"I do hope that there is a good reason for this sudden intrusion."
"Yes, of course, sir. You asked to be notified as soon as there was a new development concerning our cause."
"Continue, then."
"Our agents have determined that Katara has sent for the Avatar."
"She is in Omashu, attempting to control the riot there, yes?"
"Yes, and failing."
"Good."
"Her words for the Avatar should reach him by morning."
"Everything is going according to plan, then. Our goals are in reach and victory shall be ours."
p . a . i . n . t
As was probably predicted, Aang, Sokka and Toph had ended up dozing off in the middle of the night. Out in the middle of the woods, backs against a fallen log, heads lazily resting against each other's shoulders.
They had been out there for a few hours, quietly treading through the forest in search of any sign of the spirit light. With no such luck, they had decided to rest for a few minutes. A few minutes, obviously, turned into a bit more than that.
Until Toph's blind eyes snapped open.
There was something out there, something odd, not far from where they were resting. She could feel the vibrations in the ground but they felt...fuzzy. She attributed a lot of that to her grogginess. Silently, she detangled herself from her friends and distanced herself from them a bit to get a clearer picture. Bare feet pressed into the cool dirt, palms spread against the tree trunk.
The something out there was a someone and the pattern of movement felt familiar. But she still couldn't quite place it, even if she had her suspicions.
"Hey, get up, we've got action," Toph said quietly, punching the nearest body to wake them up. It happened to be Aang. Rubbing his eyes with a yawn, Aang came to and nudged Sokka beside him to bring him to consciousness as well.
"What's going on?" Aang asked as Sokka made a grumbling sound that meant it was going to take more than a nudge to wake him.
"There's someone out there," Toph explained.
"Oh," Aang replied, having a bit of a delayed reaction to the revelation, "Oh! Sokka, wake up!" He reached over and shook Sokka's shoulder with a bit more force. This time, he was roused from his dreams.
"I'm alive," he announced, stretching his arms out.
"So nice of you to rejoin the party," Toph snarked.
"You two had it handled, I'm sure," Sokka yawned, rubbing his eyes.
"You're not gonna want to miss this, though, I'm about to solve your mystery," Toph declared, hopping up and vaulting over the tree trunk, then racing into the woods. Right behind her, Aang and Sokka followed. Neither could see any sign of a light in the distance, the only illumination was the dim drops from the moonlight.
They rushed after Toph until she abruptly stopped. Sokka nearly toppled right into her but saved himself by digging his heels into the dirt.
"I think...I think it's Azula out there. It feels like her feet. But also…not," Toph explained, attempting to keep her voice low.
"What do you mean it's Azula but not?" Aang asked.
"I can usually pick out movement rhythms to identify people and hers is pretty distinct. But it feels off. Mechanical? I don't know how else to describe it."
Sokka's attention snapped forward. A bead of sweat formed at his temple and his stomach sank.
"How far away is she?" He questioned, managing to keep his voice leveled.
"About a hundred steps or so?" Toph answered, though she grimaced, unable to give a more precise answer. It was close enough for Sokka. Before he could even take another breath, he was bolting out into the forest. He drew his machete to hack away at whatever branches would be in his way. The sound of the bone hitting wood echoed through the quiet night and it never even registered to him that Azula might hear the sound too and it could startle her off.
"Sokka!" Aang called out, immediately following after him.
"I have to see it myself, I have to know," Sokka shouted, turning his head back towards his friends for a split moment. His head was overflowing with possibilities, worst case scenarios and awful imaginings…but none of it mattered unless Toph was right.
"Sokka, slow down!" Toph tried, "Whatever is out there's gonna get spooked if you're so loud!"
Their attempts to rein Sokka in did absolutely nothing. He just kept pressing forward until he spotted a flash of blue light through the leaves. He stopped dead in his tracks. He watched the light float, then zoom off to the side and dissipate. A few seconds later, another appeared in the same location and was released into the sky.
"Azula?" Sokka questioned. The light wavered, but continued on its path.
He swallowed bile. His heart sank. He reached for the last branch that was in the way and hacked it off the tree.
In the pale moonlight, in the glow of flickering flames, there she stood.
Sokka froze and was unable to move forward. Aang and Toph caught up to him.
