Me: ...okay. So.

Li: This is important. You should listen to her.

Me: I...need a break.

Li: And thus I will get one too.

Me: Life is complicated, and I've been busy lately, and...well, my brain is kind of not functioning properly. Actually, a better way to put it would be this:

Brain: WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE *death*

Me: So, yeah. For the rest of July, there will be no more Fire Lily chapters. I need some time to go over my plans for future chapters, work on other stories, and get stuff done that has no relation whatsoever to my writing. Sorry all, but that's just how life's working for me at this point. :/

Li: I'm good with this plan, because I have a couple weeks free. Karen may not own Avatar or Hetalia, but she does own me, and her not posting means I get time off. Enjoy this angsty little chapter that she is giving you because she wrote it and it's next on the list. Even though it's totally an invasion of my privacy.

Me: You're a fictional character. You don't have any privacy!

Li: But I'm a human being!

Me: Created for a story, under my complete control...

Li: Monster...

Me: I know. ^_^


It was night. Li was lying on a bunk in a train car, on her way to Ukraine after spending two days with Hungary at her house. She'd loved Budapest—it was beautiful in the blossoming spring, if windy. The last of the winter grayness was fading away, and flowers were starting to spring up in all their wonderful colors.

But that was behind her now—as well as the shopping Hungary had insisted they do to make sure Li was prepared for early spring in Ukraine. Li now owned three thickly-padded coats that would serve to keep her from freezing to death. She was, according to Austria, supposed to stay with Ukraine for the day, sleep at her house, and catch a train with her to her sister Belarus's house early the next morning. While Li wondered if Austria realized that she wasn't the earliest riser in the world, she was eager to meet Ukraine and Belarus, Hungary said Ukraine was a sweetheart, if something of a crybaby, and that she thought Li would like her.

Hungary was sleeping in the bunk below Li, in fact, breathing softly in her sleep. Li listened to her, semi-consciously trying to match her own breaths to her friend's. Why, she wasn't sure. It just made her feel better, thinking that there was this small connection between her and someone else.

Li hated nights here. She didn't hate much else…why would she? Everyone—well, most of the people here—were being so kind to her, when they really had no reason to other than the goodness of their hearts. Nothing obligated the Nations to give her shelter, food, clothes: they could have just taken her to a hospital and forgotten about her, left her to fend for herself. But they hadn't. They'd instead decided to help her, asked her to stay with them while Austria's house was being repaired, allowed her to see their beautiful world. For all of that, Li was eternally grateful. During the day.

But at night, things were different. At night, she couldn't distract herself from her situation, and it hit her with all the force it had on her fourth day here. The visit to the North Pole in her dream had only made nights worse. She would remember that she was in a completely different world, with no other way to support herself than to rely on the Nations. Oh, that hurt. All her life, Ru and Li's family and pretty much everyone Li knew had tried to get her to be strong enough to survive on her own—but here, she couldn't. Here, she didn't know how to.

Then her mind would turn to her friends. Li missed them, and not being able to ask Jia for advice or be teased by Mao (with Xing's help) had somehow created a deep ache in Li's heart that refused to go away. She could ignore it, pretend it wasn't there, but the absence of her friends was an ever-present fact. Just earlier that day, while shopping, Li had instinctively turned around to ask Kai what she thought of a pair of boots Hungary had suggested for her. Hungary didn't press for answers when Li asked if she could find a different pair, seeming to sense Li was feeling some sort of homesickness, but the incident had clearly stayed in the fore of her mind for the rest of the day. It made every interaction following it, every conversation, seem strained and awkward to Li.

Even Si. Li even missed Si. She'd never thought she would, but she did. He terrified her, yes, with his deadly skills and imposing figure, but he was another presence Li was used to that was now absent. Everyone kept trying to tell her that he wasn't actually that scary—ha. Did they not remember, on the escape from Ba Sing Se immediately following the Tóngyī Revolution, how Si had single-handedly taken out a group of soldiers scouring the Crystal Catacombs? All they'd heard was half a minute of screaming, a few clangs, and a plea for mercy that was abruptly cut off. Then Si, covered in blood but without a scratch of his own, sauntered around a corner and said the coast was clear. Fearing him was not only justified, it was smart.

