Switch: ii. Stone Heart

Author: overlithe

Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender

Characters/Pairing(s): Azula, Ursa, Zuko, Ozai; gen

Rating: M

Summary: Earth Kingdom!Azula AU. Ba Sing Se falls in a hail of fire when she is thirteen, and the Lady Zula escapes with her brother and mother. Zula swears retribution… but before she can have her vengeance, she has to stay alive in a war-torn land. Very, very loosely based on the Snow White fairy tale. Rated M for violence, warfare, death, and other mature themes. Written for au_bigbang 2012.

Word Count: 26,800

Two

'Wake up! Wake up!'

'Wha'?' Her mouth and eyes were leaden with sleep. Something shook her and she snapped awake. A pile of fabric tumbled off the mattress as she scrambled out of the bed.

'Take only what you can carry.' Her head turned towards the voice. The man standing in the bedroom's doorway wore the uniform and hat of a Dai Li, but she was sure he couldn't have finished his training yet. He looked like he was barely old enough to grow a beard. 'I am Agent Choi, Lady Zula. I will protect you, but we must h—'

The floor shook. Stone dust rained from the ceiling. There was still a low, distant rumble as Agent Choi took a step into the room. 'We must leave now.'

Zula began slipping on the clothes someone had thrown on the bed, thought coming too slow and thick to let her care that she was doing it in front of a man and a stranger. He wasn't looking at her, anyway; he kept stealing glances at the room behind him. Mother darted into the bedroom with Zuko in tow, two satchels hanging from her hands.

'Please hurry,' Choi said, and another rumble came, this time so close and loud Zula felt the ground under her feet shake and she had to bend the floor to keep herself from tripping over her own trousers. She heard a sharp chord of glass breaking.

The next few moments came only as splinters.

Thinking It's too soon, over and over. It's only been a week. I haven't had time to— The travel clothes put on so fast Zula felt fabric rip. Mother shoving things in her satchels, stuffing bracelets in Zuko's pockets and gold and ivory chopsticks down her sleeves once the bags were full. Agent Choi, grabbing Ursa's arm and shouting 'No time!' The last thing Zula did was dig up the book and shove it under her padded jacket. She didn't care who saw.

They rushed outside, her over-stuffed clothes jingling with each step. She would have laughed if her own hand hadn't clamped itself on her mouth. Mother's hand hooked her arm and dragged her forward.

'This way, Lady Ursa,' Agent Choi said, and guided them through the palace paths.

Outside the sky was burning, pale orange at midnight. There were screams, shouts, the roar of explosions. She looked over her shoulder, at the spot where she could see the city through a gap in the walls. The sky was dotted with the flying machines, fire pouring down from their bellies, filling the air with the stench of smoke. On the ground she could see something moving and the glint of metal; it took her a second to realise it was soldiers and tanks. Her side, because there was no war in Ba Sing Se, until there was.

Something jostled her and she nearly went down with a squeal. Coins spilled on the ground. She drew herself up, the earth shaking under her, ready to be launched at the enemy. Instead, Zuko took her hand, and a second later Agent Choi grabbed her and tucked her under one arm like she was an errant pet. Before she could protest, another explosion rocked the ground. 'Come on, there's no time to lose,' Choi said, and they rushed deeper into the palace complex. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a large flying machine, hovering fatly above the Inner Wall like an oversized firefly. Specks dropped from it in gracious peaswan dives. A second later flowers of debris and fire burst through the Wall, the explosions intense enough that she could feel them under her feet, even at this distance. Rock projectiles hit the flying machine, tearing it as if it were made of paper. Fire ripped through it, consuming it in an instant as it drifted towards the ground. Good, she thought, and felt a bout of nausea as the Dai Li agent released her. It was the smell, had to be the smell—it smelled like the entire city had decided to roast some—

The ground opened in front of them. 'Let's go,' Choi said, and ushered them down the ramp before he dropped into another stance to close the ground behind them.

