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(pull)

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"A single kayak of waterbenders could easily cripple a warship and still have time to escape," Azula says.

A grizzled warrior scoffs, "You've never fought a warship, have you?"

She unravels her scroll with a flick of one wrist, revealing intricate lines of ink in spiderweb complexity. "You've never learned the basics of modern shipbuilding, have you?" Azula says, matching his tone with a mocking lilt. "And you don't have access to the plans for every major class of Fire Navy vessel. I do."

She snaps the blueprints shut the moment the elders lean in for a closer look. With narrowed eyes, Azula says, "I'm not just giving them to you. I'm here to make a deal."

Something changes in Chief Arnook's eyes, as if he has chosen to take her seriously, at last.

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WE HAVE YOUR DAUGHTER.

He smiles. Not the most traditional, but it certainly gets the point across. He's also aware that this, more than anything else, has cemented his loyalty to the exiled prince.

The chance to be father-in-law to the Fire Lord is irresistible.

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Lanzi offers the prince a polite bow, instinctively understanding that he won't be impressed by the cringing, floor-kissing prostration favored by his father.

It's gratifying to see the same lessons he drilled into Mai melded into the distinctive carriage of the Royal Family, as if she's spent days retraining the exile into a proper noble.

"Zan's death was uncalled for."

More straightforward than a noble should really be, but then Mai was always paradoxically blunt.

"The line of succession needed to be dealt with. The Fire Lady's family has his attention now."

"You killed him."

To deny it would be a meaningless quibble, so he says pleasantly, "Should I have done something else?"

(This is what you wanted, isn't it?)

"Yes," he says, with surprising fire. "Honor—"

"This is a shadow war, of ink and words. We have our own honor."

Zuko's mouth thins to a stubborn line. "No. More. Murder."

He bows his assent, unconcerned.

(Accidents happen.)

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She points to the ice model ship and uses small words so the waterbending students will understand.

"The lower levels are most vulnerable at these points. You'll need a ruthless and unflinching attack to do it, but unfortunately waterbenders don't have quite the right attitude, so don't even try to do it alone. Redirect. Katara: catch."

Azula strikes with a sudden torrent of water, but the other girl lives and breathes waterbending: the lightning reflex, positive-negative jing. Katara returns the attack flawlessly, splitting the sky with a sharpened pillar of ice.

She saunters forward with a grin. "Pretty good, huh?"

Azula shrugs and drawls, "If I hadn't warned you beforehand, you wouldn't have been able to keep up."

Curiously, her smile only grows wider. "Is that a challenge, Princess?"

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"Didn't your sister ever tell you not to poke your nose in other people's things if you want to keep it attached to your face?"

The ice recedes enough to let Sokka shake his head frantically.

"Funny. That's what I always told my brother," Azula says, and kicks his hand, sending pieces of ice and a scroll flying. She plucks the blueprints from midair and lets a sufficiently intimidating moment pass before asking, "What were you doing?"

"You could have picked better points," Sokka says, trying to unobtrusively crawl out of the ice encasing him.

Curiously, Azula unrolls the plans and examines the ink scrawled blotchily over the plans, targeting tension-bearing beams and even, to her surprise, the hydraulic pumps. With the curious instinct of a Water Tribe warrior, he's sketched a plan of attack that could sink a ship in minutes, faster than most people could reach the lifeboats.

"They don't need to know this," Azula says, as if she's already considered and discarded his ideas.

His face is guileless as a child's, so she can see the exact moment his thoughts go from Are you conspiring with the Fire Nation? to You're protecting your people.

The misguided understanding in his eyes agitates her. Azula almost decides to change her instructions, just to prove him wrong.

She's not entirely sure why she doesn't.

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"Yao, it's an honor to see you again."

"Do come in," he answers, with a look of extreme reluctance. His men were humiliated by Mai's daggers; to encounter her father is almost an insult.

Something desperately earnest blooms in his face as he enters, and Yao can't help but be interested when he draws the curtains. With an air of grave seriousness, Lanzi says, "I'm calling in a favor."

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"Do me a favor. Yao's been making noises."

The older man smiles at the harassed-looking noble. Yao is a common enemy, and he might as well take all the gratitude he can, before Yao's plotting takes hold and the favor owed is useless.

After a flurried war in rumors and threats, Yao takes an extended vacation to the country in disgrace.

Mai's father slips unnoticeably down the Court hierarchy as the enemies of his enemies fight for power. He barely misses receiving the honor of the governorship of Omashu. The Court titters at the obvious snub, but Lanzi soldiers on with a smile.

