Daughter of Hate

by Blutus Mindpretzel

The war is over. Azula's motives remain unknowable as her child stands to shake the foundation of everything built since the fall of Fire Lord Ozai. For Toph, Mai, Aang, Katara and the rest, the world is an even more dangerous place than it was when they were children. And despite being long since gone, Sasuke's impact continues to shudder their world, perhaps more than they know.

33. Chapter 33

Chapter 33: Confrontations

Ursa watched the scene play out before her, allowing herself the ignorance to just accept the moment for what it was and let the joy of it spread to her as well. It might have been too easy to just let the many worries she was feeling consume her then just as they had been since Sasuke left, and while it may have been a strain to put those all to the side, it was such a tremendous relief just to be granted a moment to breathe and feel some residue of the happiness from the three people she was watching, none of whom likely were even aware of her presence. She smiled at the relief and tears mixing between Yue and her parents, and Ursa couldn't quite imagine the relief the young woman must have been feeling. The stress of seeing her parents once more likely had been eating her alive for weeks and weeks, during her travels with Sasuke, on the boat, in the Four Nations, right up until this very moment. Ursa knew that she would have been able to handle it on her own, but she supposed it gave her some semblance of personal satisfaction that perhaps something she said had been helpful. Her hand still ached slightly from how hard Yue had been squeezing it.

Moving as quietly as she could, Ursa gently paced backwards away from the family reunion before turning and walking down the hallway back towards her room. The smile remained on her face as she walked, but it very slowly softened as the inevitability of her reality caught up to her. The first thing that came to take away that brief instance of bliss was picturing herself standing where Yue's mother had and Azula in the place of the young woman.

Would she ever see me like that?

Ursa knew that at least once every hour, a thought passed through her mind, a desire to go directly to Azula and speak with her. She wanted to talk to her daughter about everything, to tell her how she felt and what her intentions had been when she left. She wanted to take every possible thing she could have thought to say and put it out in the open, so she could tell herself that there was nothing that Azula didn't know.

Ha.

Clenching her fists, she felt her nails cutting into her palms. It was rather ironically hypocritical how much she had been coaching Yue on confronting her past, and yet she was struggling so badly in doing that herself. It was difficult not to feel disgust for the fact that she had been able to give Yue the best advice she could, going so far as to walk her right up to her parents, and yet instead of going to her daughter, Ursa was retreating back to her room to let the fatigue she had been feeling in recent days lie her down once more. She had even so much as considered asking Zuko to come with her, but quickly dashed this idea; she knew fully well that she needed to handle this one on one, and that Zuko being there wouldn't be what she needed to get past this hesitation.

Opening the door to her room and closing it behind her, Ursa felt the name of her hesitation resound in her head with a tumultuous thud. She closed her eyes and rested the back of her forearm against her forehead with a shaky sigh.

Fear.

It wasn't fear of Azula herself that was keeping Ursa from doing what she should have long since done as a mother, but rather fear over what would happen if she did admit all that she had pent up within her and Azula just… didn't care.

Dropping down onto the sofa in her room, Ursa put her hands over her face miserably.

If I say everything… if I tell her every word of how I love her and how I wish so badly that I had done things differently and yet… if she still rejects me…

It was a painful possibility and one that loomed in her head as being more likely than any other outcome she could picture. And somehow, clinging to the chance that Azula might somehow find forgiveness within her was better than just finding out if that chance had any credence. Compounded with her fear for Sasuke and the child within her, Ursa was surprised that she was even able to feel tired at all, but it was her exhaustion that still clung to her, creeping up her arms and spine the moment she allowed it.

Groaning quietly, she rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling through fluttering eyelids. Her fingers twitched slightly and she let her eyes close, imagining Sasuke's hand reaching for her own. She focused on breathing deeply as her hand drifted back and brushed over her belly, and she felt tears leak from her eyes and track down the side of her head.

It's not my choice to keep this from Azula. To let my fear hold me back, and to let our relationship suffer more every day I don't approach her.

Ursa told herself variations of this over and over again, letting her knowledge of how wrong she was in not acting pose as a singular point of comfort that allowed her fatigue to carry her off to sleep.

Her room remained silent for a time, the gentle sound of her breathing being all that passed about its walls. It came in deep, measured pulls, indicating her deep, if restless slumber.

Through her years of captaining and becoming a very sturdy example of a careful and vigilant person, the sound that came then might very well have awakened her, were it not for the state she had been put in as a result of her mental and physical condition. As it was, while her door creaked open with a noise that carried through the silence of the room, Ursa didn't stir as it drew open just enough to admit a person, and closed.

The person in question who had intruded into Ursa's room cast eyes about the room momentarily, making not a sound as their gaze pierced about, looking for any other person beyond themself but coming up clean, they silently paced over to where the woman lay on the couch.

There was a long spell as the figure looked down at Ursa's sleeping form and to any onlooker, it would have seemed they were only there to examine her while she slumbered, but eventually, a hand raised and slowly came down just over her midriff. A palm lay flat over Ursa's stomach, the gentlest press being subjected to her. The warmth of the hand remained against her belly for a period and the hand began to shake just a touch before withdrawing. Straightening, the intruder resumed their spell of simply looking down at Ursa, their hand quivering at their side. It would be minutes before they turned and quickly made for the door.

The woman on the couch stirred in her rest, a quiet sound issuing from her throat, and the figure looked back at her as they reached the door. She moved just a bit on the couch, her head turning to the side and a sigh issuing from her as her face contorted just slightly as though she somehow detected a disturbance in her sleep. The person looked for a few moments longer before withdrawing from the room and leaving Ursa to sleep in silence, never the wiser to the intruder who had just drawn near enough to touch her belly.

---

Sasuke made his way back to the fire and sat in front of it, his back to his daughter. His insides felt a sick mess, twisted and anxious, and he drew up his anger to crush them down into submission as he had always found himself more than capable of doing when it was necessary. The rage always was able to keep down the fear.

He prepared himself for Soza to start shouting at him from behind, her insolent and brash attitude something he had come to start predicting in recent days. Sasuke may have been her father, but a lifetime of likely rarely being told no seemed to have made her into quite the abrasive creature when she felt slighted. Everything was about forward progress with her, in the direction that she wanted it to be made, and he had no doubt that was a reflection of Azula through and through. This was why he was expecting Soza to lash out then, perhaps even physically, purely out of being denied yet again what she wanted.

For a few moments, it was just the crackling of the fire that he was able to hear, and Sasuke found himself counting the seconds until he was proven correct in his assumption.

That violent excitement, that aggression… I can't keep that from her. I don't have that power. And I know that I can't… I can't continue this. I won't raise another Azula, not one who has every chance to be as powerful as me. I don't know what I'm doing, I just started training her without even knowing the person that she truly is. I can't believe I rushed into that like this.

He clenched and unclenched his fists angrily as he poked at the fire.

I let myself get caught up in it. I didn't even realize it, but there I was just now, hoping every attempt she made would be just as successful as she did. It stopped being about her, and started being about… I don't know. Feeling proud? Feeling fulfilled? Nostalgia? What the hell is the matter with me…

Sighing, he ran a hand through his dark hair and found himself feeling very unequipped and unprepared to deal with something like this, nor how to handle it now that it was dead center in his face.

If only she were here… she'd know what to say, how to react to it. She's been doing this longer than I have, if I could have brought just one person along feasibly, it would have been best to have her here.

It was with a start that Sasuke realized he wasn't thinking about Ursa.

There came the gentle crunching behind him of feet making their way through snow and he tensed slightly, repreparing for Soza's voice to come snapping at him through the frigid air. But the steps only continued on their way, striding onwards and nearing his back. When Soza finally came into view, he met her eyes immediately and saw her face tight, and her eyes intense. But when she walked around to stand in front of him, her head tilted slightly, she didn't so much as raise her voice as she uttered a single word.

"Why?"

Sasuke didn't need clarification to know what she was talking about and he nearly found himself shouting, not out of necessity, but in the hopes that cowing her would keep her from pursuing the subject. Still, that didn't quite make it out his mouth and he replied in an even tone.

"You have no control. You're learning focus, but you still have no control."

Soza's mouth dropped open and he could tell that she was ready to start shouting, but to his surprise, she caught herself. She inhaled slowly and exhaled softly, and he wondered if this was her trying to appeal to him, or if she was genuinely trying to keep herself from getting mad.

"How do I not have control? Isn't control exactly what got me up the wall? What was wrong with how I did it, I thought I did it just how you did."

Her pitch started to ascend towards the end of her words and Sasuke could sense her mounting frustration.

"I'm not talking about how you did it. What you did was incredible, being able to make it a solid two steps after never having trained with chakra in your life."

Soza looked very briefly pleased at the praise he had indirectly given her, but her concerned and distantly angry expression returned shortly thereafter.

"What then?"

Sasuke knew that he could have shut the topic down then and there and told Soza that they would be speaking no more on it that night. He somehow sensed that she might actually have obeyed him, but before he could decide on whether or not to do so, he was explaining himself.

"Your reaction. You started shooting fire every which way, yelling and laughing uncontrollably. Excitement could be expected, but… that was not all I saw."

She swallowed and glared at him challengingly.

"What then?" she repeated, her voice now an angry demand. Sasuke met her eyes flatly, not willing to give any quarter if this was actually the direction he was intending to take with this.

"I saw the same girl who lost control and nearly burned her own mother to death by consequence of tapping into something she didn't understand. I saw the same girl who is ready to fly off the handle at anything that infuriates her, or anything that she doesn't find acceptable."