Down, down, down. Father had made her memorise the entire layout of the tunnels under the city, but she had never been in this part, and right now, under the syrupy light of the glowing crystals, she couldn't quite remember where this area fit in. Mother clamped her hands on her and Zuko's shoulders and ushered them onwards. Choi opened and closed walls as they moved. The explosions grew softer and softer until they were only distant rumbles. After a while the crystals ended. Choi lit a small lantern.

Left, right, down, right, right, right. Sometimes they heard footsteps and Choi tensed until someone in a Dai Li or military uniform came into sight, sometimes with little clumps of civilians behind them. More than once they stopped to confer for a few seconds. Zula threw a contemptuous look at an older girl who sobbed quietly, not even bothering to wipe the tears and snot streaking her face.

After a while they stopped running into other people. Words clotted under her tongue. Where are we going? Are we running away? Choi stopped abruptly and she nearly rammed into him. The words dropped back into her stomach.

'Shh,' he said. Zula looked around, trying to listen. They were in a corridor so deep in the earth the walls glistened with cold under the lamplight. Outside the bubble of light there was only darkness.

'I can't hear—' she began, but he shushed her again. She would have said something sharp, but still it got stuck in her throat. Now that they were no longer moving, pain and tiredness started to creep into her body.

Was there something—? Something faint. Footsteps?

Choi opened a thin wall hiding a chamber, small enough that the light from the lantern bumped right away into its walls. 'Wait here,' he said, and handed the lantern to Ursa.

'How about you?' she asked.

'I'll manage. I'll be right back. Don't bend this open for anyone,' he said, and sealed the alcove behind him.

They waited. After a while the alcove filled with the scent of burned oil. Mother rearranged the things in the satchels. Zula edged closer to where Zuko was sitting, his arms propped on his knees, and asked him if he was afraid. He stopped staring at the spot between his shoes long enough to say 'No.'

'Me neither,' she said, but without much satisfaction. All she could focus on was the lantern's spluttering light on the ground. Mother whispered 'don't worry, don't worry,' over and over, like the clicking of prayer beads.

Like it made any difference.

'We need to get out of here,' Ursa said, after a while. Zula looked up. She couldn't tell how much time had passed. Her body felt bloodless, the bones rusted, brittle with cold. Thirst came roaring back as she caught sight again of the damp filming the walls.

Mother stepped up to where the entrance had been and listened for a long time. Maybe there was no longer anything beyond the alcove, Zula thought, only miles and miles of stone, and they were the last people in the world, locked in the embrace of the earth with only the dying light for company. She found the thought almost comforting.

Ursa bended the wall open, returned for the lantern and stepped out. 'Come on,' she said. Zula followed, sinews and muscles creaking.

Footsteps sounded in the darkness of the corridor. Ursa stopped.

'Agent Choi?' she whispered, and raised the lantern. The darkness retreated no more than a fraction. Still the footsteps came, louder, tap-tap-tap. 'Agent Choi?'

A face lunged into view. Ursa almost dropped the lantern; the light bobbed. Scarlet-and-black uniform, glint of amber. Strike, the rush of blood told Zula, but her body remained stuck in place, as though she were watching a play—

unable

—forbidden to intervene.

'What are you doing here?' the Fire Nation soldier said. His accent sounded odd, Zula noticed, the thought floating placidly above her head. And his eyes—

'Stand back!' Ursa yelled, lantern raised like a shield in front of her. The soldier kept advancing on them.

'I'm not going to hurt you,' he said. His hand darted out to grab Zuko's arm. 'You will come with me now.'

