When she woke up she was no longer in the woods. The room was spinning but Azula could tell that she was inside, but inside where?

She heard a voice, a high pitched and urgent voice. Calling words that she couldn't understand. Suddenly a person came into view, her vision was blurry but the person looked to be an old woman with long gray hair. She jumped the instant she felt a cold hand on her forehead and the woman chuckled.

"Don't be scared dear, I just want to see if your fever has gone down." She explained.

Azula's senses were just starting to return and she felt lucky to have heard the old woman. She tried to sit up but found that the action only made her dizzy and she soon surrendered to lying down.

"Get some rest, that poison really did a number on you" the woman explained and internally Azula groaned, so the Frog Squirrel had been poisonous.

"Where am I?" Her voice came out in a rasp, which somehow came as no surprise.

"Oh silly me, you must be scared waking up in a strange place." The woman commented as she rearranged some jars on a shelf as though she were looking for something. "You're in Hai Ping, we're a very small village on the edge of the forest, but a nice one. My name is Rafela, my niece and nephew found you and alerted me, I'm pretty good with medicines." The old woman explained and selected a jar from the shelf.

The jar was less than half full, it's contents a red liquid that almost resembled blood. Rafela chuckled lightly as she noticed her guest watching her and tried to guess her thoughts, figuring that the girl probably thought were about to be poisoned when she saw her measure out a spoonful of the liquid.

"Don't worry dear, it's medicine" she assured as she handed Azula the spoon.

Azula did take the spoon, really still too out of it to refuse. But she didn't make any move to swallow the liquid.

"Or you can suffer for another few hours before you die, your choice" Rafela offered and after a moment of thought, though the taste of the medicine made her gag, Azula obediently swallowed.

Sunday's were Azula's days off. Her life was a day shift Monday through Thursday, a night shift on Friday and Saturday, and then Sunday she had off. It wasn't always a long week, but after the past two nights Azula found that she had never looked forward to Sunday so much. Mika was good about letting her sleep in too. Although Azula wouldn't sleep past ten, and was often up before that, Mika was always up at the crack of dawn. But she entertained herself; Azula could often hear her in the living room playing with her dolls. Sometimes she would lie there and listen, other times she would roll over and block her ears. Sometimes it would get to the point where she couldn't take it anymore and had to get up. It wasn't that Mika was loud, on the contrary she was practically whispering, but she was still loud enough to hear. So Azula would hear and what she heard she hated.

Mika didn't exactly pretend her dolls were princesses or heroes of some sort; usually she pretended they were orphans. Once Azula woke up on mornings she could sleep in, Mika was usually out of bed and in the living room muttering words from her toy's mouths about having nowhere to go and only having each other. That wasn't really what upset Azula, after all many of the children stories she knew were actually about orphans and outcasts at the start. But what she hated was that in Mika's games there was always a daddy. She would hear one doll crying that she missed her daddy, or another saying her father was coming to get her; that second story never seemed to end. It wasn't every time, but more often than not Mika's games somehow involved a father.

He said he would stay. Just hours earlier he told her he would stay. But she was a light sleeper. He didn't know she woke when he left the bed, or that she listened as he gathered his things and closed the door behind him. He thought it would be morning when she found out. But she knew even before he was gone that he wasn't coming back.

Although Mika wasn't going too hard on the daddy subject today, Azula decided that she had stayed in bed long enough and it was time to get going.

Sokka was sitting in his apartment that Sunday morning trying to read the morning paper, the key word being trying. Instead of actually reading the paper he was sitting on his couch staring at it while his mind raced with thoughts of the previous night.

What have I done? He thought to himself. He was all for giving Azula a second chance, but what had possessed him to offer to babysit the spawn of a woman who once dedicated her life to murdering the innocent?

Man I have really got to let that go He thought, Toph's lecture still clear in his mind.

He wondered what convinced Azula to change, probably her daughter but there had to be something else. Azula doesn't seem like the type of person to decide to change then get it right the first time.

The woman left and not long after a little boy ran into the room, giggling like a mad man. Azula didn't have time to question what he was doing before an angry and somewhat embarrassed looking girl ran in after him.

"Bao! Aunt Rafela told you to stay out of here!" She scolded and the boy only giggled in response to her.

With a roll of her eyes the girl looked up at Azula, who was watching the scene with interest.

"Sorry, he never listens" she apologized as she grabbed the boy by the arm, he just kept laughing of course. "Come on Bao, we're going to leave her alone like aunt Rafela asked." She said as she attempted to drag him from the room.

Azula has never been a fan of children; she actually hates them even more now that she knows her mother had another daughter in order to replace her. This boy was about the same age and the girl scolding him couldn't have been older than ten. But she didn't care how young they were. She had spent six months alone in that forest, plus the year in solitary confinement at the nuthouse on top of that. She just couldn't take the solitude any more.

"No, he can stay" she found herself saying.

The girl eyed her wearily and for a moment Azula thought maybe they knew who she was, what she had done, and the girl didn't want her brother anywhere near this room. But with even more laughter the boy shook free of his sister's grasp and before either of the girl's could stop him he had jumped onto Azula's bed and sat there happily. For the first time since she entered the young girl cracked a smile.

"If he gets too annoying just kick him out, I'm Cara by the way" she said as she turned to leave and once she was gone Azula was left alone with the little boy, wondering what had just happened.