Three Families Chapter 43: The Shards, an avatar: last airbender fanfic

The dead of night had passed, but still she stayed awake, moving through the forms in the rain as anybody could have expected of somebody of her skill and import. Years of conditioning meant that simple exhaustion didn't even do much to slow her down. She was a Child. The Children were supposed to be the best. She spearheaded that.

An axe kick, lighting with fire, seared down and flash-evaporated the water which pooled in the courtyard. There was an irony in this building's creation; it had canals on its outskirts, constantly perterbated to throw a spray into the air so that it could steal the heat of wayward flames before an onlooker could get caught by an errant blast. Nowadays, that was dealt with more by the incessant rains than anything else. She landed easily, and twisted forward into a pair of blasts which she announced to the morning with grunts of angry effort.

There was part of her which was angry. More than angry. Furious. She didn't know why, but it flowed through her veins with her blood. It chased her in her dreams, denying her sleep. She could stay fast for a while, but there was exhaustion, and then there was staying awake for a week. She was on day three. And it was starting to show. Yoji breathed deeply, her mouth pressed shut, and felt the water dripping off of her face. It was telling as well, that even her waterproof makeup couldn't contend with the weather in the Fire Nation these days; it peeled down in rivulets, making her face seem partially flayed in the dim of dawn. Something about that last set didn't set well with her.

So she did it again.

Twist. Flame. Curl. Flame. Bound, and two flames searing out with bicycle kicks. She landed easily, but her eyes narrowed. Something didn't feel right. So she did it again. Twist. Curl. Bound. The flames were as they were the previous attempt, as they were for the attempt before that, and the attempt before that. To most eyes, her efforts were close enough to perfection as to make no practical difference. Yoji could feel a difference.

"What is going wrong?" she asked. So she took another, deep breath, and tried something different. Instead of trying to move through precise movements, she twisted her arms around, a motion she'd seen in the enemy, in the Prince. The movement was simple. It was the sensation which startled her. That tearing apart of the things inside of her, like her stomach was being set alight and burned, a great void opening as it did so; then, when she could stand no more, and her control slipped, her body practically moved beyond her control, casting forward a hand with fingers clawed. A crack of thunder in the rain, and a bolt of lightning seared away, smashing into and shattering a portion of the badly-eroded tiles upon the roof. She stared at it. That didn't feel wrong.

"It's the fire," she said. And then, she stood wide, her legs taking a horse stance. The burn on her hamstrings was intense, and her glare was fixated straight forward. Her hands swept down, as she tried to pull her breathing in. Then, a scowl turned into a rictus, and she cast a hand straight up with a scream, a blast of naked flame shooting into the heavens and boiling the rain before it could even come close to her. She'd done this before; it was good practice for sustained blasts. The longer you stayed dry, the better.

It started petering out almost immediately. The scream curdled in Yoji's throat. So she thrust up her other hand, intending to disprove herself. The blast started as strongly as the other had, but as with the other, it wasn't for long. It started receding almost immediately. Yoji cut it off with a flick of her arms. She didn't notice how, when she did that, the flame of every lantern nearby flickered slightly. She wiped a hand across her face, heedlessly scrubbing more of the white concealer aside, revealing more totally a heritage she never wanted to claim. "I'm tired," She told herself. "I just need to get some sleep."

Her breathing hadn't settled; her mind hadn't ceased in its racing. Why? Why did her mind betray her so? She didn't know. And honestly, she didn't want to. Let Kori yammer on as he would, ask whatever questions he would. They were his problem. She knew where her loyalties lay. She breathed hard, sucking in droplets of water which burned in her nose. So she ignited them, blowing them out as steam. She wasn't going to drown while standing today. "I'll just rest. Everything will sort itself out," she told herself. A lie. And more pressingly, a lie in a language she shouldn't know how to speak, said without even conscious awareness. She turned, heading back to the buildings of the Royal Palace. But she did not return unremarked.

Red eyes, burning and pulsing with black striations, watched from the shadows of the lanterns. A step, and a body formed around those eyes. It swung Its head around, looking without plan, but not without purpose. There was a shaman nearby. A powerful one. And important one. And the Shard was hungry. But if there was one saving grace for that unfortunate soul, it was that at the moment, he was as much as invisible to It.

There was a hiss, words beyond language. Not here. The Shaman is not here. The Avatar is not here. Search elsewhere.

The Shard stepped back into the shadows, the body dissolving away, leaving only the eyes staring out of the darkness. Then, the eyes collapsed down into a pair of red lines, before those red lines erased themselves from the courtyard of the Royal Palace, and in a way, from reality itself.

"Hey! New guy! Food!" the words washed over him, but he couldn't hear them. Not really. His eyes were glazed, his focus a thousand miles away. He didn't even react as the bowl was kicked over, and it spilled rice onto the floor. Sharif stared out. But he was without smell. He was without music. It was distressing in a way he couldn't explain. And he couldn't think. Not even with the false brain. There was no false brain, here. The guard, abuser he fashioned himself to be, turned and left the Si Wongi to his fate, either of food or famine. As the locks bolted into place, Sharif slowly turned his gaze down. He picked up the rice in a single hand full, and placed it into his mouth, chewing mechanically. He neither noticed nor cared that he'd eaten hen-roaches in that befouled handful.

There was a purpose. He could remember that, at least. He was here for a reason. He was here until the time was right. He didn't know when that time was. His eyes slid from the bowl and to the cell itself. There was a portion near the door which was outside of an internal cage. Unlike the ones used to contain most prisoners, though, the bars weren't made of steel as most were. Instead, they were thick logs of black ironwood, the cell actually built within them rather than cell built first and the bars installed later. The wood was lacquered, and painstakingly carved with thousands of pictograms and icons for each log, each a prayer and a ward against spirits, each icon barring the approach of a specific kind. Sharif could see, from those present, that there was one notably missing. But who of all people would know about Void?

To the consideration of most, it was a perfect prison. There was no way that Sharif could batter down the pillars of wood; they were too hard by a solid measure. He couldn't deface the symbols to let a spirit slip through, because he'd need to do the same thing for every single one of the same symbol on every log within the structure of the cell, including the ones hidden under the stone of the floor. The door was sturdily locked, the key well outside any reach of the prisoner. The food was slid into his durance vile by a stern kick from a yard away.

No way out. Obviously.

Sharif's head turned to the door, as it opened again. When it did, two entered. Sharif blinked at them, and got slowly to his feet. He rubbed uncomfortably at his neck, his fingers sliding across the choker which made his attempts at swallowing his meager meal somewhat more difficult, and watched with blank expression as the siblings filed in, their backs against the wall. Almost as though they were afraid he might lash out at them. The brother said something to Sharif, in a language he could no longer speak. What language he had remaining was restricted to Altuundili and the Tianxia polyglot, the only tongue which survived the destruction of over half of his brain.

"I find I cannot sleep," Sharif said when the young man stopped.

"He can't speak Huo Jian," the sister said, in Tianxia. The brother threw up his hands and muttered something angry. Sharif looked to him, and then back to the sister. "He says that it's annoying that he'll have to speak through me. I told you to pay attention in class! This was useful!"

The brother rolled his eyes. "When can I go? I am not supposed to be here," Sharif asked.

"The Fire Lord himself put a bounty on you. You're not going anywhere," the sister pointed out with a shake of her head. She pulled a stool from a darkened corner, and sat on it, leaning forward. "The fact that Ozai wanted you captured, and for a lot of money..." the brother broke in with something which was punctuated by a laugh. "...That's not the point, Hai. What are we supposed to do with it, anyway?" she turned her attention from annoyance at her brother to focus on the imprisoned shaman. "You're an associate of the Avatar's. That means that you're going to tell us what you know about him. If you do, we can get some leniency for you. Some comforts that'll make life a bit more bearable. If you don't... well... I understand that the rice harvest wasn't so great this year. So people... chafe... at the notion of giving it to prisoners."

"You do not know the Avatar?" Sharif asked.

