The sun hadn't yet crept over the horizon when the team of elite firebenders assembled. Despite the early hour, Azula wasn't the least bit tired. Nervous energy pumped through her veins, keeping every cell in motion. She was surprised she'd been able to sleep at all, but she was grateful. All thoughts from the previous night were gone. It was the eleventh hour, and it was time for her to test her worth on a true field of combat. This wasn't a tournament or sparring. This was a military campaign. She would fight as her uncle and father had fought, and she would make Ozai proud. The eagerness to achieve that goal kept excitement alive in her as well, fighting nerves for dominance. She would draw blood again, fight again, kill again, on a field where the only rule was survival.

There were twenty-five of them, and Azula was surprised to see that all of her roommates were in their number; perhaps the housing assignments hadn't been so random at all. Their commander was an unassuming man who couldn't have been more than five and a half feet tall. The woman standing beside him, who Azula assumed was his lieutenant, had no hair at all, and her bare scalp gleamed in the torchlight.

"We'll depart in half an hour," the captain barked, the volume of his voice by no means matching his stature. "There's rations in the dining hall, and then I want all of you in the stables and ready to move." So saying, he turned and led the way.

Very few people were talking. Azula guessed it was both tiredness and nervousness, and she was perfectly content with the silence. Even the typically chatty Misuka had nothing to say as they shuffled into the mess hall and ate the portions of fish and rice ball set out for them. Any other conversation died when their commander took the floor again, briefing them as they ate.

"I am Nao, leading this mission. My right hand is Jie. If you have questions, you will bring them directly to me, as she doesn't speak."

Azula glanced back at the bald woman with slightly more interest this time, wondering whether Jie had had her tongue removed in a fight or she simply chose silence. An interesting story, surely, but one for another time.

"This is our plan." Jie held open a detailed map of the eastern Earth Kingdom, stretching from the port where they currently were all the way up to the walls of Ba Sing Se, while Nao gestured at it. Their current location was near the tip of the easternmost peninsula. "We're riding up from the south. The guerillas were last seen attacking a supply caravan in this forest." Nao pointed at a swathe of green surrounding a river, directly between them and the encampment near Ba Sing Se. "Another caravan, a decoy, is scheduled to move through in two days' time. We're hoping to lure them to the outer reaches of the forest, and then we strike without mercy. We are to kill them all."

His words were greeted with silence. Azula tilted her head as she stared at the map. The small markings and lines of its surface seemed inconsequential compared to the real task. How could something so great be represented by something so small? In two days, they would be fighting on the edges of the woods that were nothing more than a patch of green on the map. Somehow its two-dimensional nature made the significance of the task diminish. They were just lines on a page too, just numbers, tools utilized for a certain purpose.

But she wasn't. She was more than that, more than the rest of them. She would go home and go on to something larger than any of them.

Their breakfast done, the group moved together outside to make their way to the stables after retrieving their packs from the far wall. Each person was carrying rations, waterskins, and spare clothing, and all the packs were the same weight. Azula pulled hers on with some difficulty, though she refused to show any outward weakness or ask for a lighter one.

Once outside, the sun was still nowhere to be seen, but it was a warm summer night reminiscent of home. Here in the Earth Kingdom, the air was dryer, not sticking to Azula's skin in an uncomfortable cloud. That was one change she thought she could adapt to.

The stables were dark and warm, filled with the sounds of animals moving in the dark. The group passed the stalls of the ostrich-horses to Azula's surprise and headed into an adjoining room where the air was slightly damp and the floor was stone rather than straw. Nao, at the head of the group, threw up a fireball to illuminate the inhabitants. Here were creatures Azula hadn't seen before, not even in her extensive readings. They resembled large green lizards, their bellies hanging low to the ground, a striped frill extending from their spines.

"Mongoose lizards," Nao announced. "I doubt many of you have traveled with them before. As fast as an ostrich-horse, but much more versatile and harder to track. Saddles are on the far wall, and watch the teeth. They're vicious biters if they don't trust you."

Once Azula had the leather in hand, she glanced around to assess the others' progress. Jie was already astride her mount, stroking its skin with a free hand, while Nao was striding about to offer his aid to those more inexperienced riders. With some trepidation, the princess headed for the stall of the nearest free lizard. When it saw her coming, it flared its nostrils and strained against its collar. Azula took slow steps forward, but the lizard shifted, always keeping its head close to her, keeping its back protected. When she reached out, it bared its teeth and hissed in a clear declaration of animosity. Azula wasn't about to take that from man or beast, and soon a handful of white fire was at the ready to teach the beast a lesson.