And yet, Ru was dating him.

Yes, dating. Li shuddered instinctively at the thought. She would never have thought of Ru as the dating type—Ru's sworn duty was to protect her, at all costs. Maybe dating Si so he would stick around and help protect Li was a happy side effect of their relationship, but on Ru's part only. Li would be perfectly okay with staying far, far away from Si. It was a stupid paranoia, but Li lived in fear that one day she would anger Si—and suffer his wrath. He'd joked about it with everyone else…or at least Li hoped he was joking. It was hard to tell, with him.

Thoughts of Si brought Hong, Huo's younger brother, to mind. Hong was a Dai Li trainee, or at least, he was before the Tóngyī Revolution. Many people in Ba Sing Se still distrusted their cultural police force after their defection to the Fire Nation's side at the end of the War, despite huge reforms instigated by both the Earth King and Avatar Aang. As a result, one of the first decrees from the Tóngyī ShÌjiè after gaining power, after declaring all royal and noble titles void and seizing the wealth of the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation noble families, had been the dissolution of the Dai Li organization. Like the surviving nobles and royal cousins, many former Dai Li agents had been forced to go underground to avoid persecution by the new regime.

Li smiled to herself, thinking of Hong. He acted like a child most of the time, pouting when he didn't get his way and easily distracted by "pretties." Hong was over two yards tall, and enjoyed using the broad rim of his Dai Li uniform's hat to cover his face and appear more imposing, but the illusion was always broken when he grinned and swept someone up in a fierce, back-breaking hug. His friends suspected he used childish wording on purpose, to seem like a dumb, overgrown kid, so that their enemies would underestimate him in a fight. That was a mistake nobody made twice: Hong was demonically clever when it came to a battle, using his (admittedly limited) ability to discern his surroundings by sensing the vibrations in the earth to his advantage. A tactic that had eventually emerged amongst their group was to use their various Bending and talents to make the site of a confrontation as dark as possible, and then allow Hong to pick off their enemies one by one. Sadly, that only worked when they were in a building or cave, but they'd had some success as well with using it during a new moon, or if it was a cloudy night.

Moon…night…Li hated nights here.

And Liandao…Li thought that, besides Ru, she missed Liandao the most. The two of them were from Nations whose elements were opposite, yet whose lifestyles were eerily similar. Liandao's native home, the Southern Water Tribe, was filled with strong fighters, a result of needing every hand available to survive in the harsh landscape—or rather, as Liandao preferred to call it, icescape—of the South Pole. Similar to the warrior mentality prevalent in the Southern Water Tribe, the Fire Nation required its children to learn how to be soldiers. Opposite elements, yet similar cultures: Li found the thought fascinating.

And of course, there was also Dao Jia, Liandao's friend and charge. She was the Tribal Princess of the Northern Water Tribe, sister to its Chief and wife of one of its best hunters. Jia was also pregnant. It wasn't the best condition for being on the run—but nobody had known at first, and there hadn't been much choice after finding out. They were all hunted, even Jia, and even if the Tóngyī had mercy on her and allowed her baby to live, she would still have to die after giving birth. And what of her baby? A boy would be an heir of the Northern Water Tribe's Chief: a girl could be married to someone under the Tóngyī's control, at least, and serve as a puppet ruler. It was a source of worry for everyone in Team Avatar, especially their Healer Guang Ming, who had taken to hovering around Jia whenever she could, worried about the Princess and her baby.

Ming…another pang in Li's chest. They weren't the closest friends of the group, not by far, but they were still good friends. Guang Ming was one of the sweetest people Li knew, but had the strongest heart of all. It wasn't easy, after all, to Heal people who were in pain, to cut them open so she could fix whatever was wrong inside of them. Lots of the people Ming had Healed weren't happy about the pain, or were strong warriors made helpless by injury, and they took their discomfort and frustration out on their Healer. Li couldn't see how Ming did it, kept on being so kind and gentle with her patients when they threw things at her, insulted her honor and family. After all of that, not to mention the stress of hurrying to save lives so that she could move on to the next patient, Li would have snapped and killed someone. Healing was no profession for the weak.