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Something about the blinding white fields of snow makes her pulse hum. It takes her a while to place the feeling, but eventually Azula realizes that it feels like the surge of fire that comes with the dawn after a long, long night. It feels like the tides, pushing and pulling, the surf roaring.

"It's a full moon," Hama says, beckoning. "Let's go out and play."

As if in a dream, Azula wanders out onto the ice, following the starlight figure flowing over the snowdrifts. She doesn't feel the bite of the wind on her exposed face, not with the gaze of the Moon upon her skin, burning with unknown purpose.

She struggles through the snow that Hama floats over effortlessly, until the waterbender stops, and points.

A herd of reindeer yaks huddle together for warmth in the lee of a rocky outcropping. Their breath steams in the freezing air, lit by the harsh moonlight. Without a single word spoken, Azula understands.

Blood is life; it is water and fire, pulsing its own determined course through the rivers of the body. Water.

"Play," Hama whispers.

Azula reaches out to grasp that fire-water-life, and make it hers.

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For all her flightiness, Ty Lee trains with singleminded dedication in an isolated part of the city that isn't quite isolated enough. Whether or not she's aware of her sizeable male audience, Katara is, and she isn't happy.

A threatening lurch of the snow at their feet sends most of them running. The stragglers are swallowed to the eyes in ice. Katara might swear she didn't mean to take it that far, but she catches Azula's knowing smile the next day, and can't deny the moment of satisfaction.

Then she has a fit when she finds Ty Lee walking on her bare hands on polar ice, mittens discarded.

"Those things constrict my fingers so I can't balance," she says, showing her the raw red skin.

There doesn't seem to be anything else for it, so Katara takes a needle and some penguin seal gut to turn the mittens into a pair of gloves, much to Ty Lee's delight.

"Thanks!" she cries, hugging her ferociously around the stomach, and just as abruptly flitting off. Katara doesn't even have time to blink before she starts practicing handstands again, as if nothing's happened.

Katara stands there for a beat, half-stunned. Too quietly for the acrobat to hear, she says, "Thank you."

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"It's a test," Mai says, admiring the assassins' knives before adding them to her arsenal. "If they really wanted you dead, they'd just tell the Fire Lord."

Zuko sheathes his swords with a frown. "Then we just ... let them go?"

"Whoever sent them wants to know you're not to be trifled with," she says, tilting one masked face up. "I think we've proven ourselves worthy. Tell your master."

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"High General Toza can't be trusted," Lanzi says.

"Someone with that kind of power would be useful," replies Zuko. The noble offers him the same cynical smirk Mai does.

"Of course he'll be useful, but don't let that fool you. Remember, you can't trust me either."

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It's Sokka who says, "The war's worst in the west. All the best earthbenders will be there. We'll find a teacher there."

He sounds so abruptly reasonable (two minutes ago he was trying to juggle his boomerang, with predictable results) that everyone blinks in surprise, except Azula.

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They meet Toza in the most isolated place possible and bring their weapons, but that doesn't even make him frown. The assassins stand at his side without a hint of rancor.

"Why didn't you kill them?" the noble asks, eyes sharp from within his wrinkles.

Toza waits for him to look to Mai with an air of condescension, but Zuko doesn't need even the slightest of hints anymore.

"Any fool can take a life. Why should I have permanently removed your retainers when your intent was obvious?"

"I ordered them to assassinate you."

"If I've done you a disservice by sparing them, I can take care of that now," Zuko says dryly. The two men don't so much as twitch, not until Toza steps backwards and nods.

Steel flies from their sleeves, only to be deflected by a volley of Mai's knives. Without breaking pace, they draw their swords and lunge, but Zuko's already spinning away. His twin dao flash in the starlight as he steps circles around them, slipping between their blows as lightly as a leaf on the wind.

He was far from unoccupied in their time with the airbenders.

In a hairsbreadth of an opening, though, Zuko flashes forwards, striking with the hilts. Swords fall from nerveless fingers as Mai steps between them with quiet precision, holding her knives to jugular veins. No one moves in the sudden quiet.

"Impressive," Toza says, but Zuko frowns.

"Pulling the same trick twice? You should be more careful with the ones loyal to you." He glances at the two warriors and says, in open invitation, "I won't throw people's lives away."

"Neither will I," the noble replies, and with a whirl of movement that Mai can't follow, his men are at his side, unharmed. "Forgive me, Prince Zuko. I had to see for myself."

"And what have you seen?"

High General Toza smiles like a knife. "Our next Fire Lord."

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Of course they attack the weakest link. Ty Lee can catch arrows with her bare hands and Katara has the reflexes of a true waterbending master.

