The Last Retreat

The thin but thoroughly inflexible edge of the knife dug into the skin of Azula's throat. Time had slowed around her, so that she could feel a line of her own weak flesh compress beneath the cutting edge and prepare to tear in a wash of scarlet. And that was before the knife would get to any of the major blood conveyances.

Or perhaps time really was moving properly. Maybe the reason she wasn't yet dead was that it was her own hand wielding the knife, and the sum total of all her willpower was slowing her own unwilling suicide so that she could dread every moment. Whatever had been done to her- by the Dai Li and Long Feng, however in the name of the Unagi that had happened- had turned her own body against her. That thought might have been worrying, might have made her feel violated, if Azula wasn't more concerned at the moment with the knife literally at her throat.

The pressure increased, and Azula felt a sting as the blade began to slice the skin.

Azula poured her full effort into fighting for control of her own right arm. If she failed, not only would she die, but she would forever be remembered as a cowardly assassin, someone who struck out at the world for the sake of pure spite and then killed herself to avoid the consequences. She would go down in history as a pale shadow of a former self she couldn't even remember, a monster without a case, and a failure who struck senselessly out at the weakest of her enemies because anything else was too hard. And that wasn't even getting into general unpleasantness of dying by the blade of a knife.

Azula shut her eyes and ground her teeth together, but all the knife did was shift and angle so that it could start carving a gap from one side of her throat to the other.

She screamed a wordless roar of defiance that would only be silenced by death or victory.

The knife stilled.

Azula was so focused on willing her arm to stop that she didn't even realize when it listened. The sensation that clued her in was the feel of another hand grasping her own, lending its strength to her efforts. The warmth of a smooth and steady hand wrapped around her own cool fingers, giving them a degree of life that this alien presence in her body had sapped away. She snapped her eyes open and looked to see who had come to her rescue, but she saw no one. All that was in her vision was the Earth King's moonlit bedroom around her: she was lying on his bed, beside his cooling, smoldering, stinking corpse, and the only sign of life was the glint of the blade poised against her own skin-

-a glint of shining light that pierced the darkness…

...why did that seem familiar?

Even more warmth flooded Azula. It was no longer limited to her unresponsive fingers, it was warmth like a body wrapped around her whole being in a loving embrace, and Azula's arm slowly and shakily began to pull the knife away from her own throat. It took all of her will to accomplish, a mental effort akin to suddenly willing herself to become an Earthbender, but she still sensed that it was not by her effort alone that she was saved, that something... separate... was lending her strength.

An invisible hand.

She would need it.

Even as she fully extended her right arm away from her body, it still shook with exertion, and her hand would not let go of the knife. No matter how hard she pushed, even with this extra burst of strength and will, she could do no better than that. It seemed that she would have to make her escape in this state.

Perhaps she should have just killed herself after all.

It was a cascading effect, both in the discovery and the spread of panic. It started when the Grounds Patrol made their swing over to the palace's outer entrance. The arches in the main wall were supposed to be covered by Guardsman Quong for another hour, but he was nowhere to be found when a pair of his fellow soldiers arrived precisely on time at the third hour past midnight. The only thing they saw were a trio of glowing pygmy pumas playing in the street.

Glowing pygmy pumas?!

This locked their attention in an unbreakable choke hold, and when one of the guards ran out to investigate, he literally stumbled upon the truth of the matter when he tripped over Quong's body in the shadows between the arches. The unconscious guardsman was stripped to his undergarments, and when dragged out in to the light of the street lanterns, some bruising on his neck right over his major arteries became apparent.

This was rather alarming, to say the least.

The two soldiers immediately sounded their standard-issue patrol whistles. They were just little metal tubes with slits in them, but that slit was carefully designed to make a whole lot of noise.

The security at the palace may not have been air-tight, but it was very well-planned. Upon hearing the whistling- done in a pattern that conveyed the highest level breach to anyone who could hear it, which was practically the whole central courtyard- all the various guards on the grounds immediately echoed the call on their own whistles and moved to pre-assigned spots that absolutely had to be secured in the event of an emergency. Thus, only thirty seconds after Quong's body was found, a group of soldiers arrived at the top of the steps leading into the palace and discovered another pair of unconscious guards lying in front of the door to the building proper. There were no marks on these two, but their faces were covered with rags that smelled of chemicals and drove the air from the lungs.

