"Rian!" Sokka snarled as he followed Azula's startled line of sight. Rage boiled in him as Azula's hands lit up with flames, illuminating the room in a blue glow.

"Stay back!" Azula said, her voice still thick with tears, but anger immediately surging out of her at the sight of the intruder. Sokka wasn't entirely sure if Azula was talking to the intruder, or him. He hadn't come downstairs with a weapon.

"You can put the fire up, Azula. I'm not here for a fight," said the figure in a familiar, husky drawl before she palmed the daggers in her hands and threw her dark hood back. "Unless you want one."

"Mai!? What are you doing here?" Sokka said, the tension running out of him in a second at the sight of her. Although he and Mai had never been close, he felt an odd sense of homesickness at seeing her standing there before them, dripping rainwater onto the rug. It had been so long since he'd seen a friendly face.

Mai clawed her inky black hair out of her face as she surveyed the two of them in the light of Azula's flames. She looked somewhat startled, peering at them as if she were looking at two strangers. Maybe she was. The last ten months had been hard on them.

"I was sent to find you. I'll be honest, when June and I went to Rinchaka Falls to catch your scent, I thought we were only going to find bits and pieces of the two of you scattered around," Mai said as Azula finally relaxed beside him.

"You nearly did. We got lucky, but we barely made it out of there," Sokka said as Azula lit the sconces, flooding the room with bright light. Mai blinked and looked around the room, an expression of horrified disbelief on her pale face.

"Spirits, this place hasn't changed a bit. It still smells like old ladies in here," she said, her lip curling. She looked directly at Azula. "If I hadn't thought you'd never come here in a million years, it would have saved us some time."

"We didn't have much choice," Azula said.

"Clearly," Mai drawled.

""Our safe house was compromised, and... Well, we thought it was a good idea that no one knew where we were for a while. We were going to lay low for a while and then figure how to warn Zuko."

"You were, huh?" Mai said, and then peered at Azula, noting the tear tracks on her face, the pack by the door, the crumpled letter at Sokka's bare feet. Her narrow gaze slid over to Sokka next and she pursed her lips a little. He felt like she could see right through him; Mai had always been keenly observant, even if she pretended not to be. "Did I interrupt something?"

Azula swiped at the tears on her face, avoiding even glancing in his direction. "Yes, I was... I was leaving."

Mai's eyebrow lifted at that. "I see. Well then, it looks like I got here just in time."

"In time for what?" Sokka asked as Mai shook the rain out of her cloak and tossed it down on a chair.

"To stop you from fucking this entire thing up, for starters. You can't warn Zuko, not right now. You'll blow my cover, and yours!"

"And what is happening? We're not exactly in the loop, Mai. We weren't even in the loop when were in the loop! I don't think we met more than a handful of agents, and one of them tried to kill us!" Sokka said.

"You," Azula corrected him. "He tried to kill you."

"Sounds like you guys have been busy," Mai said dryly, turning her gaze on Azula again. She had a sharp look in her eyes that Sokka couldn't read.

"We've been through hell and back, Mai," Sokka said. "Why are you here? Did they send you to bring us back into the fold?"

"Yes, but I would have come after you anyway, even if they hadn't ordered me to," she said.

"We're not coming back," Azula said softly. "And we're not answering to anyone. What happened in Rinchaka Falls was... It wasn't us. It wasn't me. It was the Fire Bug and-"

He glanced at Azula, alarmed at the suddenly unhinged touch in her voice. They had been spending their days avoiding mentioning the Rinchaka Falls, but he knew that it was bothering Azula more than she was letting on. He had heard her screaming about the children in her sleep more than once, muttering, "It wasn't me, I wasn't me..."

He had a feeling what had happened had reminded her too much of the incident in the forest. He wanted to forget what had happened in Rinchaka Falls himself. He couldn't imagine how Azula felt about it.

"You don't understand, Azula. Everything is going to shit," Mai snapped.

"What do you mean?" Sokka asked in alarm.

"June found out that the leader, or leaders, of the Smoke Demons are going to send an assassin after Zuko. And it's not going to be either of you."

Sokka's stomach sank to his toes and he heard Azula pull in another sharp breath. She let her pack slip off of her shoulder the next moment, and it hit the floor at her feet with a bang. Sokka's frayed nerves jumped at that, but his heart soared the next moment.

