Chapter 18: Trust Issues

The battle between the Dai Li and Shin's firebenders was over as Azula and Ty Lee emerged into the clearing. The captain and his men had been victorious, though both sides had suffered losses- several bodies in red and green lay scattered about, some still covered in stone or smoldering. Three of the Dai Li were still alive- they'd been bound together with what appeared to be their own cuffs and were sitting against a tree, watched over by two firebending soldiers. Captain Shin and two other men stood off to the side, deep in conversation. They were all that was left.

Shin looked up as he heard footsteps behind him. "Princess, Ty Lee!" he called. "You're alive! We were just discussing whether there were enough of us to risk looking for you and keep an eye on these scum at the same time." He motioned towards the Dai Li and scowled.

"Really? Shin, I didn't know you cared," Azula replied.

"Protecting you is one of the tasks your brother charged me with," the captain said rather stiffly. "I would carry it out regardless of personal feelings in the matter. Now tell me- what happened with the head Dai Li and that girl? Are they dead?"

"Long Feng was alive the last I saw him," Azula admitted. "But he fled when he realized he couldn't defeat me." She glanced over at the acrobat. "You've been unusually quiet, Ty Lee, but judging from the fact that you're here and she's not I'd guess that you were able to defeat Wei Ming."

"She ran off," Ty Lee said, "but I don't know where she went." Both Azula and Shin looked at her, but she didn't elaborate.

"In that case, they're both still threats," the captain said. "If they did both retreat, though, I doubt they'll be coming back tonight. Did you manage to learn anything about your mother, princess?"

"Yes," Azula said. "She's being held by a local warlord who calls himself Jian Chin in a castle a few days south of here. I was just returning to the ship to collect you and your men in order to retrieve her when we were jumped by the Dai Li."

"Well, as you can see we're hardly at full strength," Shin said bitterly. "They managed to destroy our ship, and though they weren't as strong as most frontline soldiers, they made up for it by being treacherous. We're still with you, but I think any kind of frontal assault is out at this point- and there's still the matter of the prisoners to deal with first."

"Kill them," Azula said with a shrug. "They're Dai Li agents- we're not going to be able to get them to betray their leader through force. In Ba Sing Se I was able to win their allegiance by convincing Long Feng that he'd already lost- after he acknowledged my superiority, the rest of them swore to follow me. Without him here to give them directions there's no way they'd betray their precious city."

"No, Azula!" Ty Lee put in, her tone unusually earnest. "Don't kill them- please. They're helpless prisoners."

"Helpless? Hardly," Azula snapped. "As I said, they're too dangerous to keep around, and there aren't any prisons in this cursed place I'd trust to hold them. Killing them now is the simplest solution- and it's not like they're innocent. You remember the Dai Li- they're as ruthless as any of my father's lackeys."

"I know," Ty Lee said. "But it's just that- well, you've hurt a lot of people, Azula, during the war, and that didn't work out too well in the end. If you want to do things differently this time, maybe having a little mercy might help?"

"Mercy," Azula spat. "Now you're sounding like Zuzu and the Avatar- clearly the Kyoshi Warriors got to you." Still, part of Azula had to admit the other girl had a point- if she didn't want to end up a mad wreck again maybe she would have to do something different from her old life, much as it stung to admit it. Maybe if she hadn't treated others so cruelly she wouldn't have had to fear their reprisals or betrayals, and maybe then she wouldn't have spiraled down a pit of paranoia from which there had seemed no return…

"There is something we could do with them," Captain Shin said, his voice snapping Azula back to the present. Walking over to the prisoners he jerked one of them to his feet. "If it was up to me I'd side with the princess on this one," he said to the agent. "But it looks like her friend there is trying to talk her out of it, so if you want to save your own skin, you'll answer me- did you come here on a ship, or by land?"

"Ship," the Dai Li said. "We captured it from the Fire Nation years ago."

"And where is your ship now?"

"Just outside the harbor where you left yours- hidden."