Once was a problem. Twice was enemy action.

Guards poured into the palace, screeching their whistles again. The few servants that were up and about scrambled out of the way with wide eyes, while the various soldiers patrolling the halls raised the call on their own whistles and began scouring the building for one or more intruders.

The first concern of the palace security was, of course, guaranteeing the Earth King's safety. A squad of no less than five of the most elite guards, with an additional four following them carrying a small palanquin that would bear the Earth King's weight while still allowing them to make a fast retreat, arrived at the secure residential chambers expecting to find the soldier assigned to that post at attention with the monarch ready to go.

Instead, they found yet another unconscious body, and every single one of those crack soldiers felt the dread an anguish of a mission that might very well have already failed. The unconscious guard's neckguard had been ripped off, just like Quong at the front gate. Again, there was bruising on this one's throat, and he bore further evidence of a chemical attack: his eyes leaked mucus and dusky tears that smelled like one of those awful new Fire Flakes stands that were popping up in the Lower Ring.

Panic set in, and no one was concerned any longer with whistles. All nine soldiers immediately dashed for the doorway, leaving the palanquin behind, and being Earthbenders they enlarged it as necessary to avoid a traffic jam, in effect nearly destroying the entire wall. They did the same to all the other walls they found in their way, and managed to cross the entire Royal Residential Complex in no more than three seconds. And so the last obstacle between nine alert and agitated elite Earthbender soldiers and the person who dared infiltrate their King's bedroom was a single wooden door.

Despite that, they were not the first to arrive.

Bosco beat them by a hair.

It was one small step, but it felt like a journey into the horizon for Azula. Her focus had to remain on keeping her traitorous hand from slitting her own throat, and that left only a portion of her mind to handle things like putting one foot in front of the other and keeping her balance during the whole unnecessarily complex process. Crawling her way off the bed was easier, in terms of coordination and physical effort, but it had taken her a while to figure out how to split her attention like that, and so it seemed to her like it had taken hours just to get this far.

And yet it was almost like someone was helping her, propping her up whenever she momentarily faltered.

Azula was several steps away from the room's exit, still, when she heard the commotion. The unmistakable sounds of crashing and Earthbending sounded through the door and rattled it on its hinge. Azula froze in place and nearly lost control of her Traitor Arm again. This was exactly what she had been hoping to avoid. The time for stealth was apparently over, but she was in no shape to fight her way through the whole palace's security force. She would need a plan for getting out of the building while avoiding a confrontation. A plan. Plan.

She had more chemical weapons in her sleeves, her Kyoshi war fans tucked into the back of her belt, and a knife in the hand that wouldn't obey her.

A plan.

What kind of a plan could she put together with those materials?

Azula tried to think, but it was extremely hard to do that while fighting off the suicidal Dai Li programming and keeping herself on her feet.

She needed...

...a plan...

Then the door exploded in her face and it was all she could do to grab the Traitor Arm before it could stab her again. It snapped up through the haze of her surprise as though to complete its mission, but Azula managed to raise her other hand in time and catch the fist that held the knife. She didn't manage to stay upright, though, and so her first view of her assailant was from the floor while he towered over her.

It was a bear.

Distantly, through her shock, she heard the sound of Earthbending, and a snatch of a voice saying, "-the bear deal with the assassin, the thing is crazed-" Then stone bumped against stone, and Azula was locked with a bear in a room that no longer had a door. With a bear. Not a platypus-bear, not a skunk-bear, not an armadillo-bear, or even a gopher-bear. It was just a bear, it looked like it weighed several hundred pounds, and it roared with bone-rattling force as it stood on its hind legs. Then it looked down at Azula, and growled.

Oh no.

Azula was having trouble putting her feelings into words, even in her own head, but the primal fear she was feeling ran through her body with its own chilling eloquence. The fear wasn't at all diminished by the silly outfit the animal was wearing, the yellow shirt and giant green hat that was tied atop its head, or by its name. Bosco. The Earth King's pet and companion. Azula had not personally seen this animal before, but she had heard stories of it, of how it was as docile and pampered as a housecat and knew none of the feral instincts of its kind. Apparently, that only went so far. It was a good lesson, that even the friendliest animal could be pushed to a natural violence. The death of its owner was enough for this bear.

Seeing Azula intimidated before it, Bosco fell back to a four-legged stance and gave her one last glare, then bound over to the bed. The bed where the Earth King's body was still lying.