A chunk of floor rose with Ursa's motion and swept the soldier's leg. He spun down, mouth open in surprise, but landed on his hand and knee and lobbed a fireball. Ursa dodged, dropped the lantern as it erupted in a plume of flame, dodged another strike that sunk into the wall with a burst of stone chunks, and jumped forward in the Camelephant Kick. The wall moved sideways to trap the soldier, who groaned and pushed a wave of fire towards Ursa. A handful hit her leg. She yelped but rushed through it, a lump of floor already rising at her side. A single strike sent it flying at the soldier's head. He tried to dodge, but his trapped leg caught him; his eyes widened before the rock hit him straight on, knocking him to the floor. His arms flailed. Fire spluttered in his hands. Zula could barely see him with her mother's body in the way, but she could see Ursa's hands rise again and the rock slab lift off the soldier's head before coming down again, harder. There was a strangled yelp and a loud crunch, like the sound of someone stepping on a snail-beetle. The soldier's body bucked once, twice. His hands twitched again, but this time only wisps of smoke rose up.

Ursa drew back, panting. Her right leg dragged a little, and Zula could see a patch of blistered skin where the fire had torn through her mother's trousers. On the ground, the soldier stilled. Zula took a step forward, her body suddenly free. Her innards knotted uncomfortably.

'Don't look,' Ursa said, and inched forward in a crouch until she was next to the body. She began rifling through the uniform. 'Zuko, get our satchels, there are things here we can use.'

Zuko remained still, the light from the lantern on the floor making him look a little jaundiced.

'Zuko,' Ursa repeated, and this time he moved.

Zula took another step. A necklace had spilled from her mother's clothes and one of the beads lay next to the body, close to where the neck disappeared under the rock. There was a little spill of blood, looking almost like oil in the firelight, much smaller than Zula would have anticipated. She stared at it as if it contained some great secret. Here and there, it was dotted with pink-stained whitish flecks. The air was full of the smell of smoke, but underneath there was a faint thread of salt. A hand twitched again, disjointed. She froze in place but mother ignored it as she unhooked the pouch on the body's waist. Then the body stilled. You couldn't mistake it for sleep, Zula was sure; there was some limp absence there, like in a rag-doll left in a heap on the floor. I could have done that, she thought. I should have done that. Bile pooled under her tongue.

Her head whipped up. There were more footsteps somewhere in the tunnels, coming in their direction. 'Come on!' Ursa said. In an instant she had retrieved the satchels and the lanterns and was ushering Zula and Zuko forward. 'Come on!' she hissed again, and bended the corridor walls shut behind them.

Soon the other footsteps faded and there were only their own as they moved deeper into the maze. Soon Zula stopped thinking of the soldier and how her mother—

how was it her?

—had dealt with him. There were only walls and ground and ceiling, constant grey-green rock. All she could think of was the map she had memorised, and after a while she stopped trying to match it to what she was seeing. A maze with a monster lurking inside it. Later still the map unravelled, blurred under the sweat pricking her eyes. The pain in her feet faded into a dull ache. It felt like they had been walking forever, the labyrinth of tunnels stretching to fill the world. If they ever emerged there would be only a rain of fire and a plain of ashes.

'Where are we going?' she asked.

Ursa didn't slow down. 'Out.'

'And then?'

'I don't know.'

'Where is Agent Choi?'

'I don't know.'

After that Zula didn't say anything.

The water in the dead soldier's flask was the first thing to run out, split between the three of them. Zula didn't feel hungry, but she couldn't help but feel a tightness in her belly when mother bended a door into a hidden cache of food only to find out it had been cleaned out already. Only a few scraps of dried fruit and meat, so tough it was like biting into leather, remained behind. Still, once Zula swallowed her share, hunger rushed back like an eel-dog in the last stretch of a race, overtaking pain, overtaking thirst, overtaking even the stiffness of exhaustion in her muscles. The dried peaches felt like she'd swallowed a stone.

The last thing to run out was the oil in the lantern. Mother had carefully dosed the additional oil they had taken, and for a while Zula had tried to measure time by it. She had no idea, however, of how fast lamp oil burned, if they had been walking for five hours, or fifteen, or fifty. They stopped as the flame began stuttering, darkness rippling around them as the light shrank. The moment they stood still pain ebbed back into her feet.

