"What do you mean, you don't understand? It's not very difficult to see," Uncle said dismissively, two days after we had left port.

"Well, I don't see whatever it is that isn't difficult to see," I barked, annoyed, as I paced the length of his room. Oddly enough, this was where I came to think, for no apparent reason. Uncle tended to make me focus more on what I should have done, not what I had to do. It gave me a chance to unwind. In this case, I came to release untold amounts of anger. "She's so…aggravating!"

"If you don't see it, it is not my place to say, Prince Zuko. If I may, have you learned anything new?"

I stopped, and thought for a moment. "The avatar came through that village. I do not know when. Kiri told me that she was sworn to secrecy over it."

"Nothing else? No new skills or details of proper command? I would have thought that exposure to new people would have uncovered something significant."

I continued the quick steps. "I learned to listen to what the men actually say, not just how they say it."

"Oh?" Uncle looked surprised, something that happened once in a blue moon. "I had expected far less for only a few days together."

"And what precisely does that mean?"

"Nothing, nothing."

My footsteps made a steady tattoo on the floorboards, as I stewed in my rage, and listed exactly why, in every detail, I hated Amara. One: she insulted me, often. Two: she apologized insincerely and sarcastically. Three: she presented problems and signs of dissent in the crew. Four: she presented problems and flaws in me. Five: she was the exact polar opposite of me, and it was infuriating. In, somehow, an exhilarating and desirable way, but, by Fire, it was making a mess of me!

Uncle watched my inner struggle, and said, "You could just try to set any faults you see aside, until you know her better."

"I don't even know who you're talking about." Of course I knew. Amara… I couldn't seem to escape her.

"Well, then, you also don't know who I'm talking about when I mention a certain rumor amongst the men."

I turned my head sharply to glare at him, as I remembered the wild tales of my disfigurment. "I have heard of a few. Of which do we speak?"

He raised his eyebrows at me, and said slowly, "The one involving the seduction slash rape of a fourteen-year-old girl?"

"Oh." I allowed myself to blush, but only in his presence. I was letting my temper get ahead of myself, one of the things I longed to change. "What about it?"

"Actually, all I wanted was to raise the subject of the seduction slash rape of a fourteen-year-old girl, Prince Zuko."

He was doing it again, acting omniscient and obviously trying to 'subtly' influence and guide me. I scowled impetuously. "You are insufferable, Uncle." Then again, since he brought it up, I mulled it over in my mind. I would have to become more involved. Amara was supposed to be under my control, and there she was on my mind once more, but so were all of my men. I was supposed to have total jurisdiction of the situation, and it gave every evidence of being just so.

I stopped suddenly, tapped my heels together with a solemn click. "Uncle," I started, meeting his eyes, "I would make a small supposition."

He only chuckled, and said, "It's sounding more like a confession so far, Prince Zuko."

"Perhaps. I suspect, but have no proof that, some or several parts of the situation I find myself in are outside of my authority."

"Are you joking?" I glowered at him until he stopped laughing, and said, "Of course something is out of your control, boy. This is life, and, though this may come as a shock to you, it's very, very different from command. I have always thought that failing to see that was your greatest weakness as a leader."

I opened my eyes wide in surprise, and said, "You are an exceedingly evil man, Uncle. If you see all these things, why do you not tell me? This horrible step-by-step process is like pulling teeth. I only want to be a competent leader, but you are being too incessantly secretive."

"I am attempting to spare you adulthood for as long as humanly possible, Prince Zuko. I should know; I had a great teacher when I was your age. And now I regret that. I wish that I discovered much more about life for myself. Adolescence is a very tumultuous time, and it requires much more patience than you seem to have. It is why most wait until it is over before taking command of more than two hundred men, incidentally."

"It's so…exasperating! You know all of it before I do, but you make me go through all of it anyway, because you think it'll be good for my character?" Unbelievably, Amara's lovely face surfaced in my mind. She had been trying to improve my character, as well, it suddenly dawned on me. And I had lost my temper. "She won't leave my thoughts!" I growled.