"All right then," Shin said. "Here's what I'm offering- four of my men will escort you back to your vessel- bound so you can't earthbend, of course- and see you safely aboard. You'll then go back to Ba Sing Se or wherever you came from and never show your face outside of there again. If that's not acceptable- well, all the princess has to do is nod and you're dead, understand? Your friends killed a lot of mine tonight, and forgiveness isn't the policy of the Fire Navy."

"I understand," the agent said.

Azula sighed. "Very well," she said. "That is acceptable- if I went ahead and had them executed, Ty Lee wouldn't let me hear the end of it." She turned to Shin. "There's something interesting about your plan, though- it leaves us with just three people to confront Jian Chin. Was that deliberate?"

"I didn't think it would inconvenience you all that much," Captain Shin said, a look in his eyes that was almost a challenge. "After all, I heard you conquered Ba Sing Se with only three people."

Azula smiled. "And so I did. Now it's time to see if I still have the edge." Her eyes burned like molten gold in the night. On one level, she was actually glad to have the lesser soldiers out of the way. She, Ty Lee, and Shin were all highly trained, and finding a way to use them to achieve her mother's rescue was the kind of challenge Princess Azula welcomed.

/

Azula came awake suddenly, scanning the dark clearing for what had disturbed her. Shin and his men lay asleep on the far side, and the three captive Dai Li dosed against a tree, watched over by the last soldier. They would be leaving tomorrow morning for the coast while their captain went with Azula to free her mother. Nothing stirred on that side, so the princess rolled over and saw the source of her disturbance- Ty Lee. The acrobat sat staring directly at her, her large eyes troubled and morose.

"What do you want?" she asked rather irritably.

"Azula," Ty Lee said, 'we need to talk."

"We can talk in the morning. Go back to sleep."

"No- we need to talk now. There are things I really need to ask you about."

Azula stood up and stretched. "All right then. What are they?"

Ty Lee shook her head and grabbed Azula's wrist. The princess flinched slightly at the contact but allowed herself to be pulled away from the men and into the forest. Finally Ty Lee stopped and turned to her.

"What is this about, Ty Lee?" Azula demanded.

The acrobat pulled away and stepped from one foot to the other. "Earlier this evening, while I was fighting Wei Ming, she talked to me- tried to turn me against you. She said that she killed your father, and that the two of you met in the Capital before you left. Then she said that you just brought me along to fight her, but that you never told anyone." Ty Lee looked up at Azula, her grey eyes wide. "I need to know if that's true."

A thousand possible things to say spun through Azula's mind, but to her own surprise what came out was the truth. "Yes," she said softly. "She was right."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Ty Lee asked. "I knew you seemed scared when I first saw you, but I thought that was just the whole spirit-visions search-the-world-for-your-mom thing! You could at least have warned me about the crazy girl with the shadows and the foot-long knives!"

It was a question that Azula had asked herself- she knew that Wei Ming was a threat, and it would have been the logical thing to do to warn her companions about her so that they could fight her. She could have lied about it, or just refused to answer, but something in Ty Lee's eyes seemed to demand the truth. "I didn't trust you," she whispered. "You turned on me once before, and I thought that if you knew about the danger you'd leave me this time too. I realized that during the last few weeks of the War, you see- nobody's really loyal, and they'll betray you at the first opportunity. You can't trust anyone, even your friends." She tried to imbue the last word with a bitter, ironic twist, but somehow a choked whisper was all she managed.

Ty Lee's expression became one of pity. "Oh, Azula," she breathed. "It must be horrible to live like that. No wonder you went away- when I saw you in the institution, it was like you weren't even there."

"You came to visit me during… that?" Azula asked, not really believing her ears.

Ty Lee nodded. "A few times. Even after everything you did I couldn't just turn my back on you. I stopped after a few months, though- I mean, you didn't even seem to know I was there, so I wasn't really accomplishing anything."

"Why?" the princess demanded. "You betrayed me just weeks before- after more than a year I thought you might have cooled off, but not then."