"Do not try that," an unexpected voice behind her boomed. Despite herself, Azula jumped. Nao handed her a slimy handful of something that Azula eventually recognized as raw meat. "Steeds are best trained with love, not fear. A lizard who has been burned by its master will leave her at the first opportunity. We have enough enemies without your lizard wanting to rip your throat out."

Her ears were burning with mutinous anger at being called out. Without sparing a glance for her supervisor, Azula extinguished the fire in her hand and offered the lizard the meat instead. After staring at her for a few more seconds, the creature accepted the gift. While its needle-sharp teeth were busy, Azula made her way around its head and threw the saddle onto its back.

"Better," Nao said. "Check its collar for its name and get your reins in place." Then he was gone, on to assist someone else.

Still annoyed, certain that she could have done it herself if she'd just been given enough time, Azula strapped the saddle in place and looped the reins around the lizard's head, carefully avoiding its teeth. Engraving on its metal collar shone in the light with what Azula determined to be its name.

Kawa. River.

She pulled herself up. Sitting on it was strange, entirely different from any creature she'd ridden before, as she was still quite low to the ground. Despite its initial reluctance to have her anywhere near it, Kawa was now relatively docile.

In another five minutes all twenty-five of them were mounted, Nao being the last to climb onto his lizard's back. He glanced around to make sure that everyone was ready, then silently lashed his reins and led the way.

The origin of her lizard's name became apparent almost immediately. The way it moved, not bouncing up and down but moving smoothly from side to side, was indeed reminiscent of the flowing of a river. It was a much less bumpy ride than Azula was used to. Watching the lizard's feet was almost hypnotic.

They were out of the stables and into the night, and then soon the port's buildings were flying by them. The sky in the east was just beginning to get lighter when the riders left civilization behind them, moving onto a dirt road.

The movement of Kawa beneath her was so rhythmic that Azula found herself slipping into a waking sleep. The nervous energy that had been with her since she had awoken had faded into simple tiredness. Her gaze would fix on a distant tree or the lightening horizon, and then she would blink back into reality, unsure of whether seconds or minutes had passed. All too soon the town disappeared into the shadows behind them, leaving only the dusty track and the others around her.

Still nobody was talking, and Azula spotted at least a handful of her companions' eyelids drooping. With some uneasiness, she remembered that she was not the only new recruit. Extremely skilled firebenders they might all have been, but the experience of fighting on foreign land, of obeying orders and making life-or-death decisions was almost certainly just as important as any skill.

But her father wouldn't have sent her on a mission doomed to failure.

...Would he?

Too soon the sun was up, bringing the heat with it. The Earth Kingdom's summer was every bit as brutal as Azula remembered, though fortunately she at least had plenty of water this time. Her back was drenched with sweat from the pack that covered it, and she was certain that her skin was burning, but there was nothing to do but ride on and on and on as the sun beat down and the dusty road stretched endlessly before them.

Mid-morning they hit a stream and turned off the road to follow the water's direction instead. Every hour, Nao would stop the formation and allow the mongoose lizards a chance to drink; as natives of the Fire Nation, the beasts didn't have the same resistance to the heat and dehydration as their Earth Kingdom counterparts.

By noon, the tiredness was apparently wearing off. Misuka was chatting with the rider next to her, and several others followed her example. The only rider near enough to Azula that they could have spoken was Jie, bringing up the rear, and Azula highly doubted that the lieutenant was interested in having a conversation with her.

They stopped briefly for lunch and then rode again. Nao was insistent that they take as few breaks as possible; again and again he reiterated that time was absolutely of the essence. So they rode on, even as the sun reached its zenith and shone over them with such brilliance that Azula's dark hair soon began to feel like an oven.

She distracted herself from the heat and the insistent sleepiness by observing her fellow riders. Apart from their packs and mounts, each individual was as different as could be. Not a single one of them wore complete armor, which to Azula made perfect sense. Her studies on the ship had taught her that the movements of typical soldiers were far more restrained and simple to allow them to utilize their firebending even while wearing heavy armor. But her forms, jumping and spinning, would only be impaired by such coverings, and she suspected the same was true of her fellows. That thought led into another: soon, perhaps, she'd get to see styles of firebending she'd never before witnessed.

