Author's Note: Just a warning, but I always rate my stories "T" just to be on the safe side. However, in this chapter you'll see the reason why it's rated this way. It's not too bad, but you've been warned.

(Edited Sep 17, 2020): Did my usual stuff this chapter to make it flow better and add more description to the setting. Also changed that particular scene that got the T rating just a little bit (it's a torture scene but it isn't super graphic). Overall, though, I edited this chapter a lot more than I thought I would!

Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender and I am in no way associated with the creators of the show.

Book 1: Fire

Chapter 12: The Blue Spirit

For the fifth time that morning, Aang's body shuddered with coughs and he rubbed at his stinging eyes. Next to him, Zuko was in much the same condition, but he looked considerably paler than normal with a red ring around his eyes from irritation. Both boys performed their chores around camp with sluggish movements, far below the standard Azula expected of them, and when Aang tripped over a knot of buttress roots and fell flat on his face she had enough. She couldn't even find it in her to laugh at him.

Azula just looked at them with an exasperated sigh. "What is wrong with you two today? You're both pathetic."

Another fit of coughs wracked Zuko's body, so Aang spared him from answering, giving him a concerned glance. "It's probably all the ash and soot from the volcano yesterday," Aang rasped, trying to help Azula set up camp, but failing miserably in his attempt to get the sleeping rolls out of Appa's saddle. "My throat hasn't stopped burning. I can barely see."

"Maybe if you stopped complaining you'd be able to deal with it," Azula said, rolling her eyes. "But I suppose I'll have to take care of you two for a while." Through his puffy eyes, Aang gave her an appreciative smile. "But only until you're better!" she quickly amended - she had a reputation to uphold and did not want them to get the impression that she could be compassionate and nurturing. Aang fell back into Appa's fur in relief just as Zuko did the same.

"Azula was just as near the volcano as we were," Zuko said to Aang, but loud enough for his sister to hear. "How come she didn't get sick?"

"Because I'm a firebender, and firebenders don't get sick," Azula said to him, sitting on one of the roots as she prodded at a campfire nestled in the largest gap of them. The grove they'd chosen for their camp would hide the smoke from their fire well, sheltered by a canopy of trees so that even their proximity to a Water Tribe fortress wouldn't cause an issue.

Aang frowned when he spotted her pointed insult but he ignored it. "Well, no matter what the reasons are, me and Zuko are too sick to travel," said Aang, his voice weak. "Azula, could you please go find some medicine?"

"I suppose I could pick up more of the slack around here," Azula said, fetching their map and secretly enjoying every minute of it. Once they recovered, she hoped to milk the fact that she carried their weight around camp for all it was worth. She first looked for their position on the map of the Fire Nation's Inner Islands—a riverbank surrounded on all sides by forest—and then searched for the nearest town. Trying her best to hide the fact that her brother knew more about maps than she did, she didn't rotate the map too much as she pinpointed her destination. "There may be a village not too far from here," she said after a few moments of searching.

"And...?" Aang asked hopefully, gesturing for her to continue.

"And I guess it won't be too much of an effort to find someone to help."

Aang grinned, but was seized by another spasm of coughs and rolled onto his side.


"They are the greatest swordsmen in the land, Chief Commander Vyke," Bato argued. Bato and the chief of the Owlbatross Clan disputed atop the walls of an impregnable fortress located in what used to be the capital city of the Fire Nation back during the time of the first Fire Lords. Decades ago, the city had fallen into ruin and now the Water Nation occupied the inactive volcano, building a fortress out of an ancient prison tower nestled in the rim of the caldera. "You are wasting their skills by making them act as mere guards for our stronghold in the Fire Nation. You already have scores of men under your command. They should be after the Avatar!"

"The Kokkan Samurai are not under your command, Chief Bato. They serve my army and not the war fleets. Your request has been denied." A stout man who looked like a wall of muscle, Vyke's skills as a warrior had been respected since Bato was only a boy. One of the most victorious commanders of inland battles - a rarity among the tribes - and a nonbender, Vyke obstinately held the fortress from the Golden City forces to the north and Jie Duan to the south.