'We need fuel,' Ursa said. Held under her chin, the lamplight made her face look like a drumskin stretched over bone.

'Our clothes,' Zula said. Mother shook her head.

'No, they'd just smother the flame. We need something like oil, or wood, or—'

'Paper?' Zuko asked.

Zula looked at him.

'Zula has paper.'

No. He must have seen her stow the book away.

'Give it to me,' mother said.

Zula said nothing, suddenly very aware of the press of the book's corner against one of her ribs.

The flame blinked in its death throes again. 'If you don't give me the paper,' Ursa said, 'we'll be in the dark, and I'm not sure if I can find our way in the dark, do you understand?'

The words were hard, but they weren't what made Zula reach wordlessly into her jacket and pull out her father's book. It was her mother's face, shadow-pared, the eyes turned from green into twin shards of basalt. It was as if the soft, clucking-with-disappointment face her mother had worn on the surface were no more than a mask of flesh, something to be torn away in the underground.

Ursa fed the book into the lantern, page by page. As they walked Zula pictured the words and the images, sighing in the thread of smoke. After half a book's length—it was easier to measure time in chapters—they began moving upwards again, the rise in the ground almost imperceptible at first. They were a handful of pages away from the end when the rumble started, soft, then louder and louder. They must be close to the river, Zula thought: the walls were furry-green with moss.

The lamp went out again, but this time Ursa did not seem to care. 'Follow my voice,' she said. 'We're getting out.'

Zula inched forward, guiding herself by touch.

'This way.'

Rock moved and parted, and under the noise Zula could hear her mother's breath. She was bending them an exit, Zula realised, but the thought was stillborn. All she could focus on was on following her mother up the pitching, rising ground, the cloud of dust stinging her eyes and nostrils. She couldn't even wonder about her mother's earthbending training; until tonight—

last night last week

—Ursa had never used it for anything, or at least not anything that mattered.

A cold slap of water wrung out a shriek. The ground was slippery, but she kept moving, first walking, then crawling on all fours, clawing upwards through the mud and the dark. Sunlight opened in front of her. Half-choked, she went on, hands scrabbling for purchase, and finally squeezed out of the ground, slick with mud.

She brushed her hair away from her face and looked around, squinting in the sudden sunlight like a wolf-bat. They were in the river bank, outside the Outer Wall, wedged between the stone edge of the pier and squat fishing huts.

Around them, the world had gone mad.

The locks controlling and protecting the river flow as it exited the city, slabs of stone so large she felt a little dizzy looking up at them even at this distance, had been partly blown up. Boat-sized wedges of rock had fallen into the water. The locks were half-open, holes ripped into them, gears the size of houses spilling out like the innards of a dead animal. The stretch of water—silver still in the autumn light; the sun was indifferent—cradled burning ships. A sunken hull floated upside down. Beyond it, a gutted barge had burned so thoroughly only a few tongues of flame remained in the crumbling black wood. Zula took half a step forward. One of her shoes made a squelching noise. An enormous cloud of smoke filled the air above Ba Sing Se and beyond the Wall there were still sounds of battle, not the clear ringing she had pictured before, but the sound of a landslide, a thick, muddy sound that made her bones ache. She looked back at the water, stained here and there with dark patches, dotted with debris.

No, not debris, she realised. Corpses. One of them floated facedown only a few yards away, flesh burned to scarlet and black flowers. Under the water, limbs looked bloated, skin bleached into grey. The air was full of that sweet, roasting goat-pig smell, so strong a fist of hunger clenched inside her again and for a moment she was sure she was going to be sick. Starbursts of colour filled her vision. She rubbed her face, turned back to her mother. Out of the corner of her eye she could still see the plain beyond the river, crowded with Fire Nation encampments. A huge throng of soldiers and tanks and siege engines still poured into the breached city, covered the ground like a mass of stinger-ants. They had already won, she realised. Otherwise they would not be so orderly.

'Come on,' Ursa said. Zula followed, and tried not to breathe in the scent. She was sure lye soap and nearly boiling water would not be enough to get rid of it.