Bosco didn't even need to get close; seeing the corpse was enough. It gave a long groan with resonance so deep that Azula could feel the vibrations in her teeth, then the bear turned back to face her. Gone was the snarling; now the expression the animal gave her was drooping. Azula's fear abated against that face, and she found within it a reflection of her own guilt. She had been so righteous, so driven to find out what had been done to her memory that she had blundered into a trap that had killed the Earth King. He had done nothing to her, nothing except helping in his own way to save an insane and dying criminal. He had said so, and she believed him; the man couldn't lie to save his life.

Yet she had still killed him. It didn't matter that it had been the work of Long Feng, because even if she couldn't remember exactly how she had come to be in the former Dai Li's power, she had still somehow failed and let herself become his pawn. That she hadn't desired it didn't make the Earth King's death any less her responsibility. Her choices had been less than perfect, and less than perfect was less than acceptable. Plus, she was just plain tired of killing people without meaning to.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to the bear.

Bosco grunted at the sound of her voice, and then began growling at an almost subsonic level that made its earlier groan sound like a child's laughter. The bear's furry, dark-eyed face tightened again into a predator's humorless grin, and it rose again on two legs and began stomping towards her. Bosco, it seemed, was not interested in apologies.

At least Azula had been given enough time to get over her terror. She rose to her feet- shakily, for she still had to concentrate to keep the Traitor Arm in place- and did her best to take a defensive stance. A stiff breeze might have been enough to knock her over, and she was stuck with only the use of her off hand, but she wasn't a warrior dependent on a weapon, or an Earthbender who needed a solid stance. She had a free hand a clear sight.

That was enough for Fire.

As Bosco took another few stomps towards her, Azula punched a fist at the ground between them and summoned a fireball that splattered blue flame across the thick carpet. It immediately caught into a good blaze, and it was the mere exertion of will that kept the fire from spreading dangerously, an exertion that was a lot easier than willing herself to stay on her feet. That flame should keep the animal back.

Bosco took one look at the blue blaze, growled with unmistakable derision, then used its hind legs to push itself into a leap that took it right over the fire. Bosco landed on its front legs first right beside Azula, and then as soon as its hind legs were down it raised one of the front paws again and reached out to swipe at Azula.

It was so fast, she barely would have had time to consider dodging if she were healthy and in full control of her body. She didn't have enough time to imagine the damage that the bear's claws would do to her fragile flesh before the paw struck her and sent her flying across the bedroom.

The shear power in that blow was enough to drive Azula out of her mind for a brief moment, and when her focus returned she opened her eyes to find the Traitor Arm positioning the knife over her throat again. Azula once again grabbed at it with her left hand, and the primal desperation that came from being attacked by a bear actually gave her a little extra strength to settle it back down again. Once that was taken care of, Azula had time to realize that while the whole left side of her chest was sore from the bear's blow, her clothes and skin were unbroken.

What about the bear's claws?

Azula looked up to see Bosco approaching her warily again, the fire on the carpet now orange and beginning to spread, and the sight of the stupid shirt and hat over his brown fur inspired the answer. They filed his claws. He could only pound on her, not claw her to death. Getting to her feet again, Azula had to admit that being pounded to death was still quite likely. Summoning a flame was a bit beyond her now, but it was a simple thing to grab the fires of the burning carpet and yank them away and into the air. She sent the blue-again flames circling around in a wave that would strike the ground at the bear's front paws, but then Bosco surged forward again and batted at her with enough strength to send her flying into the nearest wall.

The pain of the impact nearly covered the feel of her flames dissipating into the air. Her back struck the wall first, but her momentum was strong enough to snap her head against the wall right after, and stars exploded into her reality. She felt herself losing the thread of consciousness, but a clear shaft of comforting light shone through the supernova in her vision, and a warning whispered directly into her brain that if she let herself go, then the Traitor Arm would end her life. She fought back against the flood of dizziness and darkness, and extended her will back toward the hand that held her enemy's knife. She had trouble finding it from her position outside reality, but the same shaft of light that anchored her to wakefulness guided her up her own Qi-path to the hand, and she threw her willpower against it.

A lifetime later, she opened her eyes to find the knife perched above her, unmoving. She had done it. She had stopped it.

Then she looked past the blade and the hand that aimed it and saw the growling face of a bear looking down on her.