"Their skills are perfectly suited to assassination and capture, Vyke. Said to have the ability to slice an enemy to bits with seemingly a single swing of their sword, or to disable any part of the body, cut wounds without leaving any blood..." Native to a region in the Chuje Islands of the South Sea, they hailed from a proud warrior tradition predating the empire, and had been loyal to it since the beginning. Now, it was said that a certain amount of waterbenders numbered in their ranks, bolstering their power further.

"The Kokkan Samurai are assigned to me, Captain, so I know their capabilities well," Vyke cut across him firmly, pulling his rank to make Bato stand down. He went back to sharpening the teeth of his enormous whalebone club, Vyke's signature weapon. Bato turned away, his arms folded, brain churning for another idea. If Vyke had been a waterbender, he could just challenge him to Sedna'a, but that route was closed to him. However, the timely arrival of a messenger falcon interrupted that train of thought, which perched on Vyke's arm and when he read the scroll his scowl deepened.

Bato had an idea of what it might have said, but he wanted to hear it. "What does it say?"

"You already went over my head and petitioned the council of elders, didn't you?" Vyke asked, curling up the scroll.

Hands folded behind his back, Bato turned toward the old prison tower and smirked. "Now, then," he said. "As I was saying, the Kokkan Samurai will be deployed to hunt the Avatar and anyone who would aid him."

Above the walls behind them, a blue mask edged out of the shadows, unseen.


Azula followed the flow of the river near their camp, traveling on foot in a dour mood because the stupid bison refused to let her take the reins and leave his master behind. The village was a mile or so downriver cradled right between a fork on a muddy riverbank. Before she entered the village—which was little more than a cluster of houses—Azula took a step back to analyze it.

It took the untrained strategist a matter of minutes to spot the many flaws in the creation of the village, mostly because of where it was placed. While indeed it was wise that the people built the village where it was surrounded on three sides by water, the whole back of the village was left open to attack. In addition, if someone (or a group of someones) were to attack from the palm trees that bordered the river, the attackers would have an obvious advantage of height and camouflage. Despite being a good natural defense in most scenarios, the primary threat for this riverside village would be a waterbender attack. If fire was added into the mix, the wooden buildings and thatched roofs would burn in a matter of moments.

That was what Azula loved most about fire, her element. It burned everything in its way until there was no opposition left. She was glad to be a firebender. But she also supposed that this village was lucky to have nothing of value for the Water Tribes or it likely would've been conquered long ago.

Azula sauntered over the flimsy wooden bridge spanning the thinnest part of the river to enter the village perimeter. Once inside, she paused a moment to take a closer look. They had one enclosure for livestock and another for a pair of old, battered komodo rhinos, though most of the animals grazed freely in the tall grass at the river's edge. With no more than a dozen homes and a handful of businesses besides, she found it to be a pitiful excuse for a village so close to the ancient capital. It scarcely seemed better than her own, with all the buildings closest to the river elevated up on stilts to prevent flooding. Half of the buildings had roofs made from dried palm leaves or wood chips and terracotta tiles. The moment the Water Tribes or a pirate ship so much as looked in this village's direction they'd fall under their dominion.

Oh well. It wasn't her problem.

Villagers barely paid her any mind as she carefully walked around the mud puddles dotting the road. Azula didn't expect such a small village to have any healers or physicians but it was common practice for the innkeeper to have some degree of medical expertise, so she hoped they at least had that. She discovered it quickly enough—this inn seemed to double as the village's tavern, which advertised a sweet palm wine as their local specialty. How quaint.

"Where's the innkeeper?" Azula asked as she strode inside. "I need to know now." She looked around at the two occupants—one, a stern-looking old lady and the second, a younger woman with thick brown hair that fell over most of her back. Both glanced up at her as she entered and then turned back to their bowls of soup without a care for the intrusion. The old woman sat behind the counter overlooking the rest of the establishment and its scattering of tables and stools. Behind her, a collection of theater masks hung on the walls, staring and glaring at the new arrival. The meaty broth that the old woman tended to smelled like the most appetizing thing Azula had eaten in weeks.

"Do you happen to be some princess of a faraway land?" the old woman asked, clasping her hands together around a soup ladle with a puckered face like she had eaten something sour. Her voice came out raspy with age.

