Interlude the Second
The Past
It was a beautiful little island. Sokka almost hated to hide a lie within its heart.
He waited at the same shore where he, Aang, and Katara had first touched down on Kyoshi Island. That little incident hadn't been an entirely pleasant experience, between Aang getting himself attacked by a giant sea monster and then the whole group being ambushed and captured by the Kyoshi Warriors, but things had improved quickly after that. This time, though, he was the one awaiting the arrival of outsiders, charged with the safety and security of others. Only, for Sokka, it wasn't just the people of Kyoshi Island. It was the entire world.
More or less.
He took his gaze off the empty horizon and looked down at the notes in his hand. He had spent a lot of time constructing the needed narrative, but he wasn't entirely confident in his writing skills yet. The new events of the crossing of the Serpent's Pass, especially, worried him a bit. They were pretty complex, and he had to keep reminding himself as he detailed them which of the happenings would have been evident to the point-of-view he was writing for, and which were merely background. Maybe he should have Katara or Toph read them over, but wait, Toph couldn't read, because she was blind, and-
"There it is," Aang said from beside him. The others were up at the compound, waiting for the boys to bring their charge in.
Sokka snapped his gaze up to scan the horizon and, sure enough, there was an object approaching through the sky in an artificially straight line. He couldn't see the details of the craft yet, but from its rate of movement, he could guess its nature with a fair degree of accuracy, given that he himself had contributed towards the design. The object resolved itself into an Appa-class mechanical airship, a balloon-flyer optimized to serve as a personal transport carrying a small group quickly and in comfort. Only a few existed in the world, and Sokka had personally assigned this one to his friend the Fire Lord. It was, of course, named Fang. Certain traditions had to be respected.
The airship slowly but steadily sank through the air, finally settling on the sandy shore. Sokka and Aang waited where they were at the far end of the beach as the main hatch swung open, a ramp was extended to the sand, and the passengers began debarking. First came a pair of Fire Nation Crimson Guards. Then there was Zuko, dressed nothing like the Fire Lord he was supposed to be, walking stiffly and with heavy steps. He headed straight towards Sokka and Aang, trailed by his guards. He spared them only a nod of greeting before turning back to face his airship. "They're bringing her out now."
Sokka felt his stomach tighten.
His insides needn't have bothered. Four more Crimson Guards carried a small palanquin out of the airship, and Azula was sleeping motionless on the platform. Mostly responsible for her lack of movement were the heavy restraints that bound her body tightly to the palanquin, but she didn't even try to stir as the armored Firebenders carried her across the beach. Drugged, then. The palanquin was followed by Lady Bokujin, and Sokka couldn't help but wonder if the Fire Nation healer had left the Home she ran out of a desire to watch over her patient's transfer, or if Zuko had simply paid her a fortune to do it. Probably both.
Aang caught Sokka's glance and inclined his head over at the procession. "I'll lead them up to the compound." He was off with a gust of wind that rustled Sokka's clothes.
That left just Sokka and Zuko to welcome the final guest coming out of the airship. Dong Min turned out to be an older man with a gray bush of chin-hair beneath a clean-shaven face. His robes used both green and yellow colors, but were otherwise plain in construction. "Sokka of the Water Tribe, I presume," he said as he walked over with a hunched posture. His hands shook as he brought them together for a shallow Earth Kingdom-style bow
Sokka put on his best smile and bowed back. "Scholar Dong Min. It's great to meet you. I mean, you know, finally in person, since we've already been exchanging letters and stuff. Anyway, I want to thank you again for helping out with this, and I have my notes here for the new history we want to construct but if it's okay I'd like to get some feedback on them first, but if you want to get started right away that's okay too because I think I'm mostly finished anyway and I can just do some quick editing while you make with the brainwashing or- ooh, I'm sorry, you don't like that word, do you? Um, I mean, the... uh, treatment? Anyway, why don't you just take the notes right now, I'll just mess things up if I do more editing, and-" Zuko's elbow cut Sokka right off as it dug into his ribs.
