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.

34. Chapter 34

AN: So, quickly need to preemptively apologize; as of today, I'm starting a move to a new house, and with work on top of that, I'm probably going to be pretty swamped. I'm going to do all I can to finish the next chapter by Thursday next week, but in the case, that can't be managed, I'm very sorry in advance. I'll do my best to make it by then, or at least as close as I can.

I really am sorry if that's the case, but this should only affect next week's chapter, if it does at all. Anyway, really hope you enjoy this week's chapter!

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Chapter 34: A Mother's Touch

Ursa supposed she shouldn't have been surprised that her daughter didn't have an answer for her, but she only stepped far enough into the room to let the door close behind; it didn't do to think about the fact that, if things went wrong now, she didn't want anyone else seeing this.

If it comes to that… I won't fight it.

It had come the moment she had risen from sleep, when she had rolled to sit on the sofa she had all but passed out on. Her mind had gone straight to her failure with Azula, and in a split second, she had found herself standing and walking for the door, knowing exactly where it was she needed to be.

The idea of speaking with Azula hadn't grown any less daunting than it had while looming over her in the days previous, but something within Ursa was all but forcing her to go to her daughter regardless. She vaguely remembered strange dreams, the details of which were hazy, but the feeling of anxiousness hadn't left her when she woke, and there was a strange aura over her that made her think that she was running out of time. While she didn't quite understand what that could mean, she had nonetheless finally found herself standing outside her daughter's room, her heart in her throat and a numbness spreading through her body as she had mustered up the courage to knock, only to have nearly been barreled over by her daughter a moment later

Azula had taken a couple steps back that had seemed almost involuntary and as she door slid shut and drew them into a near silence, Ursa felt no immediate urge to speak. There were of course things that she wanted to ask Azula, and things that she wanted to say, but there didn't seem to be any hurry just then. Just the two of them standing there made it seem like the bedroom was a world entirely their own, no outside forces, no other people, not even any time. Ursa was content letting the moments play out as long as they needed to, with no desire to move things along at a pace of her choosing.

Her bare feet sliding over the carpet, Azula started to pace in a tight back and forth pattern, her eyes locked on Ursa as though expecting some sort of physical attack. It was clear that she was withdrawing into her tendencies as a person of royal upbringing and she clasped her hands behind her back, straightening her back and squaring her shoulders, but no movement she made could take away from what was nothing short of pure, unfiltered emotion practically spilling from her eyes. Briefly, Ursa allowed herself to reflect on the fact that her daughter had truly grown into a beautiful, striking young woman.

"Talk?" Azula finally asked after a stretch of time that could have been minutes. The word sounded like as much a question as anything, as though it didn't make sense to her in any way like some word she wasn't familiar with. "Whatever would we have to talk about?"

It was deflection immediately, something that Ursa remembered well from the years she had been Ozai's wife. She wondered how much of this was something Azula had learned from her father, or if it was something that she had just inherited by consequence of her blood. Regardless, Ursa had known to expect something like this; in her walk over, she had gone through as many possible responses in her head as she might have been able to expect from visiting Azula, and very few of them unfortunately were that positive an outlook.

Just by hearing the slight raise in Azula's voice and seeing how she almost looked like she was having to force herself to breathe regularly, it was clear that her daughter was hoping to keep from showing any emotion by shutting down this before it even got going. But by that point, Ursa knew she was long past the point of no return.

"We're family," she said simply. It was rather a blunt and straightforward answer, but she knew that something like this would hopefully provoke Azula past simply trying to push her away. "You're my daughter and I'm your mother. Is that not reason enough?"

As she expected, Azula's form stiffened even further and she tilted her head back very slowly as she stared at Ursa. For a moment, she was almost as still as a statue, and her voice came out of her like a viper's hiss.

"Mothers don't abandon their children," Azula whispered, her eyes flashing with ire. "Is that what you really thought would happen when you returned to us, arm in arm with Sasuke? Did you think that time would somehow have allowed Zuko and myself to forgive the wounds you inflicted upon us?"

Ursa knew she had to play things against how her emotions were telling her to. Though she wanted to all but fall apart then and there, to start spilling apologies left and right, to beg for Azula's forgiveness, she knew that if her daughter was still as caged as she seemed to be, it would make no difference.

"I've spoken with Zuko several times since we reunited," she said. "And I would have come to you as well, had it not been very apparent to me that your feelings towards me are still quite… complicated."

It was nothing short of a violent prod, and it seemed to have done just that to her daughter. Azula's lips slowly curled and she inclined her head, her face becoming half cast in shadow, her eyes beautiful and vicious orbs glowing out of the dark towards Ursa.

"Complicated?" she asked, her voice light and distant.

A sinister and eerie sort of aura seemed to almost be emanating from Azula at that point. Ursa had to resist the urge to take a step back at how unsettled her daughter looked to her just then.

I can't show her fear. She's my child, and she's like this because of me. I have no right to be scared of her.

"Complicated?" Azula repeated. "After what you did to me… you think my feelings are complicated?"

"Am I wrong?" Ursa asked, spreading her arms slightly in a weary gesture of goodwill. She was actively trying to stave off the very intense grief and self-revilement that kept stinging at her insides the longer that she looked at Azula. Only the fact that she was doing this for her daughter and not for herself kept her mind steady and focused.

Azula only stared at her, her eyes narrowed to slits. In a very brief period, she had all but abandoned her regal demeanor that she had tried to cover herself with and was already looking like she was falling into a deeply furious state. Ursa looked back at the smoldering shadow of rage that was her daughter and decided to ask a question that, while she knew she needed to voice, she truly didn't want to hear the answer to.

"Azula, do you hate me?"

The question seemed to almost briefly paralyze her daughter; Ursa watched as Azula's eyes widened slightly as though she hadn't at all expected this sort of question.

"Do I… hate you?"

She seemed to shift slightly where she stood as though she were in danger of falling over, her breathing releasing in barely noticeable bursts. Ursa watched as Azula seemed to take in the question and slowly, the corners of her mouth started to draw upwards.

"You spent our entire childhood fawning over Zuko. You ignored me and treated me like I wasn't worth a damn to you. You left without a word to me, and left father as the only person I could look up to, and then you dare… you dare come back into my life, hand in hand with the boy I love?"

Her brow furrowed intensely, the glare she shot then being enough to nearly drive Ursa from the room then and there.

"No, mother, hate is too kind a word for what I feel for you."

If there had been some sort of plan that Ursa had been intending to follow through on as she spoke with Azula, it was long gone the moment that she heard these words. Her mind was reduced to a blank slate, overwhelming grief pummeling her thoughts into mush. The task at hand suddenly was feeling terribly insurmountable and she started to wonder what she had been thinking in imagining that she was going to be able to handle feeling this sort of hate and rage from her daughter.

Because she's right. I've wronged her in many ways, in ways that cut deeper than I could ever realize.

To know that there was nothing she could say to refute these accusations made everything that much more difficult. Ursa thought to how Sasuke had angrily confronted her, demanding to know why she hadn't woken Azula and at least told her that she had loved her before she left. It was something that Ursa had pondered nearly every day of her life since she had left her family, and no matter how she had tried to justify it, guilt was all that ever met her at the end of her thoughts.

Now, she was facing that guilt, the result of her actions, and she didn't know what to say, or do.

Her mind buzzed and she felt her heart hammering in her chest as she looked almost helplessly at her daughter.

Say something!

"I never wanted to hurt you," she finally managed to burst out with. "I know you won't believe me, but to cause you and Zuko pain was the last thing I could ever have desired."

"Oh?" Azula asked, her voice a slick and menacing tone. With a jolt of fear, Ursa realized that she had just entered her daughter's comfort zone; she was clearly used to intimidating and talking down to people, just as Ozai had been, and those same tactics were being employed against Ursa now. "It seems that there truly could have only been a single outcome for a mother to leave her children, and you likely knew perfectly well what could happen."

"It wasn't because I wanted to leave!" Ursa cried out. It was shocking to her how quickly she had stumbled over her own composure and was steadily being reduced to such a state. She swallowed and tightened her lips, doing all she could to keep in control.

"It wasn't because I wanted to leave," she repeated, in a more reasonable and hopefully amicable tone. "I had no choice, I left to protect—"

"ZUKO!" Azula suddenly barked and Ursa shuddered where she stood. "YOU LEFT TO PROTECT ZUKO!"

Somehow, Ursa kept herself from shouting back in an attempt to gain some control of the words being exchanged between them.

"Your grandfather had ordered Zuko's death," she said, as gently as she could. "I had to choose between letting your father carry out the deed, or killing Azulon myself to save your brother. If I—"

"I know what you did, mother," Azula spat, putting about as much venom into the word 'mother' as might have been possible. "I heard it from 'Zuzu already, and I don't care."

The distinct possibility of what Azula might have been implying chilled Ursa, but she still felt compelled to ask, "Would you not have cared if your brother died?"

The look that her daughter shot her then was rich with renewed hate, and Ursa felt at least the smallest bit of relief that at least, Azula might not have felt the same animosity for her brother that had been implied to Ursa after what Zuko had said.

"Grandfather's death wasn't something I could have cared about either," Azula snapped, not answering her mother's question. "He was narrow-minded and far too simple to lead our nation to victory and I always believed father was a much better candidate to do so. Your actions in protecting 'Zuzu were hardly something that changed how I felt about the situation when I learned the truth."