"I knew it! I knew she lied!" Toph exclaimed. Aang dropped a hand on Toph's shoulder to quiet her. He could see the shock on Sokka's face.
"She wasn't lying, I know she wasn't," Sokka muttered, clenching his hands into fists.
"I believe that she…might have led you to believe that," Aang admitted, the words tasting sour.
Azula continued her odd practice before them. Just as Toph had felt, her motions were off. She performed the same forms over and over. Blue fire ignited from her hands but it lacked any spirit. Her precision was muddled, yet still repetitive, like a trance.
"No! Look at her, Aang! That's not normal. The Azula we fought all over the world was calculating and deadly and that woman out there is…not that," Sokka jumped to her defense. "Watch!"
Before either Aang or Toph could stop him, Sokka was running out into the small clearing to join Azula. He avoided her flames with ease and chose a spot to stand where he knew he wouldn't interfere with her repeated motions.
As Sokka expected, Azula only moved around him, continuing on with lackluster fire blasts. When she paused, he waved a hand in front of her eyes.
"It's like she can't even see us, Aang. I don't think she consciously lied," Sokka maintained her innocence.
"That doesn't mean she's not planning something nefarious, Sokka!" Toph interjected.
"She hasn't done anything the entire time I've known her!"
"Sokka, she staged the coup of Ba Sing Se," Aang added.
"You don't have to remind me how dangerous she is, I know what she's done in the past. I was there!" Sokka argued, his brows creasing in frustration.
Behind him, Azula's stance changed. She stopped and tilted her head to the side. She took a step forward and threw a ball of fire at Sokka's back.
For the entire morning, Azula kept falling in and out of consciousness. She could hear voices around her, but she couldn't discern if they were real or in her head.
"We have to take her back to the Fire Nation!"
"As if Zuko will know what to do with her?"
"Sokka, she tried to hurt you!"
"That wasn't Azula!"
"Aang saw her, I felt her! It was Azula!"
She could feel that she wasn't lying in her bed. She was on the small couch in the main room, unable to move. The pain in her head had reached new heights, a crushing sensation that felt like it shouldn't be survivable. She drifted off again.
"Azula always lies."
"The city bows before her."
"Monsters belong in cages."
"What is she but the most monstrous of all?"
"There is use for her yet, she will see."
The searing pain in her head refused to budge. Her vision was cloudy, even in her nightmares. Her limbs felt heavy, like she was paralyzed. She panicked, but nothing seemed to move. Was she chi blocked? Was something else preventing her mind and body from connecting properly?
The voices around her were loud. Too loud. How could she be expected to think straight when there were so many voices? She made an attempt at opening her eyes, hoping that she'd find familiar surroundings and not a hellscape full of green fire and cold water.
She was at home. Even through the fuzzy shapes, she could tell that. Someone was standing at the door. Someone blue.
The Water Tribe idiot.
Sokka.
Of course he was here. Did it please her to see him standing there?
"I felt perfectly safe in her presence before you guys came and decided to rock-cuff her!"
"We should stay, then!"
"I'm the one she threw a fire blast at and I think I'll be just fine."
Who was he talking to? Sokka's voice was immediately familiar, but the others were lost to her. The names flickered in her head but fizzled away like a failed bolt of lightning.
"I need to talk to her. Alone. I don't even know if she trusts me but the best chance of getting the truth out of her is if I talk to her alone."
"Sokka, this is stupid."
"I don't care. I can handle Azula no problem."
"...Sokka, be honest. Are you in love with her?"
Azula suddenly wanted to be anywhere but here. She squeezed her eyes closed again, hoping that her nightmares would pull her under. Though she'd never admit it, Azula was afraid of his answer and the implications. She begged for her aching head to drag her into a horrific memory, a torturous imagining but there wasn't enough time. Her heart had started traitorously racing and she was now too aware.
"Maybe? I-I don't know? She's the first thing that's made me feel alive in the last year so…that counts for something. I don't know what exactly but it's there, okay?"
The conversation went back and forth a few more times but Azula could no longer keep up with it. Her mind went blank. What kind of answer was that? Was that worse than a yes? Was she expecting a no? Was she bracing for disappointment? What if he had said yes? Would he have been lying? She wanted to scream and writhe out of her own skin but was trapped.