If Ko Shen were still alive, she was certain that he'd be here. Azula pictured him, his unusually light hair glinting in the sunlight, a smirk on his lips as he told her to repeat a move over and over again. The memory was no longer tainted with guilt, or with anything, really. He was just a name tied to a face, just a memory of someone whom she'd had a long time ago but lost along the way.

Maybe one of them, riding with her, had fought alongside him before. She wouldn't ask, of course, just imagine him among them. While the sun sat high above and her comrades sweated, Azula rode along with specters haunting her mind.

They didn't make camp that night until it had already been dark for quite a while. They remained on the bank of the stream they'd been following, though it was broadening as they rode and would probably soon warrant the title of river. There were no trees for cover and the surrounding ground was almost entirely flat. Azula felt open, exposed, as the group slowed their mounts and finally stopped.

Her legs almost gave out when she placed them on land, and it was only a desperate grab at Kawa's reins that saved her a potentially embarrassing fall. Even if the lizard was a far smoother ride than anything she'd experienced before, sitting in the same position all day had cramped her muscles.

Lighting a fire for dinner was out of the question, as they were now in potentially hostile territory. Nao reminded them loudly that any such signal might draw the guerillas' attention away from the decoy supply train and onto them, ruining the plan entirely. Azula watched him scribble out a message and send it off with a messenger hawk. Nao didn't look away from the bird until long after it had disappeared into the night's shadows.

Azula fully intended to eat a solitary supper next to Kawa, but she paused upon overhearing a snippet of conversation nearby. It was Misuka (no surprise there), speaking to a group of five or six.

"—saved his life, you know. Only reason she's so highly ranked. Ever since then, Nao stands up for her, since she won't talk for herself."

Interested, Azula sat quietly at the edge of the circle, nibbling away at a piece of dried fish. Perhaps she would be lucky enough to hear Jie's story after all. A quick glance told her that the woman in question was well out of earshot, standing at her commander's side.

"I was there," one of the other members of the small group interjected. It was a man, perhaps in his early forties, whom Azula didn't know. "It was the last action with the Northern Water Tribe, before they stopped sending ships down. Must have been...oh, fifteen years ago?"

"Well, tell us!"

"I'm trying! Don't interrupt. The waterbenders had drawn Nao aside, and then they managed to pin him. He fell overboard, and they froze the surface of the water so he couldn't get out. He'd have drowned down there, but Jie snuck up while they were busy with him and killed them all. Dived down to break through the ice and pull him out. He'd have drowned otherwise."

"That's not as good a story as why she keeps her hair short," Misuka objected. She looked at her companions, clearly desiring the chance to tell her story. When none of them objected, she plowed ahead. "Do you remember the assassination plot a few years back? A group of higher-ranked officers were going to murder the general and go on through Fire Lord Azulon?" The others were nodding, and Azula perked up. She remembered the event in question, though not with any specificity. She'd just been a child then. The palace's walls had been sealed up tight, meaning four days without lessons because her tutors couldn't get in. Zuko had barely left Ursa's side the whole time, though Azula had been with her father, watching him pace like a caged tiger.

"She was still really low-ranked because she never spoke, and she happened to be cleaning nearby when she heard the traitors discussing their plan. They caught her, and they were just going to kill her and make it look like an accident. She was quick enough to dodge a fireball to the face, though, so it caught in her hair. The traitors were all good military men, but none of them were great benders. She's unbelievably fast, you know, and so she took all five of them on." Misuka was a skilled storyteller, sketching the scene with her hands. She dropped her tone dramatically, forcing her listeners to lean in. "With her hair still burning, she took care of them. Still has burn scars on her scalp if you look close enough."

"Oh, that's not as good of a story," one of the men objected, leaning back and shaking his head at Misuka. "How do you know all of this, anyway?"

"You'd be surprised what you can learn when you actually give a shit about what other people say, Lei," another soldier interjected, patting his friend on the shoulder. "Just don't ever tell her anything important, or you know someone else will be hearing it sooner or later."

