaporated in a flash when there were so many other things to think about with a new guest in the house. The place hadn't seen guests in years.

"I'm Rika," announced the girl nearer to Azula, the more outspoken of the two.

"My name's Rin," the second said more shyly.

"We look really, really alike but if you ever want to tell us apart you can just look for Rin's birthmark," Rika declared and without warning her poor sister she tugged down on Rin's collar, forcibly unbuttoning the buttons to reveal a fingernail sized brown mark below her collarbone.

"Owie," Rin moaned quietly, rubbing her neck. She was quiet enough that Rika could've easily ignored her but she didn't. She apologized for the rough treatment and helped her sister button up when Rin's attention was on her neck.

"Those are your names? I don't recall ever asking," Azula said snidely, wanting to get back to sleep when this was the alternative but that option wasn't about to become available just like that now that the girls' patient, asleep for so long, was finally awake.

"You're Aki; we heard mean old Ms. Ahibara yelling at you a lot," said one of the girls and Azula didn't bother matching the words to whichever twin had spoken them. It was just a bunch of noise. "So why were you all alone in the street?"

"Your family must be really worried about you, Aki. We can go to the inn and tell them where you are."

Azula was silent and not because she couldn't come up with another snappy answer to make them leave her be. It wasn't something that could be let go just like that and even though Azula still radiated a sense of intimidation even now when she was tired and not really trying the girls still pressed her.

"I'm here alone," she put simply but when the girls exchanged odd glances she made up on the spot for the sake of appearances that her family was part of a caravan and they'd been accidentally separated.

"Oh," piped Rin, scrunching her little body into itself in great sympathy, "it must've been so scary getting left behind."

"You must be really strong, getting through the wilderness out here," said Rika, wide-eyed at the claim. "A lot of our messengers have to go to Mommy's clinic after wild animal attacks. What happened? Are you going to meet up with them somewhere?"

Azula dearly wanted to sigh but knew well how to maintain a lie. She was usually up for the challenge but not now, not with what it concerned. "I was…catching fish in the rapids of a river but my perch wasn't the best place to do so."

"You slipped on the stone?"

"No," Azula came back, very nearly insulted, "because I wasn't on a stone for that very reason. Soles can slip and the water would chill bare feet. I found a dam of reeds to step on but one of those reeds had a weak spot I couldn't have foreseen."

The two were completely rapt with the lies she spun. "You got carried away by the current?"

"You got one right." Azula rolled her eyes. "Being able to swim or not matters little in a current that strong. I don't know how long it carried me along before it became mild enough to swim ashore. I only need to keep on course with where my caravan was heading and-"

Azula's train of thought slipped when her eyes flicked back to the twins.

The furry, tawny-colored boulder had somehow materialized between the two.

What the strange thing was had been a passing fancy before, now that it was so close and she still couldn't identify it from all her studies she was slowly becoming annoyed. "What is that?"

"What's what?" chimed the girls, smiling as they waited for her to continue.

"That thing…sitting between you." What else would she be talking about?

Rin and Rika looked from her to the thing Azula described and their little faces broke out in an identical set of giddy grins. Biting her lip to hold back giggles, one of them gently poked the wad of fur.

The shapeless lump wiggled but in seconds went still.

The girls kept back giggles still as if it were a private joke only understood in their own private twin world. Azula stared through slanted eyes as the little game continued, as the lump wiggled more and more, as strange 'whump' sounds started to follow.

Azula rose a single eyebrow as a head emerged from somewhere in the ball of fur and long, floppy ears poured out from it. The animal gave a yawn so wide it could've swallowed its newly found head.

"Pukka's our pet bunny," said Rin like he was more of a favorite than any toy could ever be. "We're not sure 'zactly what kind of breed he is. A long, long time ago when Rika and I were just little babies on backpacks Daddy saved him when he got lost from his family um…just like you." She realized it might not have been the best way to phrase it but was determined to end on a high note. "Pukka plays with us all the time!"

"He's a memory of Daddy until Daddy comes back from the war."

"Hmm…" Azula mumbled though it wasn't really a response. Her eyebrow remained raised throughout her critical stare of the weird animal much larger than any other rabbit she'd read about. A person would have been scared stiff but the rabbit seemed unaffected.

"So anyway," Rika picked up again since they'd gotten off track, "Mommy says you need bed rest. You can't just go walking off an icky fever like you did in that tea shop, you'll just make it worse."

Azula took in the information. Of course she – no, she wouldn't even imagine herself that low – if a soldier were to break a leg he couldn't just walk it off and deal like with another injury. She would defeat this cold by passively sleeping through it rather than fighting and overcoming it? She'd fought and overcome the initial illness, the one that could've killed her, hadn't she?

"We have chores and school but we'll help you get better real fast, won't we, Rin?"

Rin gave a firm nod. "We'll get you back to your caravan in time before you miss it."

The girls had taken up so much time chatting away about whatever they could that by the time they remembered lunch it was mostly cold. Cold, unevenly cooked rice that on one side crunched because patches of the grain had been half cooked, that crunched on the other side for being burned. Everything in between was a mushy mess but Azula was hungry, not having eaten in several hours, so she just gulped it down her share without tasting most of the awful texture.

All of this had started after the war meeting when she'd first learned of her mother's date for execution, when she'd disobeyed her father's will and made the turn in the palace halls to where the war balloons lay instead of the troop she was to lead. She couldn't help but wonder how far it would go.

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