The door closed and she could hear Sokka's distant, quiet mumblings. He was walking around the house looking for something. His footsteps eventually came closer to her and she felt her limbs move. The loud sound of a chisel hitting rock was soon the only thing her aching head could process. Over and over, she just wanted it to stop.
When it did, she realized that the reason her limbs had felt so heavy is because they had been restrained by rocks. Bits and pieces of the previous day started coming back to her. The Avatar and the blind earthbender had been here. Clearly, one of them had decided to trap her with rocks for some ridiculous transgression that Azula still couldn't remember committing. Had it just been a precaution? Did they truly still see her as such a threat without her bending?
"Who needs bending when you've got old fashioned tools that work just the same?" Sokka muttered as he worked at cracking the stone away from Azula's wrists and ankles.
"There, that's better. I hope I didn't make your head worse with all the banging but…I didn't think it necessary for you to be in handcuffs," Sokka's voice was soft as he spoke. She wasn't sure if he could tell she was cognizant or not. He brushed the remnants of dust and pebbles from her wrists. He definitely still thought she was asleep.
"Rest a little longer, I made sure they wouldn't be back for a while," Sokka whispered. His broad palm rested on top of her head for a moment and he brushed a few strands of hair from her face.
Why did it have to be him?
Azula waited a good long while before cracking her eyes open again. Sokka was long gone, off somewhere else in the house so as not to disturb her. Something had happened, she'd been able to piece that much together. Her thoughts were still tumultuous and her head was still on fire but she knew she couldn't procrastinate facing him forever. At least her sight had mostly gone back to normal, only the faintest remnants of haziness lingered.
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, lifting her hands into her field of vision and flexing her fingers. Whatever happened had been grave enough for the Avatar to justify restraining her and Sokka had decided to set her free. The feeling that realization filled her with was confusing. It had no simple answer. It made her chest hurt.
"Sokka?" Finally, she called for him, her voice cracking on the sound. A few moments later, he reemerged, a cup of water in his hand.
"Good morning, glad to see you're finally awake," he said with a small smile, offering her the water. Azula pushed herself up into a sitting position and eagerly took the cup from him. She hadn't noticed how thirsty she had been until the cup was in her hands. She emptied it and handed it back to him. He set it on the table and remained focused on her.
He was breaking a rule. She knew that he knew not to leave a dirty cup on the table when it could just go into the kitchen sink right away. He pulled one of the chairs away from the table and set it in front of the couch before taking a seat himself. And still, his blue eyes were set on her. They were piercing, with a seriousness she hadn't seen in them since, well…
"I'm certainly not glad I am awake," Azula returned, half attempting a joke. When Sokka didn't add one of his own, her gaze fell into her lap. She had become unaccustomed to this level of scrutiny.
"We need to talk, Azula," Sokka continued.
"I gathered that," she muttered.
"This is…going to be hard. So uh, I wanted to apologize about that beforehand."
"Thanks, you're so considerate," Azula replied with more bite than she intended.
"Guess I'll stop avoiding it then," Sokka sighed. "When your bending was taken away, how did it happen? What do you remember?"
"Why do you need to know?" Azula bristled, her lips firmly pressed into a sneer.
"You have to have this conversation with someone, Azula. If you'd rather talk to Toph or Aang, I'd be happy to call them back…but I thought that this would be easiest for you."
"Why would you think that?"
"Because you know me? I thought that after everything we've been through you'd— Nevermind."
"You trust me," Azula stated what she knew and didn't wish to acknowledge. Sokka leaned back in his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"Yeah, I trust you. I probably shouldn't, but I do."
"Why?"
"Do I really have to explain it, Azula?"
Her face twisted. His words from earlier got stuck in her head. She was the thing that made him feel alive. How ridiculous! The weight of it was far heavier than expected.
"They thought I was too dangerous, they wanted me restrained like an otter-dog on a leash. But you didn't."
"You heard all that?"
"Some of it. I couldn't tell what was real and what was just in my head. I'm making an attempt at verifying."
"That was real."
"After everything I've done, you trust me. Why?" She asked again. She needed an answer out of him. She didn't even know what answer she was looking for but he had to say something.