Without even looking at him, Zuko easily took up their side of the conversation. "What my friend wants to say is that he's looking forward to working with you, and respects both your knowledge and your help. Why don't you tell him what you explained to me about the schedule?"
Dong Min looked back and forth between Sokka and Zuko, before giving a brief shake of his head and taking a long breath. "Yes. The schedule. Well, you'll have time to finish detailing the altered history. The first step will be overwriting the prime facts of the patient's life. Name, basic history, major life commitments, and such. Once that's firm in her mind, we'll do the detailed life history alongside the unconscious body language. That's going to be the tricky part, as we don't use hypnosis for that portion."
Sokka nodded. "That's where you do the 'mindbending.' Unleashing the power of our brains to make our own false memories."
"Precisely." Dong Min gave Sokka another look, this one steadier. "I've found that simple conversations are enough. We'll pair the patient with someone, perhaps you, who will talk to her about the events. It's important that you present the information as something the patient already knows, and get her to confirm the facts, even if she's not really sure. She'll want to be agreeable, and accept the information. Eventually, she'll lose track of what she truly remembers and what was merely described to her. It helps to add touchstone details, things she can use to build false memories around."
"I'll be doing some of that," Sokka confirmed. "We have an old friend of Azula's who will also be on hand for most of the work, but everyone we know has volunteered to help as needed. Even the locals are in on it. At least, those who need to be. Some of the local villagers, the Kyoshi Warriors... you know, anyone who would be familiar with the new identity."
Dong Min licked his lips before replying. "Well, there's no doubting your commitment to the project. We'll be making great gains for science with this. Great gains. Perhaps, Lord Zuko, I can write a paper on it all that your dynasty can hold in trust until after the patient's death?"
"...Perhaps."
Together, all three made their way up to the compound. Personally, Sokka thought of it as "Suki's Home."
He had decided that Azula's new name would be Suki.
The Present
It was a quiet little neighborhood on Gaoling's outer edge. The streets were empty, but Sokka could still hear the sounds of life around him. Children laughed and screeched from some hiding place, and the music of a pipa lute casually tumbled through the windows of one of the homes. Sokka turned to the girl next to him and shrugged. "I guess this is the place."
"Yay." Ty Lee ran a hand through her short hair, a nervous habit she had picked up recently. She was back in her old pink outfit, though, which Sokka decided was a good thing. It was better if no one linked the Kyoshi Warriors with their mission, and it might make her feel more secure after Suki- er, Azula- sheared her hair off and stole it for a disguise. "Do we knock, or is this one of those times when we kick in the door and tackle people?"
Sokka's eyebrows rose of their own accord. "You have been spending entirely too much time cleaning out the Kyoshi docks."
"Actually, that's how I was taught in the Fire Nation. Why do you think I like being a Kyoshi Warrior so much?"
Sokka wasn't sure if that was supposed to be a joke, so he just smiled in a very polite and neutral way as he stepped up to the house they had been seeking out. The windows were covered in curtains, and no sounds escaped from within. Hesitantly, he knocked.
No answer.
He tried knocking again, then sighed and turned back to Ty Lee. "I'll leave this to the professional door-kicker-inner, then. Try not to alarm the neighbors."
"Hold on." She tiptoed up to the door, leaned forward, and poked it with a knuckle.
It swung open without resistance.
Sokka felt his jaw drop. "You can Qi-block doors now?"
A ghost of a smile- a rare sight since they left Kyoshi Island- flicked across Ty Lee's face. "I'm getting a bad feeling about this place. I thought it was worth seeing if it was open."
Sokka nodded, drew his boomerang, and moved through the door behind his partner. It was shadowy inside, but the curtains didn't completely shut the sun out. They just filtered the light into a sickly green that splashed over the ruin within. Furniture was overturned and broken, scrolls lay in crumpled heaps below where they had hung on the wall, and lanterns had been crushed and thrown about.
