I'm starting to fall behind. Well, behind being a relative thing: Instead of being able to maintain a seven chapter buffer, when this one goes up, that'll have shrunk to six. What can I say? Chapter 13 is unlucky for me. Still, by the time this story get's put up, I'll be half way done of writing the story itself.
To address an extremely-in-depth review I got recently (good god, and I thought I put thought into this): The reason why Sokka seems to flit between rage and sane is because of a cultural condition called 'Blood-Drunkedness'. His is actually a very minor case, because he can snap out of it by his own volition, but it sneaks up on him, and can catch him unawares. It's sort of like a D&D Barbarian, but without having conscious control of when he enters his Rage. A full blown case of it is in Ked's uncle, Bato. They had to pin him to the ice for a week after the raid which resulted in Benell's conception so he wouldn't run off and get himself killed. The reason Sokka didn't mention it was because he found it frankly a little embarrassing.
Why everybody treats Azula like the enemy? Well, they haven't seen her since she woke up. They think she's still the psychopath who tried to murder Mai and Zuko (remember that?) and recommended to Ozai to burn the planet to ashes. Yeah, the people tend to get a little bull headed about her, but consider: If you knew somebody was hiding Charles Manson in their basement, would you be amenable to them telling you that he'd had a change of heart?
Regarding legitimacy: Officially, while Zuko is 'the bastard', he is claims descent from the legitimate Fire Lord, Iroh, since Ozai's supplanting him to become Fire Lord was illegal. That makes Azula more distant to the throne by an entire branch of the family tree than her brother. Ozai was never legally Fire Lord, so at the time of the Agni Kai, Zuko was second in line for the throne (after the deceased Lu Ten), and Azula, fourth. There is a ream of Fire Nation law which comes into effect, which will only be touched on briefly. But yes, the illegality of Ozai's rule is not a well known fact in the Fire Nation, and many, especially in Ember, still vastly favor a return to his style of rule. Since Zuko worked so hard to keep his sister's hospitalization quiet, her reappearance will be seen as nothing less than an Embiar miracle.
And as for Ked; he's on his own side, and he's not a Lotus. He recognized Iroh's seal on the tile, having dealt with the Dragon of the West before. He's not on a mission, save for the one which he claims to be: he wants to keep the people he cares about, safe. Long Feng threatened his sister's life if Ked betrayed him. Notably, neither Long Feng nor Jeong Jeong trust him, thinking that he must be planning something of his own. And as for his left hand: He reattached it. If he could reaffix an almost decapitated head, his own hand is child's play.
Yeesh. So much stuff. So much stuff that needs to unfurl in its proper time.
And now: a gratuitious fight sequence.
Smellerbee paced the length of her cell, rolling weary shoulders, swaying her balance on disused feet. She kept letting out little moans, as though the pain was purifying as she got used to standing upright again. Azula twirled the key ring, which was now short one key, around one finger as she watched the disenfranchised noble get used to walking once more.
"You know what, you ain't as much of a bitch as people make you out to be," Bi said, before letting out a somewhat content sigh, and leaning against the back wall, not more than a pace from where she had been chained.
"You wouldn't be the first murderous woman to say that about me," Azula remarked.
"It's too much to hope that this key opens the door, isn't it?" Bi asked. Azula shook her head. "Ah, well. I'll take what I can get."
"If memory serves, you said you had a partner," Azula pressed. She was forcing the woman, she knew, and she actually had to make good on a promise to do it, but a part of her, one that Ked had showed her recently, demanded an answer. Craved it. "So what exactly happened there?"
"More than a partner," Bi said. "I had a whole gang. Well, Jet had the gang, I was just part of it. Then the Avatar shows up and we scatter to the wind. The little ones didn't agree with what Jet was doing. Neither did I, but I knew Jet. Have you ever known somebody, somebody glorious and incredible, but unspeakably dangerous? Like a force of nature, something that will go completely out of control if it doesn't have somebody to stop him?"
"Of course I do," Azula said, flatly. Herself.
"Then you'd know what it was like being around Jet. I would follow that man into the blood seas of Hell, if he asked me," she let out a small, bitter laugh. "That was young love. Ain't it grand. Then he got... focused. On your brother. It consumed him. He wanted to hurt the firebender the way that firebenders hurt him. It burned up his mind and left him... It put him into Long Feng's hands. And that's why he died. Because he refused to be a puppet. After that, it was just me and Shot. We kept fighting, for a long damned time. But then, five years ago, he tells me that he can't keep fighting anymore. That he's worn out. That he just needs to stop. I knew I could have kept him with me, had him fight beside me, but I saw that look in his eyes. He was looking for the fight which would kill him. And if I kept him next to me, he'd find it. So I let him go. It was the only mercy I could give him."
"So you pushed people away to protect them from you?" Azula asked. For just an instant, the dour face of an Azuli girl, and the bright effervescent grin of an Embiar intruded in Azula's mind. Before she shoved them aside. She simply said. "I know the feeling."
"Yeah. So, I've answered your question, so now time for turnabout. Have you snapped off a piece of the Tribesman yet?"
"What?" Ked asked, incredulously.
"Please, I've seen better," Azula said. Ked was fairly attractive, but Tribesmen tended to do far better than he. Even Sokka, crazed killer though he seemed to be, was about three points higher than Ked. She put on a smirk, and walked her fingers up his arm. "Although, I have to admit, the thought does have its appeal."
"...You do realize I'm sitting right here," Ked said, blushing deeply. She laughed at his embarrassment.
"Was that your question?" Azula asked.
"No, not really. I was just messing with blubber-eater over there," Bi answered. "What are you planning? You seem smug as a pig-cow in shit, so you must have something up your sleeve."
"And why should you get to hear?" Azula asked.
"So that you can be smug?" Bi offered. "Come on, it's not like I'm going to tell anybody. You want Long Feng to step on his own dick as much as I do. Nah, less, but you still want him to step on his own dick, so that makes us buddies, as I see it."
Azula gave a glance to Ked, who made a terminating gesture. "We're going after my father," Azula said. Ked groaned. "Amongst other targets. But it won't end the way that they expect. They want me to be a puppet? I'll show the world just how little I appreciate being strung. What is it?" she demanded of the Tribesman.
"You have to see how much badness this will bring down on us," Ked hissed in Tianxia.
"You do realize I speak Tianxia?" Bi asked. Ked grumbled angrily to himself in his own tongue.
"You've given me my lightning back, and I appreciate that," Azula said coyly, patting Ked on the cheek, "but don't think for a second you're getting in the way of my destiny."
"If your destiny gets you killed," Ked began, rising to his feet. He shook his head. "Just be careful, alright. This is the only chance we have."
"We?"
"You know what I mean," Ked said. He turned to the woman in the cell. "I hope things improve. All things considered, I think you deserve better than what you've gotten."
"Aw, how sweet. Maybe you can be a character witness in my trial. If they bother giving me one," Smellerbee sat down in the opposite corner. "Go, have fun storming the Fire Nation."
"Oh, believe me, I will. It will be my moment of triumph."
Azula grinned then, the superior grin of somebody who knows she's going to win. But as she turned to leave the room, she heard Ked's utterance. "Tui La, this is going to end so badly. I can just feel it."
Chapter 6: Love, Lost
The ground shook under her feet, and she was off at a run again. Her hair stuck to her sweat-covered forehead. Her clothes clung to her skin. Her legs burned, her arms as well. She was in the fight of her life against the closest opponent she had ever come across to her own level of mastery. She actually had doubts as to who would win. It was brutal, and it was glorious.
She stopped, listening. Her opponent was good. She just had to be better, then. The sound of laughter, ringing through the rock around her. She schooled her breath down, calling with it her heartbeat, and let everything drain away. She was tired, but she needed absolute calm. She needed focus. She felt rumbling again, coming directly toward her. Of course it would. There was no hiding from this one. But luckily, Azula didn't have a tendency to hide. She set her foot where the stone began to erupt up, and used the momentum it offered to spring into the air, lashing out with a broad circuit of flame. It scoured the ground, forcing the foe to bring up a shield.