"Personally, I don't want to go anywhere near him," the girl said, her arms spread in a defensive posture. A sense not of spirit, more of instinct and once-well-built social-talent told that the very notion of the Avatar was terrifying to her. But he didn't know enough to capitalize on that.

"He was not well. They would not tell him how to enter the Avatar State. That troubled him deeply, I believe," he said, his gaze moving down.

"The Avatar can't enter the Avatar State?" the girl tried to confirm.

"He knows very little. He barely grasped Form," Sharif pointed out. The twins shared a confused glance. "I fear that the other Avatar will not be enough for him."

"...other Avatar?" she asked, alarm clear.

"Yes. The he that is a she. The she that is after he. That will be after he, and is," Sharif said with a nod. Then he turned, and craned his neck up to watch a spider-fly as it darted to a bug caught in its web, and started to bind it right up.

"You're not making any sense. Are you saying there's two Avatars?" she pressed, now standing with her hands pressed against the warded logs.

"There should not be. There can not be. And yet is," Sharif said slowly, watching the arachnid. "She is... brash. Heedless of her damage. I fear what will come of her. I fear what it means that she is."

The girl turned to her brother and said something swiftly in that other language which Sharif couldn't speak, and just as she did, he slowly grew more and more alarmed. He shouted something at Sharif, a note of panic in his voice. The sister turned. "You are lying. There cannot be more than one Avatar. That's the way the cycle works!"

"The cycle is... flawed," Sharif said, slowly turning back to her. Her amber eyes were very, very wide, and her hands clutching those logs were practically claws. "It reaches withershins. I have great fear for what is to come."

The girl backed away, and said something to her brother. The brother shot a glare at Sharif, before looping an arm around his sister's shoulders and guiding her out of the room. Before he shut the door, he turned to Sharif, though, and mustered what little Tianxia he knew. "I don't know what you're doing, but it won't work."

"Hope that it does. For your sake," Sharif said, and then he turned back, staring at and through a wall, as he tried to form a plan with a mind barely capable of remembering one.

Chapter 3

The Shards

Everybody in the Western Air Temple was walking on eggshells. Well, no, now that Aang thought about it, there were only a few who were walking on eggshells; Nila and Malu had no contact with Azula before Ba Sing Se, and Toph had her usual brusque dismissal of problems making her stable if ambivalent. It was the Water Tribesmen, the royal siblings, and the Avatar who seemed most on edge. And even then, only one of the siblings.

Something about the dynamic of the group had changed, either because of Azula's recovery, or coinciding with it. Aang had gone immediately to Sokka when he first started to notice it, and asked if something had changed while he was in the jungle. Sokka dodged the question. Nobody else seemed to know. At first, Aang was content to let it be. Now, it was starting to itch like his hair.

Time and time again, though, he found himself wandering past the tower which Azula and her brother had claimed as their own dwelling chambers. Aang knew it had been a mistake to have everybody all spread out across the temple complex; they didn't feel like a team, this way. Just a bunch of people who ate at around the same time. He was going to have to do something about that. And his most recent pass of the inverse tower was all the impetus that Aang needed to turn his wander into a mission. He crossed the bridge with a steady stride, ignoring the quiet hiss which resulted in the occasional droplets of water dripping from the edge of the precipice. It wouldn't have been audible at all, were there not so many droplets. The door ahead of him was wedged open, more by the fact that one of the hinges had rusted right off, and the other served more as a pivot than a hinge. Aang slipped past that door, and into the tower itself.

In his mind's eye, he went back to that time of innocence, a year or a century ago, when he came to the Western Air Temple. The time he spent with the Nuns, or rather, the time they spent desperately trying to teach him while he goofed off with Kuzon and their friends. There was some irony that the royals had taken up in this tower; Aang passed by his old room, so he slowed, turning to look inside. A distraction of a few minutes couldn't get in his way. He backed up, and entered the place that, once upon a time, was home.

Gods and spirits, things had changed. It seemed like only yesterday that he'd packed up a bare essential of his things and flew his bison back to the south. He wagered that he'd left behind dozens of books, a hundred scrolls, and a fist-full of who-knows-what else that the nuns wanted him to have and consider. He stooped down, running fingers through the sooty stain on the ground where his bed used to sit. Nothing but dust and ashes, now. A glance took in grey, weather-stripped walls. Once, they had been bright and vibrant, yellows and oranges almost blinding to the eye. He turned around, and saw the minute scraps of wood that poked up from a damp humus which collected there. The bookshelf in the room had taken up most of the wall. Now, just dirt. So much was lost.

With a sigh, he turned, opening the closet. He blinked a few times, as he saw the faded kavi which hung there; it was a size and a half too small for him, he wagered, but it still amazed that it had lasted this long. He reached out, running his fingers along it. When they did, there was a wet tearing sound, and the cloth of the kavi parted under his fingers like spider-webs, even emulating them to the point of sticking, so when Aang pulled his hand back in shock, it was only to tear the kavi in half from the strands still clinging to his fingertips. He gave a grimace of worry, and wiped off those rotted threads on the wall, before slamming the door shut.

It wasn't until a second later, as he was trying to get his heart to stop hammering, that he remembered. There was nobody to chastise him for ruining his clothes. Not anymore. His head hung low at that memory.

"Remembering the old days?" Azula's voice came from the doorway. Aang glanced up, and saw how she leaned against the frame, her toes bent up where they packed into a corner, with her legs spanning the threshold . "I know what that's like, believe me."

"Azula, I..."

"You what?" she asked with a mild frown. When Aang didn't answer, she just shook her head for a moment, and sighed. "You know... there's a small chance that I might have been somewhat unreasonable for the last few months."

"...is that an apology?" Aang asked.

"No."

"It sounded like an apology."

"I do not apologize!" Azula snapped.

"Fine, it wasn't an apology," Aang said, hands warding. She rose from the frame, walking to the window and leaning now against its edge, her brow pressed against her forearm as she watched the falling of the last droplets of last-night's rain. "Have you been alright? I mean, with your brain being put back together and a new soul getting shoved in there? Wait, that didn't sound right..."

"I'm fine," Azula said. And then her head shifted against her forearm. "...I'm not fine."

"You are, or you aren't?"

"Weren't you listening?" Azula asked sharply, turning to cast a golden-eyed glare at him.

"I was, but you're not making a whole lot of sense," Aang said.

She moved from the window to squat onto the floor, her back straight against the wall behind it. "I find myself thinking about the old days. A lot, about the old days," she said.

"The old days?"

"The last time I did this... Ty Lee was paralyzed, and Mai had betrayed me and had to be thrown in prison. Both of those were my fault. In the other, Ty Lee was the arch-enemy of the Fire Nation, and Mai... I had to kill her. If I hadn't put them in those circumstances, if I'd been more careful, more perceptive... I wouldn't have lost my friends."

"Mai's fine, though," Aang tried to console her. "And I'm sure that whoever Ty Lee is, she's alright as well."

"She was a good person," Azula said. "Ty Lee. Not smart, but the kindest girl I've ever known. Do you know what she did after she tracked me down? She crawled up to my door, heaved herself in, and forgave me. Forgave me for destroying her career, her very identity," she gave a quiet, sad laugh. "I didn't deserve friends like her."

"You must have. Otherwise, she wouldn't have tried so hard," Aang said.

"And I hated you," Azula said, shaking her head. "I wanted you to die so much that it kept me awake at nights. But... after I got out of that accursed hospital, I had other things to worry about. Like Chiyo."

"Chiyo?" Aang asked.

"My daughter," she said. "I dedicated the first six years of my freedom to doing anything in my power to punish you, to usurp Zuzu's place on the Burning Throne. My daughter bore the brunt of that neglect. She didn't deserve that. At least... At least I got to fix that mistake. But I didn't fix it enough, I think."

"You do know that all of this is in the past," Aang said.

"Do you think I'm stupid?" Azula asked dryly.

"What? No, I was just..."

"Of course, I know it's the past. But the past gives perspective. The mistakes I'd made then, they shaped me. And I know their lessons. I haven't had to suffer them. Those around me hadn't had to suffer them. But do you know what comes to mind the most, out of everything I remember of that other lifetime?"