(No one in their right mind would ever try to prey on Azula.)

They leave arrows scattered in the forest, but no note, because they know her too well. The Fire Princess would never bother rescuing a captured subordinate.

"They won't damage him," she tells Katara lightly, twirling an arrow between her fingers. "If it was one of us they'd crush his hands at the very least."

Ty Lee slumps miserably, but Katara turns with eyes hard as ice and starts to shriek.

"I thought you were better than this, you heartless—"

(monster)

"You're not listening," she says. "Everyone underestimates Sokka."

"We're going back for him," Katara says, daring her to disagree.

Azula frowns at her. "Obviously."

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Plate armor makes chi-blocking more difficult than usual, but for her it's just a new rule in the game.

Ty Lee steps into the cell first and feels the happy adrenaline rush shudder to a breathtaking halt in her veins. Her prepared lines seem absurdly childish now.

(My Prince, I'm here to rescue you.)

Suddenly, Azula's presence at her back is intensely painful.

Very distantly, she hears her say, "I'll meet you outside," as the sound of her footsteps passes away, deeper into the fortress.

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Lightning flashes with a crackle of superheated air as the door is hurled open. The firelight accents the thin, angular features of the girl in the doorway. A strange hunger burns in her golden eyes.

"Colonel Shinu. I presume I'm not inconveniencing you?" Azula says. She glances out of the window, where even at this distance she can see Katara's water leaping in the light of the full moon.

"You little—"

"Good. Let's have a chat," she interrupts, as she takes the colonel's chair. "I couldn't help but notice some interesting injuries on your prisoner."

"You're not stupid enough to go after a nonbender peasant," he says, deliberately facing away from the charred bodies of his entourage. "We didn't take him as bait—we knew you wouldn't come. He was only useful for information."

A shutter flickers behind her eyes, a lightning-fast break in her amused demeanor, before she looks back with a practiced smile.

"You were wrong. So let me tell you something, Colonel," Azula says, leaning back in the chair for a beat, as if to compose herself.

Without warning, she lunges across the desk, seizing the old man by the throat and knocking him to the ground. Her nails cut oozing gashes as she hisses, "They. are. mine."

His only reply is a desperate gasp.

"Don't touch them again."

"Nngh—"

She steps back and flicks blood from her fingertips. "Let the others know."

He nods frantically, but the longer Azula watches him, the more something dark and furious seems to grow in her throat.

And there's really no reason she shouldn't indulge, just this once.

"No," she muses, "I think your corpse will speak for you if I'm ... eloquent."

Shinu moves with all the force can muster in a single firebending blow, but with a gesture he's cut off mid-strike. His entire body begins to shake as he lifts slowly off the ground.

She's not even touching him.

"The Fire Nation was wrong about the primacy of fire," Azula whispers, listening to the roar of moonlight on her skin and the creep of blood in his veins.

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Afterwards.

Ty Lee has a strained look on her face that can only partially be attributed to exertion. She holds Azula's hands and runs her fingers over the drying blood.

"Your aura's gone all funny," she says, silent tears passing through the grime on her cheeks.

She actually has to force her voice to stay even.

"I suppose it has."

Azula still can't control the inexplicable rage that wants to run back and burn the stronghold to the ground; she can only drown it in a louder voice telling her to stand close as the healing water ripples.

She's not sure how it happened, but when Katara slumps with exhaustion, she's at her shoulder with Ty Lee, carefully lowering her to her bedroll.

(they are—mine—mine—mine—)

"I took care of him," Azula says with unusual openness. She's even more surprised when Katara understands exactly what she means.

Red-rimmed eyes grow wide. "You ... you didn't ..."

"Don't lie to yourself. You know he deserved it." And it must be the exhaustion that's making her push and beg for understanding—for forgiveness—

The silent flicker of hesitation tells volumes. "But you can't just ..."

Azula considers a moment, and says, "You can't," with something of a grudging compliment. "So it's a good thing you have me."

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Ty Lee greets him with a squeal and a hug that somehow manages to encircle him without brushing a single bruise. Sokka yelps anyways.

"He's awake!"

Katara bursts into the tent, half-panicking, but when she sees her brother's expression, her eyes fill with tears.

"Idiot—don't ever do that again," she says, tentatively embracing them. "I was so worried."

"I wasn't worried for a second, 'cause I knew you were coming," Sokka says, grinning. He looks up and sees the figure too-casually lingering outside.

"Come on, Azula. Being part of the group also means being part of group hugs."

"I'd rather not," she begins to say, but Katara grabs her hand and pulls her in with only token resistance.

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