"I thought you didn't know of whom we spoke?" Uncle smirked, and sighed. "Well, if you truly don't see your own infatuation with her, it is not my place to say. But, do your pacing in your own room, as a favor to a tired, old man. You've worn a veritable groove into my floorboards." As I turned to leave, frustrated, he added, "Try not to be angry with her only because of what you feel, Prince Zuko."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Uncle." I wanted to scream, I am not infatuated with her! but, no matter how I tried to phrase the words, it sounded like the arguments of a child denying the obvious.

"Oh, I can see that, I think," he waved me off with a smirk.

I made my way up on deck, and took a deep breath, surveying the ordered chaos of a well-run ship. Some men worked on cleaning the deck, some secured ropes and various devices that were no longer needed, and some were merely standing watch over the proceedings at several points to ensure accuracy and diligence. I could hear… mumbling. Energetic, fast, interested - I could hear the men's eagerness to talk. I didn't know what they were talking about, but my conversations both with Amara and Uncle gave me some limited imagination on that score.

It was like a new world to me, trying to understand my men. One of them was moving more quickly than others, and I tried to imagine why that would be. Had he won a bet? Another moved sluggishly. Had he been the one to lose? I saw that some of the men talked to the ones next to them, and some didn't. Was it temper, personality, or friendship that caused all these different traits? If I closed my eyes, I could imagine lines intersecting, connecting some people together and separating others. There was an entire world on my own ship that I had no part of.

One line lead straight from me to below deck, and, as I kept my eyes closed to watch this line I had imagined, the end rose to be level with me. The person was moving around. I fixed their position in my mind, and looked with my eyes open.

Amara stood before me, dressed in an ankle-length green robe tied with a borrowed red belt. She looked almost as though she belonged on the Fire nation ship, with the deep red, but still stood with more poise than I had ever seen outside the Earth nation. I was glad that she didn't look like she was from the Fire nation, with her high cheekbones and wide eyes, to be honest. She said, "What are you doing?"

I blinked, confused. Where was the mystery person? "I was trying to concentrate on something."

She shook her head, agitated. "Never mind that now. I must tell you something."

I said sarcastically, "Will anything I could say possibly make you not tell me?"

"What was that?"

"Nothing. You were saying?"

She turned her back to the railing and leaned against it, saying, "Hao is becoming a problem."

"Sorry, who?"

"Hao, the favorite of the wagers on my," she blushed, something I had seen only once before, "my virginity." Huh. That was a fun nugget of information; I filed it away, under my growing label of 'Amara'. She looked away and continued, "He has been making certain…advances. I ask you, as the captain of this vessel, contain the problem before it gets out of hand."

"I have been working on it. I do not know my men, and it worries me. This may be outside of my control as captain. Do you have any propositions? Much though I hate to say it, I do not know what to do."'

She nodded, smiling, her embarrassment forgotten. I liked it when she smiled, but mentally slapped myself before I started staring. "I have one, but it is not going to be well-received, I think."

"At this point, it is the only one, so there will be nothing to lose."

She took a deep breath, and sounded unsure as she said, "We should be more public about our… involvement."

"I thought we established that we are not involved."

"I know that, of course! But everyone else thinks that we're," she fumbled for the right words, "better friends than that! If you were more, shall we say, territorial, Hao might hesitate before doing anything untoward with me. So, please, will you at least consider it?" She looked worried, and that, in turn, worried me. Amara was, quite probably, the most strong-willed girl I had ever met (discounting my sister), and, to my knowledge, she didn't scare easily.

"It is enough, a good plan. But I have to ask a favor of you and Kiri; I do not want the men to know that I wish to listen to what they say. So, the favor I ask is…" I saw her run her eyes over me and raise her hand over her chest protectively as she moved away. I stepped forward, horrified, and said, "No, no, you know I don't mean that! I want you and Kiri to tell me what they talk about. Could you do that, for me?"

