First part draws a bit of inspiration from here: sylvacoer Deviant Art .com/gallery/97187?offset=24/d2uh3hg
Warning: A little graphic.
Trusting Traitors
She danced the green room red.
It was drab morning in the dojo at the fringe of town. She was leading a set in full armor, the entire contingent of Kyoshi Warriors similarly garbed and one move behind her staggered forms. Then a light entered the room. Azula had returned. Returned from some infernal oubliette in the entrails of the capital city prison. Returned in all her glorious posture and madness. Returned that vicious smile, that knowing look at Ty Lee, who started. Paused. And smiled back.
Ty Lee dreamt this shortly after war's end. An angry diamond of a dream that struck her harder than any physical experience she had suffered. Even after ruminating on the matter and realizing that it was completely against anything she would ever do to her sisters in arms, especially after so many years, making friendships so deep that they may as well have been blood-ties.
Ty Lee decorated in gore.
Something like being home again, and glad to please Azula. No remorse for her stalwart new girlfriends, whom she had mutilated so curtly, so easily. Glad her friend was back and smiling and laughing genuinely and not in prison and insa… And everything was just fine and back to normal from then on.
The horror was that there was none. There was no horror, no vertiginous lurch out of covers into the cold sweat of midnight. It was not a nightmare. Just a vivid predication. The fan gold dripping blood, her Kyoshi veil stained a comfortable crimson.
The thought that she would so thoughtlessly betray someone she loved…
That horrified her.
What's wrong, Ty Lee?" Sokka asked taking a seat beside his troubled lady friend. "I mean… besides the obvious." He looked around the mellow hall, all but empty until the final ceremonies at sunset. "You just look… distracted and sad."
Ty Lee rejoined with a shrug, "It's a funeral."
"Point taken. Still…" Sokka remembered how Ty Lee had tried her hardest over these past few days to insert a glimmer of pep and happiness into the town. It was received in mixed ways. The Fire Nation girl had also been a strong shoulder to cry on for family and friends of the passed. Sokka assumed that even Ty Lee got sad and grieved, but she was very guarded about it and it was such an odd look on her that Sokka couldn't help but be concerned.
Suki padded in. Each acknowledged one another wordlessly. Suki sat on the pew on the other side of the sulking sylph.
Ty Lee took a breath. Let it out. "An old friend of mine is in town."
Sokka tried to fill the cheer void, "Well, that sounds great. Old friends are great comfort, and a friend of yours is a-"
"She's needs my help."
"Oh… not so great?"
"Anything we can do?" Suki offered.
Ty Lee responded with a burdened heart, "She wants me to go with her. She's on a… a trip."
"So go," Sokka said. "I'm sure we'll manage fine without you. It's not like the warriors have something pressing that needs doing. Ha ha they don't, right?" Sokka cut himself off, searching his wife for her captain-of-the-guard approval.
Suki offered an agreeable nod and giggle. "Ty Lee, we can handle things as they are. If you're feeling up to it, and you need to go, then go."
"Yeah," Sokka joined. "It's not like we're holding you here like some kind of prisoner that came out wrong didn't it?"
"Sokka," scolded his wife half-heartedly.
The ladies laughed.
The laughing done, Ty Lee drooped again. "I just… I don't know if I should. What she wants to do and… I've been… she may not be deserving of it. But really deep down, something tells me I have to help her. I don't want to listen, but I don't feel I have a choice. It would be wrong to turn on her ag… and I feel like I need to be there to keep her from making a mistake."
Suki placed a comforting hand on her honorable friend's back. "If you feel that she needs you, you should go. You should do what's right."
It would be easy to just leave. Just leave without telling them and coming back and they'd never be the wiser as to who Ty Lee was helping. Or what she was helping do. She didn't even have to lie now. She had the whole journey to come up with something. Just leave and…
But that wasn't Ty Lee.
"It's Azula."
The cursed word rang in the muted room and between the ears of both Sokka and Suki.
Sokka balked, "Wha…you mean… she's… here? In town? Now?"
Suki was all action, up and out the door at a brisk, determined walk.
"It's been a long time, Sokka." Ty Lee intoned. The tribesman was still dumbfounded. Ty Lee didn't look at him. "I need to do something. I can't not. She's going to hurt someone."
Sokka, fresh from the narrow haze of shock, noticed his wife had left. "Yeah." He hurried out.
The rimy captain scratched his armpit with discomfort for the itch and the tension wadding up toward the apex of town. And the severe Fire Nation gal, whose presence made his skin feel like it would rather be on fire.
Scratch.