Oh, right. That.

Bosco was growling again with his teeth bared, and Azula was forced to acknowledge that while the bear's claws might be blunted by manicures, his teeth were still those of a wild predator. And Bosco looked like he knew this, too. Still, there was hope. Azula still had her Firebending, and even though she could barely feel her limbs, they weren't needed to summon the azure flame. It would be a simple task to spit a large enough fireball right into Bosco's face. It would land well before the bear could sink his teeth into Azula's head, and there was a good chance it might be a fatal injury.
But then Azula looked into the bear's dark, hurting eyes- eyes that reflected her own pinched face- and realized that she was tired of killing. If there was any other way she could survive, she had to take it before she drove herself crazy. The lack of guilt that had enabled to her to infiltrate the Upper Ring and the palace was gone, and her regret pierced her heart just like the shaft of light that had helped her stay the knife. "I understand," she whispered, just before Bosco lunged.

Bosco stopped and stared at her.

Could the animal really understand her words? Unlikely. Perhaps it was responding to the tone of her voice. Either way, it didn't matter. As long as she drew breath, she had to press on. "I never wanted to kill anyone. I... just... it just keeps happening around me..."

Bosco growled again. Saliva oozed down his teeth and dripped onto Azula's neck. It burned where the knife had started to cut her, before.

"I understand that you need to kill me, and I'm not going to be able to fight this knife off forever. Better dead than a brainwashed doll, anyway. At least no one else will die because of my stupid mistakes."

Bosco pushed its face forward, nudging her with his nose. Did it want her to fight back? To make it more sporting?

Azula lowered her gaze, seeking out the knife she clutched in her Traitor Hand. "I can't even control myself. If you don't kill me now, I'm not going to be able to stop myself from going after the bag of droppings who messed with me, and burning whatever it takes to get revenge. And who knows how many people are going to die because of that?"

Bosco made a rumbling sound, opened his powerful jaw wide, lunged forward-

-Azula shut her eyes against her coming death-

-and the only sensation she felt was the strong tug of the front of her tunic as she was dragged over the carpet.

Azula opened her eyes, and found that Bosco was pulling her across the room by his jaws. She was too confused to even consider fighting back, and Bosco stayed focused until he dropped her in front of the massive windows that let the moonlight stream into the room. From her spot on the floor, Azula looked up at the windows, then over at Bosco, and could only stare with a complete lack of comprehension.

Bosco growled, nudged her with its nose, and then looked up at the windows.

Azula's jaw dropped in shock, and she almost lost her mental grip on the Traitor Arm. "You want me to leave?"

Bosco rumbled.

"Why?" Azula resisted the urge to shake her head. She must be crazy; now she was negotiating with a bear.

Bosco growled, and looked back over at the bed where the Earth King's body had been left.

She sucked in a breath as understanding finally dawned on her. "You want revenge. On the one truly responsible."

Bosco rumbled again.

No, that couldn't be it. Sure, the Sky Bison Appa was smart, and seemed to respond to Aang sometimes as if it understood the Airbender, but Sky Bison were special, weren't they?

But then again, wouldn't a bear that wasn't a platypus-bear, or a skunk-bear, or an armadillo-bear, or even a gopher-bear, be something special, too? Azula carefully got to her feet, and was just starting to ponder how she was going to get down to the ground through a window that was three stories up when there came the sound of grinding stone behind her, and heavy voices wafted out from the hallways.

"What's going on in there?"

"It's too dark to see, shine that lantern over here!"

"There! By the window!"

Azula had to do something quick as the guards began pushing into the bedroom, so naturally she decided to light something on fire. A wide wave of her good hand sent an expanding pulse of blue fire out across the room, licking at the carpet below as it flew, and the armored figures rushing towards her all stopped reflexively from the heat and the light. Azula was just starting to go back to pondering the functional points of her needed escape when she felt a familiar tug on the back of her tunic. She barely had enough time to recognize the tug of Bosco's teeth on her clothes when a heavy yank swung her effortlessly up onto the animal's back. She had just managed to grab the stupid yellow shirt with her good hand when Bosco pushed itself up and through the window.

It was a long way down, yet the bear had landed roughly but unharmed on the ground before she could even register the fall. (Azula had to grab the Traitor Arm again when she lost focus in her surprise.) She could hear shrill whistles in the night, but nothing close by. She was in a garden of some kind, the paths barely visible in the watery glow of the moon, observed only by topiaries shaped like large animals. She supposed that was fitting. Throwing one last look of gratitude and promise at Bosco, Azula stumbled off into the night.