The hillock next to the river bank was, at least, not crawling with soldiers, so there was no one to stop them as they darted around the pilings pock-marked with water and barnacles, up the thorny bushes and the deserted fishing huts with their unkempt walls and windows like gouged eyes. As they climbed up a winding path the sole of Zula's shoe ripped open and tipped her out of balance. She straightened up, ready to bat away any offer of help, but instead of a hand, a shadow fell upon her. She spun around.

A lizard creature stared at her, its head larger than hers. The tip of a forked tongue darted out and vanished in a wink. Zula looked up at the Fire Nation soldier riding the thing, his face hidden behind the skull-like visor. A speartip winked at his side.

More of the ash-heads' repulsive creatures clambered towards the three of them. In an instant, they were surrounded. The lizard things snorted, wisps of smoke rising from their nostrils; vertical eyelids blinked. There was no point in fighting, Zula knew, and forced her muscles to relax a fraction. Mother raised her hands, but of course that did not prove she had no weapons; the soldiers remained watchful. Most of them had their visors up and Zula could tell—she almost doubted it at first—quite a few were women, even if she could barely see the swell of breasts and hips under the padded uniforms.

'We won't hurt you,' one of the women said. Same words, same lilting, clipped-edge accent. Can't they say anything else? Zula thought. They're like talking automatons. Yes, she could believe that—that all the Fire Nation soldiers were like big clockwork toys—

bloodied gears spilled

—who wouldn't stop hacking and slashing until they came unwound or their springs rusted.

'We know you're civvies—civilians,' the soldier corrected herself, as if they were too stupid to understand. Her lizard mount snorted, skittered. She reigned it in. 'You have to come with us right now.'

Before Zula could react, her mother's hand clamped on her arm. The three of them climbed the hillside, boxed in by the lizard-creatures. Zula looked at the ash-heads from under her eyelashes. Their faces were expressionless, but behind her she could hear chatter, the unworried sounds of someone talking about the weather, or the roads, or travel. As he stepped over a rock, Zuko slipped back and one of the lizard-things nudged him forward. Ursa pulled him to her side. Zula was sure that she could hear a clap of laughter.

They emerged into a stretch of scrubland where a large number of tents had already been set up like fungus sprouting after rain. The noise deepened. A crowd of people was fenced in by a regiment of soldiers, metal chains as thick as her arm, huge pots heavy with flame. There was shouting, crying, the braying of animals. A rhino mount growled behind her and she startled. A spray of saliva and chewed-up hay hit her. She edged away from the thing, turned back to the crowd as the soldiers pushed them towards one of the tents. Most of the faces were blank, shades of bronze and brown rendered identical by ash. An eye peered at her from a layer of stained bandages. Further ahead, a soldier pushed a woman towards the barriers. She cried out at the blow and sent a chunk of stone flying towards him. In a second, a knot of soldiers were upon her. Flames rippled up. When the soldiers pulled back, the woman was bound in an elaborate trap of metal shackles, mud-matted hair hiding her face from view.

Ursa whispered something Zula couldn't quite make out and pulled her closer. The mounted soldiers boxed them in tighter, hiding almost everything from view. Zula tried to crane her neck to see, but everything was blocked but the noise and the smell: the sour-sweet smell of burned flesh was muffled by the smoke from the fire pits and the stink of animals.

She could still feel it.

The mounted soldiers herded them towards a patch of land next to a tent, then rode away. Before Zula could do anything, another woman in Fire Nation armour strode towards them. She wasn't wearing a helmet, so Zula could see her brown eyes, the hair pulled back into a tight knot. She probably would fit in almost any place in the Earth Kingdom—the stray thought was uncomfortable, and Zula thought back to the few lessons she'd had about the Fire Nation, how it had filled up with people who had not minded the ravages of the heat and the jungle and angry volcanoes, who had not minded leaving their ancestral lands in search of some feverish, lawless dream of gold. Losing—

dying

—to such people was like being savaged by a pig-sheep.