Azula put her hands on her hips. "What sort of question is that? No."

"Then don't walk around like you own the world and respect your elders!" the old lady reprimanded her. "I'm the innkeeper. What d'you want? My son can show you to a room, wherever that good-for-nothing..."

Azula sneered at the old crone in front of her and interrupted before she could continue. "I don't need a room. My friends are out there," she gestured to the world outside, "sick and waiting for a cure. Do you happen to know one?" Azula asked her, long past caring about how rude she came across. She quickly listed the symptoms her brother and the Avatar had, counting them off on her fingers.

"Bah, that's all you need?" the crone scoffed, squinting her eyes. "Just make some tea out of fire lilies! Even the hogmonkeys know that!" She shuffled behind the counter and threw a sachet of herbs at her. "And put that in there, too."

Azula barely contained her anger. "And where can I get these fire lilies?"

"Where on earth do you live, the South Pole? They're those little red flowers you see all over the place. Now get outta here! Scram!" And then the old woman started swinging the soup ladle at her, chasing Azula out of the inn while the second woman watched silently.

"You crazy old witch!" Azula yelled once the door was slammed in her face. The firebender turned around on the spot, took a deep breath, and straightened her hair back into its proper place. "Well, that was quite rude," she said to herself. She quickly left the town and ventured into the forest, eager to get the fire lilies to her brother and friend so she could finally make this day end.

Azula was never a girl who favored flowers. She did not care to memorize all of their names, or point out their beauty as she walked by. She did not pick them and put them in her hair. She did not enjoy their fragrances or wear them as perfumes.

But her mother absolutely loved them.

Azula remembered how often her mother had picked them, when she was very little, and the flower shop her mother owned. Now that she thought of it, her mother owned several masks just like the innkeeper as well. She was always so happy to be there, and Azula loved being with her. Just like fire was Azula's element, flowers belonged to her mother.

But when the Water Nation came, everything changed. Azula remembered that day with vivid clarity despite how young she had been. She remembered running to her mother's flower shop, worrying for her mother and all of the flowers and praying to the Twin volcano spirits for protection. She remembered the smells, the sounds of shouting and wood splintering under the weight of ice blocks. But when she got to the shop, she found the flowers all withered and dead and dry... and their mother was discovered later, drowned in the lake outside the village, swallowed up by the waterbenders. Flowers that she always held in her sleeves and the inner pockets of her robes floated in the water next to her like a funerary offering.

Picking the fire lilies was a solemn affair.

She had picked several handfuls of them and stuffed them in her sleeves, unaware of how many she'd need but taking as much as she could carry just in case. She had her arms folded as she began her trek back to camp. Her eyes stung but her face had managed to stay dry. She didn't like to think of her mother. It made her feel weak, like if she'd been a better firebender her mother could've been saved.

The fronds of a nearby palm tree rustled in a peculiar way that startled Azula from her memories and gave her the feeling that she wasn't alone. If someone was foolish enough to watch her or spy on her she would make them regret it. Tucking her arms in, she took a deep breath and focused her energy, spreading them wide and releasing an arc of flame that licked at the tree line.

The fire dissipated before it burned the trees, but the flames gave her enough light to see the glint of a blade just as it came swinging at her. Azula threw herself to the ground, throwing her hands above her head as a form of protection. Whether it was instinct or pure luck she didn't know, but she managed to avoid that first attack and turn her duck into a roll, and she gracefully landed on her feet. She faced her opponent.

She found herself faced by a man garbed in pure white, loose-fitting clothing, a traditional kimono with the frosty blue outline of a chrysanthemum pattern dancing down to the hem. He wielded a long katana, the biggest one that Azula had ever seen, with grace unfitting for such a large weapon. His face was impassive and cold. Two more samurai that dressed exactly like him made themselves visible on tree branches surrounding her. "Who are you?" Azula demanded. The man didn't answer, opting to go after her with the flat side of his sword. Azula quickly sidestepped and jabbed at him with fingers wreathed in flames, but he ducked and swept out the flat side of his blade again, this time at her legs. She toppled but did not give up. She was no master but she wouldn't go down so easily - her pride depended on it.