A cart. She had to find one of the carts that came into the palace with supplies. If she could hide herself in one, somewhere that the guards wouldn't think to look, they might assume that she had already escaped and she'd be able to take advantage to get off the palace grounds and out into the Upper Ring. In the Upper Ring, dressed like a spy, carrying a knife, barely in control of her body.

What she would do from that point, she had no idea.

The Hidden Gem was making excellent time.

The cargo junk was riding the cool winds and waves up and around the northern coast of the Earth Kingdom, plying waters that had once belonged to fleets of Water Tribe hunters in ages past. Not the type of people to waste such a good opportunity, Meisai and her father had agreed that they should sail through the night and take advantage of the good conditions and bright moon while they lasted. Meisai had napped during the afternoon while Father had overseen half of the new crew, then she took over after the moon had risen and played captain to the other half of the 'steamers.'

From her station at the steering wheel, Meisai watched by lamp light as Mongke clumsily anchored one of the masting lines with a knot that was just barely adequate. "Hey, a word?"

Mongke looked over with a half-hearted glare, then shrugged and nodded. He gave one last pull at the knot, and then jogged over from the other side of the deck. He didn't quite stand at attention, but his back was straight and his gaze was steady, or at least steadier than the feathers in his topknot that were being battered by the wind. "Mongke, reporting."

Meisai nodded over at the knot he had been working on. "I thought, when I hired you, that you guys were Fire Navy." Meisai crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the locked wheel. "You have sailing skills, sure, but I'm pretty sure now that you saw the Navy as a taxi, if anything. A knot like that would have gotten you thrown overboard during the war."

Mongke snorted at that. "You were Navy?"

"Firebender marine detachment, under the Sea Patrol command. We spent more time groundside than on the water, but I saw enough to pick some things up."

Mongke nodded slowly, and there was no mistaking the evaluating stare he was giving her again. Meisai felt a sting of unease in her gut, and wondered if she had already said too much. Mongke and his crew hadn't seemed like the type to report deserters, if they weren't deserters themselves, but you could never be sure.

Finally, Mongke's lip twitched and he said, "We were special forces. One of the roving independent units."

Meisai managed to resist the urge to shout, "Aha!" So that was why they looked like refugees from a circus. The special independent units were teams of top-tier warriors, usually covering a variety of combat and support skills, that could be sent as a quick-moving force into enemy territory to soften up larger targets, interrupt supply lines, or conquer small settlements that would have been logistically troublesome for the main Fire Army. What Meisai did allow herself, though, was to ask the next question that came to mind: "So how did you end up working a steamer in the colonies? Er, former colonies."

Mongke snorted again, then turned away to look out across the sea, towards the Earth Kingdom coast just barely visible on the nighttime horizon. "The war didn't end in a way we could... appreciate. You find less bounty hunters on the seas than on the land, and it's a lot harder to track a group that can just take a vacation on the other side of the ocean when it wants. But maybe you'd know about that, already."

Meisai didn't react. There was no point in denying it, but neither was there a point in blatantly incriminating herself.

Mongke apparently wasn't waiting for an answer from her. He turned back to look at Meisai and raised a finger. "But don't think that we couldn't handle ourselves! The Rough Rhinos were some of the best!" He searched her eyes for a moment, then relaxed again. "We worked hard during the war. Did things that no one else could do, or wanted to do. Did things our Fire Lord now says were wrong. Maybe he never heard, but you don't win a war by holding back. We were ordered to win, so we did. Putting up with sassy bounty hunters sniffing after us for the rest our lives just sounded like more trouble than it was worth."

Meisai found herself nodding. She had actually heard of the Rough Rhinos, and Mongke wasn't exaggerating. They were known for being among the best. They were also known to be utterly ruthless, a unit that didn't have a problem with hitting purely non-military targets. Farms burned and people died by their hands. On the other hand, was Meisai any better? How do you measure which killings were more acceptable when your Lord proclaimed that the whole war was wrong, and everyone who believed in it was at best mistaken? Didn't that mean all the supposed soldiers were really mere murderers? How could you compare individual crimes when everyone involved had their full honor stripped from them? Meisai nodded slowly in the moonlight. "I'm not one for trouble myself."