For a moment, her voice had lowered down to a more reasonable tone, but all at once, Azula seemed to remember how angry she was, and she bared her teeth.

"But you went to him that night. Didn't you?"

It wasn't something Ursa would have dared lie about, but she still had difficulty mustering up the courage to reply, taking long enough to incite Azula's eyes to flash as she screamed her last two words again.

"DIDN'T YOU?!"

"Yes," Ursa said, her voice wavering weakly. Azula inclined her head again, vicious satisfaction on her face that she was able to be achieving these confessions at all.

"You probably were so sweet with him, weren't you?" she whispered. "You held your precious son and you told him that you loved him and that everything would be okay. That you'd miss him, but that he needed not to worry about you. Everything that he needed to hear, I'm so certain."

Azula took a step for the first time since she had stopped pacing.

"And there I was, sleeping just a room over. A stupid little girl who, despite knowing how much her mother reviled her, never believed that she would just be cast aside that way."

Not for the first time, Ursa felt her heart surge with pain and guilt.

"I didn't revile—"

"And yet you went to Zuko, said your goodbyes, and left," Azula continued, her eyes flaming windows into a world of hate. She took another step forward and stopped in front of Ursa at a distance that would have allowed her to reach out and wrap her hands around her mother's throat if she would have wanted.

"Why didn't you come to me?"

As she tried weakly to swim through the quagmire that was her own misery and hurt, Ursa heard something rather odd in her daughter's question. At its front, it was an accusation and a forceful reality that Ursa had spent so many years trying to rationalize and justify in her mind; Azula wanted to know why she had warranted different treatment than her brother, even if just for that night.

But there was something else in the question that Ursa heard. It took her a moment to try and figure what it was, but when it struck her what she had detected, she couldn't help the look of realization that surely passed over her face.

It was another question hidden within those words. Something perhaps much more important to Azula than an answer to the one she had asked, and something that she perhaps wasn't even aware that she had quietly implied. Maybe she didn't even know what it was she was asking.

She wants to know. She wants to know if that's how it happened.

For the first time, Ursa felt a sense of relief as she knew then that there were words she could use, words that, whether or not Azula believed them, might actually relay some semblance of comfort.

"I did come to you, honey."

Azula seemed to flinch in a way that was almost imperceptible and Ursa found that she wasn't even sure that she had seen such a movement at all in retrospect. But she didn't say anything to challenge or respond to her mother's words which was as good a sign as any for Ursa to continue.

"It's true, I went to Zuko and I apologized. I told him I was sorry I had to leave, and that everything I had done, I had done for him. I told him I loved him and that everything was going to be okay."

As she relived the memory in her head, she felt tears welling behind her eyes, warm and stinging.

"I walked to your room next. You were asleep when I drew near to your bedside and I sat down next to you."

Just barely, Azula's mouth opened and closed, as though she had just been able to fight back saying something, and Ursa wondered what it had been.

"That was all I did for a while. The truth is that I was very lost myself that night. As Zuko must have told you, the deal I made with your father was that, in exchange for allowing you to live, I would have to poison Azulon as well as accept banishment from the Fire Nation. But I didn't know where I was to go. I didn't know what was in store for me beyond the palace that had become my prison. And…"

Ursa knew that she had no business getting choked up in front of her daughter then, but it was impossible not to as the sight of Azula's sleeping form passed through her mind, something that had been all but burned into her memory. She saw her hand reach out and brush her daughter's hair and the young girl shifted ever so slightly under her covers.

Looking at that same daughter now, it was a gashing reminder just how much had changed. Azula had grown into a hateful, spiteful, cruel, paranoid, and prideful person, just as her father had been. Ursa had watched her daughter exhibit this behavior day after day as they traveled, and become more and more disillusioned into the idea that there was nothing of her daughter left that could be loved. She had listened to Azula's frenzied screams on the airship when she had tried to attack her, she had seen what had happened after Ty Lee had forced herself onto Sasuke, and she had felt that sinking feeling in the complex's lobby as she hadn't seen her daughter, but a threat, one that she didn't feel she could predict.

Azula stared at her with expectancy, her face drawn in a furious sneer, her eyes a never ceasing reminder of just how much animosity she bore for her mother, her body slightly hunched like that of an enraged animal. She was waiting for more, and Ursa couldn't help but oblige.

"… and I sat by you for what must have been an hour. When I finally found the words to say, I didn't wake you. I didn't feel I could."

A humorless and vicious smile peeled its way onto Azula's face.

"Why was that, mother?" she hissed. "Frightened to wake your daughter and have to tell her you were leaving her? Abandoning her the way that you had abandoned her all her life already?"

With those questions that came slithering into the back of Ursa's mind, she felt clarity; Azula was pressing the questions against her in a rhetorical sense, expecting her mother to deny these accusations, but as Ursa considered what she had just heard, she realized what her answer was, and it wasn't what she would have expected.

It likely wouldn't be what Azula had expected either.

"Yes."

Her voice was just above a whisper, a hoarse word that carried more weight than anything she had said up until that point. Azula made a small movement like she was recoiling, confusion swimming into the mix of derisive emotion on her face.

"What?"

It took Ursa a moment to clarify as she pondered whether or not she wanted to take back that one-word answer and keep herself from saying what she was about to. But there really wasn't a choice in the end; no matter how much it hurt her, or how much it hurt Azula, she wouldn't lie to her daughter.

"I was frightened."

Azula's eyes flicked from her mother's face to down her body to back up to her face again, her expression speaking to how little understanding she felt towards what she was hearing. Her fists clenched and unclenched unevenly at her side and her breathing started to grow shallow.

"What… why were you frightened?" she asked and Ursa could tell that she was needing considerable effort to keep sounding angry. There was still a thick fog of hate around her, but her need to know the answer to her question was clearly driving her onwards.

"Just what you said, Azula," Ursa said quietly. She felt as though she were standing naked before a crowd of strangers, vulnerable and helpless.

It's only because I don't know my daughter. And she doesn't know me.

"I was always frightened by you. From the moment you discovered your firebending and I saw the hunger in the eyes of both you and your father… I…"

The words had become incredibly hard even just to say, but Ursa grit her teeth; the pain that she would feel in admitting to the reasoning for her distance was nothing compared to what she had felt as the years had passed, and nothing compared to what Azula had surely gone through. Being caught up by her hurt now just seemed nothing short of selfish.

"I pulled away from you. I feared that if I loved you the same way I loved Zuko, it would clash with what you were getting from Ozai. I was worried about who you were becoming, but I didn't want to make things worse by running headlong against what your father was instilling in you. But at the end of the day… you frightened me. It wasn't just what I feared you were becoming, but I… I always saw something in you, Azula. Something that kept me from ever truly believing that I knew you. That I could know you."

And nothing could hurt me more than knowing I had once believed that.

Azula barely seemed to move as she registered these words, but when Ursa paused, the corner of the princess's mouth turned up and she gave a derisive exhale.

"And you were right, weren't you, mother? I became something not even father could control, I became that exact monster you were afraid of. I find it hard to believe that you're not gloating right now after being proven right in your thinking."

Again, an icy blade seemed to pierce Ursa's heart.

"How could I?" she said, her voice straining with desperation. "I never wanted this. You don't think that every day I was gone, I didn't think to you, hope that you weren't becoming a child after your father, that Zuko, or Iroh, or anyone were there for you instead, guiding you and making you into a person that I feared you could never be?"

As she spoke, Ursa felt her face flush with guilt as she realized what she had just admitted. Even Azula's eyes seemed to widen slightly as those words rebounded throughout the room as though Ursa had screamed them.

"If you had despised what I was so much…" Azula said quietly. "You should have left long before you did."

"I didn't… I wasn't…" Ursa tried to speak desperately, but words had escaped her. There was so much more to say, but with her admittance that she had felt her daughter to be a lost cause, she was overwhelmed with hatred for herself beyond what she even would have believed was possible to feel. It made just even the act of talking nearly impossible.

But it's true. I was scared of my daughter. I lost faith in my daughter. She was only a child and I gave up on her.

The tears that had been mounting behind her eyes finally spilled free, streaking down her cheeks to strike the carpet quietly.

I gave up on Azula.

She suddenly remembered a time days past to when she had found Sasuke sitting on a rooftop after that horrible night wherein Ty Lee had made a choice that had caused such a mess to erupt. Ursa remembered looking into his dark, tired, mournful eyes.

"I'm going to deal with her… I… I have a plan. I don't know if it'll work, but it's all I have. And I have to be the one to do this."

Originally, Ursa had assumed that he had told her he would be the only able to handle Azula because what he intended to do was because of the powers he possessed. It had been her belief that he was going to use his strange abilities to try and help Azula, hence his statement that it needed to be him to do it. And maybe he had used his powers, but as Ursa looked at her daughter now, a furious, hateful, wrathful young woman who was retreating into herself now more than ever, something became apparent to her.

Sasuke knew. He knew that he was the only one who hadn't given up on Azula.

The realization nearly took her to her knees then and there, but it was so perfectly clear then, she couldn't believe she hadn't seen it earlier.

Other than Soza, not a single one of them ever seemed to treat Azula like she was one of them. From the glares that Katara and Suki shot her way, to even how the usually jovial Sokka seemed to approach her like she was an explosive ready to burst, to Aang's sad and distant looks, there wasn't a person among them who had treated her as one of them.