From her position on the ground, she unleashed a furious, orange blaze from her fingertips, but with a single swing of his sword, the man cut the fire in two and let it fade away harmlessly on either side of him. He walked up to her calmly as no more than a dozen similar white shapes hopped down from their positions in the trees. Her subsequent blast was dispelled by a shield of water and the next thing she knew, one of them encased her from the neck down in an ice crystal with a swing of his hoarfrost blade.

One of the samurai promptly bashed her over the head with the flat side of his blade and she dreamed of flowers and her mother.


The first thing she felt upon waking was intense pain centered around her head and her ankles. She let out a small moan of pain and weakly tried to open her eyes. She blinked away the blurriness, unable to rub her eyes. The first thing she noticed was that she had been bound by her hands and feet, which were outstretched at her sides and firmly held in place against a stone wall in iron chains. She had also been held behind iron bars in a cell lit only by a single torch.

A calm and all-too-familiar voice spoke out to her. "Ah, our little friend is awake," said Bato, appearing in her line of sight with a smirk.

Azula shook her shackles. "What's going on? How dare you?" she said, staring him resolutely in the eyes. Two Water Nation warriors with twisting buffalo-yak horns and blue leather armor flanked him on either side. How could she have allowed herself to get captured by this fool?

"You hear that, boys? How dare we capture her? I'm afraid we can't let you go yet, princess. Your usefulness hasn't yet outdone itself," said Bato, his blue eyes glinting with deviousness.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Not that I don't like being referred to as royalty, but why did you call me that?"

Bato shrugged. "Isn't that what your headpiece was meant to be? A crown? You may be descended from those old Fire Nation royals. So this is a homecoming of sorts for you, isn't it? Centuries ago your Fire Lord ancestors used to keep their palace right here in this caldera."

Azula averted her glare and let out a huff. "I had a bit of an idea. So is that it, then? I'm a valuable hostage?" She scoffed. "You don't even have the crown anymore to prove my status. Sokka does, doesn't he?"

"Not as valuable as you think," he said, rolling his eyes with a sigh. "Let's not get too full of ourselves, now."

"What do you want, then?" she asked him, punctuating every word with hatred.

"The Avatar, of course," Bato answered offhandedly. "But you're the next best thing."

"Oh? Why's that? If I'm not royalty then what's so special about me?"

Bato smirked again, and in that moment, Azula felt a slight tinge of fear. "You are, shall we say, the bait."

If she could, Azula would have slapped her forehead. How could she have been so stupid? Now if Aang was captured, it was going to be all her fault... "It's a pretty faulty plan, if you ask me," she said, thinking quickly. "Capturing one of the Avatar's allies to lure him in? Compared to him, I'm expendable. And I don't know if you realized, genius, but he has no idea where I am now or where I went."

He scowled at her. "Well, that is not your only purpose." Azula looked up at him again. What did he want...? "We need information," he said, suddenly drawing closer to her. He gestured dismissively to his warriors on the other side of the metal bars. "Leave us." They complied. Bato flicked open his water pouch and drew out a thin stream of water, which swirled into an orb that floated just above his palm.

"What are you doing?" Azula asked, panic and fear edging into her voice.

"Tell me where the Avatar is," Bato said, his eyes turning hard and distant and cold. Like ice. "No jokes or jests or clever quips now, if you please. I really don't have patience for those."

"We went over this last time. I'm not going to tell you," Azula said curtly, turning her head to look away from him. Immediately after the words were out of her mouth, the globe enveloped her whole head before she could draw in a breath. She screwed her mouth shut and stared at him with wide eyes. She wanted to firebend but couldn't - firebending came from the breath, as Uncle had told her once - and she couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything to fight back. Her chest pumped with force of trying to breathe, and just before she was about to inhale a mouthful of water the globe fell away. Heaving in lungfuls of air, she glared at him with more hatred than she ever felt in her life. She tugged against the shackles and flames burst from her hands, harmless to Bato, which infuriated her further. "Let me down so you can fight me fair, you coward!"