"What?" Aang asked.

Azula let out a quiet sigh, and her lips pulled up, just slightly, into a tiny smile. "I was happy."

"Really?" Aang asked.

"I hated it at first. Powerless, penniless, trying to raise a child I had no business raising. Burning every bridge I or my family had ever made, until I was all alone. But there was one. A man who never knew my name, who I really was. He was just a... a pleasant distraction... as I passed through town tracking down one of my schemes. By then, he was about six years younger than me..."

"...and how old were you?" Aang asked, cautiously.

"...and he never asked why. When that, my last option failed, I had to go crawling back. He was the only place I could think of that might – might – let me in, even for one night to get out of the dark," that smirk returned. "You'd have laughed had you seen me. Destitute, nothing but the clothes on my back to my name, with a seven year old girl at my side, sired by another man he'd never met. He had a thousand reasons, most valid, for turning me away. He didn't."

"He sounds like a good guy," Aang said.

"I expected him to... take advantage... of my vulnerability. But he never did. He never demanded anything. He just... wanted to help me," she paused, and glanced to Aang. "It's no surprise that you'd like him. He was a lot like you, in retrospect. In time, my resentment faded. I started to enjoy just... seeing him when I woke up in the morning. I might have even loved him."

"Might have?" Aang asked.

She let out a sarcastic chuckle. "I don't know if you've noticed, Avatar, but I am not exactly the most sociable of people. I tend to frighten, rather than fascinate. The one time I tried flirting in my adolescence, it ended with me burning a boy's house down. I am a warrior, have been a warrior since I was four years old. I was never a girl. Not the way that Uncle would have wanted; warriors, unlike girls, don't have the time to waste with feelings and..." she threw her hands up, lacking the words to stress her concept.

"So he was your husband, back then?" Aang asked, more out of rote than anything else. He didn't like the idea of having to compete with a seven year old, after all.

"No," she shook her head. "I never did marry him. He was a commoner, and I had my pride," another sigh. "My pride hasn't done a lot for me, over the years. But he was a good man. One I couldn't keep, because of my own... I don't know. Insecurities?" she shook her head. "I was hard to get along with at the best of times. Daichi didn't help things," she cut him off as he opened his mouth to ask the question, "– my son – but even so, we had more than a few good years. Happy years. I didn't even realize it had happened until I was in the middle of it. I stopped resenting Zuzu and the shack that I was living in, and I just... lived it."

"That's the way life works, sometimes," Aang said. She nodded at that. Finally, she turned back toward him.

"What did you want? Or were you just rummaging through dead memories? You won't find much there, that I'm sure of."

Aang's wheels spun for a moment before he could get words to come out of his mouth. "I think you should sleep with me..." he began. Azula's face began to twitch down into a scowl, so Aang quickly continued, even though it didn't seem much better, "and Sokka and Katara and Toph up in the central tower."

"Why?" she asked, her outrage vanishing into indifference.

"This place is too big, too empty, with all of us spread all around," he said. "I don't like it when I walk the halls like this. I remember this place when it was filled with nuns and the old masters, girls in training and schooling. It doesn't seem right like this. The monks were the life-blood of the Western Air Temple. Without them... it's just dead."

"So you'd rather have people around you, because you can't stand the quiet," Azula summed up. Aang gave a mild shrug. She let out a put-upon sigh and rolled her eyes. "Very well, but if the Tribesman tries to 'accidentally' spy me when I'm bathing, he'll get a new burn to compliment his old one."

"Yeah, I don't think that's going to be a problem," Aang said.

Azula turned to Aang, with an expression... somewhat like insult. "And why not?"

"Well, he's kinda got a thing for this girl on the far side of the planet," Aang pointed out.

She nodded. "Ah. Yes. That."

"What?" Aang asked.

"Where I come from, if we're talking about the white-haired Tribal girl, she's been dead since winter. Why did she survive?"

"Why did she die... last time?" Aang asked.

Azula gave her head a shake at that question. "Because she had to replace the moon, and... and that didn't happen," she blinked a few times, staring into the distance. "So much has changed."

"Well, in that case, it changed for the better," Aang offered.

"Hardly. Zhao owns the North Pole," Azula said. "Zhao! That smug snake that I repeatedly set on fire because he's such an ass! He's supposed to be dead right now!"

"Well, that's the way it is," Aang said. "There's not much point arguing against reality. It tends to have a way of knocking you over no matter what you want to believe."

She sighed, then stood. "I... feel a need to talk about this. Gather the others; I don't feel like repeating myself."

"You don't have to order me around," Aang said.

"Apparently I do, because it seems the only way that you get anything done," Azula pointed out, then pulled him to his feet with one hand and no apparent effort.

"Azula?"

"What."

"Were you always this strong? I mean, pick-up-people-with-one-hand strong?"

"No. I was actually once quite frail and waif-like," Azula said with a roll of her eyes. Then, a shove through the door. "Well, don't just stand there, go 'gather your friends'."

Ozai looked up, his eyes darting more furtively than he would have liked to admit, to the door creaking as it opened. Ordinarily, such a sound would have been lost under the din of the day-to-day goings-on of the Royal Palace. Not surprising that the din had died down in recent days and weeks; after the various malcontents and traitors were weeded out and cast off of black sands, there honestly weren't many left working in the palace. He knew that he had to replace them at some point. But that would be a safer time. Perhaps after Sozin's Comet returned. After he'd won the war.

He would have liked to have not sighed with relief when he saw who had entered the throne-room via that side entrance. She ascended behind the curtain, taking her place two spaces to Ozai's left, kneeling down without a word said. "So. You have returned?" Ozai said quietly, and the flames that cut off they from the rest of the completely vacant chamber mounted a little higher.

"As I said I would," Akemi said smoothly. She turned a gaze toward him. "The palace seems quieter than when I left. Is all well?"

"Of course," Ozai said, perhaps a bit too quickly.

"Everything's just fine," Azula whispered into his ear. Ozai quickly turned his head, trying to spot her, but there wasn't anything but malicious laughter coming from the flames in that direction. With another purging breath, he mounted those flames a little higher, as though they could somehow ward off a figment of his own mind.

"...there has been some trouble with the Coordinator, but I have a feeling that he will be well in hand soon enough," Ozai continued, forcing the words out past a tongue which felt like a boot-heel.

Akemi, though, raised a brow, a drastic expression for her. "Are you well, my lord?" she asked.

"I am fine," Ozai said. Lied.

"You can't hide from what you've done. The decisions you've made. The lives you've sacrificed for your own vanity and power. It doesn't matter how strong your armies get; I will always know how to find you," Azula whispered through the flames. Ozai wanted to growl at her, to scream at her, but he just felt exhausted. Like a leaden cloak had settled over him and was dragging him to the bottom of an infinitely deep ocean. Some mornings, he woke up hoarse of throat and cold of sweat, his hands shaking. He didn't remember his dreams, though. Small mercy.

"Need I consult the physician?" Akemi asked.

"I am fine!" Ozai snapped. Akemi leaned back, and turned to face forward once more.

"As you say, Fire Lord," she said. Then, after a pause he was certain had been practiced to its utmost, she half-turned to him again. "I thought it prudent to mention that Lord Zhao of New Bhatti was making a journey to the motherland. I am given to understand that he has performed his position at that frozen waste admirably."

Ozai nodded. "He has," he admitted. "Why do you ask?"

"I have asked nothing. Simply related something I had heard I thought of note," she said. "May I ask as to the wellbeing of my child?"

"She is well," Ozai said, facing the flames once more. "The Children know to protect the life of the Fire Lord's daughter to their last breaths, if need be."

"But not just any daughter," Azula pointed out. Ozai's eye twitched, and he glanced more fully to Akemi where she knelt.

"I was surprised when you left her behind. I thought it was a mother's place to coddle such infants."

"I trust my nurses to their duties," Akemi dismissed. That struck a bit of a worried note in Ozai's mind. Had he exiled them, as well? And if he had, how long ago had it been since he'd done so? "Is there something else you required, or are you waiting on solicitation?"