"Ill tide, coming into port on a funeral day. There's still rites to be wrung before all's set… right." He scratched again, considering the spelling of his words with a skyward glance. Azula coughed deliberatly. He looked back. "I told ya now, we ain't goin' back 'till yev paid your respects proper this evening. No unfinished business welcome on any boat. Understand?"
"Vaguely," Azula sighed. Then she tried small talk, for a change of pace. "Are you familiar with this island?"
"Hmm?" He gave her an appraisal. She seemed disinterested, but he had moored and swabbed and re-rigged 'til his hands were raw and the day was just begun. Not many of the folk in the town gave him much notice. Even the garbling dock master did little more than foam at him, though he did almost run his boat through the dock on arrival. "Familiar enough. Not a local - High North Archipelago is home, mostly. But I'm traveled. Hafta be when ferryin' is your stock and trade. And I know a thing or two about watching the mood."
"'Ill tides,' yes."
The captain threw out a full Ha! "You're smart, aren't ya, ma'am?" There was ever so slightly the hint of sarcasm, which Azula could smell even beneath thirty years of sea salt sweat (rough estimate) and forty plus years of alcoholism (smoother estimate).
"Smart enough."
Scratch.
The boatmen snorted through his sun-scarred nose, and chuckled low. "Well, then you know my situation. Plus, I still got another passenger in town, and he's paid up to where I wouldn't want to leave him." A substantial customer.
"I know, though not paid up enough to leave with old ghosts attached," Azula said, vacantly redirecting her attention to the condition of the vessel. Not a sturdy steamer, but the wood and periwinkle sail gleamed with unusual care, despite their obvious age. Vintage. Not cheap to keep in working order.
"No coin worth old ghosts, especially on Tui's lovely face? Jealous girl, she is. But I'm sure you're willowware, being so sm… here now. I think that's him up town?" Azula turned her attention up the slope of the town. It was maybe a quarter mile away, but the main drag was wide and uncluttered, save a few souls. She was inwardly impressed with the seaman's keen sight. Unless he was toying with her.
But he wasn't and something wasn't right. Someone was moving toward Lee with speed from behind. And he didn't seem to notice.
"Oh, somethin' ain't right," the mariner said.
"Your money is in trouble." Azula said this an instant before she was bolting down the dock and up into town.
The ferryman was suddenly very distressed.
"You!" Suki screamed.
Lee jumped almost all the way around and managed: "Me…?" As she bore down on him, the hapless Fire Nation colonial tripped over himself trying to escape the frightening woman with unwarranted murder in her eyes.
Suki was unarmed, having set her weapons down at home when she took the kids back. Regardless, she still had her hands, and those were carried as such that Lee would rather be faced with a couple hundred pointy implements.
He remembered Au… Sifu mentioning not to draw his weapons under any circumstance and he held to her orders like life threats, because they felt like they were life threats.
Suki grabbed up the fumbling youth by his cloak. "You came into town the day after it happened. You have some connection to her, I know it! Tell me where she is!"
"I…I…I…I…" was all that came from Lee between shakes.
A bystander called from his porch: "Suki? What are you doing to that poor boy?"
She didn't need to tell him to shut up and stay out of it. Her raging eyes were enough.
The distraction was enough that Lee seized his opportunity to squirm free. Unfortunately, he made the somatic mistake of kicking her to get loose. The woman took it with more surprise than pain. In fact, Lee didn't see that he had discouraged her in the least. Quite the opposite.
Again, he was rash. The fear for his life overwrought his judgment and he pulled out one of his sickles. Though he hadn't thought, he hoped in the reflexive part of his optimistic heart, that the drawn weapon would deter his attacker, but before the hope had time to fade, the still sheathed kama was briskly wrenched from his hand, which nearly snapped backwards under the dangerous lady's grip.
And again, to Suki's growing surprise, Lee somehow managed to free himself from her hold. He even managed to retain his arm, unbroken.
The frenzied Kyoshi Warrior threw down the weapon (farming tool?) and took a moment to fill her victim with debilitating fear. Perhaps confess something before she broke him, which would happen in any case.
Lee was straining to utter something, anything to placate the fearsome spirit of war-dressed malignance, but it was all unintelligible blahs and whines. One hand found his other kama in the small of his back and loosened it from its sheath. But he didn't draw.
"Suki, stop!" a familiar voice demanded. It was Sokka. "Why are you roughing up that kid. That doesn't look like her to me."
"He came here right after Liu Mi was killed! And look at him! He's been skulking around town all week. He's…" Suki stopped short when she saw her husbands leathery brow searching the distance and then rise into something she hadn't seen in years. A primordial fright.
A sharp boot came down hard in the dusty road.
All eyes turned on her, the old ghost returned in mellow burgundy poise, unflinching.
Sokka managed, "Now that looks like her."
