A/N: New chapter :) Thanks for reading!


"Daffodils… daffodils everywhere."

"How are you making that sound scary?"

Toph and Sokka strolled along the brick pathway that snaked through the palace gardens. Zuko had made the addition after his coronation. Sometimes, when she woke too early and couldn't find sleep again, Toph would come to the gardens and sit, listen to the trickle of the fountains, smell the rich, earthy air.

She brushed one of the yellow blossoms with her foot as she walked. "Seriously though, it's like all these flowers just popped up overnight. Don't you find that… odd?" She turned toward Sokka with an exaggerated lift of her brow.

"They're plotting something." Sokka stroked his chin with narrowed eyes and Toph gave a small laugh, smiling inwardly.

One early morning, several months before, Sokka had risen early by chance, and had found her there alone. They had sat on her stone bench for a while, the one nearest the fountain, and then walked the winding paths – talking, bantering, sometimes saying nothing at all – until the sun had finally breached the horizon.

Now, the first streaks of dawn stained the sky, painting the sleepy morning dew shades of pink and purple, a kaleidoscope of color in the haze. The palace would be waking soon, her blessed morning silence disrupted until the next time. And each time, she found herself anticipating his presence, hoping to see him. It had been infrequent at first, Sokka rarely being one to struggle with sleep. But the past month or two there had been an uptick – though she didn't dare let herself dream about why – and she often found him waiting at her bench.

This morning, he hadn't been there and Toph had felt her spirits sink. She had scolded herself for being dumb and pathetic, knowing full well he was engaged to Suki. Toph knew she couldn't be the reason he'd been coming more often. Most likely he just wasn't sleeping well since Suki had been away so much these last few months, something about obligations at home. Toph had dropped down on the cold stone bench, slumping forward onto her knees, feeling the clefts and divots in the brick path beneath her feet. Not long after, a hand had touched her shoulder and she'd looked up to see find standing there. She was sure she had smiled too wide, looked a measure too happy, but if she had, he hadn't seemed to notice.

Toph and Sokka slowed and came to a stop before another fountain, the mild summer breeze brushing the hair around her neck. She stole a glance at him and found him staring into the cascades of water. He looked pensive, preoccupied with something, a solemn crease between his brows. It was an odd look for him, out of place. She looked away and cleared her throat, searching for the right thing to say, when the pounding of footsteps raced through the courtyard out of view, coming closer fast. They spun around to see Zuko burst around the corner, trailed closely by Aang, both of them out of breath.

Toph took a step back and Sokka blinked in shock and alarm. Before either of them had time to ask, an avalanche of words was rushing from Zuko's mouth. Toph didn't follow it all but she caught enough to piece it together.

Ozai. Azula. Break out. Escaped.

Toph's heart nearly dropped into her stomach. Oh, this was not good. This was not good at all.

And the day had started so well.


Katara woke to the howl of the wind. The world seemed to sway, the ground beneath her rocking as her consciousness bobbed at the surface of awareness. Her bleary eyes opened heavily from where she lied, her face pressed against a dank wood floor. Katara blinked several times, her swimming vision finally coming back into focus. The world rocked again and there was a deep, guttural creaking from somewhere, and it dawned on her then. She was on a boat.

A burning ache throbbed through her shoulders, arms, and upper back. She groaned and tried to sit up but something chafed around the skin of her wrists and she remembered the bonds of rope clasping them behind her. Remembered lying helpless while Ozai had bound her, remembered his hilt colliding with her head, the sickening sound of it before she'd blacked out. A chill traveled up her spine. Where was Ozai now?

She groaned again and finally succeeded in sitting up, wincing at the way her pulse pounded through the wound in her head as she rested back against the cool wood-planked wall. Her entire body prickled with invisible needles, like a limb after falling asleep. Only this was decidedly more painful and spanned her entire body. At least the attack was wearing off. Her chi was returning.

Katara looked around the room – her prison – and it was then that she noticed two large men standing guard inside the entrance, the door having long been removed judging from the thick coating of rust on the naked hinges. Both men looked to be edging toward the last stretches of middle-age but they were brawny and plenty thick with muscle. Her movement must have caught their attention because both of them had the tight posture of sudden alertness, watching her with hard, surly expressions. Katara glowered back.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs just out of sight and a lump swelled in her throat. There was only one person it could be. And a moment later, he appeared in the doorway. The men moved aside as Ozai strode into the room, his footsteps thudding on the grimy wood floor as he came to tower over her. He looked so much larger, powerful, more intimidating from where she sat now. In his hands were a plate of stale bread and a goblet of what she assumed to be water.

"Welcome back. I trust you slept well." His voice was dark and smooth. A ghost of a smirk touched his lips.