"No... I..." Ozai shook his head. "I grow fatigued."

"...it is barely after noon," Akemi pointed out.

"I am aware what time it is!" Ozai snapped. And then, he coached himself, pulling both his snapping wrath and the flames which welled up in response to it back into something more manageable. "I simply have had a trying day, keeping Azul's dissidents crushed under my heel. It is a trying process. I will be relieved when we are utterly rid of them."

"Another slaughter to your name. How typical," Azula said, appearing from the fire, seeming to be clothed in it. "Your only solution to any problem is to drown it in blood. Like father, like son."

"...I am greater than my father..." Ozai muttered in anger.

"What was that, Fire Lord?" Akemi asked.

"Nothing. Nothing at all," Ozai said. He rose to his feet, feeling a bit light headed as he did so. Sleep didn't come easily for him, these days, and less so with that shrill harpy of a girl screaming at him any time the shadows grew long. "I will be in my chambers. Join me when you are relieved of the rigors of travel."

"As you wish, Fire Lord," she said with a bow. Ozai dismissed the flames before him and started to walk down the dais, onto the black, reflective obsidian. There were so few he could trust. Himself, obviously. The Children were likewise beyond impeachment. And after they... the only name left was hers. She had served him tirelessly and faithfully for many years – in a number of capacities of which mistress was only the most recent. If he couldn't depend on her to hold her weight, then who could he?

"You can't send everybody away," Azula's voice followed him as he walked. "Because no matter what, you're never alone."

Ozai held his composure with an iron grip until he passed through the curtains which lead toward the royal bed-chambers. As soon as he was out of sight of his mistress – out of sight of everybody. He cast out his hands to either side, and blasted flame at the walls to either side, golden fire streaming out with hateful non-purpose, until they grew weary, and he pulled his hands back in. He was still angry, still furious. But he was so, so tired.

"Alright. We're all here. Did you want something?" Zuko asked of the group which had gathered around the fire, and his sister in particular. The airbender and the Si Wongi were cooking tonight's dinner, so they had the most obvious reason to be here. The other airbender, the girl, she wasn't anywhere to be found, but nobody was worried for her safety. She had purportedly survived the Purge with the entire might of the Fire Nation trying to murder her, for years. She'd be fine. As for the others? Azula's word alone brought them in.

"I've been giving a great deal of thought to what I've learned over my lifetime. I know for a fact that it doesn't accord with what has happened in this lifetime. So I need to know what great differences have occurred. For example, you," she pointed at the Si Wongi girl. "I have discovered why I have no recollection of you or anybody like you in my memories."

"Oh?" she asked, almost pointedly not looking at the Tribesman. He, in turn, was trying mightily to not look at her. The whole thing had Zuko a little baffled. Had those two gotten into a fight or something?

"It relates to your mother. In my time, Si Wong was hardly the nation it is today. Your mother, certainly, died in the assassination of the fifty-first Earth King. So you were never born."

"Fantastic. Who is this insane woman again?" she asked.

"Hey! My sister isn't crazy!" Zuko snapped.

"Really? You. Firebender. Were you or were you not mad as a sun-baked lizard until this very week?" the Si Wongi asked of Azula. Azula smirked.

"I like her," she said, casting a thumb to Nila. Zuko just glared at her, as she went back to cooking. "Great Whales wasn't a nation, either. Just an independent spread of barely-inhabited islands. Azul was a province, not a nation in all-but-name. And the North Water Tribe still existed."

"Really?" Katara asked, but her tone wasn't wondrous or appreciative. She sounded like she was insulted, by the tone she gave.

"If I were to lie, it would be to devastate you further," Azula pointed out. Katara seethed, and looked like she was about to say something sharp and angry, but both her brother and the Avatar restrained her. The former regretted it though.

"Ow! Katara, you bit me!" Sokka said, flapping his hand in pain.

"Well, don't get your hand in my face!" she answered him at a shout. Azula simply chuckled at the carnage and gave a glance to Zuko, who was, to be perfectly honest, happy to see somebody ruffling the waterbender's feathers. Their smirks were almost identical.

"Zhao died at the city you call Summavut, after killing the moon," Azula clarified. "I watched it happen. His hubris caused the Avatar," she indicated him with a vague gesture, "to summon a manifestation of the ocean which laid waste to the entire northern fleet. I am taken to understand that it was the white-haired one's sacrifice which undid that damage."

"You're taken to?" Sokka asked.

"Indeed. Your mother hit me in the face with a frying pan, so I was suffering a concussion at the time," Azula related, and not happily. There was stony silence from those two, at that.

"You met Mom?" Katara asked.

"Not to my benefit," Azula said.

"Mom died a long time ago," Sokka told her.

Azula let out a chortle. "Well, that's a pity for you; she hounded the Fire Nation for months. Even in prison she kept causing us problems," Azula pointed out.

"What... was she like?" Katara asked.

"This isn't the time," Azula dismissed. "So. I failed to take Ba Sing Se from Long Feng. So it remains in his hands and not the Fire Nation's. Our Uncle isn't in Ashfall, but rather a guest of the Grand Secretariat. And now, we're at a point which honestly, I am not sure how to advance from."

"I thought you knew everything about this part of your past," the other airbender asked.

"Were it not for Zuzu's clumsy lying, I wouldn't have even suspected the Avatar was alive. I did strike him with lightning, after all. Few indeed can survive that kind of punishment. I never knew exactly where you were until you 'magically' appeared to try to strike down my father with your Black Sun invasion. I was thorough, but I was not omniscient," she pointed out.

"See? What do I keep telling you guys?" Aang asked, which caused all of them to look at him wanly. He let out a gack which brought a smirk to Zuko's lips.

"Do you think Ozai knows that we're planning an invasion on that day?" Zuko asked her.

She took a breath, considering. "I'd have to guess yes. And it won't be easy to surprise him, since he'll bring Zhao into the battle, and he knows everything I knew about the invasion plan, which I learned from you," she pointed at Sokka, "because you weren't able to tell that I wasn't your girlfriend."

The way that Nila turned slowly toward Sokka could best be described as a death threat. But still, the words which came from her mouth were oddly calm. "...girlfriend?"

"Yes, I would have thought him slightly more perceptive than that. Although, in his defense, I was disguised as Suki."

Sokka leaned back, then glanced to his sister. "Who's Suki?"

"I don't know. Did we meet a Suki?" Katara asked, playing with her hair loopies. Zuko sighed and palmed his face.

"Yes, you did," he told them. "And I threw her in prison for attacking us near the start of winter."

"The Kyoshi Warrior? Her?" Sokka asked. "Really? Man, you come from a wacky alternate reality, I've got to tell you."

"So that was her trick? Funny, she had everybody convinced she was some sort of oracle," a new voice said. Zuko turned to his immediate left, and saw that there was a Tribesman squatting there, having arrived silently and without anybody else noticing. He was vaguely familiar, but Zuko couldn't place him; his hair hung loose, and thus draped over his ears; his eyes were a very dark blue; his clothing was all of Fire Nation style, but not of ordinary cut. Zuko quickly kipped to his feet and backed off, as most of the others around the fire-pit did as well. Some, like Aang, Katara and Azula, did so with short shrieks of alarm.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"Listening," the Tribesman said. Azula started to pull her arms through a lightning kata, and he raised a hand gently. "Oh, please. If I wanted to hurt you, I'd have picked you off one by one as you were coming to this little chin-wag. The fact is, I'm not here for a fight. I'm even unarmed."

"You're a waterbender," Azula pointed out.

"Well, as unarmed as a waterbender in the Fire Nation can ever be," he said.

"Where are the rest of them?" Zuko shouted, as he finally recalled exactly where this person had been seen before. "You were with the firebender and the earthbender; are they waiting in the shadows?"

He shook his head with a calm quite unbefitting the situation. Toph, for example, looked like she wanted to tear his spine out and beat him to death with it. "Yoji's in Caldera City. And as for Omo, if he's not dead, then I'm an airbender. Although, if you were wondering; no, I don't hold a grudge," he said to Nila in particular. She still looked like she was ready to chew lead and spit bullets. "Yoji wants you dead, though, so try to stay away from her. And you don't need to worry about Fire Nation troops storming in here, fire flying. I'm alone. It was the only way I could get here as quickly as I did."