He got to his feet and stared down at her, making no effort to hide the judgement in his eyes; if he was going to do this, he knew that he needed her to understand his feelings entirely.

"I saw—"

"Let me guess!" Soza yelled, finally seemed to break before her frustration. She balled her fists and glared up at him spitefully, seeming just as unwilling to back down. Sasuke could see angry tears forming in her eyes as she shouted up at him.

"You see mother, right?! I know what everyone thinks of her, they see her as unpredictable and dangerous, right?! Maybe even crazy!"

Sasuke watched as the gravity of what she was saying seemed to be weighing just as heavily on her as anything else, and he realized that this might have been the first time she had ever spoken ill of Azula before.

"And you see that in her too! And that's what you see in me! You think I'm going to become just as much of a monster when I grow up just like her!"

The tears spilled over and Sasuke wanted nothing more at that moment then to drop to his knees and put his arms around her. It was painfully clear just how much Soza had learned to both respect and fear her mother over the years, perhaps in a sense that couldn't even be imagined by him. Everything Azula did was right by Soza's eyes, and now being forced to see her mother in this new light, that might very well have been the most traumatic thing she was having to deal with. To see the woman that she practically revered break down multiple times screaming, seeing her assault her friends and threaten the most horrible things, all the way to learning how she had even been conceived in the first place, Soza was very clearly hurting over this.

Sasuke kept himself steady though; he wasn't moving from where he stood until Soza heard what he had to say, and he looked down at her agonized, angry face impassively.

"You're right. I don't want you to become like Azula."

Gritting her teeth, Soza wiped her face with her forearm, angrily wiping the tears aside before freezing as Sasuke continued.

"But that's not what I was going to say."

Unable to help himself, he got down to one knee and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at him reluctantly as she gave a quiet hiccup, and Sasuke gave her a grim smile.

"I saw myself."

Her eyes softened with surprise and, as he had done before, Sasuke slowly sat back down and pulled her into his lap, pressing her back to his chest. He nearly blew out a sigh of relief when she didn't resist his touch, though he could feel her reluctance.

When they were comfortably seated, Sasuke rested his chin gently on the top of her head and decided to just let the emotions speak for him.

"When I was your age, hate was about all I had time to feel. People who saw me likely just saw a reclusive and grouchy kid, but deep down, all I had was cold fury that moved me forward. Everyone I had to talk to was just in the way, wasting my time. This was how it went for year; I acted on impulse, on decisions that I didn't take the time to think over. The only control I possessed was that over my focus to defeat whatever stood in my way. And that lack of control, pushed on by rash emotion, was just as dangerous to the people around me then as it is to the people around you."

"But—!" Soza started to try and interrupt, but Sasuke spoke over her, not willing to be interrupted.

"Looking back on it, it's a miracle that such power in my hands didn't cause more destruction than it did. I was a thickheaded kid with nothing but revenge as my goal."

"I don't want—!" Soza tried again, but Sasuke continued to hold her interjections at bay.

"I know, Soza, because you're a very different person than I was. But that doesn't take away the fact that your wild behavior and your complete disregard for controlling yourself is very prevalent."

She seemed to finally be understanding what he was saying, and her words then were, while still aggressive, were a good deal softer.

"I'm learning," she said. "I'm getting better every day."

Sasuke released a long slow sigh.

"You just went absolutely wild over being able to add an extra two steps in climbing the wall. You could have hurt someone just by celebrating if there were more people here."

Soza let out a dismissive noise.

"That's dumb. Whether it was just you, or a whole crowd, I never would have—"

Bringing his arm around in front of her, Sasuke turned his forearm so that she could get a good look at it, and he felt her tense badly in his grip.

Near his elbow, the black fabric of his clothing had been burnt cleanly away, creating a slash in his cloak that was about six inches long. Under where the clothing used to be, Sasuke's skin was charred and seared, various shades of red and pink as well as some black glistening in the firelight. During her excited exclaiming, Sasuke had been forced to move his head to the side to avoid an errant jet of fire, and another had caught him just here on the arm. It was clear that Soza hadn't been aware of just how much firebending she was putting to work throughout her celebration, but the flames had gone in just about every direction imaginable, and he knew for certain that had there been anyone else there, they could have been in far worse danger than he was.

The wound has hardly anything that Sasuke was genuinely concerned about from a physical respect, and he knew that his natural abilites and limited healing jutsu would be enough to heal it quite quickly, but as he had hoped, seeing the burn on his arm seemed to have shaken Soza quite badly.

"I, I, I, I didn't…" she stammered. "I didn't mean… I wasn't trying to—"

"I know," Sasuke said. "I know you didn't mean to. But that's exactly the problem."

He turned her slightly in his lap so that he could look down at her, and make sure he was able to meet her eyes. As he might have expected, Soza's head was turned down, her expression burning with shame and disgust, no doubt heaped towards herself. Sasuke knew how hard she had been on herself during the entire period that they had been training, and knowing that she had hurt him…

Sasuke very nearly lost his resolve then and there as he felt a nearly overwhelming urge to hug Soza and tell her that it wasn't her fault.

But she needs to know. She has to understand the danger that she poses.

No part of Sasuke wanted to make his daughter feel like some kind of monster like he knew that she feared was exactly how he thought of her. But he was stuck dead between coddling his daughter as he believed Azula must have done her whole life, or hopefully doing all that he could to try and make his daughter understand the reality of who she could be becoming. And even though he knew that it could hurt her to force her into a semblance of that understanding, he knew that there was no other choice.

Whatever I need to do to help her… I owe it to her.

"Imagine if Toph had been here," he said quietly, deciding that this would be as good a time as any to test her resolve, or what little of it there was. "Or Mai, or Ty Lee, or even your mother."

"It wouldn't have been the same," Soza managed, her voice cracking slightly.

"Are you sure?" Sasuke persisted. "How would you know any better then just now? Being overcome with a sense of achievement and victory, and you just let loose? Can you trust yourself any better now then when you used Amaterasu back in the cellar?"

Soza grit her teeth.

"I told you, that wasn't—"

"You can't just allow your emotions to control you, rather than you controlling them," Sasuke said firmly. "If something as small as getting a little better at chakra control is enough to get you so spun up, then—"

Yelling, Soza pushed away from him and got to her feet in front of him, her fists balled at her side and her expression livid.

"You think I want to be screwing up that way?!" she hollered at him. "You think I don't want to be everything you want me to be?! You think it wouldn't have destroyed me to hurt someone I care about?! You think it's not driving me crazy to know that I hurt you?!"

Sasuke frowned, his heart sinking.

"Settle down. This is exactly what I'm talking about."

Throwing her head back and driving her fingers into her scalp, Soza snarled almost animalistically before glaring back at him.

"OH, OF COURSE, THIS IS JUST SUCH FUN FOR YOU, ISN'T IT?! TO SEE ME ACTING LIKE MOTHER AND BREAKING DOWN THIS WAY! WHY DON'T YOU JUST DRAG ME OFF TO SOME CABIN IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, AND HURT ME UNTIL I'M JUST AS OBEDIENT AS YOU WANT ME TO—"

When Sasuke slapped Soza, it genuinely felt as though he had just taken a blade and stabbed himself in the stomach. It was perhaps the most gut-wrenching thing he had ever done, but eve as he did it, there was no regret in his mind.

Soza's head snapped to the side and her face bloomed with shock. She staggered just a bit before slowly turned her head back towards Sasuke who had gotten to his feet a moment before striking her. Her hand drifted slowly up to her cheek and touched the skin that was already turning red.

"This is not about your mother."

Swallowing, Soza took in deep breaths as she stared at Sasuke, her eyes looking accusingly into his. He imagined that she had never been struck in such a way before.

"This is about your lack of discipline and focus as much as anything," he snapped in a low tone, trying to ignore the throbbing emotion within him that was still urging him to just rush to his daughter and pull her into a hug. "I tell you that you have no control, and your response is to start screaming and accusing me."

He realized that he hadn't so much as touched the subject of Azula with Soza since he had returned with the princess, and imagined that must have been wearing on Soza's mind just as much as anything else.

She has no idea what happened, but she knows that her mother is different; even if she wasn't there for the confession, even if she doesn't know that Azula didn't so much as bat an eye when I said I was taking her daughter away with me… was that why she didn't say goodbye to her mother, because maybe… maybe she's scared of what Azula will be like now?

"What happened between your mother and myself is not something you need to concern yourself with," he decided to say. "I spent a good deal of time trying to show her that things weren't as she saw them, and that she didn't need to keep treating the people around her like they were assassins, looking to backstab her at any turn."

He inclined his chin at Soza who was still looking rather blankly at him.

"You understood that, didn't you? You know that your mother isn't like most people, and her paranoia and obsession make her dangerous."

Soza's eyes turned down towards Sasuke's feet as she quietly responded.

"I know that she loves you."

Feeling a twinge in his stomach, Sasuke kept himself from reacting badly to this admission and he crossed his arms.

"What makes you say that?"

She looked both distantly spiteful, but also almost worried, as though the words on the tip of her tongue weren't ones that she even felt she could dare say.

"Back when we were in Ba Sing Se… that was when I heard your name for the first time. At least, for the first time in a situation where there was more than one person talking about you. I was curious about why everyone seemed to talk about you like they were scared, and because I had heard your name before from mother."

Soza lowered her head further, toeing at the snow resentfully.