Because we all had given up on her.

Even Ty Lee, who seemed to have been involved in an intimate relationship with Azula over the course of years, only seemed to react to Azula with fear and hesitancy. Ursa remembered when they had been loading up to leave the airship, the way that Ty Lee had flinched when with her daughter, as though expecting to be hit. It only became clear later just how genuinely unhealthy their relationship was, but even the person who had spent all that time alone with Azula seemed to treat her with nothing short of fear, wariness and reluctance.

Even Zuko… the way he talked about her, the hurt he was feeling… it wasn't because of what Azula had done, it was because he didn't feel he truly had a sister.

Ursa swallowed and struggled to keep her hands from shaking.

Just as I didn't feel I had a daughter.

It had been Sasuke, the one whom Azula had perhaps wronged the most, who hadn't been willing to give up on her. The boy whom she had tried to manipulate, possess, and whom she had eventually raped and taken the child of, and yet Sasuke protected Azula, and tried to help her. Not Ursa, not anyone else, Sasuke.

Azula wrinkled her face now, her expression drawing in disgust as she regarded her mother with an upturned nose.

"Oh, please. Tears? Am I supposed to take that as some sort of sign of your sincerity?"

Ursa sniffed and wiped her tears aside aggressively. She had to remind herself that she had no right to be crying just then, even though what she had just come to terms with had been one of the most difficult things she had ever had to swallow.

"You believed you had birthed a monster, and now you've returned to see that your belief is proven correct," Azula sneered. "It must feel so affirming, mother. To see your daughter as someone content to hurt, to rape, to murder. All of these sins that have you and everyone else looking at me with hate in your eyes. Now you know that everything you feared has come true, and you can rest easy knowing that you won't ever again have to wonder if there is truth to your wondering."

And even though Ursa felt as though she were being completely overpowered by her daughter's presence, she didn't miss the shaking that had entered Azula's voice.

"I was better off without you anyway," Azula continued. "I could allow father to be of use to me for as long as he was able, and when fate decreed that my time with him had come to an end, it showed me Sasuke, the new clarity in my life to devote myself to. Perhaps he did deny me, but I persevered. I bore his child and that child will one day be the strongest bender who has ever lived. And I accomplished that all without your wisdom and guidance, without ever having a mother I could turn to and have hold me, without ever—"

It was torture then, worse than anything physical that could have been lain against her body, for Ursa to listen to her daughter's taunts, as wavering as they were. Reminder after reminder that she had failed her daughter not just by leaving her, but by distancing herself from Azula when she was just a child. To dedicate herself to Zuko and commit to the belief that she had already lost Azula to Ozai. Ursa didn't know if it was possible to hate someone more than herself in that moment, and she couldn't have stopped herself from screaming then if she had tried.

"I WAS WRONG!"

The words tore from her throat and seemed to almost physically strike Azula, whose body seemed to pull back slightly as her mother's scream echoed around the room. Ursa stood before her, pulling in shaking breaths that seemed to shake her body almost involuntarily.

"I was wrong," she repeated, furious at how unstable her voice was. "I could have helped you. I could have protected you. I could have been there for you, but instead, the night I sat by your side, I didn't wake you. I spoke every word that I could think to, but I never let you hear them. Even in the moment where I felt that I might never see you again, I didn't have the courage to face my fear, my own demon that I had built around you."

For a moment, Ursa couldn't see the young woman that her daughter had become, and she found herself looking down at a little girl, barely Soza's age. The girl looked up at her, her face clearly trying to be more stoic than the girl felt. Her little hands were clasped behind her back and her eyes looked up at Ursa accusingly, further reflecting just how much difficulty she was facing in keeping herself together. But the moment Ursa started to raise a hand to reach for the girl, she faded into nothing, and all Ursa could see was the near suffocating cyclone of silent rage that the girl had become.

And in that shadow, that cloud of hate, Ursa saw pain in Azula's eyes.

"You speak of sin, but none is greater than my own. If not for my failure as a mother, perhaps you wouldn't be hurting the way you are now."

Azula's lips pulled back to show her bared teeth, clenched tightly like a vice.

"Hurting? Who says I'm hurting? You think anything you've done to me is something I haven't been able to fight through?"

She took a step back, shaking her head slowly, her eyes never breaking away from Ursa's.

"I never needed you. I didn't need you then, and I don't need you now. I'm past the point where anything you could possibly say means a damn thing to me."

It was a lie, but Ursa couldn't tell if Azula believed her own words or not.

"Yes, I hate you, mother. I hate you for leaving, and I hate you for loving Zuko more than me. Nothing will change that, and you're fortunate I haven't burnt a hole through you for even insinuating that things might be mendable between you and I."

Ursa felt her own heart stop as Azula's face flickered with realization as to what she had just said. It took Ursa a long moment to find her voice, speaking quietly out of her dry throat.

"I don't think I insinuated anything like that."

Azula's face, while still wrapped up in fury, now looked like she was currently holding her breath and was unable to take in air. Ursa wasn't even sure of what to think as to what she had heard just then from her daughter, as it was one of the last things that she ever would have expected to be said.

She's thinking about mending things. Is that something she's projecting? Or does… does she really have her mind set on that?

Ursa hadn't even come anywhere close to trying to ask her daughter to make amends, nor had she offered anything resembling a proper apology. In the back of her mind, she had been preparing to go down to her knees and beg Azula's forgiveness and tell her that there was nothing more that she wanted then to make things right between them, and if that was Azula hurting her for the years of suffering that her mother had put her through, then so be it.

But Ursa had just started to chip off the tip of the iceberg. She had admitted her fault, and hopefully revealed the sort of pain her failure had put on her as well. And yet with so much more left to be said, Azula had just mentioned the word 'mendable."

She suddenly felt as though there was a moment before her, one that would slip through her fingers if she didn't grab hold of it. Reaching out, she seized the unknown and started to talk almost automatically.

"I want to make things right for you, Azula," she murmured, her voice achieving some sort of stability. "I don't care what that takes of me. Your father once had a man who had dared to insult him strung up in public and slowly burned alive over the course of a week until he finally died; if you want to do something like that to me, for a month, a year, however long, I'll accept that. If hurting me will bring you relief and take away the hurt that I've given you in turn, I beg you to act on that. If you want to drag me to the depths of a dungeon to have me tortured and forgotten about, please take me."

Azula seemed to seize up at that, her eyes widening and Ursa wondered what it had been that she had said to cause her daughter to react that way, as though she had just been injected with a painful memory.

"Or, if you…"

Say it.

It was hard to get something like this out, not with words left unsaid to Sasuke and Zuko, but Ursa knew she had to take the chance. She owed it to her daughter to offer all that she could.

"…if you want to kill me, right here and now…"

She spread her arms slightly at her side, a gesture of complete surrender.

"…I will not resist."

Looking into her daughter's eyes and seeing the fountain of hate that was churning, she felt herself praying that there would be something she could offer to relieve that intense and feverous emotion that Azula was feeling.

"I know how much you despise me. I know you want to see me hurt. And if that—"

In two quick steps, Azula closed the distance between them and drove her fist into Ursa's gut. Not able to help herself, she curled around the closed hand and her legs gave way, and she dropped to her knees. Eyes watering, she felt her insides twist sickeningly, and she retched, saliva dampening her mouth.

"Shut up," Azula said as she stood above her, her voice sounding distant and far off. Ursa groaned briefly and struggled to raise her head, but was aided in that endeavor as her daughter's hand closed around her throat and lifted her to straighten her back while she remained on her knees. Not even able to manage a gasp, Ursa looked into Azula's eyes and was met with the same burning and hateful glare she had seen from the moment she had entered the room.

"Shut up," Azula repeated, her voice almost sounding foreign in how automatic the words came out. She pulled Ursa harshly to the side and threw her to the ground. Her head spinning from a brief lack of oxygen, Ursa tried to get to her hands and knees but was knocked roughly onto her back with a sharp and agonizing kick to her ribs; crying out in pain, she attempted to raise her head, but before she could manage even just that, Azula had climbed on top of her, both hands wrapping around her throat.

"SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!" Azula shrieked, and her nails dug into the sides of Ursa's neck. Feeling an intense pressure building in her head, she couldn't resist reaching up and grabbing her daughter's wrists as her palms crushed her throat. Her mouth fell open slightly, as her body seized in an attempt to try and find itself oxygen, but there was none to be found. The muscles in her legs tensed painfully as her mind started to go blank.

I don't want to die… I don't want to die again, but if this is what she needs… if this is what I can give her.

She looked weakly up into Azula's furious, condemning eyes, the dark hair they shared cascading around her hateful face. It seemed to cast a shadow around the both of them, leaving Ursa with nothing to look at but darkness and Azula's face.

The world itself seemed to start to darken then around the corners of her eyes, more shadows creeping in around her peripheral vision. There was a pounding in her ears that made the sounds of her own weak gasping and Azula's furious inhaling and exhaling fade away to distant muffles. Even the pain started to numb as the seconds thudded by with a damning certainty.

In the back of her head, there was a panic; Ursa felt the pull to keep herself from giving into the blackness as thoughts of her son and Sasuke flashed through her mind, but whenever she so much as attempted to reach out and touch those images, the visage of Azula swallowed them up.

In the end, Ursa could only feel her guilt and regret.

