Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who has followed or liked this story. Constructive criticism in the reviews would be very appreciated! Fairly new to this sort of decade-spanning story, and any notes would be very helpful.

11

Those first days on the ship, I spoke only to the chamber maid, who came twice a day to empty my chamber pot and deliver a cooled bowl of unsalted stew. "Please, help me out of here," I begged her. "Please, I don't belong here."

To which she responded, "We are in the middle of the ocean. There's nowhere to go."

Then, I reserved myself to silence. Occasionally, soldiers would leer and whisper outside my room, but they never unlocked the door. Nearly a week into my captivity, that long-haired boy with the wide eyes shrugged toward the thin opening to my door and spoke.

"Don't worry," he said. "Life on the seas isn't as bad as it sounds."

At first, I ignored him. His lavish clothes convinced me he was anything but another captive. Another week passed, and still no one visited me other than the maid and the boy. Why had this man taken me prisoner? If he knew me to be his daughter and wanted to prevent his superiors from finding out about my existence, why not kill me? Though to admit, I doubted that Fire Nation military leaders cared about their subordinates' illegitimate children. We were the inevitable progeny of war, weren't we?

I hated the Fire Nation, and so I hated the boy lingering outside my door, trying to ply me into friendship. It was only during a stormy, wave-shaken night that I caved. I was terrified of the few storms on the sea I had experienced so far. All went rearing in such hard angles that I could only clutch to a poster of my bed to keep from slipping around the icy steel floor. A four-poster bed, extravagance I had never dreamed of before, and yet I couldn't enjoy it. The whole lush room was muddled by guilt and fear.

"Don't cry," the boy on the other side of the door said. "We've hit hurricanes twice as powerful and never lost a man."

Never lost a man, as if he was one of them.

"Go away," I shouted, clinging to that bed, thunder vibrating the metal around us.

"Look, we don't have to be friends," he said, leaning in. "But I'll be here everyday. No creepy soldiers knocking on your door." I scoffed loud enough for him to hear. As if hanging around my door wasn't creepy itself. "I'm just saying, I'm looking out for you. That's what brothers do."

I let go of the bed and careened toward the door. Met my cheek to the narrow window peering out into the hallway.

"What did you say?" I asked, trying to make out his face when the lightning cracked against the sky.

He was about to respond when his head turned, a red light, a lantern, grew nearer down the hall. Without a word, he slinked off.

Only moments later, another figure approached my door, gait untroubled by the rocking ship. The light cut his figure clean against the black. It was my father, carrying a box, peering into my window.

"I wanted to give you something."

And with that, he unlocked the door.


When I awoke in that bitter darkness, the tunnel under that industrial town, I inhaled deep and spouted flames so high I felt the earthen ceiling crumble overhead, blackened. Months of searching, of being days or hours or minutes away from finding Zuko, from restoring my faith in the future of the Fire Nation, in the future of the world, in my own squalid, lonely, pathetic life. I couldn't help myself. I screamed and burned all around me.

How had Hui, my own brother in blood and in faith, come to view Zuko as a traitor? How had he invested in some backward, hateful idea of the Fire Nation, our bastard country, when he had been so stalwart in our youth? When my rage quit, I stood, followed the path of the tunnel, and emerged on a silty bank leading to the river.

It was well past sundown now, and the moon licked the ripples of the river white before me. Any other search, and I might've waited until dawn broke, but I had to believe they were still within my reach. I used my light to guide me and traced the many sets of footsteps leading, clearly, along the rush of the river. A few hundred paces, and the tracks dipped to the east, away from the river and onto, eventually, a dirt road leading away from town. Unfortunately, that road was so trafficked that their steps mixed in with the rest.

Resolving not to relinquish my search that night, I turned and sped back into the town. The Eelhound, that was where Hui had suggested, for whatever reason, we meet. Maybe he had never intended to meet me there, only distract me while he and his accomplices hauled Zuko out of town. Still, I made my way to the tavern, its short frame shadowed by the factory next door. I realized only now, as silence settled into the streets, that during the day the factory had filled the air with the grind and heave of metal. The atmosphere, too, had seemed to clear.