Azula landed, flicking her head up a moment later, thumbing one bang away from where it had fallen in front of her eye. She heard slow clapping, as the stone shield dropped, and the short earthbender, looking more a girl than the twenty one year old Azula knew she was, came out. The hands she clapped were covered in old burns from fingertip to elbow, and wrapped 'round with the remnants of heavy iron chains. Her eyes were an irregular, milky green. "Nice trick, Crazy Bitch," the woman said. "But I'm the best goddamned earthbender on this planet. You'll have to do better."
And with that, Toph Beifong attacked.
Earlier that day.
Chan flinched as the naginata embedded itself with a brutally loud thunk into a wooden support beam, about a hand's-breadth below a similar, albeit aged, wound. He glanced around sheepishly, but Azula could tell that the proprietor was still fast asleep. It actually astounded her how a man could sleep through the sort of messing about that Chan was doing, doubly so because this place purported to have the finest weapons in Ember.
"He is like a child," Azula muttered.
"You should try to take a bit of enjoyment while you can," Ked said, idly flipping through a tome he'd picked up from the docks. "Once we reach Betla, there won't be any time for it."
"I don't need fun. I need everybody to hurry up," Azula muttered.
"You wouldn't rush into battle unprepared, would you?" he asked. She shot him a look. "I didn't think so. Just relax. The boat to Betla will come soon enough. There is no point stressing about it, especially when there's nothing you could do about it anyway."
"The faster we get to Betla, the better we will be."
"Not even by a half," Ked muttered. "Your little show at Hachiman is making it very hard to make people believe you're helpless," he made a placating motion as she prepared to speak, "because as you no doubt recall that's why we're traveling so quietly. To keep Long Feng and Jeong Jeong in the dark."
Azula frowned. "You have a point," she whispered. She dared not say it louder.
Chan was slinking away from the weapon-seller, glancing about as though somebody were about to ambush him. Nobody would. These people were much like the people in Hachiman, only without the same level of industry, which was just sad. Ked marked his place in the tome and looked over the city briefly, before turning to Azula.
"You've been having bad dreams again, haven't you?" he asked. She turned to him suspiciously.
"Have you been watching me as I sleep?"
"Waterbender," he said with a shrug. "I tend to stay up late. And besides, it seemed to really be bothering you."
She scowled. "I have nightmares. Who doesn't? That doesn't mean they need to be dissected," she said.
"By your word, you're not given to flights of fancy. Your mind might be trying to tell you something. It might do well to explore your dream, next time you get a chance to," Ked said.
"Dreams don't allow for careful inspection."
"Oh, there are ways," Ked said, as Chan reached them. With entirely too wide a grin, he asked. "Did you find anything you liked in there?"
"No, but I... Shut up!" Chan snapped. Ked laughed. Azula laughed as well. Seeing the firebender flustered made the whole thing seem like it was some mad joke. It made her think back to the last time the gang was still together, with she, Ty Lee and Mai alone in the East Continent. It felt like a lifetime ago. In a way it was. That was when she still had friends.
"What about the boat to Betla?" Ked asked.
"Coming later this afternoon," Chan answered as the trio moved further into the outskirts of town. The crowds were already dissolving to practically nothing. "And we're damned lucky. They only do that circuit once a fortnight."
"Don't even call us lucky," Ked said, making a gesture which probably had some religious connotation Azula didn't care about. "Doing that just begs for the universe to make our lives miserable."
"You're being superstitious. Nothing can possibly go wroooough!" Chan was cut off when the ground dropped out from under him, then snapped closed around his shoulders. Ked instinctively leaped to the side, and for his troubles, was buried to his neck where he landed. Azula dropped into a firebending Kata, glaring around her for the inevitable follow-up. What she got, though, was the sound of clattering metal, as one small figure leaned against the edge of a building, grinning wide.
"Well ain't this just lovely?" she asked.
Toph accounted herself a very good judge of character. Partially because she adopted a blunt-honesty policy which pleased some and discomforted others; the latter tended to be squirrelly, and she avoided doing business with them. Partially it was because even with her reputation, people saw a blind woman who looked like an underdeveloped teenager and they made assumptions. Assumptions which always, of course, fell short. And admittedly, it was partially because her earthbending let her know whenever somebody was a lying bastard. So yes, she was a good judge of character.
So how she managed to get screwed out of this deal, she couldn't quite imagine. She never expected, not in a million years that she'd end up being scooped by one of her old protégées. It would have been hurtful, if Toph were the type to allow petty backstabbing to hurt her feelings. It was times like this where she was glad she was quantifiably more manly than womanish, because instead of getting upset, she got angry. She was seething at a low boil, walking through the streets of Chuo Yan. She used to go home and vent to her husband, but with Huang around... well, she didn't want her son's first word to be 'douchebag' so she had to find other releases. Mainly that meant long walks, cold baths, and massive collateral damage. Gods, she hadn't even had a good fight in years.
"Alright, Toph, not the end of the world, just a pain in the ass," she told herself, cracking knuckles, elbows, and shoulders before picking a random direction and heading down it. Unconsciously, she was heading away from the noise and the bustle of town. Into the country. Where it was quiet. Man, it had been so long since she was here? Would it kill them to throw a little hero-worship her way? She did once save the town, after all...
She was in the midst of brooding her dark, admittedly egocentric thoughts, when she recognized something. A familiar voice, an unmistakable cadence of words and tones, that sing-song quality, even if the voice had changed. A small part of her told her to get Teo and fly to Grand Fire fast as the sky bison could haul. Needless to say, that part was very small. The greater voice, that which Toph actually heeded, told her that she was long overdue for that rematch.
Toph tapped her foot, and instantly found what she was looking for. A block and tackle lay in a disused smithy. She smirked as she pulled the chain off, wrapping it around her forearms and across her back. She would have preferred the chain she had invented her unique power on, but that was with her husband and her child. And it was terribly rusty. Still, a chain's a chain. She moved through the alleys, seeing with her feet, hearing with her ears, of course. There she was. And there were two others with her. One of them was bulky, heavy-set. An earthbender maybe? The other was of a more average build. It had took her until she really started getting serious with Teo that she realized that not all men looked like Sokka. Which was kind of a let-down, when she considered it. Regardless, this wasn't about them, nor specifically about those two with her.
"You're being superstitious," the big one said. "Nothing can possibly go wr–"
Toph decided that there could be no more perfect moment. A stomp of her foot saw him drop into a pit of her making, buried to the neck. Only the best could earthbend without being able to move their hands or feet. The other one was nimble, leaping away. Still, when he landed, she buried him too. She took a few steps out of the alley and leaned against the face of the building. "Well, ain't this just lovely?" she asked. "And here I thought I'd never get another crack at the Crazy Bitch."
The deposed Fire Lord herself, former Princess, firebender extraordinaire, and all around unpleasant person Azula was in a low stance, waiting. She tilted her head to the side for a moment. "I'm sorry, was I supposed to remember you?" she asked acidicly.
"Oh, that's just hurting my feelings," Toph said sarcastically. The smaller of the two men's heartbeat spiked much higher, to the point where he was about to give himself a stroke.
"Tui La, they've found us," he muttered.
"I found you," Toph clarified. "So, what are you doing out of the wacky-shack?"
"I was falsely imprisoned," Azula muttered darkly.
"Nah, you were all full up of crazy the one time I visited. Sugarqueen never listened to me, always thought you'd get better and be nice and junk," she shook he head with a smirk. "But we both know you don't do nice, do you, Crazy Bitch?"
"Stop calling me that!" Azula shouted. She wasn't the Azula which Toph fought on the road from Shr-Wa. This was the Azula from the Day of Black Sun. In the self-control department, she wasn't doing so well.
"The last time we tangled, you ran off on me. Are you so afraid of having an honest rematch?"
"Are you so willing to die?" Azula asked.
"What can I say? Things haven't been that interesting lately. I could do with a stir-up," she said. Despite the obvious problems associated with being blind, and therefore being utterly incapable of picking out expressions, Toph could somehow still 'see' that Azula's expression pulled into a smirk. Toph turned her arms in front of her. "Besides, you still owe me an apology for almost burning my damned arms off."