"When?"

"I don't know. Soon. If we can stop them...if we're not too late..."

"We may already be too late," Sokka cursed and rubbed at his forehead. He needed to think. He needed to do something. Anything. "We need to go. To the palace. Right now. Zuko needs warned that someone is going to try and assassinate him."

"You can't. They're watching us," Mai said, strolling over the window that faced the street and peering through the lacy curtains. "I was followed. I tried to shake them, but I couldn't."

"Why were you followed?"

"Not sure," Mai said. "Maybe they didn't trust me to come find you? Or maybe they're planning on killing the two of you for what happened in Rinchaka Falls. All I know is that June and I were sent to find you and bring you back in. They didn't say for what. We tracked you to Ember Island, and I knew there were only a handful of places you might be. This was the last place I checked."

"Where's June?"

"She had some business in the Capitol. She's going to try and find out who the assassin is, but...that may be a moot point if we can't shake our tail out here."

"We could just kill them," Sokka suggested, coming over to the window and peeking out, his eyes narrowed. He couldn't see much; the rain was lashing the windowpanes, streaking the dirt caked onto the windows.

"Right, so they find out we're all double-agents when the agent sent to spy on me is found dead, that'll be great."

"It won't matter if they know we're double-agents if Zuko is fucking dead," Sokka hurled at Mai, who stepped back from the window and crossed her arms over her chest in the darkness. "The whole reason we did this was to make sure no one else but us was sent to assassinate him."

"Well you fucked that up when you blew up Rinchaka Falls," Mai snarled.

"It wasn't us. It wasn't us. It wasn't us. It wasn't me... I tried... I tried to save them... I tried..." Azula said, her voice tight and rising higher as Sokka turned on her. He closed the distance between them and grabbed her hand.

"Hey, look at me," he said gently as the panic attack slid into Azula like poison into a vein. He had sensed it coming on even before Mai had shown up. What if she'd left and had her attack without him? He hated to think of her in that kind of pain, alone and scared. "Of course it wasn't us, Azula. We both know that. I know you tried to save them, okay?"

"I tried..." she said, and her voice broke a little.

"What's real?"

She squeezed her eyes shut tightly. "You're real. This is real. We're real."

"Yes, we are. Just breathe, okay?" he said, and she looked up, meeting his gaze. Everything tumbled between them in an instant. Their feelings for each other, what had happened in Rinchaka Falls, everything. It all surged in between them like ghosts and then disappeared. It was just the two of them. Alone on their island.

She took a steadying breath and shame welled in her eyes. "I'm sorry...I.."

"It's okay, I'm here," he said, and the weight of what he meant seemed to settle the words between them like unmovable stones. He wiped a tear away from her cheek with his thumb. "I won't let you get lost, you know that."

"Maybe you should."

"Never, you know that," he said with a soft smile, as he heard Mai clear her throat. He glanced up at her and saw a strange look on her face, one of dawning comprehension and suspicion. He ignored it. "Rinchaka Falls was a first class fuck up, but we were not responsible for it. They sent a fire mad Bender called the Fire Bug to work with us. He showed up early and blew up the depot on his own. If you went to Rinchaka Falls following our trail, then you saw what happened after that."

"There's nothing left of the town."

"I killed the bastard who did it and there were witnesses. We were chased by soldiers and barely made it out of there. Our safe house was compromised, so we came here instead."

"You killed the agent who blew up the warehouse?" Mai asked, frowning. "Baz?"

Sokka shook his head. "No. Baz was our handler and it was his intelligence that sent us there, but the man I killed was called the Fire Bug. Or whatever his real name was. He's the one who blew the depot. I'm not sure if Baz knew what was in the depot or not. I don't think he'd send us there to kill us though, and we could have been killed, pretty easily."

"How do you know Baz?" Azula asked slowly, suspiciously.

"I was given information from one of my contacts. That he was the one who blew up Rinchaka Falls. I took care of him," Mai said as he met her unflinching gaze. Something passed between them in that moment: perfect understanding.

He knew that Mai had done things she wasn't proud of in her mission to take down the Smoke Demons from within. He had known that from the start. She had killed the man whose identity he was still wearing like a second skin, after all. He knew what she was capable of, but he could see the same light in her eyes that he saw in his own whenever he looked in the mirror now. Only worse. So much worse.