"How long will it take for your lips to be loosened? Or shall I cut them?" He used his other hand to pull a strand of water away from his globe, which froze into a dagger. "You'll find that water is so adaptable. There's so much we can do today. And the next day. And the next. At least until you deign to talk to a simple peasant like me, princess."

She stared at the ice but said nothing. The water surrounded her head again but she took a deep breath this time and stared at him through the water, his distorted face rippling to make him look deranged. Her lungs burned. She started to feel dizzy, but once again before she took in a breath he pulled the water away. As she gulped in air - which never tasted so sweet - in an attempt to catch her breath, he covered her again and she felt her body seize up with panic. She tried to force it down, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear, but she felt its talons clawing at her regardless. She knew enough that panicking would expend her precious breath faster. Her vision blurred. She pulled against the shackles so hard that her wrists screamed in pain along with her lungs.

He pulled the water away again and she choked out the fluid that had gotten into her lungs. It almost felt like fire and Azula had the absurd observation that the elements were more alike than she had thought if water could make her feel a burning like that. "Are you ready to talk yet?" Bato asked.

She spit at him, but he held up his hand and it stopped in midair and he flicked it away.

"Nice try," he said. "But saliva is made of water."

"He's going to the Earth Kingdom," she choked out. "We all are."

"And why is that?"

"He's trying to find an earthbending master," Azula lied.

"Do you think me a fool? I know the order of the Avatar cycle—he needs to master firebending first," Bato said, anger inching its way into his voice.

She hung her head as she took in deep breaths. "Do you remember what I said last time? I'm Aang's firebending master."

His response came out brusque. "Liar. I've seen your bending. You are no master—just a fire savage." The water enclosed around her head again, pressing it back against the stone wall behind her. The motion exposed her neck to him and that made her feel more vulnerable than anything. The water dropped in temperature and she felt a weight plunge in her stomach when she saw ice forming along the edge of the water globe and the horror set in when she realized she could meet the same end her mother did.


The moment night fell, the figure was on the move. Tonight was perfect for stealth. The silvery moon dipped low enough to just barely peek over the lip of the caldera. A thick veil of mist rolled in the moment before the figure's arrival. Barely stopping to regard the walls that had been topped with whale-walrus tusks and seal bones to resemble spikes, the figure darted to the edge of the torchlight and climbed up the caldera's wall using the uneven foot and handholds naturally part of the stone. They easily slipped around the warrior guards, their movements lithe and footsteps silent as they entered the complex and made they way to the tower at the back of it. With its multiple tiers and ramps coiling around to the top, the old prison tower converted into a fortress had been remarkably simple to infiltrate so far. Escaping from it would be the more difficult part.

Once inside the complex, the figure kept to the shadows and crept along the grounds, coming to the main tower as it rested against the walls. Instead of going in through the single entrance on the ground level, the infiltrator crept to the side of the tower and ascended by climbing on the caldera wall, jumping off, and climbing more, clinging to it like a crab-spider. In the subsequent movement, they flipped onto the next level and flattened against the side of the building, waiting for a moment to see if they were seen. Nothing happened, so they continued onto the balcony that rested on the third floor, made for whatever military official that chose to stay overnight in the facility. The masked figure knew that Chief Bato was currently staying in the fortress, so they made sure to check if he was in the room before they opened the shuttered window and slid inside.

Despite its reputation as a historically impregnable fortress even under the reign of the Fire Lords, they found it pathetically easy to infiltrate. Perhaps it was the new management - the chief who commanded the fortress before Bato never had any breakouts, to their knowledge.

After leaving Bato's chamber, the masked figure dashed down the maze of hallways, but they knew well enough where the prisoner would be. They threw all caution to the wind as they turned a corner, coming face-to-face with two Water Nation warriors. They unsheathed a wakizashi—a thin blade longer than a knife but smaller than a sword—and cut them down before they could react. They fell to the floor in a crumpled heap just as a third warrior wielding a bone club rounded the corner and rushed at them, but before he could shout an alarm to the whole tower they ducked beneath his blow and sliced across his torso, pulling his club from his grip and knocking him over the head with it in one fluid movement before he could do more than gasp in pain. The shadows danced across the mask as they continued walking down the hallway, droplets of blood hovering momentarily in their wake around their feet as the spirit passed.