"I owe you nothing," Azula responded, rising from her stance to fiddle with her fingernails. "You insulted me, then attempted to murder me without any provocation on my part. I would have been completely in my rights to put you down like a rabid beast," Azula let a pause linger. "You should count yourself blessed I only destroyed your skin, and not something more irreplaceable."
"Alright, you wanna tangle, Crazy Bitch?" Toph shouted.
"Make the first move. I promise you, I'll make the last," Azula answered. Toph grinned, then stopped one foot. A spike of stone lashed up from the ground, but Azula nimbly ducked under it, before lashing forward with a broad bolt of brutally hot flame. She quickly swept out her chains, transfiguring them into a broad shield which parted the flame, then snapping them into wire which she lashed out with as a molten whip.
Azula bounded away, landing with a grunt and another blast of pressure, shattering the wire out of Toph's control, then sweeping low, coating the ground between them with flame. Toph retorted by slamming a fist into the ground, raising up the sandy clay and separating one from the other. The sand snatched up the heat from the flames, killing it before it reached her, falling to the ground as a shower of tiny glass beads. "You're gonna have to do better than that," Toph pointed out. Azula... well, Toph guessed she was glaring, because without a word, she abandoned her companions and pelted up the street. Toph knew she wasn't running away. Just finding better ground. So with a smile on her face, the blind earthbender followed her out of the town and into the wilderness.
"Lovely lady you're workin' for," Toph said to the smaller of the two as she walked past him.
"She's had a very trying week," he answered with a remarkable amount of calm. Well, any calm, to be honest. She idly shoved his head a bit with one callused foot.
"Well, we'll see if she comes back in one piece. I've been waiting for this for six goddamned years."
"Then you really need to get laid," the big one answered. Toph stopped, eschewing turning to stare at him because she didn't exactly have vision. Then, she started to laugh. Uproariously.
"Who'd've figured that come around and bite me in the ass?" she asked, before following the firebending bitch from hell.
Gong drew the whetstone across his blade. It needed to be very sharp for its purpose. Anything less would be unforgivably sloppy, and might end very badly for him. He ran a thumb along its edge, satisfied for the moment that it was up to the task, a blade capable of slicing through sinew and bone with ease.
Of course, this blade only had to deal with bread, but that was no excuse to be neglectful. A single motion split the loaf of bread in half, laying one half aside as he sat in the early morning of Omashu. The greatest part of the task was preparing the bottom. With speed born of twenty years of experience, only broken up by three years of distraction, he quickly loaded the bottom half with cabbage, meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and a thin sauce rife with Fire Nation peppers. It was a popular confection which had reached across the ocean. Gong looked at the sandwich his hands had created, inspecting it for flaws, for unevenness, for poor presentation. It passed muster. He set it beside a dozen others, each as perfect as the last.
Gong wasn't considered the finest sandwichmaker in Omashu for nothing.
The last years of the Weary War had been hard on him. He'd had to fight, for the first time in his life. His knives stained with blood, not myoglobin. It wasn't pleasant, but it was his duty to his city and his people. And his reward? To slip back where he wanted to be. Belatedly, of course. A knocking came at his door. He picked up a new loaf and leaned over past it. Barely passed sunrise.
"We open in an hour. You can wait," Gong called out. Once more, he split the loaf, setting the top aside.
"Open in the name of King Bumi," the voice on the other side spoke up. Gong frowned, setting aside his work and moving to the door. He swept aside the curtain, and beheld a man in the green and brown livery of the Ruler of Omashu standing outside, flanked by a royal guard. This was the Herald of the King. This was the Voice of Omashu.
"Tell them we open in an hour," Gong's wife's voice came from the upper story, sounding justifiably annoyed, and at least half asleep. But Gong was of Omashu. He unlocked the door and threw it open, standing in his pristine apron before the representative of the Crown.
"What business do you have at my shop so early?" Gong asked, impatient.
"Sign this," the Voice of Omashu said, thrusting forth a document. Gong looked the thing top to bottom, but it might as well be written in Huojian for all he was able to understand it. "Please, sir, we haven't got all day."
"Fine," Gong said, taking the offered stylus and scratching his name onto the scroll. The Voice turned to one of the soldiers with him, and Gong, finally getting his head in the game, recognized him as an emissary from the recently reconstituted city of Gaoling. "What is he...?"
"Witnessed and signed," the representative from Gaoling said, scratching his own name onto the paper. "If that is all, I shall retire until a more respectable hour."
"What was this all about?" Gong asked, growing more confused by the moment. The Voice turned to him, and nodded briefly. "And why did you need...?"
"This belongs to you," the Voice interrupted, handing Gong something that Gong by rights should never be allowed within a hundred paces of. It was fairly small, life-sized to be honest, a gold and jade figurine of a squirrel wolf. It was one of the most psychotically brave members of the animal kingdom, willing to attack predators a dozen times its size to drive them away from its burrows. It was also the royal animal, and thus the royal symbol, of Omashu. It belonged to the King.
"I don't understand," Gong said, very delicately holding the Royal Seal.
"Bumi had no sons nor daughters, nor any surviving kin for whom the kingship would default," the Voice explained, as though he had somewhere else he would much rather be. "Thus, he decided upon the restoration of Omashu that you be designated his heir in the event of his demise. His death in Ba Sing Se has prompted us to carry out his final wishes. You are now King of Omashu."
Gong stared at the Voice, who, according to his own words, was now Gong's faithful servant. The stare grew long. "Me?" he asked. The Voice nodded. "The King of Omashu?" the Voice nodded again. Gong nodded slowly. "I see... WAS HE OUT OF HIS GODDAMNED MIND?"
The Voice shrugged. "That is the most commonly held belief of the man," he said. "Your servants will be by in a few hours to relocate your possessions to the Royal Palace. Long Live the King."
The Voice offered a brief bow, then moved away, bringing the guard with him. Leaving the Royal Seal in Gong's hands. He pondered briefly that this could all be part of some elaborate joke. But then he realized the only person capable of pulling that joke off that Gong knew about was Bumi himself. Gong stepped back inside, locking the door behind him. He gently set down the Royal Seal in the center of his display table. Then, on perfect cue, the madness of this morning shut his brain off, and he fainted dead away onto the floor.
The jarring impact threw Azula through the air, sending her skidding through the mud. As if it weren't embarrassing enough to have to fight a blind girl, she now had to do it covered in filth. The wind had picked up slightly, but that didn't bother her in the slightest. She quickly rolled to her feet, setting herself carefully in the muck near the pond in the hills. Her decision to leave the town had definitely been the right one; the lack of line of sight meant nothing to the earthbender, but to Azula, it would have been crippling.
The Earthbender popped up out of that muck a short distance away, grinning wide despite her being covered head to toe in foetor. The land here was a swamp, boggy land and unsteady footing. She didn't seem to care in the slightest. Azula remained still, watching her.
"Oh, Cra-a-azy Bitch? Where are you hiding?" the girl taunted. Which was odd, because Azula was standing right in front of her. A ways off, but in easy eyeshot... right. Blind. Smirking for her opportunity, she moved her arms through that practiced, deliberate motion, those long sweeping circles, as the energy was pulled apart inside her. But lightning didn't follow her fingertips. As she thrust forward, she felt the slightest hitch, a hesitancy starting right down in her soul and reaching up into her pool of Chi. And then there was an explosion.
She was hurled backwards as the shockwave took her off of her feet, the backlash hurling her a dozen paces before slamming her down into the mud at the edge of the water. She lay there for a moment, trying to shake the daze out of her mind. What just happened? There was a triumphant laugh, and something which sounded like 'oh, there you are', and a rumbling approached.