The things Mai had done were weighing down on her like lead. He could see the strain now, in the corners of her eyes, in the pinch of her mouth, in the thinness of her waist. There was something ghost-like about her now, barely there, stretched too thin.

He wondered if he and Azula looked like that, to Mai's eyes.

"No wonder they sent you to find us and not him," he said grimly. He didn't know what to think. He hadn't precisely liked Baz—the man was a Smoke Demon, after all—but until Rinchaka Falls he hadn't had any issues with him. He couldn't think of why Baz had laid a trap for them at the depot.

It was yet another mystery. His head hurt.

"I guess so," Mai drawled. "They don't know I killed him either. I doubt they'll find his body any time soon either."

"You are one cold bitch, Mai," Sokka said with some appreciation in his voice.

"I'm just getting the job done," Mai said and glanced at Azula again. "So after the explosion, you guys thought the Smoke Demons would send someone to kill you?"

Sokka gestured to the window with one finger. "Obviously. We've had problems in the past, failures. I didn't think they'd let it slide this time. Not after I killed the Fire Bug."

"Well, they didn't send me to kill you, if that's what you're thinking," Mai said, pushing the curtains closed again. "I can't say as much for our friend out there. I was only told to find you and bring you in."

"Bring us in where?" Sokka asked, frowning as Azula pulled away from him and sat down on the couch, her hand over her mouth, and her eyes downcast. She seemed exhausted and defeated.

He knew the feeling.

"The Capitol," Mai replied. "There's a meeting place. Nobu, my main handler, will be giving you your orders. Whatever those are. He didn't specify."

Sokka ran a hand down his face and hung his head. "So we're fucked."

"Potentially, but it's Zuko I'm worried about right now," Mai said. "If you go to him, the agent in the palace may slip away, and they'll know you've turned traitor. They'll know I'm a double-agent...and I'm close. I'm so close to finding out who the leaders of this thing are. I know I am. If I just had more time..."

He could hear the passion in Mai's voice, the anger there. She had been living with this thing longer than they had. He'd been thinking that she hadn't been broken by it yet, but now he wasn't so sure. Mai was full of hurt, anguish, and a driving need that stunned him. He could hear it in the way her normally laconic voice tightened. What had she been through?

Sokka started pacing, crossing his tattooed arms over his bare chest as he walked, his mind whirring.

"Okay, you're right. We can't go to Zuko yet. That'll put you and your whole mission in danger, Mai. We need to find out who the leaders of this thing are—that's important. But we can't just let an assassin try and kill Zuko."

"So we kill the assassin?" Azula spoke up.

"The trouble will be finding them. There are a lot of Smoke Demons who could do it...some I recruited too..." Mai said, a bitter expression on her face. "June may get their name, but it might be too late. We have no idea who it could be."

Sokka and Azula, however, exchanged glances. He cleared his throat and said, "It's Rian."

Mai's look of confusion was turned on both of them in turn. "Who?"

"He was one of our handlers, the first one we met when we arrive in the Fire Nation. He and I don't like each other much. It didn't take me long to figure out that he was obsessed with Azula. He thinks I'm—Tazeo—is beneath her."

Mai's lips pursed at that. "Well, isn't he supposed to be? Your cover story was supposed to be the Princess and her big mean bodyguard. And yet I've been hearing rumors about the Princess and her big mean boyfriend instead."

Sokka couldn't miss the piercing look in her eyes, the question she was skirting, but just barely. He opened his mouth to answer, but Azula spoke up instead.

"It's just a cover story, Mai," she said and rolled her eyes. Mai glanced at Sokka and her lips twisted.

"Uh-huh," she drawled. "Well, there's definitely some kind of flimsy cover going on."

"Can we focus?" Sokka interjected, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Zuko's life is at stake."

"Right, you think it's this Rian guy? Why?"

"He really, really hates Zuko, apparently. And he's obsessed with Azula. He tried to kill me to get me out of the way, I think," Sokka said.

"Do you have anything of his? Something June's shirshu could track?"

"No. The only thing he gave us, other than the heebie-jeebies, were our orders, and we burned those."

Mai blew out a breath. "I'll ask my contacts if they know him. Maybe I can-"

"Zuzu doesn't have that kind of time," Azula said, standing up again. "We need to warn him. Now."

