A/N: Hello, everyone. Sorry to leave you hanging with that shameless cliffie for a week.

And, FYI, I don't write cursing (though in some cases it would really fit), so that's what's happening if you see "(censored)." It just occurred to me that that little quirk might be a bit obscure.

I'll shut up and start the chapter now.

Mai didn't know where or why she was running. Just that she was. She wasn't scared—or bored, or apathetic even. All she felt was calm. She didn't feel her feet. She didn't feel her arms or hands as she drew knives and carelessly flung them at the intruding darkness. In a different state of mind she might have considered this strange, though now it only seemed rational.

Wait—there, in the vein of her left arm… yes, there, right there, there was something... light pressure, dull spreading, and a prick.

She kept running. To one side she saw a flash of blue scales.

Mai ran tranquilly in the opposite direction.

"Excuse me, guard, I am to speak with a prisoner," Tinh addressed the officer before him.

"We were informed that there would be two, a nobleman and a secretary. Where is he?" a second guard asked, not moving away from the dungeon's main entrance door.

"He has fallen ill due to improperly cooked food. I will continue without him. Is there some problem?" Tinh ended, restraining himself from pulling rank.

"No sir," the sentry answered, stepping aside. Tinh walked past him, noticing that the officer had turned to follow him.

"Am I not trusted to speak with the prisoner alone?" Tinh asked, looking back at the man following him.

"Sir, it is merely standard procedure to escort someone with an appointment to see a prisoner," the guard assured him. Tinh let the man pass him and reluctantly followed. He walked behind him through a vaguely familiar path toward Azula's cell.

"Will I require an escort back?" Tinh asked, mildly thinking of his ability to find his own way to the surface.

"Light the torch halfway down the corridor and someone will come to get you," the guard answered. They soon reached a short corridor that gave Tinh the feeling of being far from the sun's warmth.

"Her cell is at the end. Will you need anything?" the guard asked.

"No," Tinh replied, walking past him. "This is all, thank you. You are dismissed." The guard left, his footsteps soon vanishing in the tangled passages that lead to warmth and hope.

Tinh steeled himself and walked forward.

"What are you going to do about the nobles' demands, Zuko?" Katara asked seriously after yet another silence had developed in her meal with Zuko.

Zuko scowled thoughtfully at his cup for a moment before answering. "Keep finding quick fixes until they figure out I'm going to take my own sweet time on the matter," he answered with a pessimistic tone, pushing his tea away.

"Be serious, Zuko!" Katara chided him. "You can't just keep pushing this off. Every day you look worse and worse—and if there's one thing you're good at it's hiding how bad things really are."

"Well, if I were only going to be good at one thing, at least I chose one that will help me with my politics." He didn't look at Katara.

"Zuko! Look past yourself," Katara ordered, her eyes taking a fire Zuko had grown familiar with. "Who you marry affects most the world. She will affect relations with the Water Tribe, Earth Kingdom, and Aang. She will mark the Fire Nation's healing."

"And I'm just supposed to choose one of these nobles' ridiculous daughters with each and ever bleeding one of them breathing down my neck whispers of doubt, concealed sedition, and unmasked pride and station grappling?" he snapped. To his surprise Katara grinned.

"I'd doubted whether you still had any fire left, Zuko." She took a long, slow drink as he thought.

"What am I supposed to do?" he asked.

"Know what you want and don't settle for less or accept refusal," Katara answered simply. "If you can't find that in the nobles' daughters, stall."

"Which is the perfect remedy except I have no idea what these women who are being forced on me are like, I'm running out of ways to put off admitting defeat to the nobles, and I don't think I have much time to sit down and make a list of the qualities found in the perfect woman," Zuko answered.

Katara raised an eyebrow. "You just outlined your own way out of this, you know." Zuko stared at her, a foreign speck of nonsensical blue in a land where her cold, precise, and utterly fluid logic made no sense.

For a second he read on her face that Katara was suppressing the urge to either face-palm herself or laugh at him for his facial expression at the idea.

"They want you to choose one of their daughters, cousins, or whatever else, right?" Katara asked. Zuko nodded. "You don't want to give in and marry some stranger, right?" Zuko nodded. "And each girl they want to be the next Fire Lady is a total stranger, right?" Zuko nodded. "And when they think they're about to win a higher position they will treat you with more respect and possibly even trust your decisions?" Zuko nodded slowly. "And they don't really have to win, just think they're winning before they start cooperating more?"

"Allegedly," Zuko answered.

"Then give the nobles some of what they want. They want you to marry their daughters. Have a meal with some of them. With all these nobles, having a meal a day with each of those girls would buy you at least a month and a half. If you don't have to spend every spare moment thinking of new ways to evade them, you'll have enough time to actually figure out what you need."

Zuko thought for a moment.

"You've put a lot of thought into this."

"No I haven't. Iroh has. He just thought it would be better if someone else told you his plan. He said he's already had a meeting announced for it to the nobles," Katara informed Zuko, pushing aside her tea and standing. "I should be going. Luck, Zuko."

"I'll need more than that," he answered with a hint of a smile.

"Lucky stars are the domain of the night, Tui," Katara commented. "The Water Tribe loans them to you."

Zuko… smiled.

"What did you do to her!" Hamako cried, striking the female assassin in the cheek again.

"Hamako, don't cry. Bad Fire girls must die." Hamako struck the girl again with a cry of rage.

"Leave her, Hamako," Lien said with a cold air. "You're exactly what they trained her to be strong against."