Lightning wasn't working. This was the second time she'd done that and had it backfire on her. No. That wasn't true. It was the fourth. The first time was so long ago, not nearly as devastating. But the second time was... when Mai turned against her. She lost control of her lightning because... because she was alone? She scanned her teachings about the cold-blooded fire but couldn't find anything about attachments or emotionality. Only the Kata, the flow of energy. The necessity for strict control. What if there was something that nobody taught her? What if Jeong Jeong had lied to her? It wouldn't be the first time. Much as she hated having to bring feelings into this, there had to be some explanation for why she kept failing. But now was hardly the time to ponder it. She spun her feet, roughly and inefficiently imitating her brother's surprising move which broke her stance during the Agni Kai. It wasn't nearly so effective against the earthbender, but it made her halt briefly as she pulled up a block of soggy ground to deflect the blast. The clay was effectively fired when it was returned to the ground.
She lashed out again, a ripple of stone which Azula could have easily avoided if the footing weren't so horrible. As it was, she only managed to make it half way to where she needed to be do leap over when her foot went wide, and she was swept up and hurled bodily in to the lake. Animal panic blasted through her mind for the moment it took to get her cognition back in control. Water. She hated water. She could barely swim; when Iroh threw her off her boat on Bakemano Island, she almost drowned. That would have been a most ignominious death for her. Training trumped instinct, and she began to flail in the water not randomly and helplessly, but with a measure of control, purpose. Her head came back up above the water, the filth mercifully washed away, as she sputtered and took her breath. It felt very good to breathe.
The earthbender was standing at the shore, sweeping her gaze, such as it was, across the wind-rippled waters. "Come on out. I ain't goin' in there to get you," she shouted. Azula scowled. Wait. That was the answer. She cast her mind back, to every encounter she ever had with this woman. The road from Shr-Wa. The Drill. The Day of Black Sun. Her feet. She saw with her feet, possibly by sensing vibrations in the ground. When the ground was loose, or absent, she was as good as blind. Oh, how could Azula have been so ignorant? How could she not have figured this out in minutes? She was supposed to be smarter than this! All she had to do was...
Azula held her breath for a moment, letting herself sink into the water as she righted herself. Then, with a blast of heat and pressure, the water seared to boiling around her hands and feet. It would be agony for a while until Ked healed them, but when the pressure shot her upward, into the sky, it was worth it. Free of the water. Free of drowning. And invisible to the blind woman below.
"Oh, that's cheating," she muttered angrily. Azula didn't care. She powered toward the woman, blasting forward with searing bolts of flame, aimed low, at the earthbender's feet. She reacted as Azula predicted, panickedly protecting her bare feet as she was driven back, slowly but inexorably. Finally, the same muck which had been the downfall of Azula's footing proved to be the downfall of hers. The underdeveloped earthbender slipped and fell onto her back, and Azula slammed down into the mud atop her, one fist leveled down directly at the blind woman's face. Blue flame played over Azula's knuckles.
"This is over. You lose," Azula said. The earthbender sighed, then grinned again.
"Yeah, but it was the best fight I've had in a long time," she said. Azula stared at her. "Don't be a bitch. Help me up."
"Why?"
"You won, I lost. That's the way it goes sometimes," Toph Beifong said with a shrug in the mud. Azula stared at her. A voice was telling her to kill the woman, but there was that flinching away inside her. She knew she couldn't. That for some reason it wasn't right. Azula stepped back, but kept a wary eye on her. "Fine, then," she said, righting herself. She slammed her hand into her fist, and all of the muck leapt off of her and onto the ground around her. Oh, that was distinctly unfair.
"You do realize what happens to losers of Agni Kai, don't you?" Azula asked.
"This wasn't an Agni Kai," Toph answered with a grin. "You might have noticed that I'm not a firebender. You need to be a firebender to have an Agni Kai. This was just the rematch which was long overdue."
"You're going to tell the Avatar about me, aren't you?"
"Nah," Toph said with a dismissive wave. "Twinkletoes has got enough troubles back East. He hears about you, he gets all panicky, comes to do something about you, then my homeland goes to shit."
"So... you're not going to," Azula said.
"Why would I?" Toph slugged Azula in the arm as she walked by, causing the latter to immediately take a combative posture again. "Oh, you really need to loosen up. Get a man, get laid. Trust me, it's a hell of a stress release."
"You are a bizarre creature," Azula said.
"Yeah, I get that a lot," Toph said with a shrug. And a sigh. "And here I thought I'd hold of on losing my badassness for a while. Kids really take it out of ya'."
Azula glared at her. "Children? You have children and you didn't even bother to beg for your life when it looked like I was about to kill you?" she asked.
"You weren't going to kill me," Toph dismissed. "Besides, if I'd said something, you might have gone easy on me, and I wanted an honest fight."
"...You're out of your mind."
"Nope. Just looking for a good scrap," she said. She grinned, deliberately casting it over her shoulder for Azula's 'benefit'. "And you know what, I dare say you've inspired me. I think I'm gonna saunter home and get some shit in order. We should do this again sometime. The meeting, not the wanton destruction of property and landscape."
"Why would I want to do that?" Azula demanded.
"Because I recognize a fellow badass when I see one. You know, when you're not trying to kill me, y'ain't that much of a bitch," she said. She turned back toward the town. "Who knows? Maybe next time we tangle, you'll earn a better nickname."
The blind earthbender happily walked away, humming a jauntier version of an East Continent lullaby, as Azula stood in mud that caked up to her thighs, and stared after her. Her hair, in wet and wild disarray, hung around her face. "They must be right," Azula said to nobody in particular. "I am out of my mind. Otherwise my life is too bizarre to explain."
The first thought she had upon returning to her mobile domicile was something to the tune of 'Gods damn it all, Huang has colic again'. The distinct, unmistakable, and frankly a little blinding screams tore through the vessel with alarming regularity and frequency. Needless to say, she didn't waste time entering the nursery. Between moments of synesthetic blindness brought forth by the very loud child she had bore, she could 'see' her husband looking all manner of worried, trying to rock some calm into the infant.
"I think Huang has..."
"Colic? I guessed as much," Toph said, relieving her other half of the child. He slumped even further into his seat, only possible because he'd taken off his false legs. He let out a low groan.
"Remember when we wanted to stay up late?" Teo asked.
"Vaguely, but then again, my memory isn't at its best right now," Toph said, doing her best to not spur Huang into yet louder crying. If there was one good thing she inherited from her mother, it was her ability to put up with a rock-stubborn child. Teo leaned forward, elbows on knees.
"I heard that commotion outside town. What happened?" Teo asked.
"I got into an all-out mud-fight with Fire Lord Azula. Pity nobody ever told her; firebenders might fight dirty, but earthbenders fight with dirt."
There was a long moment of silence, where even Huang seemed confused by that statement.
"Did that really happen?"
"What do you think, Flyboy?"
Teo sighed. "Right. Bar fight it is," he said. He reached over and began fitting his legs back on. "Are we leaving tonight?"
"Nah, we've got plenty of time," Toph said, a content smile pulling across her face. "For once, we're on our own."
Ked lay awake, staring out the window. He had already prayed tonight, and Yue, as always she was, remained silent to him. That was the definition of faith, to believe that sooner or later, his Goddess would answer him. Of course, the definition of madness was to do the same thing over and over and expect different results. He frowned as he considered whether religion was fundamentally insane, but decided that it was a topic better suited for conversation over wine with pompous people getting paid entirely too much money to sit around doing nothing. Besides, if faith was mad, then so was Ked.
With a groan, he sat up, matching his sway to that of the ship. They had left for the boat immediately after Azula returned, covered in mud and with a very unpleasant look on her face. Both he and Chan instantly knew better than to utter one word in her presence. Not at first. Now, they were on their way to Betla. Everything was coming to a close. Soon, she'd be back on her way, he would be cast aside, and the whole business would be over. In a way, it was a distinct relief. In another way, it left him feeling hollow. He couldn't save her.
Ked got up, and decided to have a good pace around the ship in the moonlight. Yue's face was gibbous, swelling toward fullness. He breathed deeply, feeling the energy swirling around him, amplified by the tidal force of the moon. No matter how often he felt this, it was always fresh. Always vibrant. Waterbending was a part of who he was, and the moon felt as natural as his own beating heart. He exited the wheelhouse, standing dark and grim against the night. This was an old warship, decommissioned and dropped into the merchant fleet. It wasn't comfortable. It wasn't pretty. But it was heading to Betla. He looked to the south, where one of his messages was probably being read by his sister at this very moment. In time, she would show it to Pakku, as she was wont to do. Then, everybody would know. And there would be a chance.