He stood from the chair and took a seat beside Azula on the couch instead. He laid a hand over hers, hoping the contact would be an encouraging comfort.
"Because right now, here in the present, it feels like the right thing to do."
"You have no sense of self preservation," Azula tensed and snapped at him. Sokka stayed beside her, unmoving. Her eyes darted around the room, landing on everything but him.
"Thought we established that already?" He offered half a smile and grasped her hand more firmly when she didn't pull away.
"I don't want to talk about this," she insisted, her nails unintentionally digging into his skin.
"I want to help, I have a theory on what could have happened to you but you're going to have to—" Sokka stopped abruptly, rethinking his word choice. "Talk to me."
Trust me. That's what he meant to say, Azula was certain of it.
Before she was even conscious of it, Azula was shaking her head and pulling away. She bolted up from the couch. She misjudged her own sense of balance. She slammed her fists onto the kitchen table, both to prop herself up and to vent her dangerous temper.
"I can't," She growled. Her hands collided with the wood again. "I can't do that. It's not, it's not reliable. I can't count on it—"
"Can't, or won't?"
"But fear—"
"I'm not afraid of you, Azula."
She snatched the cup Sokka had left on the table. She whipped around and threw the thing towards his head with savage force. He dodged it with ease, the cup shattered on the wall behind him.
He spoke again, "And I'm not going anywhere."
With cautious steps, Sokka approached her. Her eyes were wide with shock, with confusion and something close to terror. She pressed her back further into the table, a poor attempt at trying to escape. She was cornered.
He laid a hand on her shoulder. She twitched at the contact but otherwise stayed put. When it was clear that she wasn't going to lash out again, Sokka pulled her closer. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed her head to his chest.
For a long time, he simply held her. After a while, she returned the embrace. Her arms hung around his waist, grip loose. As if she feared breaking— Breaking him, breaking herself. It was a compromise.
"What was your question?" She knew damn well what it was, she was chewing on her answer. Her heart was still pounding. She wanted to hear him speak again, even if the words were inconsequential. It was something to ground herself to.
"What do you remember when your bending was taken away?"
She pushed out of his arms, feeling the sudden need to pace. Back and forth she stepped, in a small circle, like an imprisoned feral animal.
"I hardly remember anything at all. Everything is in pieces," she mumbled, pressing the heels of her hands to the sides of her head, as if that could just pop all her memories back into their proper places. "There's no simple way to just know— There's so many voices, I don't know where to start."
Sokka shifted and stood in her path. She grimaced but did not protest when he touched her again.
"We were always the ones with the plans, yeah? The ones figuring out all the crazy details, coming up with wacky schemes—"
"Yours were ridiculous schemes. Mine were strategic maneuvers," Azula couldn't resist trying to change the subject and subtly dig at him in the same sentence. He deflated, releasing a small puff of air from his lips.
"You're missing the point."
"You're not doing a good enough job of making one."
"Azula."
She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to his chest. It was her version of a declaration of truce. One of his hands came to cradle the back of her head, gently smoothing her hair.
"There's so much going on in our heads, it takes a lot of brain juice to come up with the good stuff… I think that people like us, sometimes we just think too much. Try starting with what you do remember as fact. The rest we can figure out together, okay?" Sokka said, offering her the warmest smile he could, despite the gravity of the situation. The space of a few breaths passed before she was ready to continue.
"After the comet, everything was dark. I was, I was frozen, not just from your wretched little sister. At the institution. Asylum. Just words to cover up the fact it was another prison," Azula finally spoke, her voice soft, but not lacking venom. Despite the age of these memories, time did nothing to dull the pain of them and it was evident in the way she tensed. Sokka could only hold her and hope it would be enough.
"People would come. They would stare. They would stare and I could feel it. Their derision, their disappointment. All I could do was scream. There was nothing left, I thought I had nothing left. No country, no allies, no purpose, no words…and then the Avatar took my bending away, too," Her tone started to waver. Sokka did not for a moment take it for granted that she was choosing to be this vulnerable in his presence.
"Do you remember what Aang did to take your bending?" Sokka asked. He would help her talk through the rest of her trauma if she wanted, but right now he was laser focused on this one detail. She shook her head.
