Zuko heard the heavy thud of the front door slamming shut. This was it.

After as much deliberation as he could stand, he had placed himself perfectly against the side porch of the dollhouse, nearest to the desk. This was his chance. For weeks he had been observing the child, Jia, when she came into her father's study, her wide eyes roving his formidable collection of toys with curiosity.

He knew she was his ticket to leaving the dollhouse. Her father had just left to play cards with the neighbours next door; her mother still working late into the evening. If Jia was going to make any attempt at getting her inquisitive hands on her father's collection, it would be now.

Just as Zuko had predicted, the door to the study slowly swung open, the muffled sound of socked feet padding towards the shelves. Zuko quickly went limp, sticking as much of his body out of the house as he could without losing balance.

He held his breath. Jia quickly padded around the room once. Zuko could see her eyes were on the dollhouse. She had long ago lost interest in the bottom shelf toys. Within minutes, she had climbed precariously onto Li's chair, and from there onto his desk. Her hands, grimy from playing outside, lifted the papers on the desk out of her way with utmost care before stepping forward and craning her neck towards the dollhouse.

Zuko stole a glance her way. She was looking longingly at Azula, lying limp along the top of the rich woven carpet of the living room. Jia made an admirable attempt at stretching her arms towards the doll, but her fingers grasped just inches shy of Azula's shining hair. She sighed, found her bearings again, and that's when she caught sight of Zuko. He averted his gaze.

One callous swing of the arm later, he was up in the air. Zuko noted her hands were patchy with dirt, unfit for a prince, but in this moment it didn't matter. Jia jumped down onto the floor and examined her prize. Her fingers poked at his face, between the layers of his robes. She turned him upside down, gave him a shake, before reading the name on his boot. "Prince Zuko," and then she turned him around again and beamed at him.

The next couple of hours Zuko would remember forever. Jia took him to every room, revelling in the occasion of an empty house. Zuko was an explorer scaling the cliff edge of the dining table, a seafaring captain stranded on a precarious bucket island. He was the regal guest of honour at a party where he drank tea from a cup half the size of his body and twice as heavy.

In the living room, Jia decided he should become a prince again, this time one on a trusted steed, in pursuit of the magical beasts that disguised themselves as her mother's showpieces. They had claimed the mantle of the fireplace, and Zuko was the last remaining royal warrior who could defend the territory. He had to defeat them, or he wouldn't be able to return to -

The sound of the front door made Jia gasp and turn.

Zuko fell from her slippery clutch and landed against the fireguard. Li's footsteps were advancing. Zuko was aware that he had fallen on the inside, that flames were licking against his face, though in a strike of panic he realised that Jia hadn't noticed.

Jia caught her bearings again. The seconds passed slowly as she frantically looked around for Zuko. Her eyes widened with fear as she spotted him and Zuko's heart sank at the sight of her face: alarmed, scared, exactly how he felt inside.

She clambered towards him and snatched him out.

The next few minutes Zuko didn't remember well. Li shouted, and Jia listened and whimpered, until she couldn't anymore and she wailed. In his confusion, Zuko didn't notice when he had switched from her hands to his, and was being shaken, inspected, waved around.

Finally, Li made up his mind. His face was red and chest was heaving from the falling crescendo of his anger. He looked Zuko right in the face and grimaced. "It's worthless now."

Zuko's stomach twisted. He wanted to object, to run back to her: it was the closest he ever came to breaking the most important rule.

Jia sniffed in the background. Zuko took one glance at Li's face of utter disinterest before he was tossed into her hands. "Put it with the rest of your toys, and don't come in here again," he said, resigned.

Jia took an eternity to return to her room. Zuko was frozen in her grip, brushing her skirt with every step. The ruin of his face scratched against the fabric. She set him down on her threadbare carpet.

Zuko wanted more than anything to cheer her up and he couldn't understand why. Somehow, the span of two hours with this child had shown him more fun, more feeling, and more adventure than a lifetime in the dollhouse. He wished so badly for her to lift him up in the air again, put him back on the horse and swing him around the room; the swashbuckling prince in pursuit of the dragon.