He kept walking, around the circuit of the rail, until he found something in his path. Long black hair drifted lightly in the breeze, and golden eyes stared at the water from where she was leaning against that rail. Bitterly. "I didn't expect to see you up," Ked said to Azula. She cast a glance in his direction, then let out a sigh. Everything about her screamed fatigue.
"I don't like to sleep," she said simply.
"Why not?"
"Because I no longer know what I'm getting," she said, her gaze hardening. "Before, I knew. There wasn't anything I could do about it, but I knew what to expect. Now... I'm never sure. I hate being unsure. It grates. It infuriates. And there's still nothing I can do about it," she lowered her forehead to the rail, and her words dropped to a whisper. "I don't want to be out of control anymore. I need to be better than that."
"Why?"
"Because that's the only way anybody..." Azula cut herself off. "You wouldn't understand. You were a peasant. Nobody expected anything out of you," Ked was mildly offended at that. "But me? I had to be perfect. Nothing less was good enough. And I... I couldn't do it. Agni's blood, I tried. But I'm just not good enough. Never good enough."
"Sometimes you just have to accept yourself as you are," Ked said. She let out a snort.
"Ah. I knew this was pointless. I might as well have been talking to the idiot," she muttered quietly.
"Why do you push people away?" Ked asked, cutting to the heart of what he had seen. She stopped, staring at him.
"What are you talking about?"
"Everybody you interact with, you distance. You insult and belittle everybody. It's almost as though you're afraid to meaningfully interact with anybody," Ked turned his back to the rail, and began to gesture. "It's like the boarquepine during estrus. If they want to find a mate, they have to let another of their kind close to them, but if they do that, then they stand the risk of being jabbed by those same quills that they themselves possess. People are the same way. The closer people get to us, the more they're able to hurt us."
"So why bother at all?"
"Because a life lived alone isn't much of a life at all," Ked said. He waited for her vehement denial, her denigration, possibly even an ethnic slur, but she just turned away from him, back to the water. Silence stretched. "We've been on the water a while," he said. She smirked.
"The Fire Nation always found its way to the sea," she said, distractedly. "It was ours to conquer. Even though we had nothing to control it, even though it fought against our element at every turn, we still felt that drag, away from the shore, toward the horizon. We almost ruled the entire planet, because we had taken the elements that turned against us and made them kneel. It was not the armies which brought victory to our Nation. It was our navies. The Fire Nation ruled the seas," she let out a low, tired laugh. "Ironic. The path to Fire Nation supremacy lies in dominating water."
Ked nodded. "I understand completely," he said. "Our pantheon was once a triumvirate of gods. Two which guided our lives, Tui and La. Pull and push, gods of sea and moon. One of them, even more important, was the one who let us live at all. Tenger Etseg, God of Fire. There is a word in our language, a word which has religious connotations. Hareq. The closest word to it in your language is 'burn'. Before Yue's ascension, fire was our strongest gift from divinity, and 'burn' our holiest word. So yes. I understand completely the irony of being a child of water, but reverent to the flame."
Azula gave him a glance, then back out to the water. "Religion. Pah."
"I understand that, too."
Silence stretched. Finally, she turned from the rail. "I've had enough pointless introspection for one night. Nothing good ever comes from looking inward. It's just pointless navel gazing," she said.
"You know, I could help," Ked offered. She stared at him flatly. "You said you had nightmares. I think that there's something your dreams want you to see, but doesn't know how to show you. Maybe if I help, you'll be able to figure out what your mind is telling you?"
"You don't have the power."
"No, but I have the skill," Ked said. "Learning to heal opened the back door to a lot of abilities that people like Master Katara think are the sole province of the strong. I have the skill. You have the mind. If you let me, I can help you find the answers you're looking for."
"That was very distinctly said," she said, suspiciously.
"I like to believe I know how you think," Ked said. Azula looked away, then her shoulders slumped just a little bit.
"Answers. Those will stop the nightmares, correct?"
"I cannot say. It won't make them worse," Ked lied, since he really had no idea. Dreams were a shaman's playground, not his.
"Fine. But if you do anything perverted to me while I'm asleep, I swear to whatever heathen god you worship that your people will find you scattered across the Straits of Kirin," Azula said, doing her damnedest to be intimidating. Even though Ked expected it, it still made him swallow out of knee-jerk nervousness. He followed her up to the room where she was sleeping, slipping in without a word. Chan was in the room opposite her, the door wide open, just in case, so he claimed. He was also completely asleep.
Azula laid on the bed like a log. She stared upward, a very focused look on her face. "Alright. How does this work?"
"You go to sleep," Ked said. She glared at him. "One thing at a time. First you sleep, then you dream. When you dream, I give the energy in your mind focus. You'll feel the focus and be able to realize your place in the dream, and you'll have control. You will be dreaming lucidly. You will remember what the dreams can't tell you awake."
"And how will you do this?"
"A touch, and some meditation. Go to sleep," Ked said. She closed her eyes, but still looked about as comfortable as a penguin in Si Wong. Ked rolled his eyes, pulling the water from his flask into gloves, which he set alight and touched to each temple. Her eyes flicked open for a moment, but with a tightening of her jaw, closed again. Already that chaotic energy was there. It wasn't just her dreams which were plaguing her. It was her waking mind as well. He began to hum lightly in the darkness, bathed only in the tiny amount of light the water from his hands gave off. After a few minutes, Azula stirred slightly, moving into a pose which might be more sleep than 'waiting until sunrise'.
Ked continued humming. Quite to his surprise, he heard her voice, quiet in the dimness. "What is that song, anyway?" she seemed quite groggy. Considering the past few days, it wouldn't be surprising.
"Nothing," Ked lied. "Just something to help you sleep."
After a few more minutes, she slipped into her dreams once more. And this time, Ked was here to keep them from becoming nightmares.
Azula looked at the dolls in her hand, then dropped them, looking at her hands themselves. They were pudgy, stubby fingered. The hands of a child. Azula quickly got off the floor and ran over to the table, having to jump up and arm-pull herself up to see her reflection in the mirror atop it. True to her suspicions, she was five years old. But her mind was twenty three. No. Seventeen. No, thirteen? Her reflection shot through all four visages before settling on the five year old, confusing Azula enough to make her drop back to the ground. She rubbed her backside, which had banged hard against the unforgiving obsidian.
Azula turned behind her, and saw a thin yellow light connecting to her back, forming a stream which vanished into the shadows at the top of the room. "Alright," Azula said, her voice somehow both old and young, "I'm asleep. And dreaming. So what was so important?" Azula wandered, unsure what it was she was supposed to find. This was interminable. Even when she had the tools to spelunk inside her own mind, it was working against her.
"That's because you don't want to know what you're hiding," Azula said. But it was an Azula Azula had never been, and never known. It was a bloody Azula, a battered Azula, covered in bruises and dressed in rags, her hair matted and filthy. "If you keep searching, you'll find pain. Horrible, unspeakable pain."
"So you are the door keeper of my secrets, are you?" Azula asked. "So what is it that has me so confounded that I can't know it consciously? Did the Avatar do this to me? Did he sabotage my mind?"
"No. The Avatar hasn't been seen in a century," the other Azula said, confused and afraid. Azula scowled at her. "Please, just run away. I can't hold him away much longer."
"Then don't," Azula demanded. "Let me see."
The other Azula sobbed, then flickered, vanishing like a guttering flame. Then, instantly, Azula was in a different room. She was at Father's side, tugging on his robes. She wanted to ask him something. When he was going to visit Zuzu, since it would do her brother a world of good to know their father was still thinking of them. She tugged once more.
"What is it? What? What is so important that you need to steal my attention?" Ozai shouted. Despite herself, Azula shrunk back.
"I-I-I just wanted to know when you were gonna..."
Ozai pulled her very close, twisting her hand painfully. "Speak clearly, or be silent, girl," Ozai demanded.