Another curving corridor led to the prisoners' chambers. They knew which one contained the firebender due to the Buffalo-Yak warriors stationed as guards in front of the cell door. One leaned against the iron door and the other sat - Water Tribe warriors often found prisoner duty beneath them because there was never glory to seize, so they had let their guard down and enabled them to take the warriors out with nothing but soft gasps. Blood pooled at their feet, spreading to the gap underneath the cell door as if to herald their arrival.


Bato had left Azula's prison cell some time before, leaving her chained like a komodo rhino. Ever since he left, the firebender worked on her escape, heating the metal chains binding her to weaken them. She did not know what she was going to do when she was free, though. She felt weak from the pain, the torture of having her breath taken from her over and over again, like the tides washing over her to douse her inner flame. But when he left her after she became too weak and sickly to talk without rattling breaths, she felt the force of her firebending fueled by anger alone, going against every scant bit of knowledge her uncle had of it.

She hated Bato. She was going to kill him.

While she focused on that, on tempering her fury into heating her chains, the metal door to her cell creaked open. Expecting another waterbender—or, perhaps, Bato again—Azula stopped her escape attempts and stared resolutely at the person as they walked in. But what she saw surprised her.

The first thing to stand out about this person was the fearsome blue oni mask depicting some sort of horrific demon. Its fangs were long and sharp and pearly white, an angry spirit with a vengeful laugh that she felt she could relate to. She wondered if her feelings had summoned it here, a spirit that would help her carry out her vengeance, but through her bleary gaze and lightheaded haze she reminded herself that this was a human in a mask. The invader's black, form-fitting clothes told her nothing about their nation or allegiance.

"Who are you?" Azula asked of the spirit, glad that her throat had recovered enough to speak almost normally. "What do you want?" The figure did not answer, but walked over to her and cut the chains binding her with a short blade. Azula almost toppled since they had been holding her up. The masked stranger cut the chains binding her feet next and Azula fell to her knees. It was there that she remembered the fire lilies - at some point in her struggling they had fallen to the ground. She picked them up and stored them back in her sleeves and the inside of her tunic. Afterward, she stumbled to her feet on shaky legs, unwilling to seem weak in front of her rescuer.

She did not bother to say thanks to the blue spirit. "Well, whoever you are, let's go." When Azula swayed and propped herself against the wall, the blue spirit offered their shoulder but Azula shook her head. "I'll be fine."

Accepting that as an answer, the spirit turned away from Azula and slipped out the cell door. Azula followed without saying anything else, but as they proceeded down the curving corridors they passed streaks of blood and men who stirred and some that didn't, making her wonder if this spirit killed them. But who would go to those lengths, and why to rescue her? "So who are you? Can I see your face?" She tore her gaze away from the warriors and their ambiguous fates.

"No," the blue spirit answered. A feminine voice.

Succinct answer, Azula supposed. "Fine, I was just asking..."

"Come on. There's a weapons shipment leaving in a few minutes. We'll use that to get out of here," said the blue spirit. Azula nodded, bent low as they crept through the lower level hallways of the prison complex. These halls did not feel tainted by the spirit's bloody touch.

Outside, the nightly mist came in unusually thick and cloying and it helped to hide the two as they jumped into the back of a covered wagon. Both hid in the front of the wagon behind several piles of crates as Azula kept her head low instead of peeking out to the rest of the fortress. She didn't think she could focus on her surroundings too much right now, anyway. Nausea gripped at her head and her stomach.

"I think it goes without saying that you shouldn't use firebending here," said the spirit, gesturing to a wooden crate labeled explosives. Azula rolled her eyes. They waited for only a minute for the wagon to start moving, pulled by a pair of buffalo-yaks. Azula and the blue spirit demon stayed quiet in the darkness.

The moment that they left the walls of the fortress, all chaos broke loose. Drums beat and horns blared and the hoofbeats of the buffalo-yaks stopped.

Azula turned to her companion. "What now?"

In response, the spirit ripped through the tarp covering the two of them and jumped to the front seat, threatening the driver with her blade. "Do not stop," said the masked woman.

