Author's Note: The reason for this obscenely long space between updates is because I decided to take up a new sport, and it consumes a ton of time and energy. Not to mention the fact that finals are right around the corner and I feel waaaaay underprepared. So, yeah, sorry that updating is rather low-priority right now.

This chapter's not from Zuko's POV. He needed a break, but rest assured that our beloved Zuzu will return next chapter.

:)

Sokka was beginning to tire of being on this ship.

Aang was resting in the infirmary following his encounter with the sea serpent. Katara was sitting with him and annoying the physician with her presence and her insatiable curiosity. Zuko and his uncle were in a meeting with the ship's captain concerning boring stuff. Even Appa and Momo were preoccupied with their napping. Sokka, having no one to entertain him, had tried to follow suit, but he found that he just couldn't fall asleep in the middle of the day.

Sokka had resigned himself to walking the ship's corridors, nosing into anything unlocked and unoccupied. He imagined himself a spy for the Water Tribe, gathering information to pass back along to his dad and the rest of the warriors. He had yet to find anything that he would consider relevant enough to report, other than what he had gathered of the layout of the inside of the ship. He was quickly growing tired of this diversion.

Sokka pushed open an unmemorable door to reveal what appeared to be yet another storage room, this one containing semi-orderly piles of broken or rusted pieces Fire Nation armor. He picked up a cracked and caved in helmet and noted that whoever was wearing this when it was damaged probably died from the incident. He wondered if battle still looked scary from inside these intimidating helmets, and if the people who wore them worried that they might not live to take them off. He turned it over in his hands, wondering if he might be developing some sort of empathy for the men on the enemy lines—definitely something he shouldn't allow.

They're monsters, he reminded himself. They killed—

Just wanting to know what it was like to wear one, Sokka put it down and selected a less damaged helmet from the pile. Just as would be expected of Sokka, he pulled one from the bottom and caused the whole lot to come crashing down to the floor loudly. To his astonishment, this revealed a young woman, who had evidently been hiding behind the pile.

Sokka's first thought should probably have been to wonder who she was and what she was doing on this ship. He should have wanted to know why he had never seen her, whether she had permission to be there, and why she was hiding in a storeroom.

Instead, Sokka's first thought upon seeing her was that this girl was fiercely pretty. She had close-cropped light brown hair framing a sweet, cream-colored face into which were set large, intelligent eyes. He opened his mouth to offer a flirtatious greeting that was surely destined to be endearingly lame, but she was across the room and had her hand clamped over his mouth before he could utter a syllable.

"If you make a sound, I'll gut you," she whispered into his ear. It didn't sound like an empty threat.

Sokka just managed to stop himself before he asked her why. Eyes wide, he raised his hands to show that he didn't mean any harm. So efficiently he almost didn't keep up with what she was doing, she gagged him, blindfolded him, and tied his hands behind his back. He never even saw whether or not she had a knife.

"Now move," she said into his ear from close behind him. "We need to get out of here before someone comes to investigate that little commotion you caused. Don't try to run."

He allowed himself to be led around, fuming silently that some girl had managed to put him in this situation. He consoled himself with the reasoning that it had only happened because she had surprised him and…uh…distracted him. It definitely constituted a sneak attack, and it was well established that sneak attacks do not count.

He heard a door quietly creak shut. He was spun around, and his gag was removed.

"Keep your voice down. Who are you?" she interrogated him.

"Who are you?" he challenged.

"None of your business." He waited for her to offer more information, stubbornly refusing to submit to the will of the antagonistic stranger. "You don't look Fire Nation," she eventually mused. "Water Tribe, probably. So what are you doing wandering around a Fire Navy ship?"

"Everyone on this ship knows me and why I'm here," Sokka said defensively. "You're the one who should be answering some questions. Who are you and what do you want?"

"If you don't cooperate with me, I'll throw you into the water and let the unagi take care of you," she threatened.

"That giant sea monster thing? What did you call it?"

"The unagi. It eats pretty much anything and everything that moves, so I'd be careful if I were you."

"Fine," Sokka said, trying not to let his voice reveal his nervousness—he really did not want to have another encounter with the unagi. "My name's Sokka, and yes, I'm Water Tribe. Now what do you want?"

"I want to know why the Fire Navy is making waves in this part of the world. There's nothing at stake down here, so they usually stay away, but this ship is uncomfortably close and I want to know why."

"Alright, that checks out," Sokka said brightly. "I'm no fan of the Fire Nation either, and being from down south, I totally feel ya on the wanting-to-know-what-they're-doing-here thing. Since I happen to know what this ship is up to, I'll even help you out."

A hand pushed the blindfold off of his eyes, and he blinked at the girl, who looked slightly taken aback. "Well, that was much simpler than I expected," she stated. "What do you know?"

"This ship isn't looking to make any trouble," Sokka began. "It's headed for the Fire Nation with great urgency. Some very important stuff is going down."

"Like what? And how does it involve you?"

"I'm just along for the ride, with my sister and her friend too. Get this: the guy in charge of this ship is the prince of the Fire Nation! He's escorting the Avatar, if you can believe it, back to the Fire Nation to talk to the Fire Lord about ending the war!"

The girl became very still. "Is that what he told you?" she asked in a deadly quiet voice.