He nodded at the promise implicit in her statement, but his lip still quirked in a smirk. "Cargo in Ba Sing Se? Picked up by a bunch of Firebenders who don't want to be famous?" He shrugged. "Trouble enough. Even the Dragon of the West met his match there. The only reason I'm going is for the parts I can get for my ship. The longer it sits in dock, the sooner I may find an ash-sniffing shirshu all up in my hearth."

Meisai let him walk away and get back to work. That was another reason why she didn't feel comfortable comparing herself to the Rough Rhinos; she was sailing towards trouble of her own free will, and her actions in Ba Sing Se would probably cause even more trouble for the entire world.

Good thing she already had no honor. You couldn't lose what you didn't have.

Iroh woke up at dawn and made a pot of tea.

He did that every morning of course, because he was both a Firebender who valued the spiritual side of his gift, and because he really liked tea. It never ceased to amaze Iroh that one of his greatest pleasures- a warm cup of healthy liquid possessed of smooth but striking flavors- had become so intrinsic to his life and identity. He had been born a prince, raised as a warrior, worked as a conqueror, and yet here he was in the capital of his homeland's most enduring enemy, running a tea shop. People now associated him more with tea than anything else. They could scarcely mention his name without also mentioning tea. It was truly humbling, how thoroughly one could change their identity. It was also gratifying, how much happiness one could find by doing so.

Finishing his first cup of tea, Iroh got dressed and prepared for another busy day running his tea shop. It no longer got the heavy crowds it had seen when it first opened, but that was more because the visits were spread out over time than because he had lost any customers. Iroh could have wondered if those crowds would be so welcoming, had they known his true identity as the warlord who had once laid siege to this very city. Oh, the government knew, of course, but the Earth King himself had deemed that Iroh was more than welcome to continue on as 'Mushi,' so that he need not fear harassment. Perhaps no one would really care that he was of Royal Fire Nation blood, but at the same time, there were enough people with gold eyes and warm hands emigrating from the colonies, so what was the hurt in pretending to be one of them?

His daily preparations completed, Iroh poured himself another cup of tea and went to his window to greet the rising sun.

What he saw outside chilled his blood.

The sun was rising as warm and surely as it always did, but it was the city itself that disturbed Iroh. The 'Jasmine Dragon' sat on a hill in the center of the Upper Ring, and from his bedroom on the top floor of the building he had a good view all the way to the Earth King's palace. Today, a massive white flag had been draped over the palace gate to cover the Earth Kingdom sigil built right into the wall over the entrance arches. Iroh had studied Ba Sing Se's culture, both as a citizen of the city and as a General for the Fire Nation, and he knew that this signified.

The Earth King had died.

When Iroh was able to pull his eyes away from that sight, he found the streets of the Upper Ring empty, even for this early time of day when servants and delivery carts should have been starting their rounds. Empty, that is, except for the patrols of soldiers who walked the streets in pairs. Not quite a show of force, but a clear sign that panic and trouble would not be tolerated, no matter the tragedy.

Iroh bowed his head and resolved to light a memorial for Kuei. He wouldn't say that the Earth King was a friend, but they had been moving towards that, and they were at least regular friendly company to one another, time allowing. First, though, Iroh would have to put out a sign closing the Jasmine Dragon for business. He doubted he would have any customers today, but closing the tea shop officially would be a small sign of respect for the city's mourning. He shuffled downstairs, walked into the main dining hall, and found a disheveled woman in black lying curled up on the floor in the center of the room. So unexpected was her appearance that it took him a second to recognize his own niece.

Azula.

Iroh felt the Fire kindle in his heart when he realized what her appearance here meant. He took a deep breath, readied his body for a fight, and growled, "You were the one who killed him, weren't you?"

It was the growl of the Dragon of the West, a sound that had cowed armies once upon a time, but its effect seemed lost on the woman on the floor in front of him. At the sound of his voice, she lethargically raised her head and looked straight at him. Her eyes were bloodshot and had deep bags under them, and her hair auburn hair was tangled and sweaty.

She held a knife in her right hand, and even as she reacted to Iroh's presence, the arm moved to press the knife against Azula's own throat. She caught it with her left hand, her facial expression never changing, and pulled the arm back down with great effort.

Holding herself thusly, Azula gave a pleading stare and said, "Help me."

TO BE CONTINUED