Inside the tavern, thirty-odd men and women huddled around tables or leaned against the bar. Pints of beer sloshed and the floor was slick with the evenings' spills. I sidestepped a puddle, someone's lost ale, and nodded toward the barkeep. She was not much older than me, twenty-six, twenty-seven, built solidly with a golden charm to her chest-length hair. She reminded me of Hua, that long-gone friend from the Academy. In the low light, the bartender's shale eyes gleamed gem-like, and had I not been pressed with a search, I might've stayed the whole night and learned her name.

"Fellow bought the whole night's lot, so order what you like."

I scanned the crowd for some silk-dressed aristocrat but saw only well-worn robes, many layered in the soot of the factory next door.

"Is that right? Well, two fingers rye, then. Neat."

After a moment, she slid a glass in front of me. She leaned in and the scent of sweat and hibiscus petals met my nose. Just like Hua. But she was, I knew, far from here. She, too, had abandoned me when I took the job advising Zuko.

"Whiskey," the woman said, pushing off of the bar. "My kind of woman." I could see she needed to serve other patrons, and so before she walked off, I touched her wrist.

"I'm sorry to bother you. I'm actually looking for someone. Were you working here around sunset?"

"I was," she said, waving away another customer calling for a refill.

"Did you serve a young man, about our age, long black hair, black eyes?"

"Built like a twig?"

I laughed. "Yes. That's him." I sipped the whiskey and welcomed the heat and wave of relief. "When he was here, did he happen to mention where he was headed next?"

She sighed. "Girlfriend?"

"Concerned sister, actually." I slid a few copper pieces her way. I hadn't tipped her yet anyway. She pocketed the pieces and rested her elbows on the counter.

"He didn't say anything like that. Only that he got stood up."

So he had meant to meet me, then. Why? Maybe he had thought I'd want in on his scheme, whatever it was.

"Was he alone?"

She nodded. A blocky guy next to me began waving silver pieces in her face, demanding service. I had taken up too much of her time. I shot the rest of the whiskey and handed her the glass.

"Thank you."

Half a step later, I had a thought. Interrupting the guy's order, which warranted a death glare from him and a bemused blush from the bartender, I spoke up.

"Can you tell me who bought the drinks tonight? I'd like to thank him."

"Scrawny guy over by the window. Said he came into some newfound wealth."

Before I reached the table, I knew who had gifted me and all the others our liquor for the night. It was the inn owner, stretched out along a booth, two women half his age bearing his presence for the coin he must have offered them.

"Newfound wealth?" I asked, standing opposite him.

Drunk, the man took a moment to remove his nose from one of the women's ears.

"No. No, no, I—," he fumbled, hiding behind his courtesans.

"I need to talk to your friend alone," I said, smiling warmly at the two women. Desperate for an out, they both scooted out of the booth and away from our dark corner of the room.

"I didn't do anything," he said for the second time that day. "They offered it to me, said I just needed to keep my mouth shut."

"I don't care about the money," I said, because I didn't, though I was curious how Hui had come into that kind of money. "I care about the man they took away. I need to know where they were headed."

Already, the man sweat and shivered.

"But they paid me not to tell anybody."

"So use some of that gold for a bodyguard. I don't care. Just tell me what you know."

He gulped and fingered the handle of a near-empty pint. I called for another barkeep to deliver us each a pint. At this, the man seemed to calm.

"They didn't say much after you were out, but I heard a name. It was odd. I'm not from around here, don't know the local towns. It was Pu... Pui..."

"Pohuai?"

The man's eyes widened and he nodded, his whole body shaking.

"Strong something."

"Stronghold," I clarified. I knew the military base well. It had been erected in the ashes of my village.

Resolving to head toward the stronghold in the morning, I stayed at the tavern into the moon-bleached hours. For the first time in years, I drank myself merry, danced with strangers. I chatted with a few locals: a mother of two teenagers, whose husband had lost his hand to factory machinery earlier that day; a traveler from Ba Seng Se who told me of the riots there; a Fire Nation Colony kid who had recently left home to study under a nearby master.

I want to say that that night renewed me, gave me needed rest and hope in the future, but to be honest, it felt more than anything like the interlude before the tragic third act. Whatever I would find at Pohuai Stronghold, heartache of one kind or another was sure to follow.