"Where are we going?" she bit out. "Why have you trapped me in here? What do you want with me?"

Ozai studied her a moment with a look of smug disdain. "In the Fire Nation, it's considered disrespectful to pass over pleasantries in impatience to get to the point. I would have thought your time spent there as my son's call girl would have refined you." The jab found its mark and Katara's hands clenched to fists at the insult, her fingernails biting half-moons into the palms of her hands. "But I suppose it's not entirely your fault, seeing as they don't teach proper etiquette in the Water Tribes."

She jerked her wrists against the rope, ignoring the way it burned against her raw skin, and snarled up at him. But she refused to let him get more of a rise out of her, to give him the pleasure of a response. Instead, she kept her mouth closed, defiant.

"Besides," he continued, seemingly indifferent to her silence, "why so eager for all the answers now when the thrill of surprise can be much more exciting?" One side of his mouth turned up in a cool sneer. Ozai bent down then until he was eye to eye with her, still holding the goblet and plate of bread. "You must be thirsty." He held the goblet out toward her lips, the tantalizing, tempting water sloshing gently against the sides, and Katara realized with a sudden clawing need indeed how thirsty she was. But as he held it there, inches from her mouth, her face flushed red with rage and humiliation as she realized he had no intention of unbinding her to give her the dignity of feeding herself. She flashed him an icy glare and turned her head away. Ozai gave a low laugh.

"You take me for a fool if you think I'd free your arms or leave this water before you unattended." His eyes creased faintly with a trace of what looked like vague amusement. "Therefore, I advise you to drink. Or you will wait until I decide to visit you again."

Something in her faltered and she cast him a cursory glance. She was thirsty. Her stomach felt empty. But not enough to give him the satisfaction of degrading herself. She turned away again. A heaviness seemed to lift from the room and she turned to see Ozai rise and walk back through the doorway, pausing to address his men.

"This girl is to have no food and no water except by my order. Understood?"

The men nodded and Ozai disappeared around the corner, his footsteps plunking up the stairs to the deck. The silence in the room in his wake felt oppressive, a heavy physical thing. Katara leveled her gaze on the men at the door then, long and cold, until one of them shifted on his feet.

"You must know where we're going," she said to them. Their faces were stony unreadable masks, their eyes fixed somewhere on the wall past her. She continued anyway. "If you tell me, maybe I'll spare you when I finally break free from here." They didn't look at her, didn't rise to the bait. They probably knew as well as she did that there was little chance of her escaping against Ozai's thorough measures, against his strength and speed. Three of them against one of her – not the best odds given her state at the moment. Katara settled back against the wall with a cold scowl. It didn't mean she wouldn't try if the opportunity presented itself.

She sighed and cast her gaze out the small round window at the top of the adjacent wall. The sky outside was streaked with color, but she didn't know which direction they were headed and couldn't tell if the sun was rising or setting. She tried to press back the fear, the pangs of dread, the mounting sense of loss and ruin that were bubbling up to the surface of her mind. Had her friends noticed she was missing yet? Had they connected her with those unspeakable things stabbing at her heart? She knew if they hadn't, it was likely only a matter of time, but she had to hold on to the hope that there would be enough room for doubt to free her from blame. That her friends, if she still had any, would come searching for her anyway and wouldn't stop until they found her.

Hours passed and Katara didn't even realize she'd fallen asleep when her body lurched slightly, her head lolling forward, waking her. She felt the pull of sudden slowing and realized the boat must be preparing to stop. She glanced at the two men, who remained still and inscrutable as ever. She rolled her eyes away and turned her attention to the window. Her arms were bound, and it wasn't like she could go anywhere. Surely they wouldn't mind if she had a look…

Gathering up her energy, Katara hauled herself up to standing, staggering as she recovered her balance without the use of her arms. In the corner of her eye she saw both men flinch, but if they disapproved of her moving about the room they didn't say anything. She tottered over to the window and lifted herself onto her tiptoes, her eyes just barely reaching high enough to glimpse a tiny fraction of the world outside. She could see just the tip of a port village coming into view on the horizon. She wasn't sure but from what she could see of the architecture she guessed maybe Earth Kingdom.

The boat pulled into the dock and swayed to a stop. Outside, the busy merchant pier was brimming with life, the chatter and hollering of traders, the thud of crates and footsteps, the pungent smell of fish. Katara almost didn't hear Ozai descend the stairs, so when he appeared in the doorway from her peripheral vision she nearly flinched. He addressed his men by name this time – Zhang, the taller, with the receding hairline, and Yao, stockier with bushy eyebrows – but kept his watchful eyes trained on her from where she was standing now below the window.

"You have the list of provisions we need. Acquire them but be quick and do not draw attention." Zhang and Yao nodded and receded from the room and up the stairs, their heavy footsteps thumping on the deck above and then ceasing as they stepped off the boat.