Misuka tossed a playful handful of fire his direction, and he retaliated. Azula, not wanting to get caught up in any play-fights, scooted back with irritation. Was this how soldiers behaved, telling stories about each other after they'd settled down to camp? Clearly some of these men and women had fought together before; camaraderie was obvious from how they interacted. But Azula had resigned herself to being on the outside of any given circle. There was no use in seizing the center if the object was only to tell silly stories about how their lieutenant lost her hair.

"The real question about those two is what their relationship's like outside of the barracks." It was the largest man speaking, the one who'd been called Lei. "Fa-Chun says no, but there's no way they're not screwing."

The man beside him shrugged good-naturedly, passing on defending his opinion. The older man who'd told the story earlier spoke up.

"Think what you like, Lei, but it's none of your business. They're our commanders, and rumor-mongering's not what we need when we're going to be on the battlefield tomorrow."

Lei rolled his eyes behind the other man's back, causing quite a few smirks among the others, but the older man failed to notice.

"I'm with Lei," Misuka said, a smile playing around her lips. "They share everything else, so why not a bed?"

"All I want to know is whether Jie makes any sounds," one of the women said contemplatively. "Maybe it's just like fucking a corpse—no noise at all."

It was time for Azula to go. She didn't bother with silence as she stood and strode off in the direction of Kawa, and though her arrival hadn't drawn any notice her departure did. The group looked after the princess and then returned to their conversation as if there hadn't been any interruption at all.

Azula found herself hating every last one of them. She had been free, free for a few blissful weeks, and now their words were bringing back images and sounds that she didn't want to think about. Trying to stop the flow was as futile as trying to stop a river, and even as she attempted to distract herself her breathing grew more and more erratic.

Kawa hissed as she walked past it, but she didn't bother paying attention to the lizard. She kneeled by the stream and splashed water over her face. The cold helped, but her heart was still pounding. Azula held herself, desperately trying to even out her breathing, trying to force her body to obey her mind.

(She could smell him. She could smell incense and the scent of burning candles and his sweat, a medley heavy and thick enough to cloud her mind. She could hear him, whispering things into her ears. She could imagine the thick canopy hanging above her and the richly painted walls. She could feel his hair falling down over her skin, and his hands on her, on her, on her)

"Nervous?"

She was broken from her stupor to see a vaguely familiar face leaning over her. It was Choko, one of the women who had roomed with her, whose aged features were forming a smile. Something about the expression seemed stiff and unnatural to Azula, which was hardly a comfort in her current state.

"I'm fine," she managed. But her tone was still a snarl, essentially negating what she said. She wanted the woman to go away and let her calm down in peace.

"If you're afraid, you can always ride back to camp."

The words were sudden enough that they were almost enough to jolt Azula from her state of panic. It sounded like something her father would say, or something she would say to herself. It was cold and honest, and most importantly it was a challenge. She would never turn back. She would see the mission through or die, and inconveniences like what her body was currently doing were just simple setbacks.

Azula stood. She wasn't nearly as tall as Choko, but she still managed to gather the necessary composure to hold herself up. If the woman thought she was weak enough to turn around, just a pampered princess who would escape at the first sign of trouble, she was about to learn differently.

"I'd watch your words. You'll be swallowing them soon." Her tone was ice even as fire burned in her veins in response to her quickening heart and lungs. "I'll go home victorious or in a coffin."

Azula didn't sleep that night. The usual insomnia kept her up and pacing long after the others had unpacked their bedding and laid on the side of the river. She had the briefly entertaining thought of pushing one of them into the river, but that was the kind of foolish prank reserved for childhood.

Nervous energy was pumping through her again, reinforced by the anxiety that still lurked in the back of her mind. Whenever she tried not to think about something, it simply returned again and again to her mind, a recurring disease. Whenever she closed her eyes, her father was there waiting for her, so she kept them open and stayed the night awake.

They hadn't yet started moving again the next morning when Nao's messenger hawk reappeared in the sky. He ripped the message from its pouch and read hastily.

"The decoy is in place. We need to ride, now!"

Before his voice had finished reverberating, the group was already moving, everyone rushing to stuff another dried pepper into their mouth or refill another waterskin. Not a minute later all of them were astride, and then they were riding.

Compared to the previous day, Nao drove a ruthless pace. Kawa's limbs were a blur as the lizard moved across the ground. There was no danger now of falling asleep; it took quite a lot of effort just to remain in the saddle.