Azula looked to the top of the wall at one of the horn blowers who spotted them. His coiling ram horn boomed out a sound that felt as if it shook the whole caldera, and at once a pair of Kokkan Samurai came after them on foot. Just before they reached the wagon and Azula prepared to blast them with fire, their legs jerked out from under them and to her astonishment they both tripped over each other and fell face first to the ground. She would have found it funny if four more didn't emerge from behind the walls in their place.

"Go!" Azula yelled. The driver did nothing, so the woman or spirit or whatever she was pushed him off the wagon and took the reins. The mysterious woman urged the buffalo-yaks onward, but it was a useless effort compared to the speed which the samurai skated across the ice under their feet. The first one to reach them soared right over the back of the wagon, lifting his sword to bring it down on Azula's mysterious rescuer. The other woman didn't see it coming, so Azula did the first thing that came to mind—she blasted the man in the face with a ball of fire. He screamed in pain and missed his mark, hitting the blue spirit with the hilt of his sword. The man fell next to Azula with a crash, but she pushed him off of the wagon as the terrified buffalo-yaks dashed away.

One by one, the three Kokkan Samurai pursuing them either misstepped or recoiled from the wagon and dropped to the ground in a spray of red mist that clashed with the white of their robes and Azula tried to look closer but the wagon rounded a bend and suddenly they had no pursuers. She felt chills up and down her whole body and turned to the blue spirit with a question on her lips but the samurai's blow had knocked the masked woman unconscious. She slumped over in her seat as the buffalo-yaks went at full speed into the dark, surrounding forest. Azula crawled to the front of the wagon as the wind whipped her face and she tried to put the memory of whatever happened to the samurai behind her in the hopes that whatever had done that to them did not pursue her next. She nudged the blue spirit to the side and took the reins herself.

By the time the sounds of the warriors died, long-lost and far behind them, the terrified buffalo-yaks finally calmed down enough so that Azula could pull them to a stop. She knew they would have to leave the wagon soon—it would be too easy to follow. The other woman was still unconscious.

Knowing that they were useful, Azula unhitched the buffalo-yaks from the wagon and let one run free while she struggled to lift the blue spirit onto the other. Azula jumped on right behind her and rode it away, helping her rescuer out of curiosity rather than any true sense of altruism or payback for helping Azula. The buffalo yak was easy to maneuver—the beasts had been trained well, not unlike the komodo rhinos she had ridden with her father when she was younger.

Thoughts of home brought up confusing feelings, but Azula stifled them for now. Right now, getting the two of them to safety was more important.

Once the two were far enough away from the wagon and considerably away from the main road—the mysterious woman still unconscious—Azula decided to stop and let the buffalo-yak rest. Aang's camp was near, and she remarkably still had the fire lilies to make into a tea...

Azula's gaze settled on the mysterious masked woman that had come to save her. Who was she? Why did she bother to save Azula? What was in it for her? And not for the first time, Azula was tempted to take off her mask. Before, she obviously couldn't do that, but since the woman was suffering from a hard blow to the back of the head...

Before she knew it, Azula's fingers wrapped around the back of the mask and she lifted it up and away. The black hood fell as she lifted it, revealing a thick mane of brown hair not unlike her own. The mask was lifted, and Azula gasped upon seeing her face.

She was surprisingly young—near Azula's own age. Her skin was tanned. She was fairly pretty, Azula had to admit.

But she was a Water Tribe girl.


Azula ran away from the scene as fast as she could, willing to leave it all behind her. She was Water Tribe and had rescued a firebender. She was an enemy. But who was she? Why would she do it? What were her motives?

It didn't make sense to Azula. Nothing never made sense in Azula's world. There was always an explanation, always some sort of secret—but never something so unexplainable and completely impossible.

It made Azula's world spin.

She stumbled back into the Avatar's camp, panting and sick and breathless with her lungs still burning and her head still spinning. Adrenaline had carried her this far and she felt it ready to give out, but she still had tea to brew for Aang and Zuko before she could rest and make sense of everything.

A piercing scream startled her. She looked up in shock, totally disoriented from her run-in with the waterbenders in their den, their fortress, her encounter with Bato that kept playing over and over again in her head. She was completely unprepared for this.