Weak…was Li weak? She felt weak. Everyone else in Team Avatar seemed so much stronger than her, so much better at their respective Bending arts…well, except for the non-Bender Yi and Earth Princess Mao. Yi was a skilled swordsman, it was true, but his skills had given him an ego larger than a Komodo Rhino. He even dismissed Bending's advantages entirely, despite the repeated incidents where he had been defeated by a Bender. His dismissals had even managed to antagonize Benders in the past, and he'd even cost them a potential ally once. Despite his shortcomings, he was a loyal guard and friend, willing to throw himself into some of the most dangerous situations they found to protect his friends.

And, well…his older brother Wen was attractive. Really attractive. That was a huge part of why Li had kept him around.

Then Mao…Li actually liked Mao. They were fellow princesses, for one thing, but that wasn't the only reason Li liked her. Mao had a sense of humor like few others, and Li appreciated it greatly. Together, along with their friend Zi You, they had an ongoing joke about how they would take over the world. Since Li was technically now the ruler of the Fire Nation, and Mao was technically the Earth Queen, and between them they would control about two-thirds of all the land in their world, their plans were mostly "beat the Tóngyī, get Jia to join us, then lie back and laugh and at the confused expressions on everyone's faces." Jia's devious political mind would almost definitely ensure their rule came about quickly after the Tóngyī's demise, and if the whole thing was unnecessary, well, it made for some good laughs. And apparently Si was scared of what would happen if they stopped joking about it and actually did take over the world. That made Li extremely happy. It wasn't like Si was easy to scare.

You…another friend, another ache, and another laugh because of her friend's name. Zi You was an unpredictable hurricane, a typhoon of chaos that destroyed or aided at random. She was not oblivious to the humor available from her name, and enjoyed pretending that every time the word "you" was spoken she believed the speaker was talking to her. You's antics had entertained them without using her name as fodder, too: she had numerous stories of people and places she knew and had been to, many wild and quite possibly exaggerated. But hearing about how You had, supposedly, saved a village from insanity due to a hallucinogenic substance derived from cactus juice contaminating their water supply was good for so many jokes. Li was also fairly certain there were some lasting side-effects from the cactus juice You had accidentally drank during the story, because the Airbender certainly acted like there had been. It was impossible to know what she would do next, or if it would destroy anything vaguely important. Not that You couldn't be responsible when it was necessary…it was more like she didn't realize being responsible when it wasn't necessary could be important too—as well as easier for the people she was with.

Why did Li have to miss them so much? How was it that in the space of a few months, they had wormed their ways into her heart? She tried to imagine a future in her world where they won, and Li never saw any of the friends she had made ever again. It wouldn't form in her mind. Li simply couldn't see life without Xing and Mao and You to make jokes, Hong to stand creepily behind someone and make them feel uncomfortable, Kai and Zhu to make out in a corner and make Li (and almost everyone else) feel uncomfortable, Liandao to joke with Jia about the baby actually being Liandao's, Huo to be…well…Huo.

Huo. What was Huo? He was the Avatar, a fellow Firebending student, Li supposed he was a friend…but honestly, she just didn't get him. He was unpredictable, not like You (thank the spirits), but in his own, special, Huo way. Normally he acted silly, immature, like a court jester more than the spirit of the world. But at times…he could be…

Li could barely believe it, but Huo could be serious, even wise. You wouldn't guess it from his usual behavior, but behind Huo's childish actions and addiction to tea was a smart, intuitive, cautious mind. Huo planned out his life carefully, making important decisions only once he knew all the facts and had considered all possible outcomes. That was completely contradictory to the impression one first got of Huo, who did the strangest and funniest things whenever he felt like it. It had taken Li over four years to see what he was really like—and now that she knew, she wondered how she could have missed it.

Well, it had been hard to see. At first, Li only knew Huo as her fellow Firebending student, that one guy who had to do basic techniques all day when he was already sixteen. That he was the Avatar, and had only just found that out, was no excuse to Li—or Ru. Both agreed that the Avatar should be able to master the elements quickly, and have an almost instinctive grasp of all the bending arts. After four years, Huo had only just reached the same level as Li. And Li was not exactly going to master Firebending in a few months.