The worst part was that everything was covered in a thick coat of dust. Sokka sighed and sheathed his boomerang. Ty Lee, meanwhile, just kept staring at everything with wide eyes, and squeaked, "What does this mean?"
"It means someone got to Dong Min before we did, a good while ago. It also means that I was right. He is involved in whatever is going on." Sokka moved to the curtains and began flinging them open. He needed as much light as he could get. "It's too bad June's out working Zuko's bounty, otherwise we might have been able to get here quicker. Of course, we were busy, ourselves."
"Ash." Ty Lee's uncharacteristic swearing drew Sokka's glance. "All those rumors were nothing but ash. Azula isn't really making those attacks. She just wants to be left alone, I'm sure of it. She's not trying to conquer the world or destroy the colonies."
Sokka nodded as he ran his gaze over the whole interior of the one-room home. "Still, they were our best lead while we were waiting to hear back about Dong Min's past movements. The Earth King gave him enough coins to retire, but he really crawled into a hole and dragged it in after him. Although, it's a very nice hole he made for himself here. I've lived in worse."
There was a long stretch of silence before Ty Lee spoke again. "So, what now? Whatever happened here, Dong Min is gone. Everything we've done is for nothing."
Sokka turned to her and gave her a big genuine smile. "Dong Min may be gone, but this isn't a dead end. We can deduce a great deal from this, and maybe figure out where he was taken. Oh yes, taken. If this mess isn't the result of a kidnapping, I'm an Airbender."
Ty Lee blinked at him. "How do you know that?"
"It's elementary, my dear Ty Lee." Sokka walked over to the door she had tapped open, and pointed at the wall immediately around the opening. "Check out the coloration of the stone here. I didn't think to look for it until you revealed that the door had been left open, but there's a faint discoloration in a meandering line that wraps around the whole door. That's what happens when broken stone, even stone of the exact same shade, is fused by Earthbending. The point where the stones are joined is a little lighter, unless the Earthbender takes the time to precisely smooth the density. That the discoloration was left alone indicates that the Earthbender was in a hurry, since the job is otherwise very good. We can conclude that an Earthbender tried to gain entry, found the door locked, and simply broke down the chunk of wall containing the door. They fixed the door before leaving through it, then left it unlocked. Dong Min had uninvited guests, and left with them."
By the time Sokka finished that explanation, Ty Lee was leaning forward on her tiptoes. "What else?!"
Sokka tapped his chin as he thought. He wished he had his magnifier-hat and bubble pipe; for some reason, it always seemed appropriate to be working those props when he was deducing things. "Well, this mess in here wasn't an accident. I don't see any actual signs of a fight, especially if Earthbenders were involved. Whoever was here went out of their way to flip over furniture and wreck anything that was hanging on the wall or standing on a table. Maybe they were looking for something? Or else they wanted to cover up what actually happened here. But why do this if no one knew where Dong Min was anyway?"
Ty Lee ran a hand through her shortened hair again and then shrugged.
Sokka looked back at the mess. "No, they knew someone would be coming for Dong Min, eventually. The kidnappers found him, after all, and Suki is the whole reason everything is happening. They knew we would eventually realize that Dong Min had to be involved, and track him down ourselves. Because what happened to Suki required Dong Min's expertise. They want to make sure we can't go any further on the trail, and they did this so there was nothing left here that could even identify this place as belonging to Dong Min, never mind if he tried to leave any clues for rescuers."
Ty Lee nodded. "It sounds simple once you go through the whole thing."
"Yeah, that's the peril of explaining stuff. It looks smarter when you come up with solutions out of thin air." Sokka looked around again and began snapping his fingers. "That's how they knew everything! Dong Min had been to Kyoshi Island. He knew Azula was Suki. He had to know- or at least have some idea- how to wake Azula up. He knew what we all did with her. So why grab him if they already knew about Azula? They didn't. They grabbed him because they wanted Dong Min for who he was, and got Suki as a bonus." He turned to Ty Lee. "Please tell me that doesn't make any sense!"