"Yes?" Sokka's confusion at her abrupt shift in demeanor made his answer sound like a question.

"This prince…he's Prince Zuko, correct?"

"Yeah, do you know him?"

She shook her head. "But I know of him—and he's been lying to you."

Sokka felt suddenly very cold, and all traces of lightheartedness left him. He could smack himself for ever going so far as to be friendly with the enemy. Ugh, moron! Zuko had even reminded him that they were enemies, and he still had let his guard down. "About what?"

"Do you know anything about him, other than what he's told you?"

"No."

"Well, he's really quite infamous in the Earth Kingdom and even, I think, in the Fire Nation."

This was new, but not really a lie for Zuko to have concealed it.

She went on: "A few years ago, he caused some kind of stir in the Fire Nation capital. I've heard different accounts of what he did, so I'm not really sure what it was, but it ticked off the Fire Lord."

Sokka intended to find out what Zuko had done, mostly because he was now curious.

"Fire Lord Ozai is merciless. You've seen Zuko's face, haven't you?"

Sokka nodded. He thought he saw where this was going, and it was not anywhere good.

"That scar, according to what I've heard, was a going-away present from the Fire Lord when he banished Zuko from the Fire Nation."

Sokka was appalled. "Poor guy," he said. "I had no idea. That's rough."

"That's not all of it, though," she said urgently. "Don't feel sorry for him, because he is most definitely your enemy."

"Go on," Sokka encouraged her.

"There is one way that the Fire Lord will allow Zuko to return to the Fire Nation. I think it's especially cruel what he did—giving him a tiny sliver of hope that will prevent him from ever moving on with his life, dooming him to spending his whole life chasing a dream that will never come true." She seemed to soften a moment, and Sokka thought that was probably how she looked when she wasn't being a spy. "That is, until you told me that he actually found the Avatar. The only way Zuko can return and regain his lost honor is if he captures the Avatar and brings him to the Fire Lord."

"So, what he said about diplomacy and ending the war…?"

"Lies. The only reason the Fire Lord wants the Avatar is because he is the last hope the world has of defeating the Fire Nation. He wants to get rid of him so that there's nobody in the way of the Fire Nation taking over the entire world, which is exactly what would happen if this plan is carried through."

"Oh boy, this is bad," Sokka said gravely. "What do we do?"

"Is there any way you can get the Avatar off this ship and away from Zuko?"

"Well, we do have a flying bison—really! I know it sounds crazy, and I only believe it myself because I've actually seen it fly—"

"Focus!" she cut him off. "Then get the Avatar and your sister and whoever else you want and get out of here as soon as you can. But do it discreetly, so they don't realize you're gone right away."

"What about you? What are you going to do?"

The girl bit her lip, as though he had asked her a difficult question. "I need to get off this ship—I can't go all the way to the Fire Nation. I had planned to just hop off the next time it made port, but I guess I'm out of luck…I don't suppose there's room for one more on that flying bison of yours?"

Sokka looked around casually as if contemplating it—the effect was diminished by his hands still being tied behind his back. "I do suppose, if you want," he told her at last, feigning indifference. "But we'll need to get you up to the deck without being seen."

She chuckled, and there was a slight edge to her amusement. "Discretion? No problem."

It was a little saddening, watching Katara's eyes harden when he told her what he had learned—she would be that much less likely to trust a stranger again. Sokka had gone straight to the infirmary as soon as he had finished talking to his storeroom girl, and as soon as he saw that the physician was out, he had broken the news.

Katara had no trouble believing him, but Aang was a different case entirely.

The airbender was still playing the invalid, as apparently concussions could be quite unpleasant to recover from. Sokka's words seemed to confuse him, and it took him a minute to form the inquiry of how Sokka knew this.

"So you're just taking the word of some strange girl who's stowing away on the ship?" Aang had asked when Sokka had revealed his source. "Why should you trust her?"

"Because she's on our side of the war," Sokka told him. "You might not get war yet because you were raised by a bunch of nonviolent nomads in a time of peace, but generally you're supposed to trust your allies over your enemies."

"But Zuko has been so nice to us," Aang protested. "He doesn't feel like an enemy. We should at least ask him if this is true before we disappear without any explanation."

"Aang, do you really think he'd admit to it if he was planning to betray us?" Katara asked rhetorically.

"Think!" Sokka urged him. "We're taking a risk by being here, because there is a big chance that what she told me is true."

"You can't take risks, Aang. The world needs you, and as the Avatar you have to think of the world's needs first. Even if you want to trust Zuko, it's wrong of you to gamble the fate of the entire world on the ties of a new friendship."

Aang looked like he was thinking, a solemn expression on his face as he gazed at the ground. "How long do we have before we get to the Fire Nation?" he asked at length.

"If what they're telling us is true, then we should be there in two or three days."

"But we don't know," Aang concluded, "Because you think they might be lying to us."

"Exactly."

Aang's sad grey eyes were still trained on the floor. "My head hurts. I'll think about this later." He lay down on his cot and turned away from the Water Tribe siblings.

The wide-eyed physician stepped back from the door and hurried as quietly as he could down the hall. When one of the peasants opened the door, he was out of sight.

As always, thanks for reading!