Which was more than a little frustrating. Prior to the Tóngyī Revolution, Li's days had begun at sunrise with two hours of Firebending training. Then breakfast with her little brother, Ru, Ru's younger brother Yueliang, and Kai, helping Kuzon and Yueliang get to the Royal Fire Academy for Boys after playing longer than they should have, and off to the Advanced Royal Fire Academy for six hours of nonstop classes, bringing a simple, light lunch with her to eat during class. Once that was done, she would pick up Kuzon and take him to Master Qien's house. Master Qien insisted on teaching her pupils at her home, and had several assistants (including Ru) to help her train young Firebenders. Around sunset, the trainees were allowed to go home and relax. Usually Li would use the chance to have dinner with Kuzon, while Kai went off for a while and enjoyed herself at some local hangout for privileged teenagers.

Despite all of her hard work, Li was still nowhere near mastering Firebending. She was better than most other Firebenders: few were ever as skilled as she was at the age of eighteen. Many never reached the level of Master at all: the discipline and hours of work involved scared some away from the possibility, and others were simply not skilled or powerful enough. Li's countless hours of training, not to mention the various points of the day where she found a lull and used the chance to practice her basic control techniques, had only managed to bring her to the level of "highly skilled." Compared to Ru, who had mastered Firebending at fifteen through near-constant training in her earliest years and an aptitude for Firebending that was unheard of since the prodigy Princess Azula…Li was nothing.

Li clenched her fist on the blanket she was lying under, unconsciously gritting her teeth. Her mind was turning to Ru, and she would have given anything to avoid the pain she knew was coming. It was the greatest ache in her heart, the largest hole in her heart. The absence of Ru in her life.

She had never been without Ru for more than a few days! Admittedly, in the time immediately after the Tóngyī Revolution, there had been a period of maybe a week where it was just Li and Huo, trying to figure out what had happened and if their loved ones were safe. The two of them had gone back into Ba Sing Se, which they had fled only hours prior, to learn what was going on. But Ru had immediately known where to look for Li—she had explained later that Li "doesn't do safe very well." That was probably true, but at the time Li had just recently learned that Kuzon was dead, and hadn't been in the mood to take anything well. Her ensuing rant hadn't helped her standing with the others in Team Avatar.

Still. Ru was always there. Always. Li didn't know how she was functioning without Ru. It was like a limb was missing, one that was quiet and intimidating and prevented Li's head from getting too big by making aside comments about her failings. A limb Li could never have imagined life without.

She was coping, of course. Ru had drilled it into Li's head over the years that there might come a time when Ru could not protect her, and Li would have to fend for herself. The normally quiet and imposing woman had spoken very loudly on the subject, bordering on paranoia. Most of the scenarios she presented to Li seemed more than a little unlikely, and always more morbid than Li liked to think about. However, understanding that going along with Ru's planning for those scenarios would help to ease her bodyguard's mind, Li had dutifully plotted out courses of action for everything the two could think of.

They would never have dreamed of this, though. What person in their right mind would have? Winding up in another world—even as Li lay in a bed made of strange materials, on a machine her own people could not rival, with the personification of a Nation lying in the bunk below her, the Fire Lord found the very idea preposterous. Things like this simply didn't happen: there was no way this was real. For all she knew, everything that had happened to her in the past—was it nearly three weeks now? Yes, it was, wasn't it? Everything in the past three weeks, it could all be merely a dream, a bizarre hallucination of some sort.

But…Li thought this was just a little too realistic to be a dream or hallucination. Dreams always had a slightly different feel to them—there was no other word but "off" to describe it. And you always woke up from a dream. They never took this long, either, not exactly. Li could remember almost everything she had done since coming here, and that didn't happen in a dream. Time was inconstant in sleep: you could skip from night to afternoon in the blink of an eye, yet think it perfectly normal and rational, because it was a dream, and you never questioned things in a dream. Or at least, Li didn't. She'd heard of people who had realized they were dreaming while in a dream, and had managed to control the dream itself to shape things into whatever way they wished, but Li had never experienced it.