The stream beside them widened slowly into a river, and the small scrub brushes on its shores grew into larger and larger trees. Azula remembered Nao's map and a shiver went down her spine at the thought of how close they were.

They turned into the woods, but the roots tangles of brambles slowed even the deft-footed mongoose lizards. Azula, who was riding much closer to the front, heard Nao hiss an oath under his breath before he shifted the formation again.

"Don't stop!" he ordered, and in a few seconds it became clear why the order was necessary. Nao had turned his lizard directly toward the shore, and it seemed that he would fall directly into the water...but no. Azula almost couldn't believe her eyes. The lizard's legs carried it forward and it continued running even across the surface of the river. Without a pause, the others followed. Kawa's legs sent up a continuous cloud of spray, and too soon Azula was soaked, but it was undoubtedly quicker than the route through the trees.

The noise of the water and of the lizards' feet was such that none of them immediately recognized the whizz for what it was. It was only when Fa-Chun splashed into the water with an arrow through his chest that they realized.

"Amb-!" Nao couldn't finish the word before a flurry of arrows came flying. He pushed himself up on his hands and spun a shield of fire about him with his legs, and then Azula's attention was pulled away from him.

The archers were poised in the trees above them, at least ten drawing and firing. Azula sent a white fireball blazing toward one before having to block with her left hand, and then suddenly all the arrows seemed to be aiming at her.

It was all she could do to protect herself. Kawa's scales protected the beast, but then an arrow was protruding from its eye and the lizard was no longer running but sinking into the water.

The formation had scattered. Most of the others were still veering across the river, blocking arrows, and at least two had made it to the shore. There was nobody to come to Azula's aid, and she couldn't swim.

Panic was useless. Her father's lessons rang clear in her mind. There was no time for doubts about whether it would work on water. Azula stomped hard, blue flames pouring out of all four limbs, desperately trying to get traction. As if through a filter she heard Kawa's screams as the lizard was cooked alive in her fire, but that was distant.

She was lifting. It had worked. She was in the air, and now she just needed to—

She hadn't been watching for it, and so the boulder rammed into her side. The white fire disappeared. The impact had knocked the air out of her lungs, so the deprivation wasn't quite as bad when she dropped under the surface.

Earthbenders.

Her armor was dragging her down, and she didn't know how to swim.


A/N: This is going to be quite a long one, so get ready.

First of all, writing! In our month apart, I've been quite busy, and I've written two oneshots which you all should definitely read. I recommend "Living In A Glass House," of which I'm quite proud!

Secondly, music! Two character songs for Azula: "Paranoid Android" by Radiohead and "Thirty Whacks" by the Dresden Dolls.

And now the long part. Do you know what day it is today, dear readers? It's the twenty-first of December, which makes it the winter solstice. It also means that two years ago today some people thought the world would end. But also two years ago today I published the first chapter of this little fic. Yes, today is Snow's birthday! I know I talk a lot about not believing I've made it this far and how instrumental your support has been, but it's very true. Snow is the longest writing project, and quite possibly the longest project, period, to which I've ever committed myself. I know I can be slow at updates, and sometimes I go months without writing a word. But the fact that I've pushed myself for two years and published over 200,000 words of this monstrous fic is still quite unbelievable to me. Without the support all of you have lent me, I wouldn't have made it this far. And I'm going to make it a lot farther. I've come way too far to quit now, so whether it takes me one year or ten, you will see Snow completed. That is a promise. So let me thank all of you, everybody who's read this far, those who've been with me since the beginning, those who just recently picked it up, those who abandoned it a while ago, those who tried a chapter and found it not to their liking-each and every one of you has helped shape me into the writer I'm slowly becoming. It means the world.

Housekeeping! I'm going back and editing early chapters. Nothing plot-related will change, so don't worry about that, but it is possible that I'll cut and combine chapters. So don't be alarmed if the number of chapters drops unexpectedly. Everything according to plan! As far as next update goes, I am on break (though my family appears to interpret that as "time to force our daughter to travel with us instead of letting her sit alone in her room and type") so perhaps not too long. I need to be more diligent in updating! I will try to be better about this next year.

On a similar note, I've completed my first semester of college! Yay! (You probably don't care.)

Well, see all of you...whenever! Soon, hopefully!