"For you?" She lowered her hand, and stepped forward. I was confused until she winked and glanced to the men, several of which, I could plainly see, were staring. I nodded minutely, and stepped closer as well. We were inches apart. The men looking on nudged others and soon more than half the crew had stopped to see. She leaned in and whispered in my ear, "Anything for you, Zuko. I'll tell Kiri, down below. Join us when you can." She brushed my unscathed right cheek with her lips, making my skin flush a deep red. There were cheers from the men, and I made a gesture to the officers meant to keep order.

I ducked below quickly, to more catcalls and varied levels of congratulations. As I glanced back, I saw a handsome man, eighteen, the youngest that he could have joined the Fire navy, being slapped on the back and egged on. Hao, I assumed. I went below, to the infirmary.

"Good afternoon, Zuko," Kiri greeted me quietly, "Have you had a nice day?" She was still bedridden until her leg healed in, as the doctor said, about two weeks. I saw that she was wearing a brown necklace, woven out of dried hemp and supporting a pendant shaped as a glossy obsidian bird.

"Insofar as was possible, I think so, Kiri. Some inner turmoil, some conspiring against my crew…the usual." I felt very tired, and attempted a smile to reassure her of my sanity. "Happy birthday, by the way." She gave me a blank stare, and Amara looked amazed. "It is today, correct? I had it fixed in my mind…" In all honesty, I had had no idea until I saw her necklace. It was what Amara had bought for her at the market, and she hadn't had it the day before. "Is that wrong?"

"No," Kiri fixed her clasped hands with a nervous stare, fiddling with the sheets of her bed, "it's not wrong. I just thought that it would be forgotten. After what happened to…after what happened."

"I would never, ever forget, Kiri, now more than ever." Amara slid her arm around the pale girl's thin shoulders, and I wondered idly if Kiri was turning ten. I couldn't judge age well to begin with, but I thought it was around there. "A girl's fourteenth birthday is very important," she added, and my heart felt like it had stopped. She was as old as we were? As in, she was really that small for her age? She looked years younger! They saw my surprise, and Amara asked, "Why, how old did you think she was?"

I somehow found my voice, and a strangled cry emerged as, "Younger than that!" Nine or ten at most, I had thought. Oh, how wrong I had been! Fire knew how she had come to be so frail, but a girl shouldn't be so small, at an age near mine. "But, Amara, you're older, correct?" I'm not sure what I would have done if I had discovered that even there I was wrong, but she nodded.

"She's around half a year younger, to be sure, but it's really not that much. Why, how old are you?"

"Almost fifteen, only a few more months, I think. How can you two be so close in age? I mean no disrespect, of course, to either of you. Siblings can't be less than nine months apart, or more than a few days, because," I nearly flushed at this. I did not have much experience of such things, and hardly felt comfortable telling girls things like this as it was. "Well, you know, I'm sure."

"Yes, I think I see what you're fumbling to say. Because a woman can only give birth every nine months, or sometimes might have twins, what with pregnancy and that - it's really more than ten, even if she tries - I could not possible have a sister near to six months younger." I swallowed and nodded, easily out of my element, and almost envied her the confidence with which she spoke. "Kiri isn't my blood sister."

I saw Kiri's thin hand - I couldn't believe she was less than a year younger than me! - tighten on her sister's green robe, and I saw that she was mildly terrified of what would be said. Amara bent her head to listen to her momentarily, and straightened with a sigh. I thought that she would say more, but Kiri murmured, "I was adopted, but no one saw whoever left me in Mother's arms. She standing in the market one moment, and the next, someone bumped into her and she was holding a little baby."

I nodded, for I knew that this was a very forward display for her. I continued for her, "So, she was kind and raised you, and you had what sounds like a wonderful childhood until-"

"Until your people came and destroyed all of it." Amara snapped testily, her arm around Kiri's shoulder still, pulled tighter in anger. "And now you see why I hate this ship that carries me for the emblem it bears, and the men that leer at me for the too-fresh memories they uncover, and that uniform you wear for every single one of the soldiers that walk our streets."