'No injuries? Good, good,' the woman said, in a voice of someone examining heads of cattle. 'The Fire Lord will take care of you. Just wait until you get sorted out and get your papers.'

Ursa's hand shot out, grabbed the soldier's wrist. 'Please. Please just let us go.'

The woman's face hardened. A strike was coming, Zula could tell, and all of a sudden the ache and tiredness flowed away. What if they find out who you are? Because they will, they will know what your names are, they will know who your father is—

was

—and you can't just pretend you're some merchant family and what do you think will happen when they— Zula's muscles tightened into a bright point of pain. Under her skin, the blood felt like glass. She wasn't afraid, she couldn't be afraid, not afraid, not afraid—

'Don't be an idiot,' the soldier said, not bothering to hide the menace.

Ursa released her, dug hurriedly into one of her satchels. 'Wait.' Her hand emerged, bearing something wrapped in fabric. A sliver of green was visible under the cloth. 'This is an uncut emerald,' Ursa said. She was no longer begging. She was using the tunnels' voice again, her face forbiddingly empty. 'You have to know how much it's worth. I ask—' She didn't sound like she was asking. '—that you find a way to let us go.'

The soldier was silent for a while, twin green glints in her eyes. Finally, she pocketed the emerald with a quick grimace. 'Wait here,' she said, and walked away.

The three of them huddled in the tent's shadow, as if that would keep them out of sight. The fabric snapped in a sudden gust of wind, and Zula was sure she could smell sweet dough frying. She wasn't afraid. She wasn't tired, or in pain. All there was right now was hunger, filling up her stomach, pushing painfully into her lungs, her throat. Her mouth would water if it weren't so dry her tongue stuck to its roof. 'Do you really think she's coming back?' she snapped. Zuko elbowed her. 'Shut up,' he whispered. She turned towards him, razor-words at the ready, but mother shushed them.

The woman soldier was walking back towards them, looking a bit more well disposed than before. The expression was disconcerting on an ash-head's face. 'Here,' she said, and pushed a sheaf of papers into Ursa's hands, the white bloodied with scarlet stamps. A corner was torn, as if they had been ripped out of someone else's hands. Who cares? Zula told herself. She didn't. She didn't.

The soldier bowed to her, making a strange gesture with her hands. 'Welcome to the Fire Nation, citizens.'

:=:

They only stopped walking once the enormous throng of soldiers began to thin, having made their way through thickets and fields and streams and overgrown paths, the gaps in the networks of roads and fields that surrounded the city like planets circling a star. Mother let her satchels drop to the ground, then deflated against the trunk of a tree. Zuko limped a little, then dropped to the ground.

I am the only one standing, Zula thought, then looked at her feet. Something oozed from her shoes. She sat down on the grass—

this shouldn't be here not like this clean grass old oak tree as if nothing had happened

—and peeled off one shoe gingerly. The leather was worn in places, the stitching ripped here and there. Patches of skin came off from her feet, almost without pain. She tipped the shoes onto the grass; the ooze was blood. The other shoe fell apart as soon as she touched it. Her feet were streaked with mud, but even so she could see the blisters that had burst and bled then swelled again, the bruise-coloured crack running down one of her nails.

She still felt no pain.

'Your father is dead,' Ursa said, then lifted her face from her hands. 'I'm sorry.'

Why? You didn't kill him. The thought drifted over the grass, floated upwards. Zula considered laughing, but now the pain was coming, first in trickles, then gushes. Her throat felt like it was coated in broken glass.

Another thought, flitting after the first. We need little stones for his grave. In a circle for eternity, in a square for strength. Beyond the hillock, the plain still crawled with soldiers, but now they were in neater formations, marching into the torn city under black wings of smoke and ash.