So, she felt reasonably certain that this was not a dream. And really, didn't dreams also have inconsistencies, parts that didn't line up with the real world? While the Nations and their advanced technology might have been classified as such, how could Li have thought up such diverse and amazing characters for her dream in the first place? What would explain the strange animals, co-existing alongside a few species that Li recognized so far? How could she account for the consistencies that held this world bound an inescapable logic so similar to her own, the small details that one would not find so clear in dream?

No, this was no dream. Li was certain of that.

So then what? She was living out a musician's tale, a bad play! Li knew the stereotypes for such a tale: Tragic Heroine finds herself in a New World, and meets a group of Interesting People. The Tragic Heroine soon finds her True Love in this New World, but due to a past love or an unhappy but necessary engagement, the two Cannot Be. Villains enter, attempting to keep the Lovers from being together, but finally the Tragic Heroine is rescued from her unhappy life by the True Love, and they live happily ever after.

As if that would ever happen in real life.

Li knew she was by no means a Tragic Heroine: for starters, the actresses in a play going along those lines always seemed to have larger breasts than Li. And everything always revolved around the Tragic Heroine. Life wasn't like that: life did not all revolve around one single person. One person could have more power, wealth, prestige, etc, than others, but others would not necessarily find that one person to be the center of their world. People were complex things, and you couldn't know everything simply with a glance. A chance encounter could change the course of a person's day, a single mistake could ruin a mood, an accidental twist could shape history. But life never—never—focused all on one person, unless you were that person.

It was a simple fact to Li that everyone's lives revolved around them. How could they not? They were the only ones who could understand themselves completely, who could know everything they had gone through. Others could come very close indeed to knowing a person, but they could never view the world exactly as someone else did. So Li did her best to make her life about others, to keep from focusing on herself too much and being selfish. Her friends seemed to do so without even realizing it. Ming and Jia in particular managed to focus themselves on the hurts and cares of others without a thought of their own desires. And Li told herself that she had to do her best to match them in deed and kindness, and made herself toil for hours on end to aid others.

She fought against the Tóngyī ShÌjiè for her people, not herself, Li tried to believe. Her own claim to the throne meant nothing to her, save that she could try to be a ruler deserving of such a proud and loyal nation as the Fire Nation. When she gave the last bit of her food to orphans in the street, she told her conscience that they deserved it more, not that she felt a Princess shouldn't have to eat such slop as that. Most of the time, Li was able to believe herself.

But then, at night, when it was just Li and her thoughts, she would realize how truly horrible she was. She resented that she had to live as a fugitive, when she should rightfully be in a palace amongst gold and fine gems, eating fine delicacies—not stale bread. Li despised pretending to be a common civilian, bowing her head in obedience to the Tóngyī ShÌjiè and praying to the spirits that nobody recognized her face. Nobody bowed when she walked past, not anymore, and Li felt insulted that the peasants she traveled amongst could not at least recognize that they were in the presence of one of their betters. They were rough, common, uncouth, where Li was one of their rulers, someone born with the divine, spirit-given right to sit on a throne and control their lives.

A tiny voice in Li's head would always comment on how selfish and petty she was, thinking of such things when so much was at stake. So what if she no longer got the respect she felt was her due? How was anyone to know it was a Princess standing before them, and not some mere peasant, with dirty clothing and unwashed skin? Could she really expect to rule so great a nation as the Fire Nation if she could not overcome these minor difficulties and focus on what was truly important—liberating her people from the Tóngyī ShÌjiè?

The Fire Nation deserved better, Li would always conclude. All it had for a ruler now was a girl who could barely see past the insult inherent in her current status, not someone who could ignore her condition and think instead of her people. If Li ever met the personification of the Fire Nation…well, she wasn't sure what she would do. Yes, she did love her nation and its people, but did she love it enough? It was third on a list of things Li would die for, the second thing being Kuzon and the first being Ru. Her nation only barely trumped number four, her friends, because it was Li's duty to keep her nation safe. Keeping Kuzon safe had been both a duty and a choice, the duty of a Princess to her future ruler and the choice of a sister for her brother. But Ru…dying for Ru was purely a selfish wish, the vice Li refused to give up. So what if Ru was supposed to be the one protecting Li? That didn't matter to Li, so long as Ru, the only thing she could count on in this life, was safe.