I deserve this.

Her hands loosened around Azula's wrists and one of them drifted up to gently cup her daughter's cheek with some of the last energy that Ursa felt. She watched as Azula's eyes widened even further at the touch, her teeth gritting and a scream ripping from behind them, a sound that was very distant to Ursa.

Azula, I'm sorry… my child, how could I—

And as the darkness finally began to settle, her daughter's face perhaps about to be the last thing she would ever see, Ursa's mind sparked at a particular set of words that she had just thought to.

My child.

Her body rushed with a panic that didn't belong to fear for her own life.

Sasuke's child!

In her pain, misery, and self-hatred, Ursa had completely forgotten the most important development in her life as of recent. Her stomach practically seemed to throb then as she sensed the life growing within her and her panic shocked at her brain.

I can't, not now, not now that—

A moment before fear for Sasuke's child tore her body into rebellion, the darkness around the edges of her eyes swam away and color and light replaced it. Pressure seemed to lift from every aspect of her body and it gave a brief seizing shudder before Ursa gasped, a deep, overpowering breath of life causing her head to pound and feeling to rush back into her body. She rolled onto her side, coughing and gagging as she tried to keep her lungs expanding and retracting, jamming her eyes shut at the pain in her head. There was nothing that she could do then other than allow her body to try and recover; if Azula had other plans for wanting to hurt her, she wouldn't have been able to see them coming, much less try and stop them.

Seconds became a minute, then two, then three, and Ursa finally rolled onto her back once more and with a grimace, pulled herself up into a sitting position.

Azula had indeed gotten up from where she had been on Ursa's chest and had moved to the bed, now sitting on its edge. Her face couldn't be seen behind her hair which fell around her face in dark curtains. Ursa regarded her daughter's motionless and slumped form for several long moments as her hand drifted almost unconsciously to her belly.

I can't believe I almost just let that happen…

It was a mixture of fresh guilt she was now feeling; guilt over having been willing to die without speaking with Sasuke or Zuko, and guilt over the fact that thoughts of her daughter had completely made her forget that she had another child growing within her.

If Azula hadn't stopped… would I even have been able to force her off?

The fact that she had quite nearly just died had her mind buzzing, but she knew she could neither let her guard down nor ignore the situation at hand. She was still alone in the room with Azula, and there was no telling what was now going through her daughter's head. Ursa started to roll onto her feet to see if her body would allow her to stand, before Azula's voice sounded out, softer than Ursa would have even thought possible.

"I don't… want to hurt you."

Ursa froze from where she had half-managed to get to her feet. She looked towards her daughter in silence, waiting for more words and it was perhaps almost another minute before Azula quietly continued.

"You say that what you did caused me to become like this… that you being gone made me the way that I am."

Slowly, Azula turned her face to look at Ursa, who's eyes widened as she watched tears roll down her daughter's cheeks.

"So why would I want that to happen again?"

It was nothing short of sheer willpower that held off Ursa's instinct to race to her daughter's side and put her arms around her. There was a very pure and vulnerable sadness that now flowed across Azula's face, the rage seemingly dispelled everywhere but her eyes. Within them, the traces of that fury and hate remained, but Ursa found it was far less powerful than it had been minutes before.

Azula stared at her mother with a dead expression on her face as though the idea of emotion just then was much too draining to even consider.

"I don't want to hurt you," she repeated quietly. "But I truly don't know what to make of you."

She turned her head down and clasped her hands in her lap. She looked very lonely.

"I know what you're telling me is true. I saw… when I was with Sasuke, he… showed me things."

Realizing that this was the first time that she was hearing about what had taken place with Sasuke directly from her daughter's mouth, Ursa listened close. It was one thing to hear from Sasuke what had happened, even though it had been more or less rather vague, but to know not only what Azula had experienced, but to know what it had done to her was information Ursa never expected to be able to hear.

"I saw visions. Of futures where I might have been happy. And I saw memories too. Of being a child, of the academy, of… you."

Sniffing and swallowing, Azula's lips tightened into an angry line and it was clear that showing emotion for her just then was something she was battling hard.

"I saw you at my bedside. It was a memory I didn't know I even had. Maybe even though I was sleeping, my mind held onto your words. Maybe I hadn't been sleeping entirely. No matter the reason, I saw a memory I had no recollection of play out before me."

Her body pitched forward slightly as though she had just received a great deal of physical pain in her abdomen, and her teeth clenched, the muscles in her jaw tightening as fresh tears dropped onto the carpet at her feet.

"Why…" she said, her voice shaking badly, "… didn't you wake me?"

Ursa could tell that Azula wasn't looking for an answer. The way that she had phrased the question spoke to the loss she was feeling, as though the weight of what she had become, and what she hadn't become had suddenly shown its heft to her. She looked beyond miserable, wearing an expression that spoke to the sense of utter horror she was trying to conceal. Azula knew now why her mother hadn't treated her the same way as she had treated Zuko, why she had distanced herself, and why it was that on the night she had abandoned them, there had been no proper goodbye for her.

"I… I hear your words in my head. Again and again," Azula hissed. Her hands had drawn over her face, caging it in darkness and Ursa could see only the light of her eyes piercing out from the shadows. "But I don't want to believe that the words you told me that night ever were spoken. Even though you've told me now, even though I heard them in my memory, I can't let myself believe them."

Her body swaying where she stood, Ursa inclined her head just slightly, hardly daring to speak, her daughter's words seeming like a spell that was rendering her helpless.

"Why…?" she quietly asked.

Azula, her arms wrapping around her midsection and looking like she was about to be sick, slowly shook her head for several long moments, barely looking like she was breathing at all. When she spoke, it looked like her words were being wrenched from her with an incredible pain, shame clouding her face.

"Because hating you is easier than believing you actually might have loved me once."

Ursa had taken two steps before she was able to catch herself. Her hands were already making to reach out and take hold of her daughter, but it was inly though the most willpower she had ever mustered that she kept from hugging Azula.

No… not yet. Not until I know that I can.

Regardless of what her daughter had just admitted, there was still no telling if there was violent intent in her mind, and Ursa needed to be wary of that. She didn't know if she would be able to stop herself again from moving in and trying to physically comfort Azula were such a thing said again, and her daughter's current state was making it hard enough to keep from embracing her, but as painful as it was, there was something Ursa knew she needed to do before she so much as tried something like that.

Slowly returning her hands to hang benignly at her sides, she took several slow breaths to calm herself; Azula's words hammered about in her mind, making thought itself a challenge, but the realization of how close she might be allowed her to speak.

"Azula."

Her daughter's eyes flicked briefly up as her hands fell back into her lap limply. Azula looked away just as quickly, but Ursa knew that she had her attention.

"Despite everything I did, all the mistakes and sins I committed against you, there was one thing that never changed."

Azula's face seemed to slightly tense as though she were preparing herself for something she expected to hear.

"At no point in my life did I ever not love you," Ursa said, every word coming from her mouth echoing with deliberateness and passion. "I loved you the moment you were born, I loved you when you were growing up, I loved you when you learned to firebend, I loved you when I started to fear for the person you were becoming, I loved you when I left you that night. And I have spent every night since thinking to the love I have for you and your brother."

She risked taking a step forward, but Azula didn't react, her eyes staring towards the floor blankly. Gathering herself, Ursa admitted the purest truth she had uttered since she had stepped into the room.

"And I still love you now."

Maybe she had given up on her daughter. Maybe she had abandoned her like the pathetic excuse for a mother she had been. Maybe she had seriously considered if Azula was a threat too dangerous to not put in a very secure place, or worse.

But she had never once stopped loving her.

Just to speak the truth, to hear it resound in her head, felt like a relieving miracle all on its own. Ursa felt fresh tears slide down her cheeks, tickling her skin until they dropped against her breast. She watched as Azula remained motionless for another long moment before pitching forward again, her eyes jamming tightly shut as she appeared to do everything she could to keep her face passive.

"I love you," Ursa said and stepped in front of her daughter, gingerly reached out and putting her hands on Azula's shoulders. Hissing, her daughter pulled back and knocked her hands away, looking up spitefully, but the hate that Ursa could see now wasn't like what it had been before.

"Don't say that. You don't mean that," Azula rasped, her own eyes shimmering. Ursa didn't make to touch her again but repeated herself as calmly as she could.

"I love you."

Azula grit her teeth and bowed her head, releasing a tortured sound that was both a cry of pain and a snarl. She reached up and dug her nails past her hair, digging aggressively into her scalp.

"Stop it!" she yelled, but Ursa did not.

"I love you."

Her body quaking and almost seeming to shrivel, Azula shook and released another sound of sheer emotional trauma.

"Stop it, stop it, you don't get to love me, not after—"

Ursa reached out again, putting a hand around her daughter's head and pulling her towards her torso. Azula released a shriek of defiance and struggled to pull away, but her movements were weak, not at all resembling the control she had displayed when she had nearly crushed the life from Ursa's throat.

"NO, DON'T TOUCH ME, DON'T—"

Somehow, in some bizarre way, Ursa's voice carried over Azula's cracking and loud howling.

"I love you."

Letting out a ragged gasp, Azula pulled her body back as though trying to escape her mother's touch in vain once more. Ursa didn't become remotely rough with her touch as she didn't need to; her daughter's efforts to physically force her away were nothing that a gentle yet firm grip would lose to. Azula's voice dropped in pitch to practically heaving gasps as though the act of speaking at all was taking too much energy.