'What are we going to do?' Zuko said. The ash on his face was streaked with tears, but he wasn't crying and his voice was still. Now that she thought about it, she'd never seen him cry. 'It's all—'

She wasn't crying either. Instead she floated leisurely above the pain, over this—

stupid little

—girl sitting on the grass, her bare feet bleeding, a bruise blooming on her shin, her eyes wide, her lips parted slightly, like a broken, surprised doll. There was no time, don't you understand? I could have done it but it was only a week, there was no time!

'—gone,' mother said, and let out a bone-deep sigh. 'I know, I know—I. We'll manage. We'll get through—and I—' Ursa's voice cracked and she fell silent, her hands balled so tight Zula was sure she must be digging bloody furrows into her palms. 'It'll be… all right.'

She didn't sound like she was trying to convince them, only herself, so Zula neither talked back nor rolled her eyes. She could do neither, she suspected; her tongue felt like sandpaper, her eyes like marbles.

It wasn't real, the floaty, flitty thought decided. It couldn't be: they were sitting on grass that was just starting to yellow, a tree with reddening leaves. Here and there, she could see insects, tiny jewels scattered on the ground. It was impossible that they were watching the greatest city in the world burning alive only a few hours' march away, filling the sky with a cloud so dark and thick it blocked out the sun.

She tried:

The Earth Kingdom has fallen.

No, the thought was too big. She had only seen the whole of the Earth Kingdom in maps, and so some little part of her had never quite believed it was wholly real. The mineral ink on the great maps, then: iridescent green marking the forests, the sinuous lines of rare cobalt blue. The true scarlet had not been retouched, and so it had faded. They did not trade for it anymore.

She tried again. Ba Sing Se is gone. No, that wouldn't do either. The ash-heads were savages and—

red and white twitching on the ground

—barbarians, but they were cunning enough. She was sure they meant to keep the city rather than burn it entirely to the ground. They did not care if they broke it. But they wouldn't annihilate it. Not completely.

Great-grandmother's mirror. No, that wouldn't do either. It had looked like an open, pupilless eye in its carved bronze and ivory frame, and some part of her had always found it—

frightening

—ugly. She didn't feel anything over its loss, over picturing its shards lying on the ground, maybe next to—

Father's books. The book he'd given her. She could feel the cover, still under her jacket, digging into her skin.

After their training sessions, father would let her drink some ginseng tea. He didn't care—hadn't cared—for it, but it was her favourite. She thought of the cups with their decorated rim, the carving so small she was sure it had to be done under a magnifying glass. The sweet steam was gone. The cups were gone.

The magic wheel. She had never really had any friends, had never felt either the need or the lack, but she'd had no choice but to visit with other well-born girls her age. At Lady Tai's house they had been ushered onto floor cushions laid out in front of a stretch of white fabric. They were to watch a magic wheel, she was told, and at that she'd replied with 'There's no such thing as magic.' But it wasn't magic—it was a thing of levers and spinning wheels and mirrors and in the darkened room the white sheet soon filled up with bright, moving pictures: ostrich-horses, an earthball game in which the ball suddenly sprouted wings, one-legged, one-eyed creatures that turned into fish. She pictured the white fabric catching fire, the creatures consumed in a shower of burning scales.

The wall scrolls mother had painted. Those were gone, too. She wondered if, in the heat, they had wept ink.

All her inkstones were gone too.

So were the brushes.

She had not done much to suppress her disappointment when mother had given her a pair of embroidered slippers for her twelfth birthday. She didn't have to be disappointed anymore, since they were gone. So was the spa where mother had taken her. The bubbling mineral water would have bubbled with a boil instead.

The food carts around the spa, selling cakes full of layers of fruit cream. Those were also gone.

Along with the pillars holding up the tram tracks, blown up in a shower of dust.

The pins she used to hold up her hair as she braided it.

The green curtains around her bed.

Gone.

She barely noticed her mother pulling her and Zuko into her arms. Zuko hugged Ursa. Zula didn't, but she didn't fight her embrace, either.

But she didn't cry.

She wouldn't.

She never did.

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TBC...