"I know how to get onto the palace grounds undetected, but I have no idea how to get to Zuko, not without rousing suspicions. If someone saw me at the palace, that would be a big red flag. Especially if its the mole."

But Azula's eyes glittered at that. "My father had a secret escape tunnel built during the war. It leads from the bedroom in his suite to a storage room in the stables."

Mai's eyes bulged. "What? Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. He killed anyone who knew about it, even the Earthbender prisoners who built the tunnel for him. He wanted a private escape. I only found out by snooping around. We could get in that way, if we can get to the stables without being seen."

"I doubt that," Sokka said. "But we have to try. There's... There's another option. We could send a letter."

"They're watching us, Sokka. We have no way of knowing if our communications will be intercepted."

But Sokka's eyes narrowed. "We don't send it to Zuko. We send it to Suki. There's less of a chance her mail is being intercepted, and if it just looks like a letter from her boyfriend-" he glanced at Azula, who was stone-faced-"then no one will think twice about it."

"They will if it says 'hey head's up, Zuko's got an assassin on his ass,'" Mai snarked. Sokka hesitated and then cursed.

"Okay, good point. What if we just...I don't know, hinted? Just tell her to watch Zuko's back or something. Put her on her guard. At least until we can figure out how to get into the palace. We have no idea when this assassin is going to try to take him out, right?"

Mai sighed. "Unfortunately not."

"So they need warned, as much as we can warn them in a letter unfriendly eyes may read, until we can get to the Capitol. We have to send a letter."

"You just want to talk to your girlfriend," Azula said, in a stinging voice.

"Azula, now is not the time," he said in an undertone, but she just crossed her arms over her chest and turned her eyes away from him.

"Awkward," Mai said under her breath, and he glared at her. He wasn't about to explain his relationship woes to her. She let it go though, ignoring his glare and pushing her damp hair out of her eyes. "It's the best plan we've got, I suppose. But what do we do about our friend? I'm pretty sure they're waiting to see if I leave or not."

Sokka glanced at the window, and the agent skulking beyond it. "If you left without us, I bet he'd attack and kill us, right? Or at least attempt to."

"That would be my guess. If I can't bring you in, then...well, the Smoke Demons wouldn't have a use for you. And they don't keep dead weight around."

"How many are there?" Sokka said sourly, jerking his thumb at the window.

"Just the one, as far as I know," Mai said cautiously. "What are you thinking?"

"Divide and conquer. They can only followed one of us at a time, right? I'll write the letter to Suki, and you and Azula can lead our spy away, while I head to the nearest messenger hawk office."

"What if they don't follow us? What if they see us leave and then come in here and try to kill you?" Azula asked in a tight voice.

"It's a risk we need to take," Sokka said firmly as he walked over to the desk in the corner and grabbed a piece of yellowed parchment, a quill worn down to a nub and some old ink.

"I don't like it," Azula said, and he looked up at her.

"I know you don't," he said softly. "But what choice do we have?"

Azula closed her eyes. "None, I guess..."

"Does this mean you're staying?" Mai shot at Azula, whose eyes flung open. She stared at Sokka, whose heart was racing all of a sudden.

"For now," she conceded and turned away from him.

He had known that she was going to leave him; she wasn't nearly as sneaky as she thought she was, and when he hadn't seen her pack in the bedroom, he'd sneaked downstairs while she'd been in the shower. He hadn't liked going through her stuff, but the letter had had his name on it.

He hadn't read it, not a single word...but he'd known what it contained.

He hadn't been sure if he should stop her or not. He hadn't even been sure if she'd go through with it, but when he'd woken up to find the warmth of her in the bed so inexplicably absent, he had sprung from the bed in a panic, running after her.

If Mai hadn't shown up out of the blue, he was sure she would already be gone, disappeared into the storm and from his life as suddenly as she had appeared. The thought made him sick.

He wanted her to stay. He wanted...well, he wasn't sure. He just wanted her.

"You may regret that," Mai said.

"I already do," Azula mumbled and then lifted her chin. "So what's the plan?"

"We send the letter, and then we can head to the Capitol. We'll figure out how to get into the palace from there, and then... We'll just have to wing it."

"I'll have to bring you in to keep my cover," Mai cut in. "What if Nobu is just waiting to kill you?"

Sokka hesitated and then bent over the parchment. "He can fucking try."