"What do you want?" Katara snapped at him.

He motioned to the edge of the fire once again. "I want you to sit."

"We should just kill him before he has a chance to betray m... us." Azula said, her tones harsh but even.

"If you're certain that my presence is that damning, then you're welcome to try," he said with a shrug, and then turned away from Azula, which caused her to wilt a bit, and the lightning to drain out of her hands. It was the Tribesmen that he addressed directly, to the confusion of all. "So. You're from the South Water Tribe, right? Tell me something."

"What?" Sokka asked.

"Who am I?" he asked, earnestly and succinctly.

"Well, I guess we know what that smell was," Jet said, as he looked over the river which ran with scum and stench.

"I don't like the looks of this," Mai said, from her place on the embankment.

"Well, I don't like the smell of it," Jet added. Mai flicked a glare at him that silenced him from any more stupid jokes. That was Bug's thing; he just didn't have the timing. "Fine. Are you sure that we need to go this way? That water doesn't look healthy."

"I know my Fire Nation cartography. We cross the river to the port, we take the port to sea, and from there, inward," Mai said. "So much work just to talk to an old friend who likely doesn't even remember me. Zuko's plan better have been worth it."

"He had a plan?" Jet asked. Once again, Mai told him to stop joking with but a glance.

"We've got to find some way across the river," she told him, which should have been clear from the fact that they were standing on one side of the flow, while the other side vanished into fog and drizzle. "And I am not swimming in that river gunk."

"Didn't think you would for a second," Jet said with a shrug. He grabbed a limb of a willow, and started to lean out on it, only to have it tear loose with a wet plop, and only by Mai's panicked grab did he prevent himself from plunging into that horrid funk. She heaved herself bodily back to get him back onto solid ground, and ended up sitting on saturated humus at the end of it. Jet just stood there, baffled, holding a rotted-off tree-limb for his experience. "That was unexpected."

Mai, though, pushed herself up, and grabbed another limb on a different, nearby tree. With almost no effort, she snapped the limb which was as big around as one of her legs out of its origin and let it crash to the ground. "The plants here are diseased," she said. "Likely the animals, too."

"So, double 'don't touch the guck'?" Jet asked.

"I'd say quintuple, to be absolutely certain," Mai nodded. "Did you see anything before you almost took a bath in it?"

"Yes," he motioned vaguely to the southeast. "There was a scummy wharf a quarter mile that way. It seemed to have a barge in. Beats having to walk around a river."

"It does that," Mai said. The two of them walked through the forests, following the warp of the 'river', if this flood of toxic sludge could be called that. Even as she walked, she started involuntarily shivering. Jet, needless to say, noticed and pulled her a bit closer, draping his cloak over hers and letting the almost fiery heat of his body start to seep through her own soaking wet clothing. "I was fine," she said. Lied, a little.

"Yeah, well, maybe I just wanted to give my girl a hug," Jet said.

"Flatterer."

"I didn't hear 'stop'," Jet said. She didn't need to look back to know he had that smirk on his face. While it was a bit trickier going, trying to walk through the rotting woods like some four-legged post, they somehow managed it, erupting upon a cleared out section of the forest which had been built up into a jetty. That jetty had seen better days, though, as its black-sealed wood was starting to turn a crusty green. And the bargeman's hut had likewise seen better, as the door had been obviously kicked aside where it'd fallen off its rail. Thus, Mai could see inside, and the inhabitant reclining on a chair, his bare feet kicked up on the sill of a window.

"Our savior," Mai said flatly. Jet let her move free of him, and she walked up to the bargeman. He wasn't just reclining; he was tipping his chair back, even as he slept with his head on his hands. She cleared her throat, but that didn't cause anything but a snort of unconscious annoyance. Thus, she did as she often did these days, and sighed. Then, she did as Jet often did these days, and yelled at an idiot. "WAKE UP!"

The old man let out a yelp of alarm, and unbalanced his chair backwards, causing it to crash down, and shatter, under his weight applied in the wrong way on something not entirely structurally sound to begin with. He let out another snort, then pushed his little hat back into place, and bounded to his feet with surprising alacrity for somebody of his age. "Oh-ho, we've got visitors! Welcome to Jang Hui!"

"...Yes, we've noticed the river," Mai said.

"An Azuli? You're pretty far from home, little girl," he said, giving her a good-natured, elbow prod in her side. "And you must be her bodyguard! Where are you from? Ember? The Midlands?"

"I'm from..."

"The colonies," Mai cut him off, since Jet was getting that look in his eyes. "And he's not my bodyguard. Finally, what are you talking about? This doesn't look like much of a village."

"Oh, this is just the way to get to Jang Hui," he said. "I'm the village bargeman; folks call me Dock."

"You don't say," Jet answered flatly.

"Wait. The village is on the far side of the river?" she asked. Because the maps she'd studied in her childhood didn't indicate that.

"Not exactly," Dock said, as he ushered them onto the flat-sided barge and began to pull them along the rope which wound around a sort of capstan that he had to continually crank; it came up slimy, and the barge quickly started to stink. "Jang Hui's a fishing town. And what better place to get your fishing done than right on the river!"

Almost as though he'd timed it out perfectly, the first of many structures began to appear out of the fog and rain. They were all practically black for the creosote which proofed them against wet-rot, but unlike the buildings which were scattered all throughout Ember and the Midlands these days, they had a settled, elder look to them. These buildings, the way they were built, predated the Deluge.

"Well, that's nice. Is there a barge to the far side?" Mai asked.

"Oh, there is, but Bushi let it get all run down and ruined. Lazy old fart, that Bushi is," Dock complained.

"So... we'll be stuck on the floating village in the middle of a river of crap," Jet summarized. "We should have just gone down river."

"Oh, you'll not find a bridge across the Jang Hui. This is the only crossing 'less you like to swim."

"In that? No thank you," Mai said.

"You should try it. It does wonders for the constitution," Dock offered. Mai raised a brow, and turned to Jet. He likewise looked skeptical, if not a little alarmed. The old man continued to crank, and the village loomed closer, until the barge reached the rope's far end, and bumped into another jetty that sloshed against the river. "I recommend trying some of the local seafood. It's the likes of which you'll not find anywhere else in the Fire Nation!"

"I don't doubt that," Mai said. She tugged on Jet's sleeve, and the two of them got off of the barge, and headed up the jetty. It didn't take long to see that the village had empty huts. That wasn't something which happened often; there was always somebody wanting more space. Those that remained, watched the newcomers without any of the curiosity and joy that strangers usually caused when they passed through. Only drab, lethargic glances, before quietly turning away, or moving back to sit down somewhere.

"Mai..."

"What?" she asked, not liking the tone of Jet's voice. He glanced into a hut, and ducked inside it.

"These people are getting poisoned by the river," he said.

"It is polluted," she admitted.

"And you're just going to let that go?" he asked.

She shrugged. "What am I supposed to do? Troll their river for them? Or maybe you expect me to blow up the factory causing all the pollution?"

At that, Jet got a very thoughtful look on his face.

"No," she intercepted him.

"Mai, these people are suffering," he leaned a little closer, and switched over to Tianxia. "Fire Nation or not, they don't deserve this kind of treatment."

"Look, all of this is kind of moot. We've got a job to do."

"The Baihu's can wait," Jet said. Mai raised an eyebrow at that. "You know I'm right. Would you rather put this place behind you, knowing that you left somebody to suffer?"

"I didn't know you cared about the Fire Nation so much," Mai said, crossing her arms before her. Jet took the inverse of her intended meaning, and moved closer to pull her to his chest.

"Oh, I care very deeply about the Fire Nation," Jet said with sarcasm and a smirk. That smirk dimmed though. "And I don't turn my back on people who need me."

"Since when?" she asked.

"Since Ba Sing Se," he said quietly, and turned toward the door, leaning against the threshold and staring into the rain.