"I didn't really think of what I did as betraying you," Ty Lee said. "You were shouting and looking like you were going to start shooting fire any second, and Mai had one of those knives of hers out, and it looked like in a few minutes one of you would be dead- maybe both. I couldn't just stand there and let my two best friends kill each other! I didn't want to hurt you, just to protect Mai from you, or maybe you from Mai, I don't really know, I just acted. But I guess you didn't see it that way."

"No," Azula said. 'I didn't. I saw you and Mai turning on me within minutes of each other- two of the three people in the entire world I was certain were loyal to me."

"Who was the other person?" Ty Lee asked, seeming genuinely curious. "It couldn't have been Zuko- did you have a secret boyfriend or something?"

Azula snorted. "No. The other person was my father, and then he left me to rot on a ruthless throne. He made me Fire Lord and then made the entire position into a sick joke by proclaiming himself Phoenix King. What does the ruler of the Fire Nation matter next to the god-emperor of the world?" Even now, the memory stung; Azula bared her teeth in a snarl and flames danced in the air around her clenched fists. "Everything I did I did for the Fire Nation – I did for him! – and then he showed me in the most dramatic way possible how little it meant to him. That's when I panicked, seeing treachery everywhere and ending up little more than a frothing animal when all of that pain and fear and rage took control." She looked up at Ty Lee and barked a short, bitter laugh. "And now that the truth's out I suppose you're going to leave me too."

Ty Lee shook her head. "No. I'm staying, Azula."

"Why?" the princess asked, confused at the acrobat's apparently sincere tone. "I lied to you, remember- or at least I left a rather important part out of the truth. And you nearly got killed because of it."

"Well, part of it's because your mom's a nice lady and she needs our help," Ty Lee said. "And part of it's because I do want to help you, Azula. When we were little kids, you were the first person who ever seemed to notice me, rather than just the newest addition to a family where nobody had to worry about remembering which girl was which because they were all the same. You weren't always very nice, and I know now that you were just trying to make a "useful ally" or something, but I still appreciate that. You may have been trying to help yourself, but you helped me figure out who I was too. Whatever happened later, I never forgot that."

Azula looked quietly at her friend for several moments, and then spoke two words she couldn't remember ever using sincerely in her life. "Thank you," she said quietly.

Ty Lee walked over and put an arm around Azula's shoulder. "Thank you for being honest," she said. "I know that's just about the only thing that's hard for you. Maybe you should try it more often- then you wouldn't have to worry about people not trusting you as much. And it's definitely better than shutting yourself up and pretending you don't feel anything- I mean, look at Mai. You don't want to end up dressing in black and sighing all the time, do you?"

"The spirits forbid," Azula said. She was reminded now of why she herself enjoyed Ty Lee's company- the acrobat was straightforward and guileless. There had been a time when the princess hadn't even been able to imagine her committing a betrayal, and now she was reminded of the depth of the loyalty she was capable of. Ty Lee flitted from emotion to emotion easily, but friendship was a constant; even the betrayal at the Boiling Rock had been rooted in it, even if it was directed at Mai. It was something Azula found difficult to understand, but that she honestly appreciated.

Trust, honesty, faith - these were things that were hard to come by in the Fire Nation court, and yet they were, Azula now realized, all the more precious for it.

/

Jian Chin sighed contentedly as he closed the door to his private rooms behind him. After the Dai Li man- Long Feng- had left the previous night, he'd spent the entire day working on gathering his subjects together and equipping them with weapons. They didn't need much training- they were just going to be meat shields to get him through the defenses of the Earth King's palace. Long Feng said he had ways around that, but Jian Chin wasn't sure he believed him and thought it best to be prepared for anything he'd overlooked.

Now the warlord was exhausted and was ready to sleep and dream of conquest. Removing his cape, he turned to toss it haphazardly over the back of an ornate chair he'd bought off a pirate captain for a ridiculously inflated price- and then stopped in surprise. Someone was sitting in it.