"Why does that matter?" She protested.
"It might be an important clue to what's going on. Please, Azula, try to remember whatever you can," Sokka encouraged her, holding her a little tighter, as if that could jog her memory. Azula sighed, frustrated with her own mind, with his insistent questions, the fact she wanted to stay enveloped in his warmth but refused to admit it.
"He…I think he put both his hands on top of my head. Like this," Azula explained, raising her hands and placing each of them above Sokka's ears to demonstrate, "He spoke….a few words and went into the Avatar state. I don't recall anything else."
"I knew it!" Sokka exclaimed, forgetting himself in the moment, a wide grin spreading on his face. Azula's brows furrowed in quietly brewing anger. Her nails started to dig into the sides of his skull. Sokka stopped her by taking both her hands in his and holding them firmly without acknowledging her small violent act.
"Explain," she demanded.
"That's not how Aang really takes away bending. He puts one hand on their forehead, the other on their chest," Sokka explained. Azula glared at him to continue. "But when the Ember Island Players updated the ending to their show, the way the actress took Ozai's bending on stage was the way you described."
"What are you saying, Sokka?" She questioned, making a poor attempt at hiding the alarm in her voice. Her breaths quickened as the dots connected in her own mind.
"Aang never actually took your firebending away."
She tore herself away from him, rage taking over.
"Lies!" Azula growled, "He took my bending! I know he did!"
"Azula, he didn't. He told me yesterday afternoon that he didn't."
"Then why can't I bend, Sokka? I've, I've been trying for years to firebend, to see if I could hold on to one measly shred of my old life but there's— there's nothing! I can't bend!" The broken look in her eyes would be the end of him, for there was one more thing he needed to tell her and he knew it might just push her relative stability off the edge.
"Where did we go last night?" He thought it would be easier for her to accept if he led her voracious mind to the proper conclusions rather than outright telling her.
"You…you and your friends were hunting the spirit in the forest," she answered, the significance not quite clicking yet. "You were hunting the blue light in the forest and—"
Her mouth hung open, she shook her head, her eyes went glossy. Her breaths grew shallow as the panic set in.
"And they wanted me restrained…because the Avatar never…"
"You were firebending in the woods last night," Sokka confirmed, "And when I tried to prove a point to them, you threw a ball of fire at me."
"But I can't bend!" Azula shouted. She punched at the air, attempting to make fire flow from her fists. She held out each of her palms and tried to ignite a flame in each. She extended her middle and index fingers, trying to make lightning crackle to life. Nothing happened. "I can't bend, I can't," she frantically tried all the motions again. "I didn't lie! I can't bend!" Something in her snapped completely. She blinked and hot tears were falling down her cheeks. She felt like she couldn't breathe. She was ashamed to have cracked like this in front of another soul. She couldn't seem to stop. She fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around her own middle, as if that could help.
Sokka rushed to her side. He kneeled beside her and reached out to her. She pushed him away, not wanting him to bear witness to her weakness. But just like he had said earlier, he wasn't going anywhere. He attempted to comfort her again with a more forceful hand. Azula tried to fight his embrace but there were too many other battles she was waging. She chose to lose this one.
"I didn't lie to you," She cried, "I swear it, I didn't lie, I can't firebend, I can't," she repeated, fully believing this to be the truth, despite the evidence otherwise.
"I know, Azula, I know you didn't lie," Sokka assured her, holding her again, "I believe you."
"Don't say things just to placate me," she spat.
"I'm not. I believe you"
His acceptance of her words was the catalyst to her tears starting to ebb. Her breathing slowed, Sokka traced soothing circles on her back and placed a small kiss to her forehead.
"You said you have a theory," she muttered against his chest.
"Yeah, I've got a few," he admitted. When she didn't respond again, he took it as an invitation to start explaining. She said nothing afterwards, the sheer emotional exhaustion taking its toll on her. Sokka eventually pulled her back up to her feet.
"Come on, you gotta eat something," he insisted, leading her into the kitchen.
Aang and Toph came back in the early afternoon with a new sense of urgency.
"I can't stay much longer, Katara is in trouble," Aang explained, unable to hide his worry. He handed the scroll off to Sokka so he could inspect it.