The lively muffled sounds of the pier droned on as Ozai stared at her, his expression stern and unreadable. His amber eyes skewered her like a pin through a moth's body. Katara swallowed. She fought the urge to shift under the weight of it and forced herself to hold his gaze.

"Regaining your strength, I see," he said at length.

Katara shot him a dark look. "No thanks to you," she growled lowly.

Ozai stepped through the doorway then and into her cabin. Katara felt something in her shrink back slightly, but she held her ground, tipping her chin up. Ozai stopped several strides before her and a tiny exhale passed her lips in relief of the distance he was keeping for now.

Just the corner of his mouth turned up as he studied her. "Have you considered that perhaps I've done you a favor?"

"A favor?" Katara nearly choked on a laugh or a scream, or both. "I didn't ask to be abducted."

"A favor in saving you from what would have been a tragic and, frankly, humiliating end for you and your little romp with Zuko." His voice was so cool and dark, like the underside of a stone worn smooth.

"It wasn't a little romp. What we had– have," she corrected, "isn't some idle fleeting attraction, one and done. There was a magnetism that ran deep, that tethered us from the moment we met. But you couldn't possibly know what it's like, could you? Something real like that. Pure. Untained by manipulation. Any kind of love you might have had you twisted into some sick, cruel perversion of itself."

Ozai's jaw clenched and his eyes flashed. He took an intimidating stride toward her. "I know because I've been around. I've seen this story unfold before. It always ends the same."

Her mouth twisted downward and she tore her eyes away. He was wrong. Their love was deep, real, true. Complicated, sure, but no relationship was without its trials.

The memory of those rumors she had helped perpetuate flashed to the surface of her mind. The things she had written down on paper had turned her stomach and the thought of them again brought a fresh wave of nausea. Her eyes flicked back to him, his towering form, his hands almost forming fists as he frowned at her. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know, but she had to ask.

"Was it true, those things you told me about Zuko?"

He cocked his head just so, blinking long. "Does it really matter now?" Disdain hid just beneath the surface of tone, his brows drawing up faintly as though he found her so pitiful it was actually fascinating.

Katara set her jaw and shot him an icy glare. "It does to me. I need to know."

Ozai simpered and his eyes lingered on her a measure too long. From overhead, two sets of footsteps sounded against the wood floor. "I'm afraid our little heart to heart must come to an end for now. Perhaps another time." He flashed her a smug look as his men entered the cabin.

"All the supplies have been procured, my lord," Yao said with a slight bow of his head.

"Very good. I'll have the captain set our course again." Ozai turned and walked back through the doorway but his leering eyes found hers for a just the breath of a moment before he vanished out of view.


"This is bad."

Sokka stood next to Toph, Aang, and Zuko, gaping at the mutilated asylum. Black charcoal tainted parts of the structure where fire had eaten away at it. Some of the walls were darkened by smoke damage. A part of the roof had caved in. Police and guards swarmed around the scene like flies over a rotting carcass, architects working to remove the damage and repair the building as quickly as possible. The patients who had survived – and thankfully most of them had – had been temporarily placed in vacant prison cells. Not an ideal situation, and it also meant that the prisons were nearly at capacity, but it was the best solution at the moment.

None of them spoke for a long time, their eyes trained on the impossible sight, the horrible reality unraveling before them like a spool of black thread.

Sokka's mouth worked, trying to formulate the words that swam in his head. In the end all he could manage again was, "This is bad."

"You said that already," Zuko said back.

"It seemed worth repeating."

"Any sign of them?" Aang asked, looking to Zuko.

Zuko only shook his head in disbelief. "Not a trace. They're still searching, but…" His voice trailed off, tight and gravelly.

"You said whoever let Ozai out used the tunnel system to escape," Aang said. "How could they have known about that? I didn't even know until you told me a few hours ago."

"I don't know. But I have a feeling this wasn't the first time the person had been in contact with my father. He must have told them."

"Any indication who might be behind all this?" Sokka asked. "The obvious answer is the rebels, I know, but… Do they have any waterbenders?" He lowered his voice. "No one could do the things they did without bloodbending. It has to be."

Zuko was silent for a long moment. "It's possible. Katara may have been the only waterbender from the Southern Tribe, but that doesn't mean some from the Northern Tribe haven't immigrated. But…" Zuko hesitated.

"But?" Toph prompted.

"I don't have any on record. I checked. If they're here, they'd have to be here illegally. And that's hard to do."

Sokka raised his brows, looking to Toph, Aang, back to Zuko. "So, what are you saying?"

Zuko was certain they knew what he was saying. The same thing they were all thinking but were afraid to ask.

"Has anyone seen Katara?"