Azula stared into golden eyes, fear that both young and old Azula could feel, even if neither understand. "Zuko wants to see you. Can't you visit him? He needs some hope, something to lift his spirits."
"The boy is sickened in his very soul and I have no need for him. Now go away," Ozai said dismissively, giving her a rough shove.
"But..."
"I said leave!" Ozai reached to one side and backhanded the girl, knocking her to the floor. He rose to his full height, towering over her. "Get out of my sight you useless child."
Azula broke and run, tears streaming down her cherubic face. It wasn't until she had cleared the room, gotten away from Ozai's presence, that the elder Azula felt the spell holding her silent break. "What was that?" she asked. "That made no sense. He never thought I was useless. I was always his worthy vessel, the one worthwhile thing to come out of his marriage to Mother."
And yet, there it was. It was memory. She knew it was just from the feel of it, the way it so easily slotted into what she already knew. A memory which had become buried inside her own mind. A memory which didn't make any sense. Ozai never treated her like that. And yet, her own memories now said that he did. She opened her eyes, and was looking up at the canopy over her bed. She quickly threw her legs over the side, as the sound of sloshing water came to her ears. She ignited a ball of red flame over her hand. So this was later, but still before she turned eleven years old.
She walked toward the sound, silently, with hostile intention. The light dispelled the shadows as she approached, and she beheld a figure in a robe, running a towel down her arms. She stopped, turning toward that light, and the towel slipped from her hand, landing on the floor. It was Mother, no doubt about that. "What are you doing here so late?" Azula asked. "What's going to happen to..."
Azula was cut off when her mother ran toward her. Azula took a wary step backward, but Ursa's embrace could not be denied, even thought it brought the woman to her knees. She kept repeating apologies, begging for forgiveness for some unmentioned slight. The flame in Azula's hand snuffed out, a side effect of her confusion, and she stood stock still for almost a minute, her young mind trying to figure out what in the blood seas of Hell was going on.
"Mother, what are you doing in my room?" Azula finally managed to ask as Ursa's weeping petered out.
"I did something... I believe I will regret," Ursa said, slowly getting composure back into her voice. She stared at her daughter for a long time. "Azula, I want you to know that no matter what you thought, I never stopped caring about you."
"You're lying," both aspects of Azula said at once. "You only cared about Zuzu."
"I couldn't," she said. "I refused to make the cardinal sin of loving one child more than the other. I need you to remember that, Azula. I always loved you. No matter what... that man says to you, tomorrow or next week or next year or next decade, remember that. Your mother always loved you, and believed in you."
"I don't understand," Azula said. "Why are you bleeding? What did you do?"
"I murdered Azulon," Ursa said coldly, sitting back and finally releasing Azula from her grasp. Azula stared at her mother. "I will never let anybody hurt my children. Not assassins, not my husband, not the Fire Lord himself. When he signed your brother's death warrant, he found he'd signed his own."
The elder Azula marveled, in a distracted sort of way, how much Ursa... sounded like Azula. Or possibly the reverse. "But you killed the Fire Lord. You're a traitor!"
"I'm also a mother. I don't care what happens to me. I kept you safe. I kept both of you safe."
"Oh, please, like anything was going to happen to me," Azula chided.
"Not today, but what happens when Ozai doesn't need you anymore?" Ursa pointed out.
Azula scowled. "You're talking nonsense. Father loves me."
"No, he doesn't," Ursa said solidly. "I don't even think he can."
"It wasn't like you were there," Azula said. Ursa took one of her hands and held it tight.
"Yes, I was. I was always watching over you. Why do you think I was always around Zuko? Because you were, too," Ursa said. "Just try to remember the way it really was, instead of what Jeong Jeong taught you."
"The Firemaster told me the truth."
"The Firemaster has his own agenda, and he's been manipulating this family since Azulon's day," Ursa said harshly. "Look at things as they are, Azula. I taught you that much."
Azula pondered briefly. "So you're an assassin. I have to call the guard."
Ursa nodded slowly. "I know you do. Because that's the role you have to play right now. But Azula, please, just... give me a bit of time to say goodbye to your brother, first."
"Why did you come here?" Azula asked.
"Because I wanted to see my daughter one more time," Ursa said, with brutal honesty. "Because I wanted her to know that no matter what happens, I will always be proud of her. I will always love her, and I will never forget her."
Only at this exact moment did it dawn on Azula that this was it. Ursa was really leaving. She wasn't coming back. Azula's jaw tightened, her eyes clenched tight, and she quickly grabbed her mother in a desperate embrace, even though her conflicted mind hadn't came up with a satisfactory answer as to why, yet. Just one last time, she wanted her Mama to hold her. Ursa actually started sniffling again, holding back the sobs.
"You and your brother... you were the only people in my life who ever made me feel loved," Ursa said quietly. She gently pushed Azula back. "Thank you. Thank you for giving me the courage to say goodbye. Azula, please, promise me that you'll protect your brother. He needs somebody strong, like you, looking out for him. Please..."
"Alright, I'll do it," Azula swore. The elder Azula was perplexed at this. Trying to hold a brave, or in this case, belligerent, face, Azula scowled. "You'd better hurry up. I don't have m-much patience for traitors," she said, an unexpected hitch in her own voice. Ursa nodded, then pulled off her dress, igniting it idly as she pulled a long, dark cloak from the back of Ursa's wardrobe. It went to Azula's heels, but on Ursa, it only covered to the backs of her knees. She gave one last smile, desperate and tearful, to Azula, before departing. But she paused at the door.
"Don't ever lose who you are, Azula," she said. "You're so much more than Ozai wants to make you."
And with that, she was gone.
"Go back now," that battered Azula begged, tears running from her blackened eyes. "I can't keep him away. It hurts too much!"
"You have the answers I want," she demanded. "Show me now!"
She was standing at her door, about to lock it for the night. Only a fool left the doors unlocked. But as she was sliding the bolt home, she felt somebody slam into the other side. Not as though they were trying to batter it down, but rather as though they expected it to open and walked into it when it didn't. Azula rolled her eyes, knowing it could only be one person, and opened the door back up again. One hand cupped over her nose, but not diminishing the brilliant grin in the slightest, was Ty Lee.
"So you came after all," Azula said, opening the door. Ty Lee bounced in, that smile brightening up the room. It wasn't the first time Ty Lee had shown up in Azula's room at an hour usually reserved for assassins and Azuli, or those that were a combination of both. In fact, it wasn't even the hundredth. Ty Lee, in the truest, most unquantifiable sense of the word, was the first, and truest friend Azula had ever been able to make. "I have to thank you for... introducing me to Kenta. I think it's the first time one didn't run away in fear as soon as they saw me."
"Of course I'd do that for you," Ty Lee said. But there was something behind those big brown eyes, something not usually in the acrobatic noble's repertoire. Regret. "Azula... I think we need to talk."
"About what?" Azula said, sitting on her bed. Ty Lee paced on the floor before her, fiddling with her fingers as she tried to come up with the proper way of saying it. Ty Lee might have always had a good heart – until she betrayed me, the elder Azula interjected into her own thoughts – but her brain was a bit more suspect. "Could you stop pacing? It's distracting," she said in the not-entirely-serious way she did around her and Mai.
Ty Lee got a hang-dog expression briefly, like she'd done something unforgivable instead of merely a faux pas. "I'm... leaving," Ty Lee said quietly. There was a sinking feeling in Azula's chest.
"What do you mean, leaving?" Azula asked, hollowly.
"I'm leaving my home," she said. Her eyes welled up. "I can't stand it there anymore! It's like I don't even have my own name! The spirits know I already don't have my own face!"
"Calm down. It's going to be alright," Azula said, not entirely comfortable trying to placate somebody, even if it was her dearest friend. But still there lurked a hint of betrayal. Ty Lee was leaving her. Just like Mother.
"Don't do that," Ty Lee said. "Your aura just went all blue there for a second. Blue is a bad color."