"What's going on?" Sokka demanded. He took a moment to read through the words on the paper, recognizing his sister's writing, "Do I need to come with you?"
"I don't even understand what's happening in Omashu, myself. Seems like it came out of absolute nowhere," Aang said, "I don't know if it would be wise for you to come too, though. You'd have to bring Azula with us, we can't leave her alone here anymore."
"I don't wanna leave him with psycho princess hothead," Toph added, "I say we put her back in rock cuffs and bring her along."
"She's not that psycho!" Sokka protested, "I took her out of the cuffs and nothing happened."
"Yeah, but she's still clearly dangerous," Aang agreed, "Did you manage to talk to her? She didn't try to hurt you again, did she?"
"No, of course not. Nothing happened, I said that. I told you guys, I trust her. I think I know what happened but I'm going to need access to her patient file from the asylum Zuko sent her to," Sokka was being intentionally vague. He knew if he shared everything he thought, it would only invite more questions. More questions he didn't have answers to, more questions that would just make them all even more suspicious of Azula than they already were. Sokka couldn't blame them in the slightest, but he still thought she deserved a fair examination.
"If things calm down in Omashu quickly, we could head to the Fire Nation next to investigate her records…but you might have better luck talking to Zuko about that. He was going to be in Ba Sing Se for a while. Diplomacy, visiting his uncle, standard Fire Lord stuff," Aang explained.
"Yeah? We had plans to head there anyway…Though I can't imagine Azula will react well to seeing her brother again," Sokka crossed his arms, now deep in thought on how to both talk to Zuko and keep the peace with Azula.
"She's probably not going to have much of a choice if we want to get to the bottom of what happened with her. He's going to know the most out of all of us," Aang countered.
"So what do you think is gonna show up in her records, anyway?" Toph asked, wanting to know more about his plans. She still clearly thought it was a dumb idea to leave him here with Azula.
"I think the doctors in the asylum messed with her head so she believes she can't bend. Probably for their own safety, knowing what Azula's capable of," Sokka explained, "I imagine they'll have written something about it in there. We already know that some level of mind control is possible because of the Dai Li, I think these doctors just took it even further than that," he rubbed his chin.
"That sounds completely insane," Toph declared. Sokka shrugged.
"But it's entirely possible. Weirder stuff always happens to us," Sokka defended his idea easily.
"I agree," Aang said, "It's probably the best explanation we've got right now. Until things are settled in Omashu, I think it's best we leave her in your care. In all the times we've assumed she was doing something bad since coming here, you've proved us wrong. If you don't think she's an immediate threat, I'll trust your judgment, Sokka. We'll come back as soon as we can to help you figure out the rest."
"See, I told you guys I could handle her on my own. She's not that scary, with or without the fire."
"You're really not doing a good job of convincing me you don't have feelings for her," Toph interjected. Sokka blushed.
"That doesn't matter! I gotta figure out her firebending problem before I figure anything else out!"
"Whatever you say, Sokka."
"We should get going, it's a really long ride from here to Omashu, even at Appa's full speed," Aang said.
"Keep me updated, alright? As soon as things are good, send me something so I'm not worrying about my sister, even though I know she's still mad at me," Sokka said. Aang agreed and soon after, they were climbing into Appa's saddle and flying away.
Sokka watched them grow smaller and smaller into the sky, knowing full well he didn't tell them everything about his Azula theory. He firmly believed that the doctors must have manipulated her mind but there was absolutely more to it than that. For all the answers he had now found, there were a thousand more questions. Plenty of things still made no sense at all. Why would she be missing entire gaps, entire important gaps of her memory? Was erasing all her memories surrounding the Dai Li an attempt at healing her mind or was it something much more sinister? Sokka had a hunch it was the latter option and until he knew more, it was best to play his pieces close to the chest. With the way Aang and Toph had reacted, he could only imagine how much worse it would have been with Katara involved, too. Azula had finally started opening up to him about her past and Sokka didn't want to risk losing her already precarious trust. Besides, the less anyone else knew about this, the better. If the people behind Azula's misplaced memories were aware that people outside their organization knew, they'd all be instant targets. The best next step was to talk to Zuko and get ahold of the files.
Good thing they were already leaving for Ba Sing Se tomorrow morning.