Ty Lee immediately walked over to a spot where the floor wasn't cluttered with broken furniture, bent over and shifted so that she was standing upside down on her hands, and shut her eyes. "Okay, I'm in thinking mode. So, it sounds right in pieces, but put together the two things you said. They kidnapped Dong Min for reasons and found out about Azula, but they also ruined this place so that we couldn't find out anything more than Dong Min. How does that add up?"
"Hm, good point." Sokka drew his boomerang again and ran his finger against the sharp edge. Dong Min was the key here, but Ty Lee was right. He couldn't have things going both backwards and forwards. So which came first? It's not like anyone would go through all this trouble for anything but Azula. She was the center of the world, in a way, and pushing her out onto the world stage would-
Wait.
Wait.
What if Suki was only the center of Sokka's world? He thought about her all the time, even before she became Azula again, but not everyone did. And Dong Min was a lot more than just the man who created Suki. That was why Sokka had sought him out in the first place.
Dong Min had discovered the science, and invented the techniques, that formed the foundation of the Dai Li's old brainwashing programs back in wartime Ba Sing Se. And everyone involved in the Dai Li, including some of the leadership who were never accounted for, would know who Dong Min was.
"What if," Sokka said slowly, "we add the remnants of the Dai Li to the equation? What if we sum all that up with the trouble in the colonies, the Invisible Hand, and the way all our efforts to make peace over there somehow seem to fail even before they get started? And we assume that they figured we would eventually realize what they were doing. Does that add up?"
Ty Lee somersaulted into a proper standing position, and looked at Sokka with quivering eyes. "I think we're on to something scary."
Sokka ground his teeth together and bit back a growl. Dai Li. Great, just what they needed.
The Past
Today was the day. Sokka shouldn't be worried, really. The whole thing had already been going on for a while, and Sokka had watched every step. At this point, he was as familiar with Azula's face as he was with Zuko's. Sometimes, he even heard her voice in his dreams, chanting, "I am Suki, loyal member of the Kyoshi Warriors." Over and over, just like the waking hours. Sokka couldn't say they were pleasant dreams.
He heard the sound of thick boots on the path, and turned to see Azula walking toward him on the path beneath the bright Kyoshi sun. They had cut her rare auburn hair when she first arrived, to keep her from feeling for a topknot, and the more femininely casual style really suited her. "Sokka. Here on Kyoshi Island. My home. Are you visiting? Welcome." She stopped and looked at Sokka with eyes that seemed glazed over.
Sokka smiled at her. "Heya. Yeah, I'm visiting. We're friends, after all. I was just taking a walk; want to join me?"
"Okay." She immediately reached out and took Sokka's hand in her own. She had been doing that with everyone since they started the treatments. That and hugging people whenever she seemed upset. Physical contact seemed to keep her calm, make her feel secure.
Sokka found her hand pleasantly warm.
They walked along the path, and as expected, came upon the dojo of the Kyoshi Warriors. "Hey, check it out," Sokka said as though he hadn't been heading towards it the whole time. "Let's take a look." Azula went along with him into the box-like building, and stared around the interior with wide eyes. "Yeah, it's a pretty neat place. I thought so from the first time I saw it, but I was being all macho and couldn't admit it, remember?"
She turned a questioning expression towards him.
Showtime. "Yeah, I was standing right here, dressed just like I am now, and was all, 'Sorry ladies! Didn't mean to interrupt your dance lesson!' Can you believe it? I must have been really smarting from the way you and the other Kyoshi Warriors attacked us on the beach. Remember, you came up behind us, threw burlap bags over our heads and then dragged us into town and tied us to the big pole with Avatar Kyoshi's statue on it?" Through the whole description, Sokka acted things out as best he could manage all by himself and with no props. He thought he did a pretty good job, but when he turned back to Azula, she began laughing. "What?"
She laughed again, and a light was shining in her eyes.