"Never out loud. Not to me. But I heard her at night. She would sometimes dream, and I could hear her sounding almost scared, and sad too… but when she got like that, she would sometimes say your name."

Sasuke tried not to think about the chill that ran up his spine as she talked.

"She would ask you why you left, and why she felt so alone without you. She would say that… she was never going to give up on you. And that she would never marry another until the day she died."

Her feet squirmed as though this all felt very taboo for her to just even say aloud.

"Why did you leave everyone?" she asked angrily. "I know you didn't know what mother had… done to you. But why did you leave? Everybody, the Avatar, mother, Auntie Mai, Toph, everybody seems to be happier when you're around, even when they pretend that's not true. If you meant so much to them all back then, why did you leave?"

Sasuke could never have hoped to explain to her his reasoning, the broken, stupid reasoning of a teenager who didn't really understand what he wanted. Soza looked at him for several moments before scowling.

"Whatever. I guess it doesn't matter. All that matters is that you think I'm too dangerous to keep training, isn't that it?"

She posed the question like she expected him to deny it, but Sasuke only gave her a small nod.

"That's right."

Soza jerked her chin accusingly at him.

"Because you think I'll become like you?"

The infuriation was still very apparent, and Sasuke knew that he needed to explain better where he was coming from. Despite his reasoning, it was clear that Soza still was attaching some level of resentment to his choice, but he knew that even before, he hadn't spoken properly when he had told her she might never be ready. He had been feeling his own heart race as he had felt the wound on his arm, and his words had offered no comfort to a girl so locked up with a plethora of emotion.

Settling down on one knee before her again, Sasuke reached out and gently touched her cheek, stroking the skin he had slapped. It was a slight comfort to him that she didn't flinch away from him, but her eyes had never been anything but fearless when she had regarded him.

She's not scared of me… she's only scared of what I think of her.

"I don't want to put you in a place where you wind up hurting someone you care about, or losing control because you're pushed past your limit, whatever that might entail. If I am to keep training you, I would do so with the knowledge that while I am teaching you to harness chakra, I am putting that power in the hands of someone who doesn't know yet how to handle their emotions. Who lets their feelings dictate their actions."

Her eyes betrayed only the emotion of a person locked up in the idea that they were inferior, or being disregarded.

I can't tell her that she's not dangerous… but I can hopefully do better than that anyway.

He moved his hand to rest on her shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze.

"Soza, listen to me: there is nothing wrong with you. But you are a child still. You're mature for your age, but that doesn't exclude you from still being prone to letting your emotions best you."

Sasuke lowered his hand even further to find her palm and he gave it a squeeze.

"I was rash to just rush into training you without any idea what that might mean. I suppose part of this was my desire to spend time with you and make up the years that I wasn't able to be by your side. But I only chose to act on what I wanted, for that was giving you what you wanted."

Slowly, Soza chewed at the inside of her mouth, looking at him somewhat hesitantly.

"So… you let your emotions get the best of you too?"

Sasuke blinked in surprise at her a moment before giving her a smile.

"Time might let you learn better how to control your feelings… but that's not to say they are ever fully leashed."

Soza started to look back towards the ground, but Sasuke took her chin and forced her to keep meeting his eyes.

"I won't abandon you again, and I won't give up on training you either. But this will take time, more time than I ever considered might be necessary. If you're willing to be patient, to try and control your emotions just as much as chakra, I will keep training you."

She looked at him a long moment and he thought for a second she might just push away from him. But slowly, a small smile crept onto her face and she looked to her feet.

"I'm sorry," was all she said and Sasuke couldn't keep himself from hugging her then. He held her tight and felt relief as her arms wrapped around him as well.

"I'm sorry I hit you," he replied. "And for not explaining myself."

They both embraced in the midst of one another's apologies before Soza finally backed away, looking like she was almost embarrassed for having been caught up in the moment.

"I'm tired," she announced almost humorously. "I think I'll go to bed."

Sasuke smirked at her declaration.

"That sounds a fine idea."

Turning on her heel smartly, Soza walked to her bedroll, drew it open, climbed inside and closed her eyes without any ceremony whatsoever. Sasuke felt slightly strange at how she had just acted, but supposed that was better than him yelling at her; he wasn't sure how much of what had just taken place had been actually resolved, but he knew that now was not the time to stress too badly over it.

That didn't feel like anything was resolved.

It was a dark thought and after kicking out the still dwindling fire, Sasuke lay down in his own bedroll, keeping a watchful eye on his daughter for hours after she had seemingly drifted off to sleep.

---

Aang walked glumly along the outer terrace of the palace, his pace slow and meandering. This was the highest point he could be within the palace grounds, and the pale blue sky glowed coldly down on him, a reminder that he had been visited personally by the chief and asked not to take to the air. Aang understood why; with the expectation that the spirits would be on the doorstep of the Northern Water Tribe any day, getting too far from where he could be seen was a dangerous thing. He personally didn't think that they would choose to target him, but with how Kyoshi had handled this entire invasion, Aang didn't know what to expect. He sighed and leaned against the rail, staring out towards the ocean and trying to see if he could spot any encroaching flicker of light that was out of the ordinary, but just as was always the case, he saw nothing. Lowering his head into his hands, he closed his eyes and tried to ignore how sick he felt.

He had spoken with Kyoshi several times during the Hundred Year's War, but her behavior in handling her attempted retrieval of Sasuke and Soza was both nothing like what he expected and yet exactly what he should have expected. On one hand, her desire to handle the situation with as much speed and efficiency as possible made sense for who Aang had known her to be, but beyond that… her cruelty and cold outlook of the entire invasion was deeply troubling.

Why does she hate him so badly? It doesn't make any sense to me.

He could understand why she was so incensed with his presence, but for her to be going to the lengths she was, it was enough to make Aang's skin crawl.

Would I feel this way if it were anyone else?

Raising his head, he blinked in surprise at his own thought, not even sure he dared to consider what that question had meant.

Relax… you're worked up, you're anxious, you're scared, you just need to take some time and—

"Breathe, Aang."

He both spun and obeyed the command at the same time, sucking in a breath of air as he realized that he had indeed been holding his lungs quite tightly. His surprise at the voice likely helped fuel this action, but when his eyes landed on Mai, he let his breath release in a relieved sigh.

She was leaning against one of the veranda's pillars that reached to the ceiling just before the terrace gave way to open air. Her expression was predictably flat and impassive, but he could see the concern in her eyes that he knew she would never dare try and hide. Crossing her arms, she cocked her head at him slightly, her voice giving way to that same concern.

"You haven't been sleeping well," she remarked and Aang felt an involuntary chuckle make it from his lips.

"That's not entirely true. When I actually can fall asleep, I do like a baby."

Turning back to look out over the city, he added in a softer tone, "It's just actually getting to sleep that's the problem these days…"

Mai's footsteps tracked up behind him softly, and she joined him standing at the rail.

"That's kind of what I meant. You look like you haven't gotten a wink in two days."

"Nah, just one," he said with a smile, but his joke didn't seem to make her feel any better and Aang could feel Mai's eyes piercing him.

"You can't be letting your feelings hurt you this way."

Her voice was tight and he could hear the strain in it, and he wondered if she too was suffering from a lack of sleep.

"If you're not ready to go at a hundred percent when the spirits get here, which they will, we've lost our strongest asset what with Sasuke being gone."

"He'll come back," Aang said almost automatically as though his brain had been wired to offer such a response to something like that. Mai's smile was nearly audible.

"That's not the point I'm trying to make; I believe just as strongly that he'll come back, but it's a matter of when, not if."

Aang regarded her words a moment before running his hands over his head again and letting out a tired sigh.

"I know. I guess a part of me is just used to him showing up right at the last moment and making it count for us. And I'm just assuming that if things ever get bad, the same thing will happen."

Reaching out, Mai put a hand over his, giving it a soft squeeze.

"We can't rely on that."

There was nothing Aang could say in response to that. Mai was right, as he might have expected of her often more sound and rational mind, but as he found himself appreciating how she was going out of her way to try and keep his spirits up, he still sensed something off about Mai as though why she was truly there was yet to be addressed.

"What's going on, Mai?" he suddenly heard himself ask; it was as stunning to him that he had spoken so abruptly as it seemed to be to her and she pulled back slightly, her expression glinting with surprise. Though part of him wanted to immediately apologize for being so brash, he didn't find himself feeling like he could back down, and he was reminded of the moment they had shared in Ba Sing Se when he had rather unfairly all but asked Mai about her feelings for Sasuke.

She stood rather rigidly before him, but he was happy that she didn't seem to grow agitated and uncomfortable as she had the last time they had spoken to one another. That feeling quickly changed to unease of his own when she did finally reply to him however.

"I wanted… I thought maybe we could talk about Sasuke."

Oh no.

"What about him?" Aang asked in a tone that he hoped sounded light, but he knew the moment the words left his mouth that he had all but betrayed his thoughts in how pathetic his attempt to sound casual was. Mai looked at him as though she were looking at a child who was vehemently denying that they had stolen from the cookie jar even as they stood there with crumbs on their face; it was impossible not to see the look as painfully pitying, and Aang had to turn away from her.

"Come on, Aang, I think you know what about."

"I don't know what you're talking about," he replied, again in a voice that sounded quite automatic. Mai sighed as she leaned over the railing herself, her voice about as soft as Aang had ever heard it.

"It's probably not any great secret to anyone that I've got… well, some measure of feelings for him. Or at least that's what I keep trying to deny to myself. And, well, I can't really talk to Ty about it, not after what happened."