Mai sighed in resolution. "Fine. But at least sleep on it. We're both exhausted, wet, and hungry. Any plan we come up with now is going to be moronic."

"That, I can live with," Jet said with a nod over his shoulder. He walked out into the drizzle, glancing around at the signage. He blinked a few times, then turned to Mai with a shrug. She shook her head. He'd learned to speak it, but read it? Not so much.

"The public house is over there," she pointed, and escorted him across the 'plaza' which was built at the center of the floating village. They pushed the door aside, and walked into the lower floor of what was one of about three two-story buildings in Jang Hui. Mai started to shake the water off of her hooded cloak when she turned to look for the proprietor. And her shaking came to an abrupt halt. "Dock? What are you doing here?"

The old man tipped his floppy, high peaked hat a little further to one side so that the wild white hair poked out under its rim. "Dock? You must be talking 'bout my brother, the bargeman. I run the house and keep the fishery stall in the market. Folks call me Xu!"

Jet glanced back at her. "Twins?"

"I hope," Mai said. "We need some place to sleep. Do you have space?"

"Oh, we've got plenty of space. Not as many people visiting Jang Hui these days. Don't know exactly why, though," Xu scratched at his head as he pondered a few seconds longer than he probably should have. He then glanced up back at them, with a look of confusion, until it seemed to dawn on him who he was speaking to. "Oh, yes. Lots of room. Right there at the back! You'll have to share a bed, though, so no hanky-panky!"

"That ship has sailed," Jet muttered. Mai silenced him with a look. It had, but he didn't need to sound so happy about it. Xu only chuckled, though, and loped back to unlock the room. Oh, right. Embiar tended to be more open, even as they were more prudish, whereas Azuli tended to be more closed and... open to experience. "Alright. I'll sleep on this. But I'm telling you, we've got to do something."

Mai gave a grudging nod. "The true question is; what?"

"Well?" the voice came as she lazily washed the sudsy water off of her body. Akemi gave a glance to where another had joined her in the chamber. His hood was pulled up, but his frame and what little of his face told her exactly who this 'stranger' was. After all, even the Fire Lord's mistress might have a hazardous time in her bath, given the current state.

"He is as I recall, only somehow worse," Akemi related to the other with her. She glanced up at him, as he moved closer, a cunning smirk on her lips. "His sanity slips farther with each passing day. His politics are a mangle and he is dreadfully distracted. Displacing him will be a simple affair. Almost contemptuously so."

"You are a dangerous woman to have as an enemy," he told her, reaching down to stroke his fingers down the skin of her cheek. She smiled up at that face, the smug grin on it, even though the burn over his left eye pulled it into a permanent glower.

"You have no idea," she told him.

"...who are you?" Zuko repeated.

"Did you not hear me? Need I repeat the question?" he pressed.

"You hound me for months, try to kill me or cast me in chains at every opportunity, and then expect that I – or in any likelihood any of the rest of them – are going to help you? Are you insane?" Azula asked.

The waterbending assassin shrugged. "Like I said, I have no further business with you. I was just supposed to 'keep your poisonous influences from Prince Zuko's mind'. However, since Zuko seems to have come to his own notion to turn his back on the Fire Nation, I'd say 'damage done' and not to bother any further. There might be others who would have personal grievance with you, but I can't name them off the top of my head. You weren't exactly a very active participant in Fire Nation politics in the years before your exile," he said with an easy smirk.

Aang could see where this was headed, so bounded between Zuko and the intruder, supposedly named Kori. He held out a hand toward each of them, warding the Prince from charging the waterbender. Zuko held his ground, but only just. He still looked like he wanted to punch a face in. "Everybody, stay calm. He..."

"Is right," Azula finished for him. They all looked to her, Zuko with an expression of dumbfoundedness. "What? I was almost unintelligible, having spastic fits every other week, and bedridden for almost a year. Invalids don't make enemies as a rule."

"Indeed they don't. And may I say that it's nice to hear you without that stupid accent," the assassin said. Azula's patient expression ratcheted down a few notches, and Aang could tell she was grinding her teeth. Kori leaned back, changing the subject with a gesture rather than a segue. "It's come to my attention that there are certain aspects of my upbringing that may not be true. There's a bit of a conspiracy of silence around the 'appearance' of several of the Children, myself included. The vast majority are earthbenders 'rescued' in their early childhoods from the East. The pattern always seems to be the same."

"What pattern?" Aang asked, finally moving back to his seat when Zuko took a position on Azula's other side, his eyes still burning even if his fists no longer were.

"Youngest inductee? Three years. Oldest? Five years. No parents. Lost to 'natural disasters', or so they claim. Plagues, famines. The usual," he said. "That's what they said for their earthbenders..."

"Wait, hold up," Toph said, rubbing her brow. "Earthbenders? As in you've got more than one of 'em tucked away up there?"

"More than two dozen, I'm afraid," Kori said, and then grinned. "Oh wait, I'm not afraid at all. Yes. The vast majority are firebenders, but earthbenders make up the rest. I'm the only waterbender. Guess I'm just special like that," another grin flashed.

"And you think that you might have been one of the stolen children?" Aang asked.

"Wait... That means that you were probably taken when the raiders hit our village!" Katara piped up. She turned to Aang. "I never understood why they came to Chimney Mountain; somebody must have called out for a waterbending teacher, and the Fire Nation learned about it!"

"For you?" he asked.

"For my sister, and for another boy in the village who wasn't as gifted," Katara answered. She fell silent for a moment. "You know that... the girl you call Yoji..."

"Is your sister. Yes, that's becoming very obvious," he said. He frowned. "I don't remember that time very well. Do you know what that boy was called?"

"Yeah," Sokka said. "Ogan talked about him a lot. Less after Benell was born, but Dad always said that when Ogan got drunk, he'd start talking about Ked."

Kori nodded, as though something had just been confirmed. "I see. So waterbenders were taken from the South Pole as soon as they reasserted themselves. An effort to limit themselves to one war-front, I have to assume. And..."

"You're not going to ask about your sister?" Katara asked.

Kori sighed. "Until last winter, Yoji was my sister. This 'Benell' is a stranger to me. Why should I want to know her?"

"Because that's part of what you are," Katara stressed. "That's your family."

"Then they've done a damn poor job of raising me," Kori snapped, raising to his feet. "Your kind just let them run away with me tucked under their arm like a pony-keg? You didn't once try to find out what happened?"

Now, Aang was in between Kori and his Tribal bretheren, and the waterbender seemed to have truly lost his calm. At long last, Aang figured, but still not pleasant to behold. "Kori, please, calm down! You said you weren't here to hurt us, and I think that you like to keep your word."

"Please, I lie like a rug," Kori snapped. "The Tribesmen failed me. They couldn't defend what was theirs so..." he suddenly broke off, and looked up into the distance. "...wow. That really just came out of my mouth, didn't it?"

Aang gave a glance to the siblings, then to the firebending siblings, and all seemed mildly baffled. All the more so, when Kori started chuckling.

"What a mess of a man I am," he said, he shook his head, while staring at his boots, before looking at Katara and Sokka with a wan expression. "For a second there, I was actually going to defend my kidnappers. Shows how deep that they cram that crap into you."

"...where are the other children?" Katara asked. "The ones who weren't waterbenders? Did the Fire Nation... kill them?"

Kori shrugged. "Maybe they would have done that in Sozin's time, but I figure they like to think themselves a bit more civilized than that, now. My guess? The 'bastards of Boiling Rock' might be who you're looking for. But if you think you can get them out of there, you might want to reconsider. That place is a prison built in a fortress built on a death trap."

"So... are you on our side, now?" Aang asked.

"Please," he said patronizingly, and moved Aang aside. "A lot of what you've said could simply be adults telling their children what they want to believe..."

"And yet you admit Yoji is Hikaoh, our sister," Katara said.

Kori fell silent at that, and sighed. "To say that the resemblance is uncanny would be putting it lightly. It's the kind of thing which is hard to notice when everybody's trying to kill everybody else. Especially since I've seen your – her – father; I can see where she gets it from. But this is all circumstantial. And I'm not going to throw my life into a bonfire for circumstance and hearsay."

