This chapter is going to be a little longer than the previous ones. I appreciate all the support, feedback, and suggestions from the reviews. It's really you guys, the readers, that make this fun and intriguing for me as well. A bit of forewarning, this chapter may or may not seem a bit choppy as it was written in sections over a few days. Still working on my portrayal of characters and the depths of their thoughts and emotions. Definitely tried to take the advice of "more show and less tell" into play during this chapter and will continue into the following chapters as well. Updates may get notably slower as well, as school is resuming once again, but I will definitely keep updating as I can. Without furthermore, Ch10.

Ch10

The day had been another of non-stop walking and complete utter silence from the captured princess. The iron cuffs had been replaced on her wrists at the campsite before they had set off on the day's leg of the journey. For Azula, she took some comfort now that Sokka had taken the extra step of making sure they weren't too tightly clamped on. Though, that did not mean she could slip out of them, to her disappointment. Through a disappointed and never-happy face, she eyed the navy blue blanket which hung off the back of Sokka's pack as it swayed side to side, the one that she had woken up with but did not recall going to sleep with. She remembered the night being a chilling one for her.

Azula's eyes clamped shut, furrowing her brows, and crinkling her nose as she lay on the ground. A loud unignorable rumbling noise filled the air, making it impossible to remain asleep. She associated it with the great noise that the Fire Nation's siege drill for Ba Sing Se made when standing within the housing for the support braces. Her eyes snapped open and she sat up, furiously.

"What in Agni's name is making that horrendous racket!?" Her bangs violently swung left and right at the scanning movement of her head as she searched for the source of the disturbance. "What kind of creature can even make such-"

Her eyes came to rest on the sight of a slumbering Sokka, the embodiment of anything but grace and composure. Her one eye twitched as she took in the sight. The proud warrior of the south had come out of his sleeping bag, partially, one leg and arm out while the other was in, and was spread out wide over his area of the ground. His face was down in the dirt with a steady stream of drool pouring out from his mouth.

Suki was diligently packing up the campsite, just finishing rolling up her green earth kingdom tarp and tying off her pack. She raised her gloved hand to her mouth and covered her lips. Despite their differences and the spite Suki still harbored for the former princess, she couldn't help but chuckle at Azula's disturbance, rude awakening, fit of rage, and disappointed yet surprised look at her boyfriend.

"What are you laughing at?" she scolded. Azula's face looked up to Suki with a look that said 'How can you possibly put up with this?'

"Nothing," Suki chuckled, "Just seeing the royal kookiness being shocked and rudely awakened by...that...is hilarious somehow."

She knelt down besides Sokka, trying to shake him gently awake. "Sokka," she prodded, "Sokka! C'mon get up! It's time to go!"

He snorted, disturbed slightly from his slumber, "Huh?...Yeah yeah, Suki...just five more minutes," he grumbled.

Suki rolled her eyes. He was a hopeless case, and when he was like this, she knew it would take some effort to effectively get him moving. She shook him further to no avail.

Azula looked down to her covered hands. A fleece blanket, navy blue, with a water tribe crest embroidered into one of its corners flowed over her raised palms and lap like the rolling waves of the ocean. It didn't take her long to connect the dots of where it had come from and who had given to her, as she looked towards the slumbering elephant seal of a man who was still hopelessly asleep. But what did not make sense to her was, why? Did he particularly care for her? Was this more of an insult? Surely he had some sort of ulterior motive, nobody naturally went out of their way to do such gestures for her, ever. He is delusional, is what she wrote it off as.

"Come on Sokka," Suki's voice loudened, and her shaking of Sokka got stronger. "You've been saying 'five more minutes' for the past hour!-"

"Hmph!" Sokka groaned as a wadded up projectile bounced off his face. The fabric unfurled on impact and covered up his head, suppressing his muffled exclamations and grumbling. It was the blanket he had given to the princess the night prior. Suki's head spun around reactively, seeing Azula now standing above the two of them. She had managed to wad up and throw the soft material with an impact that stunned Sokka.

"What's your problem?!" Sokka managed to shout, pulling the sheet from his face.

"Come on, peasant!" she barked, "time to get up! Your incessant snoring is unbearable!"

"I didn't think you'd care so much how long we could just sleep here! If anything I thought I was doing you a favor!" He was very much infuriated at the sudden wake up call he was given.

"I do when you make it impossible to effectively sleep! You've practically woken up the entire cursed forest at this point." She crossed her arms and inspected her nails, just as uninterested and uncaring as ever.

Sokka finally started to get up, grumbling to himself as he gathered his things hastily. "The nerve on this girl…"

Well acquainted iron cuffs clamped shut over Azula's wrists. Suki was through with the socialities and mutual cheeriness with the prisoner for today. Her scornful gaze had quickly returned. She did not know what Sokka could see that made him appeal to her in a sympathetic manner; it was one point that Suki and Sokka did not see eye to eye on. The cuffs clicked, sharply, three times instead of four which allowed them to sit a little looser than they had been set the previous day.

"And I thought we had begun to connect over something," Azula mocked in a pout.

"You're just as crazy if you think I'd ever connect with the likes of you after everything you've done," Suki scolded.