"I can't, you can't do this, I'm not, we're not, you can't…"

She was starting to babble incoherently at that point, and Ursa moved as close as she could, her daughter's knees on either side of her legs as Ursa stood ahead of where Azula sat. Slowly, she moved her other hand behind Azula's head and delicately pulled her close, her daughter's forehead resting just underneath her breast. She felt Azula's body shaking against her as she uttered her mantra once more, the only three words that seemed to give her power over her daughter.

"I love you."

All at once, Azula's body stopped shaking and it seemed to swell for a moment as she took in a deep breath before releasing it in a miserable, agonized wail. Her body shook with renewed heaves, the telltale signs of sobbing, as she pressed her face against her mother's abdomen, howling and crying at the same time. They were by far the most pitiable sounds that Ursa had ever heard and it wouldn't have taken much relief of her willpower to break down then herself.

Not this time. I can't leave my daughter with that weakness again.

Her hold on Azula's head increased just a touch.

Never again.

"I love—" she started to say again, to add another layer of her reassurance to the emotional collapsing that was her daughter, but she cut herself off.

She had just noticed that Azula's hands had wrapped around her lower back, a touch so weak as to almost be unnoticeable, but Ursa could see her daughter's arms ensnaring about her waist.

She's hugging me.

Ursa closed her eyes and tilted her head just slightly upwards as her lower lip trembled badly then. She was able to keep from sobbing as Azula was, but now at least she could allow herself to cry.

Her daughter continued to sob and scream against her, almost as though she were in the fits of a night terror, but Ursa knew better. These weren't the cries of a cold, brutal and sadistic young woman who had thrown off all the shackles that were the parts of her basic humanity. Ursa didn't feel the furious grip of that woman, who might strangle her as soon as touch her.

The cries she heard and the touches she felt were those from a little girl, one whom had perhaps never before in her life cried this way. The sobs, while painful to listen to, sang a melody that was more than misery. Ursa could hear a great relief in them as well as her daughter shuddered against her. She couldn't fathom what it was that Azula was all releasing in these sobs, but she wasn't going to let her daughter go anytime soon, not until she had taken everything she needed from her mother.

I thought she would want me dead… that she would want me hurt.

As Azula's howls faded away into lesser moans, intermingling with her sobbing and hiccups, Ursa knew that while her daughter's body might have matured, so much of her was still just that child who's bedside she had selfishly abandoned.

She wanted her mother.

---

Zuko stood against the wall just beside his sister's room. His body was a shaking and tense mess; he rather felt as though he had just done a lap around the walls of Ba Sing Se for how exhausted all his muscles seemed to be just from the stress they had been experiencing while his body clenched while taking up vigil just outside the door. A great many times he had nearly burst into the room containing both Azula and his mother, ready to separate what he heard was a violent encounter. The only thing that had stopped him was trust that his mother knew what she was doing in handling Azula.

He had listened to the voices resounding from behind the door the moment it had closed behind Ursa; Zuko had seen her leave her own room in something of a hurry, but when she hadn't seen him approaching, he had decided to follow from a distance, a pit in his stomach somehow telling him with a sinking feeling that he knew where she was going. It wasn't that he didn't want his mother to speak with his sister, but it was impossible for him not to feel dread over the idea regardless. With how obvious it had become to him how much Azula resented Ursa, fear for his mother's safety weighed heavy on Zuko's mind.

That was why it had been beyond difficult for him to keep from exploding into the room when he had overheard the screaming, and the sound of what seemed like a body hitting the floor. His hand was on the handle when silence had fallen rather quickly and he had been able to hear two voices after a period, muffled as they were, and his legs had nearly given out at the relief. No words were able to reach him from where he was as the door was quite solidly built, but the two different cadences made it clear that there were still two people talking within the room. He had heard the voice that was Azula's rise and rise then, and with an intensity that had practically caused Zuko to stumble backwards and fall onto his rear, he had listened to his sister begin screaming. It took him a moment to realize that they petered off into sobs, and Zuko rested his head against the door, closing his eyes and hoping as hard as was possible that somehow, things were going to be alright.

He had waited then for the sounds of further bellowed words or the cacophonous thudding of a scuffle to break out once more, and Zuko didn't think he would be able to keep himself from interjecting if he overheard such a thing again. But Azula's cries had slowly decreased in volume and, to his stunned ears, he heard something else. For seconds, he couldn't even properly identify it, not because he didn't recognize it, but because it was the last thing he ever would have expected to hear in the proximity of Azula.

Ursa was singing.

It was the same bedtime melody she had occasionally shared with him during his younger years, and to hear it again now was enough to nearly floor Zuko with nostalgia. And if hearing a song he so closely associated with his childhood, the most innocent time of his life, wasn't a miracle enough, the melody was being offered to his sister.

Slowly rotated from where he was leaning against the door, Zuko pressed his back against the wall and slowly drew fingers through his black hair. After a moment, a small smile slid onto his face and tears slid down his cheeks.

It wouldn't have been an understatement to suggest that Zuko was feeling well past the point of no return with his sister. So much time had been spent in his adult life ignoring Azula as best that he could, hoping that things would change, but also not holding that hope in very high regard. Then, to see her break down on the airship, and learning that she had raped Sasuke to have her daughter, Zuko had only felt his sister slipping further away from him. From the manic looks she shot Sasuke's way during their travels, to her rather frantic and intense behavior which steadily seemed to grow more and more erratic, then finally culminating in what she had done to Ty Lee, Zuko had already felt as though the Azula he had wanted to love was gone. He had gone to see her after her return with Sasuke, but while she had acknowledged how he felt, there had been little more to it than that.

And now, she was not only allowing Ursa to be in her company, but their mother was singing to her.

Nothing could have been a better sign than that and Zuko bent over slightly as he felt a sob of his own shake his body. He quickly caught himself and wiped his eyes as he looked up and down the hall. It wouldn't do well for someone, especially not one of his friends, to see the Fire Lord having what looked like something of a breakdown. Swallowing down the lump in his throat, Zuko pushed softly away from the wall and walked quietly back towards his room where he knew he could have proper privacy with his emotions.

When he was a few hallways away from Azula's room, he felt a gentle chuckle ripple from his throat. Who else but his mother would have been able to get through to Azula?

There came a small stutter in his step as a dark cloud settled over his thoughts, as upbeat as they had suddenly become. The one thing that perhaps could cause his joy over hearing Ursa singing to Azula to dampen.

No one else but Sasuke.

It wasn't lost on him that this event he had just overheard had only occurred after Azula had been gone for a period with Azula. It would have been impossible for Zuko to ignore the possibility that this moment between his mother and sister had only something that could have happened as a result of Sasuke's actions.

Fucking damn him.

Even in a moment of joy that was so lost amongst all this uncertainty and fear that shrouded the Northern Water Tribe, in the briefest instant where Zuko felt something like hope for his family swim through his veins, that name had come right back to him.

As he drew near to his room, he wrenched the door open and closed it behind likely a little rougher than he needed to. Moving to the chair beside the fireplace, he jabbed a fist towards the indent and an orange flame burst to life, cascading the room in a warm glow. Zuko dropped into the chair and set his eyes focusing darkly into the dancing fire.

It felt bizarre to even be thinking about Sasuke in an instant where he should have been nothing short of relieved as to what had happened, but if that catalyst for said happening was Sasuke, Zuko could scarcely ignore it. He clenched his fists around the chair's arms, staring broodingly forward as his eyes drifted out of focus while he retreated into his mind.

Sasuke had saved his life. Sasuke had saved the lives of the people he cared about, well more than once for all intents and purposes. Zuko should have owed the man more than anyone else on the planet, and while that may have been true at face value, there was such a burning hate in his gut that he couldn't ignore. There were a great many things that bothered him about Sasuke, but at the end of the day, there really was only one thing that could have made things feel so unresolvable.

He's with my mom.

It wasn't fair to Zuko, and it wasn't fair to Ursa. To know what his mother had suffered through at the hands of Ozai was one thing, and now she was with the same person who had fathered Azula's child? What was she thinking?

Zuko bent forwards, his back hunching, as he pressed his face into his hands, rubbing wearily at his skin.

She can't possibly believe this can work… she's Soza's grandma for shit's sake! And she thinks she can be with her granddaughter's father?!

He leaned back and gave a dark chuckle then as he realized that he was now directing his anger towards his mother, rather than towards Sasuke.

Zuko saw how Mai looked at him. He saw how his sister looked at him. He saw how his mother looked at him. And to boot, he had now gone and had sex with the last person that Zuko would have expected, and he didn't imagine Ty Lee would be too willing to open up with him about the event. Zuko's laughter started to persist, becoming a deeper, almost feverish sound.

All the women I've known for so long… why? Why Sasuke?

He wished he could line Ursa, Azula, Ty Lee, and Mai all up in front of him and scream the question into their faces collectively. There wasn't much of him that imagined he would actually obtain some sort of satisfying answer from them, but the idea that perhaps they would at least know just how much the entire thing bothered him was distantly comforting.

And all because of him.

There was something comforting too then, as he sat in the chair and brooded on the matter, of just taking some time to himself to imagine a world where Sasuke had never existed.

---

Toph trudged the along the grounds of the palace, trying to let herself enjoy the fresh air. She was finding even just such a simple thing to be anything but relaxing, if only due to her racing mind.