There was an atmosphere of such charged hatred in the room now that I couldn't help but retreat to the hallway with some sort of farewell. I went back up on deck, to find Uncle commanding in my stead. I stood to the side, watching him, and trying to catch snippets of what the men said. Some were speaking of what they hoped for dinner to be, and other trivial, narrow-minded things. I heard just the hint of sniggering laughter at the bow, forward from me. I was at the stern, and made my way quietly into a shadow close enough to hear them.

One, the apparent leader of the gang, slapped a tall man on the back and laughed, "You have some stiff competition, Hao!" I could see that it was indeed the eighteen-year-old I had seen earlier. I knew what they were talking about; Amara. I stomached a few more increasingly vulgar comments, before stepping out into the sunlight with a scowl. An uncomfortable silence snapped in place immediately as ten elbows simultaneously nudged ten sides.

Hao stood with a closed mouth, looking very solemn. "My lord, good afternoon." I appreciated that he didn't simply act as though nothing had happened.

"Good afternoon," I racked my mind for his rank, came up with nothing, and went with age alone, "Private Hao. May I ask what is so fascinating as to keep a good ten men from their tasks?"

"We were…" Hao seemed to not want to go on, and, as it turned out, he didn't have to. The boisterous leader, who looked to be senior of the rabble, though he couldn't have been over twenty, jumped in front of Hao and began speaking.

"We were discussing your lovely bride-to-be, my lord," he bowed low, almost sarcastically. I didn't penalize him, because I was in an irritable mood after what Amara had said and wanted to settle the entire problem as it stood now. "The beauteous… Amara, was her name?"

"Lon, remember who you speak to," Hao hissed. I saw that he was indeed handsome, but he was the usual, dull caste of soldier. This Lon, though, would be a challenge, especially if he was one pushing Hao to act on the bet. He wasn't a particularly good-looking man, but it wasn't as though he was disfigured, as I was.

I remembered that I was expected to answer at some point, as the course of the conversation. "Yes, you do have a point; she is lovely. She is not my bride-to-be, as yet, but she is not yours to discuss in such a manner."

"Of course not, my lord," Lon said with a sneering curl to his lip. I very much disliked the man. "But it seems that young Hao has had some fair money wagered both for and against him, and we were cajoling him into some action over it."

"You were admittedly encouraging him to attempt to woo my slave? Have you no sense of survival, Private?" He was certainly being up front.

"It's all in fun, my lord."

"Amara doesn't find it to be so."

"What does that matter? She is a woman, and of the Earth nation, and a slave, my lord." I had not told any but Uncle that she was an earthbender, but, if I had let the fact slip, I'm sure Lon would have said it against her here, as well.

I was blindingly furious at this insolent man - six years older than I, mind you, but I could still best him in any duel. The wind picked up, and I heard Kiri whisper in my ear, "No, Zuko. Please. Not for something so small as this. Calm yourself; is this the sort of leader you want to be?" I took her words to heart, but did not look around at her. I had to keep eye contact with this man, and wouldn't have turned my back on him for anything in the four nations.

"Private Lon, you are out of line," I signaled one of the peace-keepers nearby, "And you will be escorted down to the brig." I struggled for a few seconds with the proper words. "If I ever hear of another man's hand on Amara, there will be no question of what I'll do." I held my hand up at chest level a certain way, and carefully flicked my wrist to leave my palm up toward the sky. A small, strong, bright fireball came at this call, and I held it for long enough to get my message across. I dropped it suddenly, and it flaredwith heat oncebefore hitting the metal deck.

As I stalked away, my mind was on a suitable punishment for Lon. I would have to come up with something more dire than some few lashes for rude speech, but could not bring Amara's dignity into the fray, because I did not, for the last time, have a crush on her. What my mind was not on was what Kiri had been doing outside the infirmary with a broken leg, or why she had disappeared from behind me before I even saw her, or even the odd expression on Amara's face the next day, a mixture of gratitude and shock.

My life seemed to be quite a bit more interesting since the girls had come.