"Should we call you Ked?" Aang asked.

"Kori will do fine," he said. Another grin flashed. "After all, it's done me well the last few years."

"Is Hikaoh alright?" Katara asked. Kori shook his head.

"She's taking Omo's death very badly. They were a couple, after all. Frowned upon in our association, but it happens. She's... a bit brittle right now. I wouldn't want to try to run your little spiel by her any time soon."

"Question?" Toph said, hand raised.

"Hmm?"

"Your sister was a waterbender, right?" Toph pointed at the Tribesmen while still staring to Aang's left. The two of them nodded. "So why exactly is she now a firebender?"

"I couldn't tell you," Kori said with a shrug. He pondered for a moment. "Right. I've got to go check something."

"Whoa, where do you think you're going?" Zuko said, getting in his way as he tried to walk for the exit.

"Caldera City. There's some paperwork I need to preruse," he said.

"Caldera City, where our father lives?" Azula asked. "Caldera city, where one of the most deadly armies in the world is stationed? That Caldera City?"

"I wasn't aware that somebody'd commissioned another one," he said. He then waved dismissively. "I'm not going to tell them about you. Keep your underwear on. I don't need that much money anyway; everything I want I can get for myself."

At the underwear comment, Sokka turned a glance toward Nila, trying to keep himself from laughing at something, while she on the other hand got a sour and humorless look to her. Aang moved to Zuko's side, further hemming Kori. "Kori, you've got to listen to us. We're not trying to usurp your Fire Lord. We just need to end the World War. If we don't, then... well, reality ends."

"Bold claim. Not interested in that, though," Kori waved it away. "If I find something that backs your story up in the archives, then I'll consider treason a little more seriously. As it is, talking to you without trying to murder you is already enough of a betrayal. Yes, Tribesmen, I'm aware how jingoistic that makes me sound. Some things just can't be helped," he shrugged back at the other two. "Step aside, please."

"We can't let him leave, Aang," Zuko said.

"You can't stop me from leaving," Kori answered. Zuko's brow drew down, and fire started to sear at his fists, while water from the pools on the floor began to quiver at the twitching of Kori's fingers. The whole thing was cut off by Toph, in the background clearing her throat very loudly, and then spitting into the fire.

"You do realize that I can tell when people are lying?" Toph said. News to Aang, but sure. "You, Runaway; are you going to run directly to Ozai and tell me where we are?"

"What? No."

"Are you doing to do anything close to the intent of that which isn't covered by my initial choice of words?" Toph continued.

"No... although, prudent of you to ask that as well," Kori said.

"Are you going to tell anybody about us at all?"

"Not if I can help it," he said. Toph frowned. "Fine, no. Not even Yoji. Frankly, that'd be doing her a massive favor. If she knew where she," pointing at Nila, "was, she'd be after you all without so much as a break to eat or sleep. That's not healthy, believe me."

"He ain't lying," Toph related. "Hey. Tell me a lie."

"...I whole-heartedly consider myself a Water Tribesman," Ked said with gusto. Toph broke out into a grin. "Picked that up, didn't you?"

"He's a good liar; I'm better," Azula said. "I'm a four hundred foot tall purple people-eating platypus bear with pink horns and silver wings."

Toph turned her glance toward Azula's whereabouts. "Damn. You are good at lying."

"Decades of practice," Azula said evenly. She then turned to Kori. "And just so you know, if I so much as suspect that you're going to work against us, I will crush you like an ant. Are we clear?"

Kori swallowed at that, seemingly involuntarily. "Sure. Why not?" He then turned to Zuko and Aang himself. "Would you mind? I've got a long way to go, and my eelhound is probably about three minutes from starting to wallow in the mud."

Zuko and Aang exchanged a glance, both of them obviously uncomfortable with the assassin leaving, even without a drop of blood spilled on either side. But they did part, and let him walk past them and up the path before it rounded a tower and he vanished from sight. Zuko looked back at them. "We can't stay here," he said succinctly.

"What?" Aang asked. "We were just getting settled in!"

"Zuzu is right," Azula gave a nod. "Even if he doesn't betray us, the fact that he found us so quickly after we arrived here means that this place is far less hidden than we'd thought. We will have to move on."

Aang let out a sigh, knowing that the two of them were right. "I guess. We can leave in the morning," he said.

"We should leave now," Azula said.

"No, we shouldn't," Zuko said. Azula shot him a confused glare.

"Try to wander Azul at night? You must be daft," Nila said. "If I wanted so terribly to die, then I would throw myself, naked and bound, before their revenge-maddened sister!" she said, pointing at Sokka and Katara. Katara looked mildly aghast. Sokka, though, just nodded.

"She's got a point. Azul's called the 'deadliest place on Earth' for a reason," he said.

Azula growled. "It seems there's still much I don't recall about this lifetime," she muttered. "Fine. The morning. Perhaps we will even have better weather to fly in by then?"

Her sarcastic tone made it much less optimistic than it should have been. "We'll see when the sun comes up." Aang said. He glanced around. "Has anybody seen Malu?"

"I can't say I've ever seen Malu!" Toph offered from the back.

"Very funny," Aang said flatly. And it was a strange thing, as now Azula was chuckling richly. "What?"

"Oh, I just remembered how much amusing Toph used to be. Before Republic City anyway."

"Republic what?" Aang asked.

"That, Avatar, is an immensely long story," Azula said flatly.

"Careful, careful now," Zhao reprimanded, as the bearers carefully maneuvered the crates through the halls of the Royal Palace in the dark of night. The city was sleeping as the rain pounded down on it, unwilling to brave the weather for what had, in the old days, been unending nights and sometimes spontaneous celebration. Sozin might be remembered by history as a bloody-minded tyrant, but the Fire Nation was certainly prosperous under his rule. Not like today. Ozai was ruining everything.

"It's just a box. Probably won't..." the coolie said, and Zhao immediately cut him off by punching a bolt of fire into his shoulder, causing him to cry out and wheel back, before the King of the North stormed up and grabbed that burn and slammed it against a wall. The coolie stopped shouting, as the pain had gotten worse.

"That box is worth more than your entire ancestry," Zhao told him. "You will give it the respect it's due."

"Alright! I will! I will!" he sobbed. Zhao shoved the peasant aside, letting him stumble onto his face, before quickly pulling himself up and running away. There would be other coolies, and they'd probably be more diligent than that one had been. Zhao, though, gave a moment to glance around the storage room, confirming he was alone. Then, with a smirk that didn't quite pull his branded eye out of its glower, he pulled up the top of that box, and peered down inside.

The two koi-fish, black and white and white and black, still circling each other even in the tiny tank, stared up at him.

"And they doubted that I'd be Zhao the Invincible. I'll be more," he said. He slid the panel back down, and locked it in place with its clasps. His smile turned absolutely malevolent. "I will become Zhao, the Fire Lord."

Well away from all of the drama and rancor of the central fountain and it's fireside meeting of those who knew or cared about Princess Azula's supposed other life, Malu meditated, her breathing steady and calm. A breath in. Life in. Everything that she was supposed to end, a few weeks ago. She would have been a hollow shell, an almost-girl lurching to the tugging of vile threads. Now... not.

It was a new day. A new life. One free of hubris and terror and denial. That was a thought which kept returning to her mind, and every time it did, she smiled a little. She had faced down the end of the world, and she had said it nay. No matter what came today, or tomorrow, or any tomorrow after that, she would always have the unshakable, unalienable understanding that she had earned the right to be here. The right to breathe free air, the right to eat until her stomach swelled and then stop. The right to fight back against what had tortured her.