There had been a myriad of situations over the years where Toph had been able to sense the approaching of hostile forces or individuals well in advance of when they actually arrived. This had been most useful in keeping herself and those around her clear of any surprise ambushes or attacks, and just as helpful for her, it had allowed her the ability to feel quite safe in just about any circumstances. When her feet were on solid ground, it allowed Toph a feeling of supreme security.

Now, there was likely an entire army advancing on the Northern Water Tribe, and Toph would be none the wiser of them until she was outright told by someone else.

Through much practice, she had been able to use the minerals and debris found in ice and water to allow for something similar to what she could do with earth, but the ice beneath her feet now only allowed her to detect movement in a small span around her. Not to mention that the callouses on her soles only did so much to keep the chill of the frozen ground from stinging at her. Toph hated wearing footwear about as much as anything, but if she wasn't able to walk about outside without freezing her toes off, she regrettably could only stay out there for so long before needing to go back into the much more temperate palace.

Sighing, she tilted her head skyward and allowed herself a few more moments to enjoy the fresh air. Even if her mind wouldn't let her relax, the feeling of clear, chilly air in her lungs was genuinely rather comforting, even if only to a physical degree. Eventually, she had to give in and retreat back inside to further labor under the idea that war very well could be at their doorstep within the hour.

Though, in truth, that wasn't the cause of the majority of her anxiety.

As she closed the door to the palace grounds behind her, Toph reached back over her shoulder to almost absently to rub at the mark that had been placed there so many years ago.

The stupid boy I wish I didn't have to feel this way about… and the girl that I would do literally anything for.

Sasuke and Soza's absence was wearing on her much more grievously than she had ever imagined it would.

It wasn't like when Sasuke had left when they were but kids, back when there had been no guarantee any of them would ever see him again; Toph knew that he was coming back, and he would no doubt have his daughter with him, just as safe as could be. She knew these things and yet her mind raced nonetheless.

What if they don't get along? What if Sasuke doesn't get how to talk to her? What if Soza thinks he'll spoil her like most everyone in her life has? What if something happens to her and Sasuke panics, and he can't help her?

While she had been sitting on the edge of Soza's bed with Sasuke beside her, Toph had very nearly insisted that she join the pair of them on their journey. The idea of Sasuke and his daughter on their own hadn't even remotely jived with her then, and she wanted them to be able to have some sort of mediator between them and since no one knew Soza as well as Toph…

Not even Azula, I'd wager.

…she would be the perfect candidate for that purpose. But Toph had known too that she would be next to useless in all other areas, and that reason alone had likely stopped her from bringing up the matter with Sasuke. Without bending, she was just a young blind woman tagging along, and she knew she wouldn't be able to keep up with the pair of them.

Still… how can I not worry?

Questions kept pouring through her mind about how Sasuke and Soza might handle one another, and what would happen if they ever wound up butting heads. It didn't take that much of a leap to imagine such a thing, with Soza being quite the spoiled and expectant girl that she was, and Sasuke, who to Toph's knowledge, didn't give quarter to anyone, except maybe Ursa.

Her insides twitched angrily at her for that as she walked sullenly through the palace's vast and expansive halls.

Don't think about her.

Toph decided that she would track down Jin, maybe Ty Lee as well. There was no greater cure for an anxious mind then her two best friends, Toph had found over the years, even if there might still be some tension between her and Ty Lee after what had happened. It was impossible for her not to feel resentment towards her friend for the relative disregard she had showed for what she had done with Sasuke and how that might have affected Toph, but it was entirely possible that she had been so wrapped up in trauma that she had just failed to consider such a thing altogether. After all, this was after who knew just how long of being brutally abused by Azula, and that should have been more than enough reason to give her some leeway.

It should have, anyway. Toph still wasn't feeling particularly forgiving on that front.

Still, she figured a talk with both of her friends might be just what she needed to take her minds off things, and she started for the stairs that led up to the guest rooms they had all been lent. She would check first for them there, and then the kitchen; Jin often could be found cooking when she was stressed as it usually acted as the perfect distractor for her anxieties. And if there ever was a positive to be taken from Jin's potential mental uneasiness, it was that her mastery in the culinary fields made the fruits of her stress quite tasty. And perhaps Toph would be able to ease any stress her friends were feeling while they helped with hers, though she couldn't imagine that they could have been in a worse state than she was, at least in regard to Sasuke and Soza.

The idea of getting to see her friends was weighing on her mind enough that when she felt two people approaching her, she assumed it was both Jin and Ty Lee without even sensing, but when she heard Katara's voice, she was able to sense both her other female friend and Aang approaching her quickly.

"Toph!"

Toph only had a moment to think about how much she didn't want to be bothered just then, but when she heard the urgency in the just the inflection of her name, she felt her brow furrow. She stopped walking and let Katara and Aang jog the last few feet to her.

"What's wrong?" she asked, and her mind immediately went wild; from bad news over Sasuke and Soza to the ever-encroaching threat of the spirits, she was deeply on edge almost immediately.

"We need to get to Sasuke," Katara said with a clipped firmness that was just as much her style of talking as it always had been. "And we need your help to do it."

As she had been hoping that her needless paranoia had been unjustified, Toph needed a moment to swallow down the fear that started building sickeningly inside her.

"What happened?" she snapped, and she could feel Katara's posture slipping into that of slight aggravation.

"There's no time," she snapped back. "We'll tell you when—"

"I've sensed something," Aang said. His voice was clearer and he sounded much more focused and fixed with intent than Toph thought she had heard since back in Ba Sing Se. "I'm not sure exactly what, but I know that Sasuke and his child are in danger."

"What, like through the Avatar state, or your spiritual connection?" Toph asked, hearing how light and nervous her voice had become.

"Yes," he replied nonspecifically. "I have…"

He paused for just a moment, a rather strange moment at that.

"…figured we can use on the carriers that the Water Nation uses for transport. Waterbending them can make them travel extremely fast and they will handle the terrain as well as anything. But even with speed like that, we have no chance of getting to Sasuke quickly enough without your help."

Toph couldn't think of someone less useful in navigating through a blizzard, on top of two waterbenders with working eyes no less.

"What the hell do you need me for?"

"Your mark, Toph," Katara said, her voice softening slightly and it was clear that she respected at least what the seal meant to Toph, even if she might not have fully understood it. "It let's you sense Sasuke, right? So if we make it near enough to where he is…"

"…you can use me to home in on his exact location," Toph finished. She swallowed again and reached back over her shoulder to gingerly massage the seal. It had been softly burning back there since Sasuke's return, so soft to the point of being imperceptible as the days had gone on. Now that he was gone, there was a sensation back there that almost felt like a numbness, and Toph truly didn't care for the feeling.

"Have you told everyone else?" she asked and she could feel both Aang and Katara shift somewhat impatiently.

"I'm going to let the chief know now," Katara said. "There's no time to track down everyone else, but it will get passed down."

That seemed to be a rather odd answer on its own, but Toph felt herself too caught up in how worried she was to pay it much mind.

"Are you in?" Aang asked, and again, there was an edge to his voice that sounded almost too in control. Toph could understand why he might have been doing all he could to remain in control, but it was impossible for her not to notice just how at ease he seemed to be with the situation.

No, not at ease… expectant.

Though, if he had undergone some sort of spiritual epiphany that had told him something that no one else did, and it regarded the safety of Sasuke and Soza, Toph supposed she would have been just as focused and urgent were she in his shoes. Still, she was struggling to keep her head from spinning; this was all happening so fast.

"How fast are we going to be able to move?" she asked and started to walk as she did. Both Aang and Katara seemed to note her acceptance of partaking in the mission, and they led the way, the three of them breaking into a loose jog, with Katara breaking off while Aang and Toph continued towards the palace's doors.

"With Katara and I waterbending one of the Water Nation carriers, we'll make excellent time. We'll just need you to actually get us to him," Aang said, and Toph's brow furrowed just briefly once more as to how calm he sounded before she shook thoughts of such a pointless matter out of her mind. Sasuke needed her.

Soza needed her.

"You can count on me."

---

From where Sasuke stood, he couldn't shake the fact that the body seemed even bigger than he had imagined it being. He had taken Soza down over the frozen plain to ascend the leg to where the knee bent, and they may as well have been standing on a mountain for how high they had climbed. Sasuke had looked in both directions to see if there were any other parts of the enormous body that he could see, and looking eastward, he saw a very measured rise that looked a great distance away that could have been a chest as well as a series of strangely curved spires of ice that very much had the chance of being fingers, even as they loomed far off as being the size of a building apiece.

If this thing was standing… it could wear Manda as a fucking scarf.

The sheer scale of it was quite something to behold and Sasuke had even found himself brought to a halt just to consider its size, but Soza didn't seem to pay the find any more notice than a bug she had stepped on.

She marched around on top of the plateau that made up the being's knee, looking about with a furrowed brow.

"So, what then?" she said, the first words spoken between them since they had left quickly from the ridge to trek the distance over to the body. "Is this Koloss?"

Pushing aside the thoughts regarding its size, Sasuke looked around about him, and questions started to flood in to replace them.

I don't know… is it? It must be, Roku spoke of a giant crafted to house the immense energy that allows the physical world and the spirit world to remain interlinked in such a way… but what now? Do I need to find the heart or something? I thought this thing would have been upright and ready to defend itself, what the hell is it doing almost completely buried in the ice? And how best to go about destroying it; that's what I'm here to do after all.