But she didn't pick him up. She crossed her legs on the carpet and looked at him long, until her face crumpled into tears again. Scrubbing at her face, she opened the box, tossed Zuko in with a trembling hand.

She turned away and did not pick him up the next day, or the next.

Zuko watched Jia play with her regulars every afternoon. And every afternoon, his resentment grew.

Why should he be cast aside by them both? When he was better, stronger, cleaner, nicer, than those cheap things? It wasn't fair. It didn't make sense.

Toph sensed the figure approaching her hammock from afar. He left his perch on the windowsill, dropped off of her radar, and reappeared in a few moments by the garden doors. She nestled into her hammock - a plastic bag, one from Narook's Seaweed Noodlery that floated in dependably once or twice a week.

Zuko stopped in front of her, his shoulders hunched. "Hey."

Boy, that kid was awkward. Toph yawned and made herself more comfortable in the warm sunlight. "What's up?" She did not turn her head to acknowledge him.

Toph was old - she didn't tell Zuko how old, gaining immense pleasure from the way Zuko squirmed when he couldn't figure out if she was joking about her insides being made of lead or not. She knew he was too afraid to really ask. How Toph wished she could see his expressions. Something told her they were probably enough to make her burst into laughter. But years in the garden had bleached away much of her painted features, and for a toy, to be eyeless was to be blind.

"Nothing much." Zuko trailed a sword in the dirt, roughly.

"Cut that out," Toph yelled, pulling her hands over her ears. "I can feel it, you know."

She didn't mind her peace being interrupted - it was nice to have company, sometimes - but she couldn't always take his dramatics.

"They're having a meeting inside," he said. Grumbled, more like. "There's a new toy. Aren't you going?"

She gave a shrug. "I'm sure Sokka and Katara will bring him out to play sometime. I need my sun."

She felt Zuko shake his head at her blatant irreverence. He knew her well enough now how she had escaped years ago from a few houses down. Playing alone was better than being left behind glass and never played with at all. Zuko was probably about to start one of his rants about how she was only going to fade more in the sun, you know that, right?

But she didn't care about something so lousy as her appearance. Things like that didn't matter when you didn't have to worry about an owner keeping you. Of course, she wasn't dumb enough to say that to Zuko. He cared about things that were a mystery to her, and he cared mountains more than Toph ever had, even back when she was a prim little box princess.

"Why aren't you going?" Toph asked, letting a hint of exasperation edge into her voice. She already knew the answer.

Zuko made that sputtering sound that meant he was trying to tamp down his irritation. "You know they don't want me," he said finally.

"Whose fault d'you think that is?" she said. "I swear, if you just swallowed your princely pride…"

"If you're going to lecture me, I'll play somewhere else!"

Toph raised her hands up to ease him. It only took a gust of wind to get him worked up. Not everyone could be as carefree as her, she knew that, but this guy was on a whole other level.

Zuko sat down next to her hammock. "You don't seem like you need friends," he said, and Toph could tell he was softening his tone so it didn't sound like an accusation. She appreciated that.

She sensed Zuko's surprise at her lack of reaction. After a long moment, she said, "That's not true. They're my best friends," she nudged her head in the direction of the door leading into the house, into Jia's room. "The first friends I ever had."

"Really? There was no one in your old house?"

"Nope."

Zuko looked like he was struggling to understand her nonchalance about this. Kept toys really were all stuck inside the box - figuratively, too. Finally, tilting his head, he said, "Well. Why don't you go inside with them and become one of Jia's toys? You like her, you made her laugh with those worms."

Toph was surprised he remembered that. "I don't want to belong to a kid. Why do you think I escaped?"

"So... the kids in your old house? How could you not like them?"

Toph scoffed. "They weren't-" She paused, trying to phrase this in a way Zuko would understand. Poor guy would probably think that leaving her on a shelf dressed up in things she could barely move in was normal. "Look, real friends - and owners - don't care who you are or what you look like. They play with you and let you be yourself."