As her hands left the princess's cuffs she recalled the message her boyfriend had from the prior night when their watch cycles had switched. "Hey, Suki...Tomorrow..maybe we could try setting the shackles just a tad more loose," she recalled him saying, not in his normal, borderline sarcastic, tone but rather in a dead serious mellow one. Travelling around with Aang and the rest of her friends around the world with all their differing experiences before they met again at the Boiling Rock certainly did leave an impact in Sokka. Suki did not believe the Sokka she had originally met- captured, on Kyoshi Island would care too much about prisoner comfort.

"Eventually," Azula sighed, "I'll warm up with one of you guys…"

The kyoshi warrior scoffed as she looked back at the captive in repulse, choosing to ignore her and return to her packing.

"Hey could I talk to you for a minute," Suki whispered to Sokka as she latched onto his arm.

"Huh?" Sokka was surprised by the sudden action by his partner but went along without question. "Sure, Suki. What's up?" He methodically rolled up the map he was following and temporarily tucked it into his tunic's belt. The edge of the canopy of trees above them promptly ceased as they passed through the edge of the humongous swamp area and out into a flat land which would begin to lead to the mountainous regions outside of Omashu.

The pair maintained a watchful look at their high value prisoner, who was now made to walk ahead of the pair. Azula did so without question, with only another subtle scoff and a roll of her eyes.

"What's up with you and fire britches?" Suki whispered.

"What do you mean?"

She looked off to the left. "Well..it just seems like you're going..a little easy on her. I'm just concerned."

"What, you're jealous?"

"That's not what I meant." She said flatly. "I'm just concerned that you may be letting your guard down a little too much with her. She may be shackled up but that girl is still a clear and present danger." Suki looked the princess up and down ahead. Azula looked rather uncaring, like a friend brought along on a three person outing where two of the three were a couple. "She looks vulnerable enough now, but remember that same woman single handedly brought down the most fortified city in the world. She's a convicted war criminal."

"Suki, if I could," Sokka stammered. "I think you're being a little too hard on her."

"Too hard on her? Sokka, remember who we're talking about here."

"I'm still angry from what she did during the war. I've just gotten better at interacting with people I despise," he made his case. "Especially for what she did to you but…" The next-in-line chief of the Southern Water Tribe now looked off into the distance. His voice significantly decreased in volume. "I don't know, I just feel..bad for her."

Suki seemed very confused at his words. He did not expect anything other than confusion.

"I know it's confusing so I get where that face comes from," he continued. "Truthfully, I don't understand why so much myself. But just..hear me out okay?"

"Okay, shoot." Suki's finger aimlessly twisted through one of the braided tassels which hung down from her golden head piece. Sokka knew it was a mannerism of hers when she was on edge, anxious, or perplexed.

"I don't hold everything she's done fully against her," he admitted. "Yeah, during the war she was an emotionless monster and all. She was sadistic and just evil, and I hated her for it- for everything she did." Sokka felt his warrior's wolf tail was in need of a redo and pulled the tie holding his ponytail loose, his hair falling draping around his head. "But after learning just what kind of a person Ozai was- what kind of a dad he was, from Zuko. All Zuko was before joining us all began to make sense. And I start to wonder what it must have been like for…" He motioned with his eyes to finish the phrase.

"But Sokka, if what Zuko says is what you're going off of," Suk whispered. "Then she had a relatively fruitful upbringing. Azula's supposedly 'daddy's little girl' from what his stories make her out to be."

"I know, but I doubt it could have been all up and no down. Think about how she is. She's a master at what she does. Nobody can get to that level without some struggle, even if it is all internal. And with everything about their mother being gone and the whole 'finishing the war' thing...I think there is more to her than what is just on the surface."

"How'd you figure that much?"

Sokka paused for a moment. "It was the way she looked the previous night. The look in her eyes. I can't explain it, and you know I'm bad at these kinds of things, but something was different. Something was off- or missing. Like she was lost."

"Well," Suki added in a matter-of-fact way, "She technically was lost. In that creepy swamp of all places."

"No- Well..yeah, but not like that." Sokka rubbed the back of his scalp and the area under his eyes tensed as his pupils looked up to the skies as if looking for the right words. "Have you ever heard the saying 'a soldier without a war to fight?' Sometimes the men of the water tribe are put into this desolate, aimless, state of feeling worthless or without direction."

Suki nodded, now beginning to follow.

"That's what it looked like to me. Someone lost, without a purpose, scared even. And when I ran into her she even looked like she was running from something. That was the first time I've ever seen her scared or even terrified of something. Frankly I didn't even think that was possible with her."

Suki stayed quiet, holding her tongue. Her expression of perplexion was all she gave in response. One that said, "So what do you want to do about it?"

"I...want to try and get her to open up. See if we can connect with her. I want to think she isn't..all that bad beneath the surface," Sokka exhaled. "Maybe I could strike a cord with her. Who knows?" He was grasping at straws with his optimism.

"Sokka I don't know…" Suki trailed off. Her makeup really magnified her expressions.

He took her hands into his own. Her eyes opened wide from the sudden surprise. "Please, Suki. Just try with me. Humor me," he pleaded. Her eyes looked left and right profusely, trying to avoid his hard and serious gaze. "I'm not asking for a lot. Just for you to try and get along with her," he continued. "Just try."

"Ohh, alright," she finally capitulated. "But I still don't trust her. And if she even thinks about harming you-"

Suki was pulled into a strong and sudden embrace. One of his firm hands pulled her into the hug from the back of her head. "I know," he interrupted, "I know. She'll have to beg to the spirits above for mercy." He smiled.

"Exactly," Suki affirmed, burying herself deeper in his strong embrace.