"It must be," he said, deciding to at least sound like he knew what he was talking about. And frankly, he couldn't think of any other possibility. "Koloss was told in the stories as being a giant and I'd say this enormous bastard fits the bill."

Soza toed the ice and snow-covered part of the body they stood on, looking skeptical.

"I don't get it," she said, echoing his thoughts exactly. "It looks like it's already dead."

"We don't know that" Sasuke replied. "It could be in a state of torpor or something perhaps."

His daughter turned to look at him, giving her undivided attention.

"So, what do we do then?" she asked. "Wake it up? Or just try and kill it?"

"I'm thinking of how best to handle that," he said, turning away from her. He could practically sense Soza's impatience and he honestly couldn't help thinking as to how amusing it was that she didn't seem to be taking the discovery with that much awe, as though finding a giant the size of a mountain buried in ice and snow was something she did every day.

If it is sleeping or something like that, I wouldn't want to wake it… I would rather snuff it out without it so much as moving… but if I'm looking for something like a heart or a life force, what makes me think it would even be in its chest? If the spirits possessed this body, or created it with their own power, or whatever the case, then maybe it being a bipedal sort of shape is as far as that similarity goes to a human. Hell, I can only see this leg and what looks like a torso raising those hills way far off, and maybe some fingers. How would I start with—

"It's hollow."

Sasuke blinked and turned back to Soza.

"What're you—" he started and cut off as he looked to his daughter.

Soza was looking down towards her feet, her expression rather blank but lingering now with surprise. Her mouth slightly ajar, her eyes were widened and Sasuke saw that the pattern of her Sharingan were very much active, and very much alive.

"It's… the whole leg beneath us," she breathed, a voice just loud enough for Sasuke to hear at all. "It's like a… a cave. Like we could go inside of it."

"Soza," Sasuke said, his voice quiet but firm. His daughter looked up to him, seemed to realize what his focus was before he could so much as say a word and she swallowed abruptly as though coming out of a trance, blinking rapidly. She took a single, staggered step backwards and Sasuke tensed, ready to rush and catch her if need be.

"What…" she murmured. "What was that? How did I know that, how did I see that?"

It was a grudging thought as Sasuke realized that Soza had come to a very noteworthy discovery, again, faster than he had and she had done so using a part of her being that he had rather heavily implied he would rather her not dipping into. Still, there would be time for any scolding he wanted to give her later; for now, they needed to get moving.

"Those were your Sharingan," Sasuke answered, using his own to look down and he saw that what she had said was in fact the case. The leg beneath them had its surface only track down for a number of meters before it opened up into a vast expanse, uneven within, but still cylindrical in the same way that a leg was. It would be more than easy to walk around inside.

He turned his gaze up to look at his daughter who he saw was eying him with some semblance of contrition, but he could tell she was masking a fair bit of curiosity and hunger beneath.

"Our eyes are special in more ways than one," he said, deciding to give a brief explanation. "You've found that they can allow you to create Amaterasu, but they are also able to enhance our basic vision in numerous ways. They can let you see something more clearly, they can help you see things from much further away, and they can even allow you to see through certain objects, as you have just done."

Sasuke watched carefully as the corners of Soza's mouth twitched and he could tell she was trying not to smile triumphantly at the revelation that she had just unlocked more of the potential of her eyes, but when she looked up to him, he watched her hastily try and hide that excitement.

"Alright," was all she said, clasping her hands behind her back and adopting what she must have thought was a very innocent and ambiguous stance. Sasuke sighed and looked to his feet.

Later.

"Get behind me," he instructed, and she complied without a word, standing just off to the side behind his right leg and he could tell she was leaning to get as good a look as she could to what her father was about to do.

Here's hoping this doesn't wake the beast.

Snapping off a quick several hand seals, Sasuke inhaled and blew out a Fire Style jutsu to punch a hole about a meter wide directly down into the leg. The air around them burst outwards with the force of the blast and the thick layer of ice and snow around the hole peeled back, melting in the time it took a person to blink.

As the wisping orange of the flames retreated away, Soza immediately tried to scoot past him to get a look down the hole, but she ran into Sasuke's arm as he extended it to his side, cutting her off.

"I just want to—"

Sasuke only needed to flick a quick glance her way and she swallowed and lowered her gaze respectfully. He turned back towards the indent he had made, waiting almost on edge for the behemoth leg to start moving beneath them, but when it continued to remain as still as a mountain should, he gingerly paced to the hole and looked inside.

It surprised him to see that it wasn't a dark void within the vacuous interior of the leg, and rather he could see blue light glowing consistently within almost as though a lining of lamps left by Azula had been placed within; the blue light was just about as unsettling as anytime Sasuke had seen her firebend, and he wondered if the similar way this situation was setting him on edge was something he needed to take heed of.

Stop, you're overthinking. If this thing has natural illumination within its body, then that's only something that's going to help us.

How easily Azula had wormed her way back into his head, Sasuke didn't care to think on that anymore.

"Are you ready?" he said, turning back to look at his daughter who had obediently remained where he had stopped her with a look. Soza's eyes flickered with eager anticipation, even as her body language continued to try and exhibit the façade that she was both calm and collected.

"Yes," she said, her tone a mixture of assuring and firmness, but he heard that single word waver just a touch. Sasuke looked at her for a moment longer, knowing that he wasn't able to keep the disappointment from his eyes. But he wasn't looking to keep anything like that from his daughter. He didn't want to hide how he felt from her.

"Alright then, get over here," he said with a sigh. Soza looked at him a moment and he saw the nerves on her face flash briefly as she no doubt identified the doubt in his eyes. Then, she quickly obeyed and bounded to his side.

"What's the—" she started to ask before she cut off in a high-pitched squeal as Sasuke wrapped an arm around her waist, held her tight to him, and leapt into the hole he had made.

Soza's arms reached up and wrapped tightly around his neck in an intense vicegrip as the wind whistled past them. In a moment, they were past the darkness of the few meters that made up the layer of the leg itself and were falling into what looked like a vast cylindrical cavern. Several dozen more meters down, Sasuke's feet lightly touched down into ankle deep liquid. His eyes flashed to this first and he looked intently down at what he would have first assumed would have been water.

"Put me down!" Soza yelled at him, but he ignored her. There wasn't a chance that he was setting his daughter down into this liquid as well, when he didn't know what it was and he found himself cursing his own carelessness. He bent his knees slightly and prepared chakra to dispel any adverse effects it might have when making contact with his skin, but when his fingers touched it, he found it strangely enough to be rather lukewarm and just thicker than water.

Internal bodily fluid of some kind?

It didn't seem to be harming his footwear and clothes, nor his skin and he reluctantly set Soza down beside him. She almost immediately stomped her foot in annoyance, causing the liquid to splash lightly on their lower legs.

"You could have told me you were about to just jump down in here like a psycho!" she snapped at him, clearly not at all concerned about the substance as he had been. "You gave me a heart attack!"

"You're exaggerating," he murmured, only half-listening to her complaint. His eyes had turned to his surroundings and he was only slightly willing to put aside the fact that they were standing in an as still unidentified liquid.

The inside of the leg was just as hollow as he and Soza had seen it as, and it rather very much was like they were standing within a massive, luminous cave. Sasuke couldn't quite tell where the blue glow was emanating from, but it seemed to almost be coming from the cavernous sides of the leg's interior. As he looked down, he thought he could see the silhouettes of spiderwebbing lines arcing about underneath the liquid like a great many roots. Turning his head up, he imagined they were atop the knee's lower arch, and in either direction, the cavern started to slope down, one direction leading towards the lower leg, the other leading towards the thigh.

"So, what do we do then?" Soza huffed, crossing her arms and looking with a wrinkled nose at her feet, finally seeming to notice the liquid currently soaking her boots.

Sasuke drew his focus in and cast out a jutsu similar to the one that he had used to detect the spirit army back in Ba Sing Se. Suddenly, he was through the entire width of the leg and far down the gaping maw of its insides was indeed a massive torso. Opening his eyes, he sighed again.

"We go looking for a heart."

It was the best option that Sasuke could think of. Without knowing directly where they needed to be going, heading towards where a heart would be was the straightest course of action that he could think of, even if it might wind up not being remotely accurate. His second guess would have been to try and make it to the enormous body's head, and it was in that direction anyway, so there were at least two chances that he might be on to something.

They made their way over the arch that was the knee and the cavern started to gradually widen and the slope beneath them increased in its angle. Even with the speed at which they moved, traveling the length of the thigh seemed to take too long almost as though it were even larger on the inside than the outside. Sasuke took time to look at the surface they ran on as well as how it arched up and high above them, and he truly couldn't figure out what it was. The ground felt too hard to be flesh or muscle, yet not hard enough to be rock or metal.

Rather suddenly, they ran into a massive wall that Sasuke needed to crane his neck to see the top of and even then, he wasn't sure what he was seeing was even the top. He slid to a halt before it and Soza cranked off her firebending to land nimbly beside him.

The wall had the feeling of looking at one of the engines that ran the airships that Sasuke had been on, but the aesthetic had a peculiar feel. It looked like a series of tubes and unnaturally angled turns and curves etched into the wall as far as its surface reached, like it was the front of some massive piece of machinery that seemed to stretch up as high as Ba Sing Se's wall.