Aang heard the sting of jealousy in her voice that was impossible to miss.

"And… Aang, I've seen it. Even if somehow no one else had, even if you had done a much better job of hiding it, I've seen it. And I thought if there was anyone I could talk to about it…"

There was a trembling anxiety flowing through Aang's gut that genuinely felt quite overpowering and he found himself having to shove his hands into his pockets to keep them from shaking. It was a sense about the conversation that once he admitted this, once he told anyone how he felt, there would be no way to hide from it, to retreat back and hide within the shell that he had built for himself out of his own denial.

I guess I'm rather like Mai that way.

"Can't you talk to Zuko about it?" he tried, knowing even as he suggested it that it was about as weak an answer as he could have given. She tilted her head back towards the sky and gave a bark of humorless laughter.

"Please. Even before Sasuke came back, we weren't on the best of terms. We were on hold as far as our relationship was concerned, so we weren't exactly being friendly with each other, both for our own reasons. Then, on top of Sasuke coming back, Zuko has to find out that his sister raped Sasuke to give birth to his niece, and that Sasuke is also in a very passionate relationship with Ursa. I'm not sure if you've noticed or not, Aang, but Zuko isn't speaking to anybody really. Even if we had been happy as can be, engaged to be married, madly in love and all that crap, I would still be worried to bring something like this up to him. You know how insecure he still gets."

These were all entirely valid points and Aang couldn't deny any of them. It hurt him to know that Zuko and Mai had once again been in a crummier state of their relationship, and he knew for a fact that he wasn't imagining that, even if she was dealing with an array of feelings, he could hear hurt in Mai's voice when talking about Zuko. A hurt that sounded like it had much more to do with loneliness than it did anger.

Still, this wasn't detracting from what Mai was trying to bring up with him, and Aang still found himself struggling to muster so much as a response.

"I don't know why… why you would want to talk about that with me…" he muttered, hating that his cheeks were flushed and knowing that standing out in the sun wasn't probably making it any more inconspicuous.

"What, you worried about Katara? I'm not going to tell her anything," Mai replied flatly and Aang swallowed rather aggressively.

"I'm not sure—"

"Or because Sasuke's a guy? After what my two childhood friends have apparently been up to for years, and the fact that I've been fucking other women in brothels for just as long, that's not really even something I've thought about.

Trying to push the image of Ty Lee and Azula going at it out of his mind as well as that of Mai tangling her legs with other beautiful women, Aang shook his head while trying to keep his face from blushing further. Mai's bluntness might not have been something she even realized was causing him such discomfort, but he knew that she never would have meant to inflict that on him, and he could see from her face that she wasn't even really looking his way anymore.

"I wouldn't have suggested that, I just—"

Turning around to lean with her back against the rail, Mai gave him a knowing smile with her eyes finally meeting his, but there was sadness behind it too.

"I know. I'm just… well…"

She drew a set of fingers through her black hair and heaved a sigh that sounded very burdened.

"I figured if there was anyone I could talk to about having a silent crush on Sasuke, it would have been you."

Her hand fell away from her head, and she stared at her feet. Only then was Aang able to glimpse past his own anxieties that were currently in the midst of tearing his insides apart to see just how alone Mai looked. She had never been the type to really get close to anyone, and even the people she was near to, Aang knew that she was staring at a brick wall with that small number.

She couldn't speak to Zuko, given their relationship and difficulties therein, she couldn't speak to Ty Lee because of what had transpired between her and Sasuke so recently, likely still an open wound for her, and she couldn't speak to Katara or Azula, for very clear and pointed reasons. Just bringing up the name Sasuke to either of them right now would have been just as amenable an act as jabbing either of them in the rear with a hot poker.

And so Mai had come to him. Despite her relative distance that she had always seemed to keep from most people, Aang had always quietly prided himself on how well he had been able to get along with her. He knew that regardless of how cold she most often seemed, she had a softness to her that most people probably never got to see. So here, in her time of loneliness and uncertainty, she had come to him, and Aang started to realize that she might have done so no matter what his own feelings for Sasuke were made up of.

His hands stopped shaking then, and he allowed there to be silence between them for a rather long spell as he leaned against the railing alongside her. He turned his head upwards, contrasting to how Mai still had her gaze locked on her feet. Aang looked at the blue sky, wondering how far away Sasuke was, if he was making progress, and if he was getting along with his daughter. It took him a moment to notice that he was smiling.

"I don't know when I realized that I might have been feeling something," he said quietly and he just barely saw Mai twitch out of the corner of his eye, likely in surprise. "It was never something I really took the time to think about because it was such an irrelevant thing, to feel emotions towards someone that I thought was gone from my life forever."

He kept expecting himself to freeze up talking about this, but somehow, now that the words were finally coming and being in Mai's presence, this seemed as casual a thing as discussing the weather.

"I guess if I had to think about it, it would be that night in the Eastern Air Temple, the night that Sasuke ran off and I chased him down."

Mai gave a slow nod.

"I remember that. When Katara forbade you from going anywhere near him?"

Aang chuckled.

"Yeah. I didn't listen obviously, but I remember at the time, I didn't really know what I was doing talking to him at all. I guess… I guess I just wanted to know more about him. Why he was so foreign, why he was so mysterious, what was so different about him, I was just so curious. And when he talked to me then, I remember being so… touched by what he said."

He crossed his arms and smiled gently at the pale blue above.

"I had assumed everything about him would be cold still, but it wasn't. We got to talking about my role as the Avatar and…"

Sighing, he nudged the ground with his foot in something like shame.

"When I look back on it, I know that I would have had to face Ozai on my own. If Sasuke had never showed up. But he told me then, that I never should be ashamed for wanting what was best for myself and that it wasn't the world's place to put a burden on my shoulders that was too much for me to carry. Those weeks leading up to meeting Sasuke, I was more scared than I think I even realized. I was just a kid, and I was looking at fighting the Fire Lord, in as powerful a state as he could be. And everyone around me, Katara, Sokka, Toph, everyone, they all just seemed to think that I would be fine. Not even with just fighting Ozai, but in that I was happy shouldering all of that."

His smiled moved towards the ground, reminiscence and shame coating his expression.

"I didn't want it. And I was angry that no one asked how I felt. I'm pretty sure I've loved Katara from the day I woke up from that iceberg, but even she didn't so much as ask me if I was alright with tackling Ozai, or see if I wasn't burning up with anxiety about it all."

Kind of like how I am now.

"Sasuke was the first person to tell me that was crap, that I should have had a say in everything, even if I guess I really didn't have a choice. This boy I had just met, powerful, cold, arrogant in a way, perfectly controlled, he was the one who told me that. And then… I guess there's really no other way to say it, but I remember just feeling so safe being around him. Like nothing could touch him and because of that, nothing could touch me. He went and shouldered the entire war that was meant for me, for the good of some people he had only known for a matter of weeks. That impression never left me, and I guess there was a part of me that was always thinking about him, even after he left."

His cheeks pinked again slightly as he thought back to more recently.

"But then to actually see him again… I guess that was finally when I got to really see that the impression he made on me was bigger than I realized."

Aang didn't necessarily want to dig into what that meant more just then, partially because he assumed his words spoke for themselves. It shouldn't have taken a genius to figure out what he was implying, and Mai didn't seem at all put off by it; rather, she almost seemed relieved to start talking herself, a warmth in her voice that Aang seldom heard.

"I think it was some of that that pulled me towards him as well," she said quietly. "That… stability. That confidence and security I felt around him. When most of my life had been spent only really knowing or caring about three other people my age, all of whom had a screw loose in different ways…"

It wasn't posed as an insult and Aang understood what she meant; when he considered how even-tempered and how much of a straight shooter Mai was, spending her childhood and adolescent years around the likes of Ty Lee, Zuko and Azula probably didn't give her personality a great deal of positive reinforcement. They all would have had their downsides in being able to understand her as a person when Aang thought of how they all were back then.

"…I guess that just made me appreciate someone like him all the more. I wanted to cling to that security, and use that to learn more about him, how mysterious he was, you know. I thought it was a crush, but I think it's persisted for me, just like it sounds like it has for you."

Sighing, she seemed to grow somewhat moody, an attitude that Aang had more often than not come to expect out of her in just about any given circumstance.

"I wish so badly that it hadn't. I want to just be able to look at Zuko and feel that same energy for him that I do for Sasuke, but it's just not something I've been able to find. I don't think I can be faulted for that, or at least, that's what I keep telling myself."

Aang reached out and took her hand, just as she had a moment ago.

"No, you're not at fault for who you have feelings for. I think if you lied to yourself and just kept charging ahead with Zuko, you'd be even more miserable. You can't help thinking about Sasuke probably any more than I can."

She regarded him briefly and he could tell she was trying to gauge whether or not her attraction for Sasuke rivaled Aang's.

"You think so?"

Aang shrugged.

"I don't see why not. I kind of thought emotions like love, and attraction, and stuff like that would get easier as you get older, but it's really only gotten worse for me honestly. It's not like I suddenly feel differently for Katara just because Sasuke's back, it's just like feelings for him have just been tacked on."

His shoulders slumped slightly as he realized how much just that combination was weighing on him.

"It's really kind of awful sometimes."

Mai put an arm around his shoulders and gave him a somewhat rough one-armed hug; it was clear that physical comfort wasn't something she was used to giving by how jerky the motion was, but Aang still appreciated it.