In this life…that was a thought that scared Li. Because there was the inescapable truth that Li denied as best she could: she should have died from her wounds at the North Pole. Meiko had cut her throat open and drained almost all of the blood from Li's body to use in healing Ru, Li's last demand that the Waterbender had mockingly granted. Remembering her dream of being trapped in an immobile body, unable to move or speak or do anything to let her friends know she was alive, Li shivered. Ru's cries of pain haunted her ears, echoes of memory that made nights all the harder to bear.

Then Huo's proclamation that Li was still alive, Ru's mad dash to the Spirit Oasis, Yue's appearance—was any of it real? Was any of it true?

The true horror of night began to creep around Li, enveloping her in a shadowy, frightening thought.

What if she was dead?

But that couldn't be—Li felt alive! She felt more alive than she ever had, here, in this world, traveling to visit the Nations and learning about this wonderful, beautiful world of theirs. How could she be dead when she was feeling more intensely than she had since Kuzon's death? Sages and priests and even Avatars spoke of the Land of the Dead, where souls went after their body's death, to reside forevermore in happiness. Beyond that bare description, not much else was known of the Land of the Dead. Tales abounded, there were of course clichéd stories about someone being rescued from the Land of the Dead by a grieving lover or relative, but those were only fiction. General Iroh, the Dragon of the West, had ventured into the Spirit World following his son's death, but he had failed to find the entrance to the Land, and returned with nothing to show.

And wouldn't the Lands of the Dead be…well…happier to live in? Unless a spirit had been evil, and deserved punishment, it was a generally accepted fact that the dead were happy, were "in a better place." Li didn't think she had been too corrupt in her life, not corrupt enough to warrant punishment, so unless everybody was wrong, she didn't think she would be so unhappy here if this place really was the Land of the Dead.

But at night, she wasn't so sure.

Still. Even in punishment, wouldn't the unhappiness be more constant? If Li was paying the price for her sins, wouldn't there be no brief moments of happiness, of forgetfulness in the daytime? Shouldn't a damned soul be in constant misery, not allowed to laugh and smile and make new, if temporary, friends here? So it was even more unlikely that this was punishment.

Hungary shifted in her sleep, and gave a low groan. Li's train of thought was derailed, and she debated just climbing down from the bunk to find a glass of water or something. But even though she didn't feel too tired, she was afraid that moving would simply wake her up more, make it harder to sleep, so she stayed put.

The Nations. They weren't a bad bunch, really. Several, like Russia and a tall blond nation Li remembered someone describing as Nordic, could be scary, but Li was almost sure they weren't capable of being evil. How could a Nation be evil? It could have evil people as a part of it, could commit atrocities that shocked the world, but Li didn't think a Nation could ever be truly evil. Maybe it was just her way of justifying her own nation's actions. Her beloved Fire Nation had done horrible things, slaughtered the Air Nomads, driven the Southern Water Tribe to the brink of extinction. But she could never see her nation as being evil—she loved it too much. Li would always justify anything her nation did, refusing to consider the notion that it could be evil. Because that would mean that everything that was Fire Nation was evil, and how could that be?

Yes, how could that be? How could fire lilies, blooming in the summer, be evil? How could the land be evil? How could the animals that wandered the remaining forests and the plains be evil? How could newborn infants, who knew nothing of the world and could not fend for themselves, be evil?

Yet the Tóngyī ShÌjiè, despite preaching tolerance and equality for all, seemed to believe the Fire Nation was evil. The Tóngyī was primarily made up of Earth Kingdom citizens, farmers and peasants who had suffered under the rule of their rightful masters. Scars still remained upon the earth from battles a century and a half and more ago, and the Earth Kingdom as a whole had yet to completely forgive the Fire Nation for its actions. And now the Fire Nation languished under harsh masters, chafing at their hypocritical rule, waiting for the chance to rise up and overthrow the pretenders to its throne.