"Jian Chin," the figure in the dark cloak said in a cold, female voice. "We have things to discuss."

"Who by all the spirits are you and what are you doing in my fortress?" Jian Chin snarled, clenching his fist and making the floor rumble. "If you don't answer me now, girl, I'll crush you like the vermin you are!"

"Clearly the great Jian Chin's reputation does not exaggerate his charming personality," the strange girl said acidly. "To answer your question, my name is Wei Ming and we have a mutual acquaintance- one Long Feng, Grand Secretariat of Ba Sing Se and Head of the Dai Li. Is that name familiar?"

"It is," Jian Chin rumbled. "If you're here for him, he's gone. Tell me what your business with him is and I might tell him you were here."

The girl drew back her hood and shook out her glossy black hair. She was pretty, Jian Chin thought, if one was in to the pale type, but there was something deeply unnerving about her as well. Maybe something about those strange purple eyes – they were the kind that seemed to see too deeply, and too much. The warlord decided he didn't like this Wei Ming. "No need to tell him," she said. "Long Feng is dead."

Jian Chin swore. "What happened?" he demanded. "The city man was supposed to give me a kingdom!"

"He was killed by Princess Azula of the Fire Nation," Wei Ming said. "She's coming here right now- she heard you have her mother, and she's not happy about that at all. She'll be here in a few days."

The warlord was hardly a political expert, but he'd heard of Azula's takeover in Ba Sing Se and wasn't terribly keen on the idea of facing her. Still, he thought, she was only a child, and a girl to boot. A boulder would crush her as easy as anyone. "What do you get for telling me this?" he asked suspiciously.

"I want to see Azula dead, and I think we might be able to help each other," Wei Ming replied. "I couldn't help but notice that you have a small army gathering around this fortress- turn them loose on her. The princess's companions are fair game to kill, but I have something special planned for Azula herself. I believe that there are caverns located beneath this place?"

"Yeah," Jian Chin grunted. "What about them?"

"If your men can herd Azula into them, I'll do the rest." Wei Ming raised a hand and shadows trailed from it. "I'm not some shadowbender out of a ghost story, but darkness and I have and… affinity, nonetheless."

Jian Chin suppressed a shudder. "And what do I get out of this deal?"

"Long Feng was going to show you secret passages into Ba Sing Se," Wei Ming said. "I can do him one better." She reached into the folds of her cloak and pulled out a scroll which she tossed at the warlord. He caught and unrolled it, and then gave a fierce grin. This was a detailed map of the Ba Sing Se undercity- exactly what he needed. "I drew this a long time ago, thinking it might come in handy. I think you'll be able to make excellent use of it."

"You have a deal, girl," Jian Chin said. "You've handed me the key to the Earth Kingdom, and so I'll give you your little princess. Never let it be said that Jian Chin doesn't honor his debts."

Wei Ming smiled and pulled her hood back up. "Excellent. I'll see you again soon- though you may not see me." She rose and slipped into the shadows in the corner of the room, vanishing completely.

Jian Chin waited until he was certain she was gone and then snorted. "Cursed witch," he muttered. Still, he'd put up with her for what she'd given him.

It was time for the man who bore the name of one of the greatest conquerors in history to earn a little glory of his own.

/

This chapter is an extremely pivotal one in Azula's development, especially when she and Ty Lee have their heart-to-heart. Still, I think most of it speaks for itself. Azula is starting to build herself back up, and is starting to grasp her way much for firmly to some idea of what friendship means and why trust is so valuable. For Ty Lee's part, she's reaffirmed her decision to stand by Azula, because whatever else she may have done, Azula needs help, and so does Ursa.

Especially since our two surviving main villains are now in active alliance with each other. Wei Ming is happy to pick up where Long Feng left off with Jian Chin, and the warlord is too fixated on his own glory to realize what a dangerous game he's playing. We're headed for a climax now!

-MasterGhandalf