"I know what you mean. I keep telling myself that it will go away, but truly, so much about him I just still can't help but noticing. Even though I know he's dangerous and can be unpredictable, I know that he feels for all of us in a way that it would do no good trying to describe."

She let out a small laugh.

"He's also drop dead gorgeous."

Aang could feel her looking at him almost expectantly and when his swallow was very much audible, she laughed again.

"It's okay, I don't think there's a person here who would deny that."

She paused a moment.

"Except maybe Toph."

Another pause in which she and Aang both looked at one another, and a moment later, they were both laughing. Genuine, pure, and stress-free laughter carried out over top the palace as the pair of them allowed the joke to briefly relieve them. When Aang imagined the pouty expression Toph might have made at such a comment, it only made him smile more. He knew that deep down, Toph couldn't have cared less about a person's physical appearance, and she had poked enough fun at her own lack of sight enough times for him to know that she'd probably find Mai's dig a touch funny herself.

"You're lucky Sokka wasn't here for that," he remarked as their laughter faded away. "He'd be laughing all the way into the night."

Mai let out another small chuckle.

"You're probably right."

The humor of the moment slowly faded, but Aang felt his smile remain on his face even as it did.

"Mai?"

She glanced at him.

"Hmm?"

"Do you think… do you think either of us… well, you know?"

Raising her eyebrows and giving a long exhale through the hole her mouth made, Mai gave her head a slow shake.

"Aang, you do down that rabbit hole, I'm just telling you, that's a dangerous place to put yourself."

She rotated her shoulders slowly and Aang was able to tell even just from her tone that this wasn't something she had avoided thinking about herself.

"At the end of the day, there hasn't exactly been a chance for any of us to really go and get some good one on one time with Sasuke. I think just about all of us need that in a way, because there is closure that was never anywhere close to achieved with him across the board. And while I know part of this might just be me trying to be optimistic, I honestly wonder… I don't know, it's probably not my place to say."

Her suggesting that only had Aang more curious.

"What do you mean?" he asked, trying not to sound as eager as he felt. Mai looked like she was trying to make herself shut down the thought before she gave up and sighed yet again.

"I wonder if Sasuke and Ursa being together isn't a bit of them both… you know, coping."

This didn't do much to clarify and when Mai caught Aang looking at her with an expression that was only more confused than anything, she made a face and tilted her head back and forth, looking to be trying to find the words to accurately explain what she meant.

"Ursa hasn't been with her own children for the majority of their lives. And not during the most important moments either Zuko or Azula have had. I don't doubt for a second that there's a piece of her that wants those days back, and she sees Sasuke maybe as an extension of that desire. Someone she can comfort and hold, just like she would her child. I see it in her eyes sometimes, and I wonder if… I don't know, maybe that's just me diving too deeply into it."

Her lips tightened into a tight line.

"And then Sasuke on the other hand… you heard what Kakashi was saying. All those stories. Sasuke found the bodies of his parents dead when he was only a little kid. And it sounds like he's done everything in his power to be a loner since, probably because he's scared to open up and reform connections with people again. Yet now, he finds Ursa, this mother figure, and he latches onto her the moment they even remotely become intimate, and he sees her… well…"

"Like a mother?" Aang asked quietly and Mai quickly nodded.

"Yes. Well, maybe."

She made a frustrated noise to herself.

"I don't know. I don't really have any right to know. It's none of my business."

Aang could sense the typical Mai he knew, that part of her that just regarded so much with a dark and cold attitude, and he could tell she very much wanted to believe in her assumptions.

"I'm just guessing. But maybe… maybe there's more to them then just two people who want to kiss and make babies every chance they see each other."

For the umpteenth time, Aang's cheeks flushed, and Mai gave him a small, somewhat reassuring smile.

"I guess that was my roundabout way of saying that nothing's for sure right now. At the end of the day…"

She seemed to catch on the words before forcing herself to get them out.

"I want Sasuke to be happy. I wouldn't want to… be with him like that if I had any suspicion that it wouldn't make him happy."

Aang saw the discontent within Mai at such a thought, but she seemed to get past it and let out a last sigh.

"Anyway. We'll go nuts trying to speculate now."

She looked back out over the horizon behind them.

"Something tells me Kyoshi isn't going to cut us any slack just because some of us are dealing with unresolved crushes for the guy she's after."

Happy at hearing the clarity in her voice, Aang gave a firm nod.

"You're right."

Together, they looked out towards the ocean and it fell to a comfortable silence between them for a long while before Aang felt a question rise to the tip of his tongue that he somehow found himself able to ask.

"Hey, Mai?"

She turned her head slightly towards him in a gesture that told him she was listening even if her eyes never left the horizon.

"Would you be willing to die for him?"

It was a deeply personal and a question Aang honestly wouldn't have been surprised if she had just ignored altogether. But after several seconds that ticked by with all the grace of hours, she smiled.

"Yeah."

"Why?" he followed up quickly and she looked down at her hands, her fingers lacing together with themselves in varying patterns before she finally clasped them together firmly.

"Because I know he'd do the same for any of us."

---

Sasuke kicked at a small bluff of snow; dry as it was, it chipped and shattered at his touch, smoothing out the ground enough for him to lower his pack onto the smooth surface and allow himself a moment to sit. It was right about noon he guessed, and they had gotten up to an early enough start that he didn't feel ill-used in giving him and Soza a moment of respite. He looked to his right to see his daughter already sitting similarly to him, her rear planted on her pack, and her gloved hands clasping together. Her expression was passive, but he could see the storm of thought in her eyes and he knew that her mind was most certainly occupied.

The clouds had rolled in that day, but fortunately, the chilling breeze that might have accompanied them hadn't, which meant the day was quiet and grey, the landscape reminding Sasuke of the time he had spent with Azula in the cabin, where the color of the skies had merged with that of the horizon and ground itself, enwrapping him in a world of cold dullness that seemed to practically scream at him with its silence. It made distances slightly harder to judge, and Sasuke wasn't sure exactly what kind of progress they had been able to make all things considered.

He found his attention focused then on Soza however, even as he tried to get some sort of bearing in mind for where they ought to be headed next. His daughter had been at the forefront of his thoughts from the moment he had laid down to close his eyes, right up until that very moment as he watched her think, seemingly oblivious to her father's eyes. Since he had woken up, Sasuke had only become more unsettled at just how strangely Soza seemed to be acting; there was no inquiries about training, no real attempts to speak with him at all, just mostly a sense that she was thoroughly uninterested in really reacting to him at all. Sasuke was trying to figure out if this was her way of giving him the silent treatment after their noticeably heated conversation the night previous, or if this just was genuinely her way of trying to make amends for her behavior. Either way, it was starting to badly unsettle him, and he was starting to look for ways to approach her that wouldn't come across as him conceding anything. A less optimistic part of him was somewhat certain that Soza had just as much ability to be cunning as her mother, and he was making sure to be on the lookout for something like that.

I underestimated Azula one too many times and I can't afford to do that with Soza… I don't think she'd go to any extreme that her mother has, but that might only be because she hasn't had the time to develop those…

'Skills' wasn't the right word, but Sasuke didn't dwell on it. All he knew was that until he could Soza safely back to the group, he was going to as vigilant of her as he could while also keeping focused on the mission at hand. He was learning more and more how ill equipped he was to be a father out here on his own, and he wanted nothing more than to get his daughter back to Toph, or Ursa, or hell, even Azula at this point. He didn't want to be damaging Soza even more than he already was what with his less than knowledgeable parenting and Sasuke was already feeling concern that he had damaged his relationship with his daughter to a dangerous point already just by how poorly he had handled rushing her training as he had.

"You hungry?" he asked, a stupid excuse to try and get her to say something. Soza turned her head to look at him through unreadable eyes, tilted her head back and forth for a moment as she seemed to consider his offer before giving a quick nod and getting to her feet. They crunched in the dry snow beneath her as she made her way over while Sasuke dug through his pack; he extricated some of Jin's baking and handed it to his daughter who nearly dropped it, her mittens seemed to make gripping somewhat hard. It was a cute sight, even Sasuke had to admit.

They ate together silently for several minutes and Sasuke found he couldn't even think to look around at their surroundings with how focused he was on Soza. She still wasn't paying him much mind, seemingly content to eat and be at peace with her own thoughts. Sasuke tried to think of some way he could break the ice with her again but kept coming up with ideas he liked less and less. It finally settled on him that it might not be something that he was going to be able to instigate; if Soza was going to be distant with him, he figured it would probably be best he just let her, at least until he could go to Toph or someone and explain what had happened, and how severely he had messed up. Giving a relatively silent sigh, he sat down, not particularly facing her and deciding to employ a similar sort of treatment of her.

"Hey, dad?"

Sasuke blinked as Soza spoke to him within seconds of him sitting down.

Was that really all it took? Ignoring her for such a brief period?

He might have congratulated himself on getting his daughter to reach back out to him, but he couldn't muster it with how he felt his heart sinking. The way that Soza had phrased those two words told him perfectly well that there would be another question coming and he felt he had a pretty good idea what it was going to be. He tried desperately to think of how he could turn down Soza's question regarding her training even as he replied to her.

"Yeah?"

She released a soft grunt as she got to her feet and walked over to him. Without hesitation, she dropped to sit in his lap with her back to him, just as he had held her in days previous, her back pressing against his chest, her head just under his chin. While it was still a quite comforting position for Sasuke, he still found himself wishing he could see her expression. Soza was quiet for a time, and when she did speak to him again, Sasuke found himself proven wrong in his assumption that she had wanted to talk about training.