"Ever since you trained with Piandao, you were always a bit... batty," Azula said, trying to seem light and airy, and par for the course, failing miserably, sounding horribly artificial. "I... am glad that you saw fit to inform me. I would have hated to have learned about this from a letter you sent from wherever it is you're go..."
Azula was cut off when Ty Lee's tongue unexpectedly went down her throat. Her first instinct was, of course, to struggle free and demand answers, but this was like most of Ty Lee's embraces; you got out when she let you. And by the time Ty Lee let her, she didn't want to anymore. There was a look in the girl's eyes, one which she could almost see reflected back in herself. A hunger. A need. A lust that even the thirteen year old Azula couldn't mistake for anything else. A goodbye which would never be forgotten. Even the elder Azula still remembered what came next. Awkward, definitely. They were both as girls, and neither had a clue what they were doing. But it wasn't embarrassing. Azula felt... warmly... about that night. As the girl closed her eyes, pulling the oldest friend, turned sudden lover close–
Terror.
Blood.
The Embiar Boy, a smoking hole through his chest.
"Run! Get out while you still can!" Azula's hoarse voice screamed. Azula stumbled to a halt. She was in her room again. Her back felt afire, and every whisper of her robe across her back was most exquisite agony. Her skin was anemically pale. Everybody was giving her a very wide berth. She looked down at her forearms. There were not scars. There were scabs. Fresh, jagged, brutal scabs, dried blood holding scraps of skin together. She felt numb. Hollowed out. And it all started here. In her bedroom. With a roar of unspeakable rage, she bent, and the brilliant azure fire danced at her command, searing out and utterly consuming everything in the room, burning the black rock blacker, evaporating the paint, melting the gold inlays into misshapen lumps, reducing even the stone pillars holding up the canopy of her bed to runny, molten-candle-esque stumps. Tears flowed from her eyes as her dervish of destruction consumed the last thing in easy reach. She slowly, unsteadily hobbled to the lavatory off of her room, and looked at herself in the mirror.
That harridan stared back at her. The weeping Azula. She was a monster.
She screamed, and punched the mirror, raining down shattered glass.
"Enough! I can't deal with this anymore," Azula said, reaching behind her and grasping that strand. She pulled, and found herself pulled from her own body. And after another tug, pulled out of the dream completely. The division put a comfortable distance between herself and the agony, which she still couldn't understand. Had she been injured? If it was simple injury, why had she felt such shame? She was standing in that room again. This time, there were four windows, one of them once again black and muffled, the other three the memories she had encountered before. She glanced around. So this was her mind, was it? Hmm. She expected something more high-class. As she sat, there happened to be an acceptably comfortable chair, and she patiently waited to awaken.
She never noticed the red-haired man watching her from the darkness, a grin on his face.
Azula started snoring a little. Contrary to what she would have others believe, she was actually a little adorable when she was sleeping. She must have been actually putting forth an effort to make herself seem more frightening, to compensate for when she was asleep. Of course, Chan didn't like the way Ked was touching her, but also contrary to popular belief, Chan wasn't an idiot. The barbarian had a healthy respect – no, that wasn't exactly right. He had a healthy fear of Azula, so he would do nothing inappropriate. Ked glanced over, beheld Chan, and slowly slid away from where he had been sitting, cradling Azula's head on his knees like a pillow, glowing hands on either side of her head. She kept sleeping, muttering something incoherent before turning away from the door, and the snoring picked up again.
"You're treading dangerous ground," Chan said.
"I'm trying to help her," Ked said with a shrug. He looked tired. Actually, the barbarian looked exhausted, but there was no telling how long he had been in there working his magic water. "I just hope that I managed to do some good for her. It's all up to her, now."
Ked went, not toward his room, but out the wheelhouse door, leaning beside that portal, looking to the moon which was hanging near the horizon. The sun would be rising soon. Daybreak. "You're going well above the call of duty with this 'service' thing," Chan commented.
"I am, ain't I?" Ked muttered.
Chan nodded, pacing to the rail and back. "And there's a reason for that, isn't there?"
"Well, I'm trying to protect the people I care about," Ked said. "If I don't deliver Azula, my family..."
"That's not it," Chan said, wedging his fingers together. "I've seen when people get blackmailed. They perform, yeah, but with resentment and bitterness. I haven't seen either of those in you. You want to do this."
"And here I was starting to think Azula was right and you were an idiot," Ked said with a small smile. Chan tightened his jaw, but decided not to slug the little bastard for insulting him. Ked was sleep deprived. That entitled him to one freebie.
"So. Why?"
"Does it matter?"
"Don't you pull that trick and turn the questions around on me," Chan said. "Why are you doing this?"
Ked let out a low sigh. "Because she's worth saving," he answered quietly.
"If I find you're doing anything inappropriate..."
"Why does everybody feel the need to say that today?" Ked asked, scowling. "I get it, she's royalty, I'm a barbarian; I don't need it drilled into my head. Besides, she's perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Most of the time."
Chan was about to launch into the rest of his lecture anyway, but he heard a scraping sound, one that he, as a soldier, was extremely familiar with. The whisper of sharp metal against leather. His eyes went wide and he managed to flinch just enough that the plunging knife which would have split his head like a coconut instead dug hard into his shoulder. He didn't even bother shouting in pain – and there was a great deal of pain – instead focusing on throwing his head back into the assassin, smashing the jaw even before the assailant finished landing. If there was one good thing about having, as Chan's instructors always said, 'a thick head', it made headbutting a useful proposition. Chan turned, that dagger still lodged in his back, and elbowed hard into the man's liver, doubling him over. With his one useful hand, he grabbed the man's – no, wait, it was a woman who'd stabbed him – face and slammed it back into the bulkhead, once, twice, and with a sickening crunch, a third and final time.
Chan looked up, and Ked was inching away on his back, hand clasped over a bleeding wound in his side, as three others quickly circled him. So Chan obviously wasn't the target. The killers were all dressed in dark colors, but not like those of locals. Not even Azuli dressed like this. They were wearing robes, of a green so dark it was almost black in the dim light. Their feet were also bare, silent against the metal deck.
Chan had seen enough. He regretted the decision as he made it, but he used the wall behind him to lever the knife in his back to a position where he could grab it, then hurled it at one of the killers circling Ked. It struck him in the hamstring, causing him to stumble and leave himself open. Chan followed through with a strong, focused bolt of flame which slammed into his chest, knocking him back so hard that he struck with a brutal snap against the rail, almost bending double backwards, before slipping over and falling into the water.
So far not so much as a word had been spoken, the only sounds being Ked's clipped cry of alarm, and the sounds of two men dying in silence. One of the two remaining turned from Ked, and punched toward Chan. He expected a bolt of flame to launch at him, and moved into a twist block, but instead, a fist of stone slammed into his wrist, dragging it away and pinning it behind him. The other hand struck forward, and a second fist flew to join the first. But Chan learned from his disastrous 'Sokka Kai' against Wang Fire, and most importantly, learned not to make the same mistake over and over. He tipped back, kicking out with a foot and letting flame blast from his heel. It smashed the stone hand as it flew.
And Chan was also, as he appeared, an extremely strong man. The assassin's eyes widened a bit when Chan took two running strides forward, then twisted his entire body, using the assassin's earthbending against him. His spin put all of that energy into the laden fist which had been pinned behind him. While Chan was not a man of physics, he knew that something heavy always hurt more than something light, and something swung hard always punished more than something swung feebly. So when he swung his fist with both his own strength and the strength of the assassin's bending behind it, it landed with a brutal snap, caving in the man's collarbone.
The assassin, not to be put away so easily, lashed out once again, this time with something black covering his fingernails. It sliced through Chan's shirt and skin with contemptuous ease, and blood began to run down Chan's torso, on both sides now by his two wounds. Despite being now in the same boat as Chan in having only one usable arm, the killer lashed out again, striking at Chan's eyes. The firebender caught the strike, just in time, too. The claws cut shallowly at the skin at the corner of Chan's eye, the thumb so close it could almost touch his eyelashes.