Sokka smiled back. "Anyway, yeah, so you apologized for the ambush, but I just couldn't meet you halfway. I said- I kid you not- I said, 'I mean, normally I'd hold a grudge, but seeing as you guys are a bunch of girls, I'll make an exception.' I was lucky you didn't smack me right there."
Suki laughed again.
Azula. Azula laughed again.
Sokka's smile grew broader at her amusement. Sure, most of these were true events, with the speech and actions of various Kyoshi Warriors consolidated into the new Suki character, but his presentation was obviously making a strong impression. He described the rest of the day's events to Azula, playing it up a little because, hey, why not? Suki really enjoyed the part where 'she' forced him into a Kyoshi Warrior dress. Sadly, that didn't last as long as he would have liked, and he had to move on to Zuko's attack. He led her into town, and as planned everyone kept their distance but otherwise didn't react to them. He showed Suki where the Kyoshi Warriors had attacked Zuko, and prodded her into 'remembering' where she had fallen to the prince's Firebending attack.
He finished the tour around the rear of one of the local's homes, where he had said goodbye to the Kyoshi Warriors and apologized one last time. "...and you told me, 'I am a warrior. But I'm a girl, too.' That changed my life, you know. Looking back, that was the first step in my getting over myself. I had a lot of hang-ups that I couldn't quite face yet, but that got me started."
It was weird, but Sokka couldn't even remember which of the Kyoshi Warriors had actually said that to him. Of course, the original line (he remembered it exactly) was, "We are warriors. But we're girls, too." Sometimes, Sokka considered trying to find out which one came up with it, but other times he thought it meant more coming from the Kyoshi Warriors as a whole.
Then his thoughts were interrupted by the feel of Suki's lips on his cheek. Sokka blinked and looked at her in surprise, and he could feel his face burning. What was thatabout?
Suki grabbed his hand again, and she too was blushing. "You've become a great guy, Sokka. I'm- I'm glad I was able to help you."
Huh.
Huh, again.
Gradually, it dawned on Sokka that the sun was setting. It was time to get Suki back for another round of 'hypnotic programming.'
As he led Suki back to the path, Sokka tried to keep his mind focused on the long term plan, on the agenda for tomorrow, on the fictional life he had painstakingly created, but the only thing he could focus on was that Suki had kissed him.
No, Azula had kissed him.
Should he do anything about it? Tell someone? Nah, there was no need. She was just responding to his story in her typically physically affectionate way. Really, when you think about it, a quick kiss on the cheek worked perfectly with that line about being both a girl and a warrior. That's it. Maybe the next time he went over this story for her, he'd retroactively make it a part of the story, so that Suki wouldn't have to consider taking responsibility for it. Yeah. That was the way.
No problem.
The Present
"Hey, Sokka?"
"Yeah?"
"Does this mean we have to give up on finding Azula before everyone else?"
"Whaheehaw?!" Sokka nearly fell off the eelhound, but he pressed his legs into the saddle and managed to keep himself upright. Without slowing his mount down at all as it bound through Gaoling's rich section, he turned his head to look at Ty Lee in the saddle behind him. She was sitting upright at the far end, keeping her balance easily despite the loping of the eelhound beneath them.
She stared at him with piercing gray eyes. "Well?"
There were a lot of questions that Sokka had no desire to answer about his life, like 'Why does your sleeping bag always smell funky?' But questions about his personal failures were right up there at the top. "I don't know. At this point, we have to figure that someone at least associated with the old Dai Li are involved in waking her up, and are probably mixed up with her now. The Dai Li were control freaks, so they wouldn't just be content to unleash Azula on the world and wait for her to cause general chaos."
A big, carefree grin grew on Ty Lee's face. It made her look a lot like the old Ty Lee, despite her new unwanted haircut. "So then we find Suki, beat up the Dai Li who are poking her into making trouble, and then she'll be free and we can all go back to being happy! She'll be sorry, and we won't have to worry about her becoming Azula again, and we can be friends without lies and you can really let yourself love her!"