"Yesterday… you told me that when you were my age, you were caught up in revenge. That Kakashi person told us a lot about you, but… I don't think he knew it as well as he thought he did. He might have known a lot, but I could tell that he didn't know you that well."

Sasuke found himself also thinking that this line of thinking might actually wind up being worse than her asking about being trained.

"I've been wondering…" she said quietly, squirming just a touch in his lap. "What did you mean by all that? When you said you didn't want me to become like you? All that stuff about revenge and hate? What did you hate, what were you trying to get revenge against? Your brother?"

Her words were about as innocent as could be, but Sasuke could feel himself feeling as vulnerable as he had since he had first allowed Ursa to open him up back in the Fire Nation the first night they had been intimate. He wanted to tell Soza that this wasn't something that she should have been asking about and that he hardly wanted to spend time talking about it with her, but no such response came even close to slipping from his mouth.

The only thing that had made it to the tip of his tongue was a desire to tell his daughter everything she wanted to know.

"What exactly did you hear from Kakashi?" Sasuke asked. He still was annoyed deep down about that entire situation, but he knew much of that frustration was directed towards himself; he should have been forthright with everyone far longer ago then he had, they deserved to know what it was that had driven him and turned him into the person he had become.

"Well…" Soza murmured. "I know that your brother killed your parents when you were young, younger than I am now. I know you wanted revenge. But I guess he didn't really talk too much about who you got it against."

Sasuke realized too then that he didn't really know all what Kakashi had told them. By the sound of it though, he had been perhaps at least somewhat modest with the details, and not gotten into the more specific parts of Sasuke's story, at least not to the point where a resolution of any kind had been reached.

There never were any resolutions, not really.

He sat there with Soza in his lap for a little while, content not replying to her immediately, and she seemed to be accepting of this, letting her father lapse in silence. A hundred different ways he could approach this rushed through his mind, but not one of them made more sense to him than the one that his instincts had first led him to want react with.

"Soza," he finally said. "I don't know if this is a story you'll want to hear. There's no happy ending, there's no truth to it that will leave you feeling… satisfied. My story is not a pleasant one as you might have guessed, but unlike many stories, it never grows much better either."

He could sense the tenseness in her and he gave her a small squeeze.

"And I don't want to tell you something that is going to hurt you or be unsettling for you."

Sasuke felt her swallow then and she shook her head firmly.

"I'm not scared. I want to know what it is that you're afraid you might see in me if I head down a bad path."

The fact that she acknowledged his fear as stemming from her going down a 'bad' path at all was somewhat reassuring to Sasuke, but as she replied to him, he slowly nodded and felt his mind click into place without even so much as needing to make a decision.

I won't lie to her. I have to be better than that.

"What you heard was true," he said, his voice alone in the still, cold air of the frozen tundra. "My brother did kill our parents when I was just a child. From that day, I swore that I would catch up to him, become strong enough to destroy him for killing my mom and dad, and our entire clan."

He could feel his eyes drifting out of focus as he reminisced on a time that seemed so long ago even as the images of it still stood out so clearly in his mind.

"I trained to be a ninja; to learn to use my chakra as you seek to do, to become powerful enough to avenge, and to kill my brother."

"You really did want to kill him?" Soza asked, her voice tentative, something that he rarely heard from her; it seemed that she was almost frightened to ask a question like that.

"Yes," he said bluntly. "And I succeeded."

At that point, he could tell that she hadn't known this piece of the story and he found himself glad that Kakashi hadn't divulged such a piece of information to his daughter. He remembered telling the others on Appa's back years ago about what had occurred between him and his brother if little else, back when Madara had posed as Itachi. Kakashi had no doubt filled in a great many of the details about Sasuke's childhood which explained the pitying looks that he had received from a great many of them after he had awoken that night, but it would seem that his former sensei had kept a fair bit of it to himself. It still felt somewhat wrong to tell Soza now, but he knew that she could handle such hard facts. She needed to, if she really wanted to know who her father was.

"I grew strong enough to face down my brother, and I killed him. There, I thought my journey for revenge would be at its end, and I could try and move on. I was wrong."

Sasuke swallowed down a lump in his throat that had risen up against his will.

"I learned after the fact that my brother had slain our family and clan for the purpose of preventing a war. My clan was up to suspicious dealings and the indications were clear to the higher ups in my village that revolution was coming. They enlisted my brother to kill off the clan before such a conflict could arise, staining his hands with the blood of his family, but protecting the lives of so many others."

He felt himself smiling, a sad and regretful expression that he was glad Soza wasn't able to see from where she sat in his lap.

"But he couldn't kill me. No matter the risk, he couldn't bring himself to kill me too. My brother died a villain to all but the few who knew the truth, and I, even though I sometimes wish I had been left in ignorance to be spared the pain of that truth, was one of them."

It wasn't really true anymore; he spent often would think back to Itachi and the self-sacrifice he had made for Sasuke, and used his brother's actions as guidance for his own life. Perhaps it would still always hurt, to know what had truly happened, but it was still knowledge that he never would have traded.

"I learned that that the village elders had put my brother up to this, and I decided in all my youthful wisdom, to go to war against my own village as well as the other village leaders for siding with my village. I would wipe the slate clean and pay them back for hurting my brother the way that they did. They made him a villain to keep their hands clean, and they used him without a second thought. When I learned it all, I was filled with a hate that I had never even felt for my brother. For what they had done was just as terrible as his actions, but there was cowardice laced in as well."

He thought back to the last memory he had before he had awoken blearily in that Fire Nation temple, and found that he couldn't more closely draw any remembrance to it specifically, but he did remember his near fateful encounter with the Raikage and the joy he had felt in putting down Danzo.

"When I came to find myself in this world, I still was in that quest in my head, a pursuit of revenge, even if my memory was briefly scrambled to the point that I nearly blamed your entire nation for the injustice done to my brother."

"You lost your memory?" Soza said, her voice sounding strained and dry.

"Briefly," he answered. "I knew who I was for the most part, but specifics escaped me to the point that I assumed this world was my own."

Turning his eyes down to look at his daughter's flow of jet black hair, he ran a pair of fingers distantly through the strands.

"I had to confront the truth of my revenge while I was gone on my own. I had to force myself to realize that my search for revenge had no basis in self-fulfillment. I had fought and killed in the name of my revenge to the point that I hadn't even lent the idea any credence that I could have been wrong. Years on my own, and I finally understood that my hate and my rage were doing nothing but distracting me, pulling me away from just being able to move on, and accept my brother's actions as his own. He did what he did for me, and every moment I spent trying to avenge him was a moment I spent nearly disgracing his memory. It was about me, but it was also about honoring what he had done for me, the life that I had been given because of his love. I never so much as dared to consider that in my world. All I wanted was blood in his name."

He pressed a small kiss to the top of Soza's head.

"I got lost in it all. My emotions, my motives, my focus, my heart. It destroyed the few relationships that I had with people who cared about me, it turned me into a criminal and a murderer, and through all that, I lost sight of myself. Who I really was."

Soza's next question was so soft that it was nearly a whisper, but she asked it almost immediately.

"Who were you?"

Sasuke's smile remained, bleak and haunted.

"I was lonely."

He held her tighter still, relishing her warmth and touch.

"And I was sad."

The tears that leaked from his eyes then could never have been stopped, but he somehow found that he didn't mind if Soza saw him crying.

"And all of that led me into becoming a person who didn't care about others, and didn't care about myself. I hid behind a single purpose, a drive that led me to nearly get myself killed all while alienating most of my own world."

He sighed slowly, making sure that his voice wasn't shaking when he continued to speak.

"I don't want you to ever get lost in a drive like that. Whether it's proving yourself to me, or your mother, or getting your mind wrapped around growing powerful, or losing yourself in hate of the people who have wronged you, I never want to see you fall down the same path that I did. That's why I was hesitant to keep training you, and it's why, even with everything that's happening with the spirits, I still fear for you more than anything."

Soza shifted in his lap, clearing her throat as she seemed to try and shake off the impact that his story had inflicted upon her, her voice coming in firm and forceful.

"But you don't need to be! I'm not going to be like—"

As she turned to face him, her eyes met his face and the intensity that had been forming in her expression faded away to surprise and something that looked like guilt.

"Are you… crying?"

Sasuke turned his eyes down and blinked aside a last fresh streak of tears, his smile remaining.

"I'm sorry. Thinking about those times gets me caught up sometimes. And thinking about how that might translate to you definitely doesn't help matters."

She continued to look at him with a strange sense of almost morbid curiosity, as though she had never seen another person cry before.

"Mother always said that crying was the worst sort of weakness you could show."

Sasuke should have found this bit of information angering; he hated the idea of Azula telling their child that crying wasn't something she should ever do. Did that mean that every time that Soza had cried, be it over Toph, or her mother, or whatever the reason, was she quietly hating herself for having that weakness?

More so than anger however, he felt nothing but regret for his daughter. Because he knew how that felt. The hatred of weakness, of sadness and fear, this was all something he had experienced himself. He had shut himself off from even recognizing emotions like that and while he was younger, it had nearly kept him from so much as interacting with Aang and the others when he had come to this world, and the few allies he had back in his own. There situations being completely different, Soza had still found herself with the same sort of thinking that he had possessed.

I wasn't there to tell her it was okay to cry.

He put his arms around his daughter and held her close to him. No doubt her expression was still one of shock and confusion, but Sasuke had a feeling that he was never going to be able to repay all the affection he owed her, not after abandoning her for as long as he had.