Aang was the one screaming as if in pain, his face twisted in horror. He strained so much that his face reddened and his brow sweat and he babbled incoherent nonsense that scared her even more than the mysterious blood spray from the Kokkan Samurai. Aang kept screaming and writhing and she didn't know what to do. She cursed to herself, wondering why Aang always caught her off guard.

He was delirious and sick. It was then that she remembered the fire lilies and the tea she was supposed to make for Aang and Zuko (who was out cold) and frantically went to work, desperate to make Aang's fear and nightmares stop. She was no expert at making tea, but she put the fire lily petals in a pot of river water, heating it in moments with her firebending that burned hotter than normal. She worked almost automatically, her hands shaking from fatigue and the pressure of it all. All she cared about was getting the tea to Aang and ending his suffering.

Every minute was agonizing for her as she readied the tea for him, pouring it into a cup as he struggled feebly to get away from her. Azula dropped to her knees in front of him but he pushed her away.

"Y-you monster! Killer! Get away..." he mumbled, eyes still wide with terrors that only he could see. "Azula... you killed... Don't trust...!"

"Aang, drink this," she begged him, almost desperate. What was happening? Why was he acting this way to her? She did not want Aang to fear her, to call her those things. Each word felt like he struck her in the torso and after everything that had happened she almost couldn't take it. Aang never showed fear. She admired him for it, almost envied him. So why now, toward her?

"P-poison," he murmured to himself, but she finally got it down his throat. The soothing effects were stronger than she realized when Aang finally stopped his frantic squirming and descended into an uneasy sleep. His episode finished, she finally dropped her guard and felt her breathing returning to normal, wondering why she suddenly felt like she was responsible for the boy.

Her limbs heavier than they'd ever felt before, she managed to slump her way over to Zuko and pour some tea into his mouth after stirring him awake, which he swallowed with barely any recognition of her. Once that was done, Azula fell into Appa's fur, still dizzy and hurt and confused. Sabi jumped up in fright when the firebender nearly landed on her, but settled down a moment later with angry chittering.

Azula's head still spun with questions. What was going on? Would that Water Tribe girl, that blue spirit, find them? Why did she help Azula? What happened to those samurai in the woods as they fled from the fortress?

And... why did she care so much for Aang?


The girl blearily opened her ocean blue eyes, her vision focusing into an animal's face as it munched on some grass and examined her with curiosity. The girl pushed the buffalo-yak's face away forcefully, but grasped the back of her head a moment later when pain lanced through where she'd been struck earlier. Cursing herself for letting her guard down enough to take a hit from those sellswords, she nearly jumped when she realized that she was no longer wearing her hood... and her mask lay on the ground a few feet away from her. She scampered to her feet despite the pain and took in her surroundings.

Next, she noticed the firebender that she had rescued had gone missing. She should have expected that from the no-good, ungrateful savage. Not for the first time, she wondered why she bothered to rescue her anyway. But she always countered that side of her with the argument that Prince Sokka needed the Avatar more than Bato or any other Water Tribe man... Capturing the firebender only halted the Avatar's journey, and eventually, the Avatar was sure to go and rescue her, only to be captured himself. She couldn't let that happen, not from Bato and his men.

Perhaps, she hoped, she would be able to restore her bond with her brother if he'd be the one to capture the Avatar instead.


Author's Note: (Sept 17, 2020) Kokkan- "depths of winter." You may be wondering what a Japanese-inspired samurai group is doing in the Inuit-inspired Water Tribe, but after coming back from my hiatus I determined that they're island neighbors to Kyoshi, making them Earth Kingdom, and like Kyoshi conquered near the beginning of the war, which is why some of them are waterbenders.

Also, fun fact: I remember way back, someone asked me if that younger woman sitting in the inn was actually Katara. I don't think I intended it at the time but I figured, why not? So that's Katara's official first appearance in this story. Incidentally, as I wrote the cantankerous old innkeeper this time she kind of morphed into Yon Rha's mother in my head and I kind of like the irony of Katara stopping at her and Yon Rha's inn so that's that, I guess!

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