"Ty, uh..." Sokka tried to swallow past a lump in his throat, without much success. "Ty, I promise, I'm going to track down the Dai Li, if they're involved, and beat them so bad even Toph will be impressed, but it's not going to be so easy to bring Suki in. She- things were bad on Kyoshi Island, and what she did wasn't the Dai Li's work. You and I know it was because of the situation, that she was scared and confused and maybe a little crazy, but even if she's sorry, things aren't going to be able to go back to the way they were. And they're not going to get better."
"Are you saying that even if we win, we'll lose?"
"No. I'm saying that our work isn't going to end when we find Suki. It's just going to become a new adventure." Sokka turned back to the road and pulled at the reins. They were coming up on their destination now. "That's why we tried to save her in the first place. To give her the chance we thought she needed. And, you know, despite everything that happened on Kyoshi Island? I think I'd give her another chance. But let's not worry about that until we find her. And for that, we need to check my sources. Maybe June can be persuaded to give up on Zuko's bounty and help us. She wasn't too crazy about how old and clean Azula's old stuff was anyway, scent-wise. I'm just glad all Suki's stuff burned in her hut. Hunting Dai Li must be way more fun."
He yanked the reins hard as the eelhound loped up to a sprawling mansion, giving the eelhound the signal to slow down. Sokka steered the animal around the side of the walled estate, to the servant's entrance, and drew an object out of his pocket as they approached the guards stationed there. The two men stared, then made out the object in his hand as a White Lotus tile and immediately relaxed. Sokka stopped the eelhound right next to them, and nodded all business-like. "Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe. Checking in for messages on the network for me."
One of the guards bowed. "Wait here, sir. I'll check with the master."
It wasn't a long wait. Sokka had just enough time to figure out where the Bei Fong estate would be in comparison to this place when the guard came back with three scrolls that he immediately handed over. "Thanks, buddy." Sokka unrolled the first and read it right there.
Ty Lee leaned over his shoulder. "Well?"
"Hm, everyone is doing the usual, chasing down rumors about Azula attacking groups in the colonies, just like we were. Aang and Katara are heading south to investigate rumors there, because they figured Azula would be more likely to be close to Kyoshi Island. That's smart. Zuko was sending spies- oh, wait, the Earth King was sending spies on Zuko's behalf, that was very nice of him- to the city of Yang to follow up news about a building being burned down with blue fire."
Without even looking back at Ty Lee, Sokka unfurled the second scroll. "Hm, the follow-up says that the city authorities recovered a suspicious body from the site of the fire that Zuko's spies in turn stole. Huh, remind me never to be a real spy. Stealing corpses. Creepy. Anyway, the body was badly burned but still... whoa."
When Sokka didn't speak again, Ty Lee leaned full on his back to try to read what the scroll said. "What? Tell me! I can't see!"
Sokka read it twice more before he finally answered. "They thought the body was Azula's, but they managed to smuggle it back to the Fire Nation- I guess they hired a Firebender heat-specialist, that's usually how you keep things cool on a long trip without a giant Fire Nation engine to power things- and Zuko confirmed it wasn't his sister. But they found something he wants my opinion on. He didn't even trust it to the White Lotus." He passed the scroll back to Ty Lee to read, and picked up the third. "And, finally, an update on... oh, hey, June's bounty. It says that... her body was found in the colonies, and witnesses say she was attacking two women, a Waterbender and a warrior in light armor; they walked away and she didn't."
Ty Lee was once again leaning over him, looking for hidden secrets in the paper. "Could it be Suki?"
Sokka swallowed, and looked up and into the distance. "I don't know, but it could be. How she hooked up with a girl Waterbender, I have no idea. Maybe she was hurt and needed healing? Anyway, we need more info. And Zuko needs me in the Fire Nation. I have to check in properly and talk to someone in the know."
He twitched the reins, and the eelhound darted off like an arrow from a bow. Like an arrow from a bow, it was heading towards plenty of unpleasantness.
And Sokka was along for the ride.
TO BE CONTINUED