"Your mother is wrong. Crying can indicate weakness, but it can also be a result of happiness. Of understanding, of empathy. Of grief and hurt. Tears can often help us understand how we feel even when we don't know the emotions we're going through."

Pulling back and looking into his daughter's eyes, Sasuke made sure that he left nothing unsaid that he wanted her to know.

"There is weakness in all emotion. Emotion is blinding, and it keeps us from seeing things right in front of us. From joy, to hate, to sadness, to love, to envy, anything you can think of. But you know what?"

She swallowed slowly before asking, "What?"

"We all feel emotion anyway. You can't prevent that any more than you can keep the sun from setting. I don't want you to lose yourself in your emotions, Soza, but I don't want you to neglect them either. Maybe they will prevent you from always being able to think clearly, but they will guide you, protect you, and remind you what it feels like to be alive."

He thought of something and decided to roll with it, even though he knew it might be something somewhat brutal to remind his daughter of.

"Do you remember the night Toph was nearly executed?"

As Sasuke might have expected, Soza's body stiffened and as her eyes glowed with anger and pain over the memory, he knew perfectly well then just how much Toph meant to his daughter.

"Yes," she said in a clipped and bitter tone.

"Do you remember how you felt?" he asked, not relenting. She remained still as a statue for a moment before inclining her chin once more.

"I'm sure you hated yourself at the time for feeling so wound up and upset. You were angry, wrathful and frightened, but you would never have felt any of that if you didn't first feel nothing short of love for Toph."

"I don't…" Soza immediately started to say before she trailed off, her expression going from indignant to distantly thoughtful. Sasuke nodded at the sight.

"Yes, you do. You know you do. From what I can tell, she's been more of a mother to you than Azula has your entire life, and I can't tell you how grateful I am to know that."

He watched as Soza's face twisted with anger at what he was implying, that he would dare speak ill about her mother that way, but as the seconds went by and she made no response to him, he knew that there was nothing she was saying because she could think of nothing to say at all. Azula had raised her daughter to believe that her mother was infallible, but with such evidence having been so recently shown to suggest otherwise, Sasuke knew that Soza was having to confront this in her mind, even if she wouldn't say so out loud.

"I'm not blaming you for any of this," he said. "You haven't had the chances you need to reflect on your emotions and how you feel because the environment you were raised in didn't let you."

His thumb came up from where it rested on her shoulder to gently stroke her cheek.

"I don't want to see you have to suffer that way any longer. I don't want you to become like how me or your mother were when we were your age. I will spend my life trying to help you come to terms with your emotions if that's what it takes, but you need to know that they're valid. What you feel is all valid, even if you don't understand it. I promise I'll be here to help, Toph will be here to help, your grandma will be here to help, and yes, Azula will be here to help too. She has her own problems that she's fighting through, but no matter what changes, or what happens, one thing I know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that your mother loves you."

Soza's brow furrowed so slightly that it was almost imperceptible.

"You didn't think mother loved me…?"

It was painful to hear the hurt in her voice, but Sasuke knew now was not the time to back down from being honest.

"I wasn't sure," he replied plainly. "When I learned that you were my daughter and what Azula had done in order to achieve that, I was fearful that she only saw you as some sort of achievement, a trophy that she could look at and think that she possessed a victory that she was prouder of than anything."

In truth, Sasuke believed that this was true in a sense; everything about how she looked at her daughter and discussed the event made him think that Azula was locked in an idea that her daughter was something of a possession, but he wouldn't dare tell Soza that. And on top of that, he knew that there was more to Azula's feelings than that.

"But I've seen how she feels for you. And I see that motherly instinct in her eyes, and I know for certain that she loves you."

His daughter stood before him, still looking to be very much at odds with something. It was impossible for him to tell exactly what it was that was on her mind, but when she spoke again, her voice quiet and hesitant as though she didn't know whether or not she even had the right to ask such a thing.

That, or she was afraid of the answer.

"You… you love me too, right?"

Seeing the uncertainty in her eyes hurt almost as badly as hearing the question and Sasuke wished there was a word stronger than 'yes' or 'absolutely' or something better than 'of course.' No words or combination thereof could possibly have helped him iterate just how much he wanted to respond in the affirmative so as he made sure Soza was meeting his eyes as he nodded, he pulled her into as tight a hug as he dared.

It hadn't been long since he had met his daughter, the child that he hadn't even known existed. Yet he already felt so much between them, and he knew not all of it was good. And while so much of his self was steeped in uncertainty about how fit he was to be a father, there was one thing he knew he could offer his daughter by way of an assurance.

"I love you, Soza. With every ounce of my being. If it ever seems like I'm hard on you, that's why. Because I know I can help you become a better version of yourself, if only by making sure you don't become like me."

Soza's arms snaked around him and held him just as tightly. He couldn't see her face as she buried it near his shoulder, but he had a feeling she might have been hiding tears of her own based on the consistency of her muffled voice.

"I don't know… I kind of like you. Maybe being like you wouldn't be so bad."

Sasuke was relieved that he was able to tell that her words were in jest, but it didn't help him from feeling a twinge of concern at the possibility of such a thing.

He and his daughter held one another for a long time and through it all, Sasuke found he couldn't even quite make himself think to their mission and the essentiality of it. Holding Soza and trying to put as much comfort in the embrace as he could was all he cared about for those few moments. It was strange the clarity he had felt when she had asked him that question, that single probing and worried query. Sasuke had spent so much time trying to rationalize what his daughter meant to him and what he might mean to her that he had never quite realized that, without a doubt in his mind, he had come to love the confused and broken girl who was so set on earning his approval. That understanding might have been why the hug he now shared with her felt the most pure of any embrace he had ever shared.

"Dad?"

Soza's voice came quietly from over his shoulder and he allowed himself to turn his head slightly to press a kiss to the side of her head.

"Yeah?"

"That mountain…" she said slowly. Her voice was still thick as though still trying to keep from being emotional, but there was an air of intrigue and curiosity in it now. "Does it look… right, to you?"

Sasuke allowed himself to withdraw from his daughter's arms and turn away from her to look where she had been facing. It felt rather painful to pull from Soza, but she clung to his arm as he stood and faced gazed out over the icy world.

Over the days that they had been traveling, mountains of ice and snow were far from uncommon and Sasuke had rather since stopped noticing them to any real extent. There had been so many of them across the glacial plains with such expanse that it had almost started to seem to him that the entire world was made up of frozen mountains. But as he tracked his eyes along the horizon now, he came to stop on a gently sloping ridge that met in either side of its length in a rounded but still prominent peak. It was a wide angle and not raised very high, not nearly the height of most mountains they came across if still equally large. There were details about it though that couldn't be missed, Sasuke thought however, the longer he looked at it. Curves that looked almost unnatural, lines that seemed too straight to have been drawn up by normal frigid activity.

As the resemblance struck him, he felt a quiver of anticipation run through him.

"I'm sorry," Soza was rather quick to say. "I didn't mean to distract you, I just thought… I don't know, it looked—"

"No," Sasuke said, silencing his daughter's mumbled apology and he felt her look to him quickly. "You were right to point it out."

A fresh smile was working its way onto his face, one of tired satisfaction.

"What is it?" Soza timidly asked and Sasuke released a long, slow breath as he acknowledged where their journey had finally led them.

At last.

"That," he said slowly, somewhat in awe of what he was looking at, "is a leg."

---

Azula paced her room, the routine of it having become almost like of breathing for her. The walls occasionally seemed to almost reach a point where they felt like they were closing in around her, but just like with all her thoughts, she simply ignored this sensation.

That had finally proven to be the most stable and acceptable solution to the torrent of anxieties and raging and fears that spun about within her; just taking it all and pushing it from her mind forcefully was deeply relieving and frankly quite gratifying to boot. Azula knew that if she allowed them, her feelings would likely have driven her crazy right there in her room, and as long as this strategy was available to her, she was happy to continue it for as long as she needed to. Her pacing offered a pace that was almost like a metronome in its consistency and she found this quite helpful as well.

Walk and nothing else. Keep my mind clear of all.

It was incredible how much better she felt when her mind wasn't sinking its claws into the prey of her fears, a beast much too large for her to slay.

And still, she couldn't keep from reminding herself of the things that were driving her mad, purely on accident, by noting random things that triggered them.

Azula looked to her nightstand and the mirror and saw Soza sitting there before it, her just behind her daughter and doing her hair for her. Both of them were smiling softly and it wound up being such a pleasant memory that Azula nearly felt her knees buckle at the thought of something so absent of pain. The idea of happiness felt like it had long since abandoned her and this was its attempt to taunt and to play, to remind her that there were times past that she would have returned to in a heartbeat were she to be given the chance. Everything had seemed to cut and dry back then with nothing to keep her understanding from shaking and shattering. Everything had been about herself, about Soza and about Sasuke.

Now what was there?

Stopping dead in the middle of her pacing, Azula felt her heart clench up within her as her eyes widened with realization.

They're gone. He took Soza and left.

She looked around wildly as though there was something to that equation she had missed, something to allow it to make sense and be okay, but nothing short of anxiety began to flood her veins as her chest began to thump with a sickly beat.

Why did I let that happen? Why am I not with them?

Her feelings for Sasuke were so confused and frenzied to the point of being just another facet that she had pushed aside, but now, she grabbed hopelessly at her anger, her love, her frustration, her agony, everything to do with him that might explain why she had let the person she cared most about be taken from her side.