"What now?" Soza asked. "Do you know what this is?"

Sasuke didn't, but he was suddenly struck by an idea that sounded just stupid enough that it might work. As he pondered it, his daughter seemed to grow impatient with his silence.

"I know you're angry with me," she said, sounding like she was trying hard not to be mad herself. "But the least you could do is tell me what we're doing here."

She looked around and it finally seemed like some weight of the situation was settling over her and Sasuke could very nearly feel her anxiety mounting.

"We're inside what I assume is a massive body, heading deep inside of it, and I have no idea why, where we're going exactly, or what we're looking for."

Upon seeing that he wasn't looking at her, she leaned her head, trying to meet his eyes.

"I know you don't trust me. But can you at least try and—"

Drawing back, Sasuke pumped chakra throughout his body, rushed forward and slammed his fist into the strange wall they had encountered. The resounding impact released a booming retort as the energy of a great deal more than a normal punch was forced outwards from Sasuke's strike. Slowly, the rattling and explosive sound faded away and silence slowly began to fall back throughout the massive cavernous expanse before, with a crumbling groan, the wall gave way.

Sasuke stepped back as a hole fell open before him, large enough to admit a person a great deal larger than him with other cracks in the wall spreading out around it. Past it, there was a passageway that looked, strangely enough, like it could comfortably accommodate a person, almost like a hallway.

Looking back to his daughter, Sasuke finally met her eyes.

"We go on. That's all there is to this."

His answer wasn't anything close to satisfying and he hadn't intended for it to be. He knew that he was more or less punishing Soza in a way that she certainly wasn't appreciative of, but if this was enough to relay to her the seriousness of his scolding the night prior, Sasuke counted it as a win.

They started into what Sasuke would soon realize was a labyrinth entirely on its own. He had assumed that the wall they had found was what segmented the legs of the great being into its torso, and he and Soza both found themselves quickly into a series of halls that twisted and spiraled in a seemingly infinite loop. Stranger still, doors and openings littered not only the walls, but the ceiling as well, and after a while, the floor too. For hours they scoured the passageways, and even with Sasuke's excellent sense of direction and memory, he was finding it difficult to keep track of where they were.

Part of that might have been due to the fact that gravity didn't seem to operate quite the way that it should.

Sasuke learned this when Soza, after they paused for a brief break, Soza leaned against the wall with a sigh, gave a small yelp and rolled onto it. It had taken Sasuke a couple blinks to look as his daughter stood up shakily and found herself standing on the wall, her body parallel to the floor she had just been standing on. She had immediately started to grow agitated and anxious, but Sasuke quelled her by extending a foot and placing it slowly on the wall. Without having to exert any chakra, he found that he too was now standing on the wall, and had he not known where the floor had once been, he would have surely assumed that this was actually the ground that he should have been standing on.

"What… what is happening?" Soza asked nervously and Sasuke looked about towards the four surfaces around him. Without a word, he ran up the wall, and onto the ceiling, ignoring Soza's worried shouts. He found that he stuck just as seamlessly to the ceiling, the wall opposite and then back to the floor they had started on without any sense that there was something amiss. Walking back to the wall that Soza had initially leaned against, he walked onto it to stand beside his daughter once more and looked into her bulging eyes.

"It seems that gravity doesn't work the same way it does outside of this place. For whatever reason, it is central to the surfaces within this labyrinth, not any pulling force from the planet we're presently on."

"How is that possible?" Soza demanded, and Sasuke shrugged.

"Beats me. I'd given up on logic and reason the moment we saw a knee the size of a mountain."

With both of them a touch more on edge, they continued on.

Possessing this newfound knowledge, they were able to get through every possible opening that littered the twisting halls they were plunging through, but while this ensured that nothing went unchecked, Sasuke quickly realized that he had lost the sense of where they were spatially to the outside. He had no idea where the sky was in relation to them and while this was just another factor to add to his tightly bundled nerves, he kept it to himself.

Eventually, they started coming across fallen sets of armor. They were dark, ornate, rather menacing for the most part, but there was no one wearing them, no bodies inside and no sign that anyone had so much as put them on. But with how they were scattered about, it seemed as though someone had left them there in a bit of a hurry.

"There's people in here?" Soza asked as they passed by one particular set with a horned helmet with malicious slits for where eyes might have peered out of.

"Possibly. Or perhaps at one point."

Hours longer and Sasuke was starting to get agitated himself, and he could tell that Soza was near to having a panic attack. Being within those strange walls of glowing blue for so long, it was hard to even remember where they were. Sasuke had to remind himself more than once that they weren't within halls of ice with sun shining through glacial blue around them; they were quite possibly inside a living being whose insides glowed with an azure hue. He couldn't blame his daughter for growing as anxious as she was, but they couldn't turn back at that point.

Almost as soon as he had this thought, Sasuke locked eyes with a very large, very ornate door on the side of one of the surfaces. It was far greater in size and decorativeness than anything they had come across to that point by a long shot and he drew near to it, pressing a hand against its surface. Soza drew up alongside him, eagerness in her eyes, though she kept her mouth closed. Sasuke held his hand against it for a moment longer before drawing back a kick that banged the massive door open with a booming crack.

The pair found themselves in what seemed to be an antechamber of some sort, wide, oval shaped, and with another door on the other side of its space. Sasuke strode through it without a glance, only taking pause to note the dome shaped ceiling far above. After so many hours of sharp ninety-degree angles, seeing something rounded that way was almost alien to him, but he shook it off and continued to march to the second doorway, Soza following hurriedly in his wake.

Sasuke pressed his hand to the door, and this time, was sure there was a presence on the other side of it, and his heart leapt in his chest.

"There's someone in here," he said quietly to Soza, whose expression reflected his own reserved excitement. A smile split her face and he saw eagerness in her eyes again. Sasuke looked at her a moment longer before nodding and then shoving the second door open.

The room was much smaller than the antechamber Sasuke had just crossed, but it was the first time he had seen anything like furniture within the empty and endless hallways. A throne of both dark and light material sat directly ahead of him, unoccupied. It was the only thing of note in the rectangular room at least until Sasuke drew his eyes away from the first thing he had seen in what felt like ages that wasn't the color blue, and they came to rest on something half-lying near the back left corner of the room.

It took him a moment to realize he was looking at a person.

Soza, who clearly hadn't noticed the figure splayed near the ground, started forward towards the throne.

"Who do you think this belongs to?" she eagerly asked, but when her father didn't reply, she looked back to him expectantly. Following Sasuke's gaze, she too saw the person and jumped, taking a pair of involuntary steps back.

When the person slowly raised their head, she scampered further back and ducked behind Sasuke, who put an arm out, ready to shield her.

The figure was about as little a threat as anyone could be; based on the proportions, they looked like a child, maybe only a few inches taller than Soza. Their body however was horribly unhealthy looking. It wasn't diseased looking or overall sickly, but there was hardly any skin on the body to Sasuke's eyes. Arms, legs, torso, everything was much too thin to be remotely natural looking, and the entire body was mostly wrapped in white bandages and that was all as far as any semblance of clothing was concerned.

The unhealthy-looking person slowly finished raising their head and Sasuke saw bandages covering their head and face as well, leaving only tangled streaks of greyish looking hair and a single eye to peer out at him.

The moment he locked his own eyes with that one orb, Sasuke felt nothing short of sadness for the person. There was so much melancholy, hurt, and defeat in that single stare that it was almost enough to be overpowering. For several long moments, he and Soza regarded the person in silence.

"You made it."

The voice that came from behind the bandages was weak, but still clear. It seemed indeed to be a child based on the cadence, though whether boy or girl, Sasuke wasn't sure. He swallowed to compose himself before replying as Soza drew nearer to him, clinging to his side.

"You sound like you've been expecting us."

The child nodded slowly as though the movement were very difficult.

"I felt you come in. I was rather… looking forward to this. I made sure all my friends were sleeping so they wouldn't try and stop you from finding me."

It was a riddle almost immediately and Sasuke shifted his weight slightly between his two feet.

"Your friends?"

The child either didn't receive his question, or just was content to ignore it. It shifted from where it lay on the floor and Sasuke found himself wishing it wouldn't prop itself on its arms as they genuinely looked like they might snap.

"It's been so long," the child said softly, a voice like a blade wrapped in reeds, but not menacing to that extent. "I knew someone would come for me eventually."

Sasuke cocked his head a touch, somehow finding himself not wanting to disappoint this weak, helpless person.

"I'm sorry," he said. "But I'm afraid we're not here for you."

The child cocked their head in turn, the eye looking slightly confused.

"Oh? Do you… not actually know what you're looking for?"

It almost sounded jeering, but Sasuke could tell that wasn't the case; there was a great deal of naivety behind the child's words, and he knew there was no offense intended.

"We do," he replied firmly. "We need to find a great source of energy, the energy that exists to allow the spirt world and the material world to connect. It is urgent that we do."

Soza spoke up somewhat reluctantly from behind him.

"Do you know where that power is?"

The child seemed to look at her for a long moment before turning its eyes back to Sasuke. He couldn't see the frail being's mouth, but he could hear a sad smile in the words it spoke next.

"Of course I do. Because I'm who you're looking for."

It weakly pushed itself into a sitting position and crossed its thin legs.

"I'm Koloss."