"And what am I supposed to do?" Hamako snapped. "Just let her sit here spouting little rhymes while Mai is dying under some useless doctor?"

"I need you to leave here so I can find a way to break her that her guild never prepared her for," Lien answered.

"Fine," Hamako spat. She made for the exit of the vast tent the township had loaned them. Passing the assassin, she lunged and punched the woman deeply in her stomach, knocking the chair she was in onto the ground. The assassin gasped then grinned in a twistedly.

"Broke my ribs in that little fit—"

"And you bet I enjoyed it," Hamako finished.

"Hello, Miss Azula," Tinh addressed the former princess before him.

"My title is princess. 'Miss' is for commoners, Nobleman." Azula stood in a stance that spoke of her past rank. "There is a chair in the shadows past this cell, if you would sit." Azula took a simple stool from where her water basin stood and positioned it comfortably in front of Tinh. He took the chair she had recommended and positioned himself opposite her. Tinh opened his writing case, searching for the tools needed to record the meeting.

"How is Mai?" Azula asked as Tinh brought out his supplies.

"I am not here to answer your questions," Tinh answered. "You will answer mine.

"Do you even know which questions to ask? Ooh—how about how many followers I have? Their names? My plans? Zuzu's most embarassing childhood moments?" Tinh paused for a moment and looked into Azula's eyes.

"He doesn't trust you. Zuko doesn't trust anyone anymore. I had the scribe removed to ensure this meeting would be free of bias."

"You did what?" Tinh asked before thinking.

Azula cocked her head and smiled.

"Hua? What are you doing?" Ty Lee asked as her cat scratched at the wooden shutters. "You want out?" She opened the window and the cat jumped from sill to sill, eventually coming to the ground and running off.

"Come back soon," Ty Lee muttered glumly, leaning on the ledge. Her less-than-pink musings were soon interrupted by a knock on her door. She opened it to a town messenger.

"There's a visitor for you, miss. Ma'am. Ambassador," he told her, slightly stumbling over his words.

"Thank you. I'll be there in a minute." Ty Lee closed the doors and checked her reflection before descending the stairs.

Mai started to get the feeling she was tiring. The constant running certainly couldn't be helping. Come to think of it, she had no idea why she was running. She didn't seem to have the choice to stop. Her fatigue lessened when she slowed for a moment, though it seemed not right somehow.

Much more now she was seeing the blue-scaled dragon. She now heard it speaking, whispering at least.

She noticed that the feelings between stopping and running further turned to true conflict when the dragon came closer.

Mai had come to think that the dragon represented something… less than good. Such concepts had come to seem somehow detached. There was just Mai and the dragon, running and appearing.

And now a cat.

When the cat appeared, the dragon disappeared. Mai felt she preferred this. The cat was familiar and strangely glowed… pink.

Ty Lee. Zuko. Kyoshi Warriors. Missions. Azula. The war. The assassins.

For one thing, Mai knew that she was probably fighting death. Death was bad. Running was probably what was consciously keeping her from death.

And with every step since remembering, Mai lost speed, energy, and ability.

But she gained a reason.

Ty Lee's cat came up beside Mai—had it always been that big?—and Mai kept one hand on its back, giving the cat half the effort of staying alive, and kept running.

In the distance she saw a flash of blue.

"Have you made any progress?" Hamako asked Lien as she left the assassin's prison tent.

"She's strong, borderline insane." Lien looked into Hamako's eyes for a moment. "No progress." They stood for a moment, lost in thought.

"Where are you going?" Hamako asked as Lien as the warrior began to walk towards town.

"I'm going to see what I can do for Mai."

"You poisoned the scribe?" Tinh asked, taking small, quick notes.

"I can't do much from behind cell walls, now can I?" Azula answered.

"You had followers poison him," Tinh asserted.

"Perhaps. Perhaps he merely ate improperly cooked food. Answer me this one thing, Nobleman Tinh. Why did you come to me against my brother's wishes that you have a chaperone?"

Tinh sat there a moment, slightly taken aback. He calculated the dangers of answering and spoke carefully:

"Your brother's very prudent precautions stood in the way of a very necessary and beneficial mission. It was much better that I come today alone than tomorrow as no threat to you, as I'm sure your followers would make known to you."

"And if my brother is discontent that you broke your promise?" Azula asked.

Tinh looked down reflexively then covered it by scanning some report he was holding."I'll handle that when I come to it." Azula smiled in reply and watched as Tinh made his notes. "Azula—I have answered your questions and ask now that you would answer mine: did you arrange for any of your followers to be placed in the company of Mai's soldiers?"

"I have no idea. It's possible I have followers among her number, though I had nothing to do with it. I don't know the number of those faithful to me, or the whereabouts of specific soldiers." Tinh searched her face for a moment before taking notes.

"Why should I trust your word? It's very possible you're lying," Tinh commented, looking up from his papers.

"You knew this before you came, yet you asked the question anyway," Azula answered. Tinh found himself once more at loss for words.

"We will continue this interview later," he said, standing. Tinh gathered his papers and sent a calculated burst to ignite the torch halfway down the corridor from where he had sat and talked to Azula. Tinh began to walk toward it yet stopped abruptly at Azula's last words to him:

"It doesn't seem right, does it? That you've loved her so long yet my brother gets her respect, loyalty, and affection. Shouldn't the Fire Lord be concerned about such injustice?"

Tinh walked away quickly without looking back.

A/N: Sorry it took so long. Hopefully you enjoyed it! Please tell me what you think about the situations/interactions/character behavior/development and all that good stuff.

To God be the glory.

ZFF