It occurred to Li that, if the nations of her world were indeed personified, a fitting scenario to match the situation would be the Earth Kingdom with a foot on the back of Li's beloved Fire Nation. But no, the Earth Kingdom suffered as well, despite the Fire Nation bearing the brunt of the Tóngyī's wrath.

Maybe the Tóngyī ShÌjiè had been personified as well? It called itself the One World, the ultimate nation that would rule forever. How would that work, though, when its only claim was land already named? Could an organization be personified? Li would have to ask Hungary in the morning. Thinking of a personification for the Tóngyī ShÌjiè made Li feel very, very vulnerable indeed. Her mind presented the image of the personification of the Tóngyī stepping on the vague form of the Fire Nation, forcing her proud country to the ground, making it grovel and beg for forgiveness for acts it had long ago atoned for. The past was the past, could people not see that? Her nation had made its atonements, and now it owed others nothing, it was free of any obligation for rebuilding the world. They had paid for the building of Republic City, a metropolis that allowed for the people of the Four Nations to mingle and interact and exchange knowledge and ideas. Couldn't they stop apologizing and start thinking of themselves, how they could be strong once more?

Not that Li doubted the Fire Nation had once needed to make amends to its fellow nations. Their world had been broken and chaotic, needing something or someone to bring about peace. Fire Lord Zuko, Li's ancestor, and his good friend Avatar Aang, once the last Airbender, had worked together for all of their lives to repair the world. Zuko's ascension to the throne at merely sixteen had certainly been a surprise—nobody had expected one so young to be a competent ruler. But he'd had the benefit of his uncle's wisdom, of the Avatar's advice and influence, of the fact that he had declared the War over and that the Fire Nation would try to undo the damage it had caused.

There were things he had done that Li frowned to think of, though. Immediately after the War was declared over, the Earth Kingdom had made it known, in no unclear terms, that it wanted the land of the Fire Nation Colonies back. Fire Lord Zuko had wanted to agree, until the Governor of the Colonies sent him a letter detailing just how bad of an idea that was. The original residents of much of the land the Colonies took up were long dead, and many families had lived there for a hundred years at that time. None of them liked the idea of giving up the farms and shops and town their great-grandparents had built. Residents of the Fire Nation proper viewed Colony settlers as slobs and vagrants, the sort of people who would not be welcome in their glorious Homeland.

So there were peace meetings, and correspondences between Fire Lord Zuko and the Earth King, until it was agreed that some of the less populated areas would be given up and the lands that had been settled fifty years prior would remain a part of the Fire Nation. That had been the best solution to a hard problem: Fire Nation peasants had to be moved, of course, and Earth Kingdom settlers pressed the boundaries of the Colonies to the point where disgruntled commoners almost began the War all over again, but in the end both sides were mostly satisfied.

And Li found herself disappointed in her ancestor and his successors, because they couldn't seem to realize that the Fire Nation had paid its debt years ago. They just kept on apologizing, and rolling over and showing their bellies to shrewd politicians from other nations, and giving in when the Fire Nation needed to stand firm. Her country should be the most powerful, like the fire it was named for, and it was growing weak.

Li had vowed long ago that she would never let her nation get any weaker. The Tongyi might control the Fire Nation now, but she would not let that last longer than she could help it.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Hungary stretched, and blinked her eyes open. The train was starting to slow down, and judging by the scenery outside the window, they were getting close to their stop. She'd slept through the night, very peacefully, without any dreams that she could remember.

Getting out of her bunk, Hungary glanced up at Li's bed. Sunlight from a barely-risen sun was streaming in, illuminating the contents of the room. Li was tangled in her sheets, the pillow kicked halfway down the bunk, her face only just visible. Strands of her hair were visible around her face.

"Li, it's time to get up," Hungary reached out and shook the girl's shoulder. Li's eyes opened slowly, and she looked at Hungary blearily. "Did you sleep well?"

"No," Li replied, eyes shutting again. "Not really."


Me: So. Please send in reviews concerning your opinions of my writing, my characters, what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong...all that. Only way I can improve is if I get your feedback!

Li: Plus I get a cookie for each review!

Me: And it'll be a while before the next chapter, so she needs cookies more than anything.

Li: So true.