Soza… Soza!

Her daughter was gone from her; if Azula burst into the halls of the palace then, threatening everyone she encountered with a painful and fiery death, they would all have nothing for her but the same answer.

She's not here. She's gone.

Where had Sasuke taken her? Into the depths of that wintery hell, off to follow him in the hopes of finding some ancient power. Was she safe? Was she scared? Was she cold? Azula ran her fingers over her body feverishly, trying to continue to allow herself to feel anything, as she experienced something that rather felt like her body was trying to numb itself.

She'll be okay. She's strong. She's with Sasuke. The man that I…

Hate? Love? It continued not to make any semblance of sense and Azula gave a rattling inhale as she bowed her head.

It was too much, it was overwhelming. Her she was, princess of the Fire Nation, sister to the Fire Lord, with no bending, no allies, no one to turn to except perhaps her brother, but she thoroughly believed Zuko's affection for her was a result of pity, nothing more. That might have disgusted her just as much as anything, if an even more sickening thought hadn't crept into her mind just then.

She realized she wanted Zuko to be there with her just then.

I could just… talk to him. He doesn't need to say anything, I don't want him to say anything… but… why do I want that so badly?

Snarling, she shook her head like a frustrated animal; she didn't know where such a childish and stupid thought had come from. What she needed to focus on was her daughter and just as she reminded herself of that, another realization popped into her head.

What's stopping me from going after them?

It would only take going to some waterbenders and forcing them to take her where Sasuke and Soza had gone. No one knew other than Sasuke and Zuko that she had lost her abilities, and she could use that fear of her power to her advantage. Even better, she could go to the Avatar and force him to call his dumb flying beast and use that to take her to her family.

Family.

Just the word itself felt near enough to crush her spirit and she ran a hand shakily up her torso and over her breast to massage the area where she still possessed Sasuke's seal. It would guide her, it would help her find them, she knew it would.

Her room suddenly felt quite suffocating to her and she felt like the only option she had then was to track her daughter and her daughter's father down. Now that it had entered her mind as even a remote possibility, there was nothing left to consider. Anything to make her feel whole again.

Azula made it halfway to the door before she realized that she was naked and she growled at the inconvenience of needing to walk to her bed and yank the robe from its surface that she had shed at some point. It billowed around her as she drew it over her body, running it hastily over the parts of her that would have drawn blushes from passerby. Modesty seemed such a stupid necessity just then and Azula found that she might not have even cared if anyone saw her in the nude. If she even needed to, she could use her body to perhaps persuade those she needed into assisting her, if her lack of bending wound up being something that—

As she threw the door to her room open, her train of thought slid to a screeching halt in her mind. Thoughts of her fears and anxieties, thoughts of her brother and Sasuke, and even her own daughter were banished as she met eyes with the woman standing just before her.

Ursa might have been taller than her as it was, but Azula couldn't help but feel like she was shrinking anyway.

Her mother looked at her with eyes steeped in a wide range of emotions, even as her expression remained calm, or as calm as it likely could have, given their relationship. She stood in the doorway, breathing slowly, and looking like she as trying to remember something she had planned to say. Azula found herself fighting down the urge to scream, cry, and attack all at once, and the result was that she couldn't so much as move from where she was planted. Of everyone she could have wanted to see, her mother was not amongst that already very remote list.

Shifting ever so slightly where she stood, Ursa moved her eyes briefly from Azula's, seemed to catch herself and then looked back with a focus that Azula hadn't yet seen from her mother, at least directed at her.

"Azula…" she asked gently, but the edge in her tone was apparent. "Can we talk?"

---

Katara made her way back to her room, trying to keep from feeling overwhelmed. She had been with Sokka for most of the day again, relaying information back and forth between the chief and his advisors and with how much preparations had been fluxing to and fro those days since Sasuke had left, Katara almost just wished the spirits would fucking attack them already and get this over with.

She stopped where she was in the hall and sighed, closing her eyes. Of course she didn't actually wish for such a thing, but it would have tasted a lie to suggest that she wasn't starting to experience a lot of frustration and tension.

Being distant from Aang wasn't helping, but Katara had found that she didn't trust herself around him, a very painful and stinging realization. She had hoped that she would have been able to corner Sasuke, but he had been so elusive from such a meeting ever since they had reunited in Ba Sing Se. If he wasn't away from them, he was practically hand in hand with Ursa, and when he wasn't with her, Katara would find him on his own talking with Mai, or Toph, or her brother, or Jin, or Yue, or whomever. Every attempt she had made to find him alone had resulted in failure and Katara was long past impatient with the situation.

I just need to talk to him.

She reached her room and drew in another long breath and released it again as a calming sigh. Her emotions were high and she couldn't blame herself under the circumstances, but she still was at a point where she believed about anything could set her off.

As she opened the door, she came face to face with the most prime example of that fear.

When the door closed on its own behind her, Katara wasn't even sure she heard it close. She was aware that it had, but her senses were all dulled as she stared with wide eyes at Sasuke who was standing before her fireplace with his back to her. It was impossible to mistake his build, his mess of black hair, his dark clothes and Katara felt her mouth immediately go dry.

This had been what she had wanted, right?

At the sound of the door closing, Sasuke turned to face her, his eyes piercing, obsidian, and probing.

"Ah, there you are. I've been waiting for you."

His voice reached her and chilled her, but Katara still forced herself to respond.

"You… you shouldn't be here. When did you get back?"

Sasuke cocked his head like a curious dog.

"Where should I be then?" he asked in reply, and Katara had to swallow before replying.

"Koloss. You were looking for it. Did you find it?"

As though she had just told him something extremely important, Sasuke seemed to stiffen in front of her, his eyes flickering with something like surprise. He said nothing in response to her as the silence thickened between them, but when his mouth twisted in what was a genuinely sinister smile, Katara felt her brow furrow slightly.

"Yes… that is indeed what I was doing."

He shifted his weight and started to raise both his hands.

"Well, the truth is—"

Had he been a second slower, Katara's thin icicles might have reached and impaled him, but as it was, they burst against the mantle above the fireplace in front of where he had just been standing. Sasuke looked in surprise at where the attack had landed before his eyes flicked to the stream of water that was thinly circling him. His eyes then moved to Katara, narrowing slightly.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked.

Katara stood with her arms and hands raised, her poise ready to unleash her bending and rip this imposter to shreds. Her surprise was gone, replaced only with anger and derision.

"You gave yourself away too easily," she snapped. "You might be able to copy his look perfectly, but you're not at all the same person he is. You could never replicate that."

Sasuke stared at her for several long seconds that seemed to tick by like days. His expression was appraising as though he was trying to think of what to make of her, but all at once, his body collapsed to the ground, seeming to almost fold in over itself. His form shifted, expanded, spread and rippled upwards and in a matter of moments, a centipede sort of monstrosity loomed before Katara. Through the spectacle, her bending never wavered, the water circling the monster ready to slice into it at a moment's notice.

"You are perceptive," Koh hissed, sounding genuinely impressed, if amused as well. "I suppose I was rather careless."

"Sasuke doesn't smile hardly ever, and when he does, it's not anything like that venomous smirk you just put on," Katara growled. Koh's body seemed to shiver slightly as though he were laughing.

"You know him quite well, then?" he inquired smoothly. "I would have thought that you might want to be alone with him… the other girl certainly seemed to enjoy herself."

Katara narrowed her eyes.

"What do you mean?"

Koh made a shaking hissing sound, this time the laughter in it being unmistakable.

"Oh, my dear, I would never dare upset you with such information. It's enough to know that you wanted to be alone with him."

"And that's not at all what you think it means," Katara snarled at him and for a moment, Koh's body seemed to freeze as though it had been paralyzed. She glared up into his bizarre and creeping visage and continued. "You have no idea what it is that I want from him."

The monstrous spirit remained still a moment longer, and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet, with a genuine sense of glee behind his words.

"I believe I do now."

Katara grit her teeth; her mind was racing with how she could alert whomever she could, to get the information out that Koh was here, and if he had made it…

The spirits… are they in the city? Are they all here?

There likely couldn't have been much time to spare and Katara lashed out angrily with her words, not willing to waste more than she already had.

"If you came to try and kill me, I suggest you move quickly. I've seen you fight, and I'm betting you—"

"Kill you?"

Koh's body twisted and unfurled like a hose, spreading his disgusting body before her, his very posture seeming intrigued.

"I don't mean to kill you. I've come to you specifically for quite the opposite reason. You must have assumed that I chose you instead of any other of Sasuke's friends for a reason, no?"

It was impossible not to be pulled in by Koh's words then and his implication; Katara froze up a moment before snapping back at him.

"What are you talking about?"

He released another chittering hiss and drew several feet closer to her, an action that Katara couldn't help but feel her blood chilling as a result of seeing.

"I merely come to you with a request. A request that you listen to my words now."

"And why would you ever expect me to listen to what you have to say?" Katara shot at him, her arms tensing even further and her poised waterbending seeming to swim almost anxiously in the air, desperate to be unleashed. Koh looked at her a long moment and when he spoke again, there was no humor in his voice. Sincerity was something that Katara knew could be faked, but after everything she had ever heard Koh say, she found it strange that now would be the time he was choosing to be genuine, unless of course, genuine is actually what he was being.

And still, it was impossible to shake the idea that, while she couldn't seen an expression on Koh's masked face, he was smiling.

"I believe you can help me. And even more so, I believe I can help you."