Chan stomped the killer's foot, then kicked hard at the knee, buckling it. With the claws no longer in danger of tearing out one of Chan's eyes, he kicked hard into the gut of the killer, causing his feet to slide out from under him. Chan released the hand, then delivered a flaming punch to the face. The killer went still.
Chan looked up. One of them was standing behind Ked, a knife pressed to his neck. "Just let me kill the barbarian, and you won't see us again," the man said, his Huojian accented heavily.
"Put down the knife and I'll consider not killing you," Chan said.
"You had better listen to him. He is very good at killing things," the dangerous voice of Azula appeared behind Chan. He glanced to her, and she was staring past him. "So this is how it is? I remember a time not so long ago when you swore loyalty to me."
"We serve our master, not you," the assassin said, green eyes narrowing. "Don't get in our way."
"That's a problem," Azula said. "I can't let you kill him. I find him useful. I don't allow others to take anything that's mine. So drop the knife, or lose your life."
"No matter what you do, I'll still kill him," the assassin countered. "I can cut his throat as fast as a lightning strike. You can't stop me."
Azula stared at him, as she had the entire time. Like she was making a decision, or perhaps discovering that she'd made one. But the moment he mentioned lightning, a distant smirk came to her face. And the last sentence might as well have been spoken in satire, because his last word was punctuated by her pulling her right hand from behind her, to thrusting before. That half-arc was cut in lightning, following her arm and leaving a green afterimage in Chan's sight. It was launched in a fraction of a second, and a great thunderclap tore through the air between them as it connected with the almost hidden face of the killer almost instantly. The blade drew across Ked's neck, but not deep enough to open his veins completely. He collapsed to the deck, clasped over his wounds, as the killer fell back, a smoking hole in his head.
Azula was still in that pose, the sloppiest form she had ever known, her fingers thrust forward, but without any of the grace that the lightning Kata demanded. It had worked. She looked at the entire event again in her mind, trying to figure out why it had worked, but at the moment, the most baffling thing was that it had.
Chan was bleeding fairly heavily, but so was Ked. The Tribesman waved Chan's attention away from him as he worked with the water, making those glowing gloves, and pressed hard on the gouge across his neck. After about a minute, the members of the crew had started to pour onto deck, asking what happened. The three corpses were all the explanation they needed. Dai Li agents, all of them. Azula had worked with them before, when she'd briefly conquered the whole of Ba Sing Se, and by extension all of the East Continent. But she had sent them away, and they found a new master. Or rather, an old one. They were working for Long Feng again.
Azula stared silently, trying to grasp what it was she had done differently, as the sun began to peek over the horizon, filling her with renewed vigor and vitality. The sun was always a part of her life, one she could never ignore. It fed the fire which powered her. Without that fire, she was nothing. She knew it as clear as day.
They had been sent to kill Ked. But why? To remove him from the equation. It was the simplest answer. Ked represented an unknown factor, a wildcard which nobody wanted to deal with. Thus, Long Feng took the simplest solution, and sent somebody to kill him. Somebody who failed, but only barely. The cynical part of her, that part which usually spoke in the voice of that disheveled double, asked why she even bothered saving him. An equally cynical but distinct part of her answered it was so that she may properly jab that smug bastard in the eye at any opportunity she could find. Never mind that he was helpful, and loyal. And he made her mind obey her again. And let her remember happier times...
Oddly, even knowing what she knew now about her mother, there was still a lingering sense of bitterness, resentment, and anger. Lacking the background she thought she had, it was a puzzle as to why Azula would feel this way, even now. She didn't like when things were out of place, and this was decidedly out of place. Ursa was proud of her, proud of her warrior child. So why did Azula still feel a desire to scream at her until her lungs bled?
Her eyes snapped up at the other firebender when she realized he'd addressed her. She chided herself for her obliviousness and put on an impatient expression. "What is it now?"
"They found the boat these bastards came aboard on," Chan said. "We know what they were here for. But we don't know why, and who sent them."
"Long Feng," Azula said simply. He looked a bit confused. "He's an old foe of mine, still bitter that I outplayed him in a game, a long time ago."
Chan scoffed. "Then he needs to find a less competitive hobby."
Azula turned inward again. New memories, effortlessly sliding into place where other things had been brutally shoved in before. Mama. Somehow, despite everything she thought she knew, Mama actually did care about her. Those... hallucinations, they were memories, trying to surface, Azula trying to remember the things her mother had said to her years before, but skewed for the shift of context. One thing Azula still couldn't remember was what she was talking about with Ty Lee before she left. Who the hell was Kenta? And why did she suddenly remember Father striking her when she was a child?
And none of that, either in parts or together, explained how she got her lightning back.
Ked was limping by, blood soaking his clothing and dyeing it a hideous color. He paused at her side, staring at her with those very dark blue eyes. "Thank you," he said quietly, and tentatively, as though afraid to open the wound at his throat. "You didn't have to do that."
But some part of her knew she had. And then, a piece slid into place. Why she had lost her lightning, and why she had gotten it back. She lost it because she tried to use it to kill her second oldest friend. The conflict that caused her, the imbalance it bore, the pointlessness and needless brutality of it, all drove a schism into her control. And when she got it back, right this minute... The law of parsimony was clear. The simplest solution, all other things being equal, is the correct one. If the reason she lost her lightning was because she tried to use it to kill one of her friends, then perhaps she got it back... because she wanted to protect one.
Fire Lord Zuko stared down at the map arrayed before the Burning Throne. Of course, since the first day of Zuko's reign, the name was something of a misnomer; he didn't ignite a veil of fire to separate himself from the masses. That was his predecessors' way of doing things, but not his. "So how many are we talking about here?" Zuko asked.
"All of them," Yeh-Lu, a long-time soldier who had accepted his amnesty, said. She pointed out out along the entire Ember Archipelago, and and aide hovering nearby began to lay out markers. "As far as I can tell, every single military unit based in or stationed in the Ember provinces has gone into a state of open rebellion."
"That's..." Zuko shook his head.
"Unfortunate," Mai said coldly at his side. The older of the generals, those who had served in Ozai's administration but accepted the amnesty, had protested loudly at Zuko's inclusion of the Fire Lady in military matters. But he would have it no other way. "Confusing, too. Ember wouldn't rebel without something to rally around. We still have Ozai sitting in a cell, so..."
"They have my sister," Zuko said darkly.
"Indeed," Lee, one of the younger generals said. He pointed to the garrisons down the chain. "She could be anywhere, but the standing belief is that this is her doing."
"She will strike, and soon," Mai said, rubbing a hand over her belly, staring at that map. "If I know Azula, and I think that I do, it will come from a direction we won't see coming," Mai turned to her husband. "Which is why I already started assembling a fighting force to be stationed in the Crater City until further notice."
"This is highly unusual," Colonel Yoto said loudly. "The Fire Lady has no authority to..."
"This isn't a matter of if I may raise an army, Yoto. It is a matter that I already have," Mai said coldly. Yoto blustered, but returned to his seat. Zuko gave her a quiet, private smile. She had found herself the most powerful Fire Lady in recent history, and Zuko, as often stated, would have it no other way. For all intents and purposes, it meant that he could be in two places at once.
"The only question becomes, what does my sister have planned?" Zuko said, leaning forward. "If she is as cunning as I think, there may be little we can do to stop her."
The swearing was quite vehement from the sacked room in Grand Ember. The riots had died down, and now, soldiers were walking the streets, and the people threw flowers down at them as they passed. Soldiers in electric blue armor. Vachir didn't care about politics. Not really. The only good part about them was that the back-room dealing of the high meant there was a steady stream of targets for Vachir to practice on.
Mongke finally emerged from the room, wearing only his pants. "This had better be good, Vachir. I was enjoying myself."
"You might enjoy this, too," Vachir said with a ophidian grin. "We've located the actress. The troublesome one probably won't be needed at all."
Mongke pondered briefly, before a smirk came to his face. "This is good news. Retrieve her at once. Take Ogedai."
Vachir turned, but Mongke's hand clasped over his shoulder. "And one more thing. If you ever interrupt my fun again, I take it out on your face. Understood?"
It only made Vachir's grin grow wider. "Oh, I'm looking forward to it."
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