Zuko shifted in the dirt, dragging his sword again. Toph let it go this time. "By that logic, you're my only real friend."

She groaned. "Don't get mushy on me."

Azula paced through the rooms of the dollhouse, flinging aside bamboo doors and flimsy pieces of furniture in her way. "Ty Lee, get over here! What's happening in the garden?"

Ty Lee swung off her place between the pots of pens on the top shelf of the desk. Her rubber arms stretched and catapulted down her into Azula's view on the very edge of the desk. "Umm, let's see," she rested her chin in a bendy hand. "Jia's toys are playing with that little eyeless one. I think the new toy is there? Looks like they're introducing him."

Ugh. "No sign of Zuko?"

"Nope."

Where the hell was he? Surely not moping around inside Jia's room again. If he still didn't have the guts to mix with them, what even was the point of his treachery?

She wandered irritably into her bedroom and slumped down into her cot. She twirled the golden tassels of the bedspread around and around in her hand, until the glint of one of Mai's blade arms, poking out of her elaborate casing, came to distract her.

Azula sighed roughly. "Don't you ever get, you know, bored?"

"All the time," Mai said. "I wish Li would do something with me besides cut cigar paper."

"Not like that," Azula snapped. They weren't understanding her point. Mai was a vintage, painted-doll pen knife. She could be valuable and usable. Not that Azula cared, but she thought it a little unfair. Mai took damage yet Li treated her as if she was irreplaceable. She didn't seem to have any regard for her own position, sighing her way through each day. "I mean… don't either of you ever wonder why you're here?"

Ty Lee, bouncing towards the edge of the back in a mindless exercise, twisted her neck in a long moment of thought before chirping up. "No, not really. I mean, I know why I'm here, Azula, I'm a stress toy. Anytime Li or Meng or even Jia gives me a squeeze, I can tell they feel better 'cause of it." She swung into a handstand, hooking her feet onto the top shelf and catapulting herself back onto it. "And that's all I need," she added happily.

How sickening. Azula looked to Mai, who swivelled her serrated arm in thought. "Mmm. I'm here for Li's smoking habit, clearly. And you should ask Zuko, I'm sure he'd have a better answer for a-"

"Stop," Azula demanded. She shook her head, irritably. Of course, Mai had to bring him up, as if she was clueless to the fact that she was the only one in the room Zuko even bothered being friendly to. "My brother won't even-"

She was interrupted by a loud trilling from the telephone on the wall. All three of them limpened, Ty Lee rushing back into her place between Mai and a pile of books. Within moments, the door slid open and Li entered to pick up the phone. Azula didn't bother paying attention to the call, until the sound of her name pierced the angry haze of her mind.

"...I only have Princess Azula," Li was explaining. "I'm back to square one, come on, man. We agreed on the price."

Azula listened intently. Li's brows were drawn together in disappointment. The voice on the other end was garbled and quiet from here, but even Azula could recognise the guilt in it.

"How much for just one?" Li was saying. "What about the elder one, Iroh? I know those cost less, Mithu, everyone knows about the manufacturing errors in the first edition…"

Azula's heart seized as she realised what they were discussing. No. This could not be happening. It was the only thing she'd had to look forward to for months. Since Zuko left.

Li began to raise his voice, but the other caller cut him off, talking fast. After a few moments of disgruntlement, Li was nodding, his fingers pinched over the bridge of his nose. As his determination slipped, Azula's panic grew.

"All right..." Li was saying, his tone defeated. "No, I can't afford any of them at this rate. Just- just let me know when you have an update…"

She would be alone. Again. As usual. Her mind was pounding. She barely noticed Li leave the room.

As the door slammed shut, she heard Mai's voice rising continued the conversation, unperturbed. "Look, what Zuko d-"

"Don't talk to me about Zuko!" Azula leaned over the edge of the courtyard railing to glower at her companions. "Don't talk to me at all, both of you." She stormed into the first room in front of her and slid the bamboo door hard enough that the whole wooden structure of the house rattled on its stand.

She was seething. She couldn't keep this up. Something had to be done.