A part of her wanted to know exactly what Aang had planned for stopping the Fire Lord. And she still had to get used to the fact that the Fire Lord was now called Ozai, not Sozin; that only two generations had passed seemed a bit suspect, but then again, some people just tended to live for a ridiculously long time. That the Fire Lord's children were fighting against him told Malu what she needed to know of his parenting style. She continued to sit, her legs folded under her, and opened her eyes to the cliff face beyond her. The rains had stopped, so there was no more of the stream overflowing, and cascading down before the Western Air Temple. So much had changed. In all her days before the Day of Fire, she'd never seen it rain more than two days in a row in the Fire Nation. Now, particularly in the Midlands, it was almost unheard of for sun to be out two days in a row. And Malu understood why.

The world was dying. Just as the Spirit World died before it, the world was slowly bleeding to death, and everything that occurred on its face was a manifestation of that, a desperate attempt to staunch a wound too long open. The rains due to fall on the East Continent instead flooded the West. The heat and dry of the West fell upon the East. And the seas shouldered the difference, trying to hold things in balance and failing utterly. It was a skin over an apple, only the apple had rotted away inside so that only the skin remained; it looked like an apple, but the slightest touch could send it to collapse. And Imbalance wasn't content with a slightest touch. This she knew, because she had felt it inside Imbalance in that last and fateful moment, before it was torn out of her.

It was telling, that she now saw with the eyes of a shaman decades older and more experienced, but only because of the torments she'd suffered. That was the way of things, perhaps; she'd struggled, and she'd suffered, and she'd learned. So she knew more. What the Blowouts were. Why Imbalance took the Great Divide. But as for its next move? That evaded her estimation entirely. Not for lack of trying, though. Malu shifted slightly, scratching her bottom as she did. Zen could only take a body so far, after all.

Malu glanced down and to the side, where the Aang Gang were talking heatedly amongst themselves. Nila, though, gathered her things and walked away without a word being said. The Tribesman made as though he wanted to move after her, but he faltered and halted. Malu shook her head lightly. It was also strange to think of him as young, naïve, foolish. She didn't want to, but she knew how crucial time was, right now. She knew how little of it might be left. And she knew she didn't want anything left undone. She would have to warn the Tribesman about that. If only to get him to talk to her. Nila was obviously uncomfortable with something, or angry about something. Knowing Nila, probably the latter.

She let out a sigh. She had a full belly, a comfortable pillow under her, clean clothes, and purpose. Honestly, she was feeling better than she had in half a decade.

Then, there was a shudder that ran through her. It scoured at her skin, raking across her like a polar gale. She let out a racking breath, and she could have sworn it misted in front of her. When she opened her eyes, she sensed without senses a dread, a proximity. A danger. Her eyes widened, as she bent a bolt under her to pop her up and to the corner of the building. She flattened her back against it, peeked around. And she saw a ripple in the shadows, somehow seeing it even though it was black against black. A hole from reality into something that wasn't. A hole, from which emerged two burning red eyes.

The cold was replaced by hot, a blast of heat and wet that punched her in the gut, and in her mind's-nose, she could detect a scent of the rot of something which hadn't been exactly savory in its life. It was the smell of something wrong. And this wasn't the only direction it was coming from.

The eyes turned, and spotted Malu, hidden though she was. Of course it would. It could sense her, just as much as she could sense it. At this range, it was clear as daylight in the Fir... okay, not in the Fire Nation these days, but the metaphor was already crumbling under an amassing panic which reached into her boots and pulled a scream out of them, sending it up through her entire body, before it erupted from her mouth in an explosion of terror and warning.

"THEY'RE HERE!" Malu shrieked, and was instantly running. The thing beside her faded back into the shadows, and she bounded from the tower, letting her airbending bear her via a punt from behind across the vast gulf with its long drop beneath it. She landed at a roll, only to dodge under a sweeping blow by something she didn't yet see, because it didn't yet fully exist. She glanced to a side as she picked up her momentum, seeing how the Shard pulled itself out of the edge of that shadow, a maw somehow darker than black opening under those eyes. When it did, a silence, greater than any scream, blanketed the Temple.

She made another bound, this time having to run up the wall and flip herself onto an upper level, before hurling herself forward to a rolling halt on the edge of the fountain plaza. "What's going on, Malu? What's here?" Aang asked, his battered staff in hand. Malu just pointed at the platform ahead of her. Aang's eyes grew quite wide indeed when he saw the thing, standing at the edge of the precipice, watching them with those evil eyes. It twisted at Malu's guts just to be near it. It ran greasy fingers along her soul to see it. "What is..."

"Just run away from it!" Malu shrieked. The Shard took a step forward, off that edge. But instead of falling, it seemed to teleport to the edge of the fountain plaza. Burning eyes swept along the plaza, before they settled on the Avatar. Then, the maw opened once again.

AVATAR. HUNGRY.

The words rattled the Temple as they erupted, sending dust raining down from on high. It then screamed its own horrid scream, and hurled itself at Aang. Malu tackled the Avatar to the ground, and then hurled him beyond, blasting a bolt of solidified air to carry him the whole way, even if it didn't guarantee a gentle landing. She then turned to the Shard, which was standing like some sort of brutish beast, the maw which defied easy classification closed, and those burning eyes, narrowed. She had to keep it tied up. The eyes flared, and a sweeping blow hurled at Malu. She kipped back. She then had to hinge aside, as the Shard was instantly behind her somehow. She twisted up and around, blasting herself back with airbending. Even as an experiment, she tried to level the thing with a bolt of wind, but it seemed to break like a wave against the solid stone which was its unnatural existence.

It stepped out of the shadows into the light proper, which still burned from the lanterns and the fire-pit they hadn't yet extinguished. It lashed out again, and she knew in her mind that she would not survive its touch. How, she could not say. So she flowed around it, a leaf on the wind. She dodged through its fast if brutish strikes, trying to take its back, to get out of its arcs. To stall it.

She finally had her place, her hand hovering away from its shoulder-blades because she knew the price of contact. The Shard tried to spin, to get her in front of it again. She didn't let it. Or at least, she thought she didn't. There was a pause, where it stopped trying to turn and catch her. A shift, the body seeming to evert on itself, those burning eyes opening on the side of the head facing her, the arms bending back, their elbows and knees not subject to the restrictions of sinew and bone. And Malu hurled herself back. Lucky, she did before it launched itself toward her. She then cast her hands up, and swept the wind down, flattening her to the floor, even as the Shard flew over her head, trying to claw at her, but fortunately finding itself subject to the laws of momentum. Until it reached the edge of the shadow, the edge of the light. Then, it was standing at the point nearest to her, having not crossed the intervening distance.

"Oh, that's just not fair," Malu muttered, even as she spun her way to her feet.

A crack of gunfire, familiar from the time it blasted Malu's heart out, sounded, and the Shard hesitated in its advance into the light. It stared down at itself, then past Malu. Malu could only give the slightest of glances, to see that Nila had taken the field, as it were, and had her firearm at her disposal. Her expression shifted from triumph to dawning dread, as it became apparent that her pin-point shot into the heart of that thing hadn't done anything at all.

"Get onto Appa! Fly away while you can!" Malu shouted. The shard opened its maw again, but not to words or a shriek. No, that was more like... a bloody toothed smile. A smile of certain victory. Nila was rushing forward, rather than the sensible away, and Malu couldn't turn her attention away from the Shard which was now advancing toward her. "Nila! Away, not toward! Fly away!"

"Not today," she said, coming to a halt before the Shard. The Shard gave Nila only a passing glance, before it's attention turned back to Malu. While it's hunger was reserved for the Avatar, Malu was something it couldn't ignore.

"I'm serious! If it touches you, you're worse than dead!" Malu said, trying to force Nila behind her, as the thing advanced. They passed out of the light, and started back over the bridge. Malu started looking in all directions even as they reached its far side, and the Shard finally stepped to the edge of the light. Less than a blink later, it was right in front of the two of them, standing at the point where the bridge met the inverted tower. Malu let out a squawk of alarm, and hurled Nila through a window in what may have been the first infenistration. "Keep focus on me. I am what you want, not her."

The Shard did exactly that, stalking her movements with ground-eating strides even as Malu backed away from it, trying to grow distance. It wasn't giving her that luxury. And she didn't know how to hurt this thing. She heard footsteps from in that room, even over the sound of Altuundili swearing, and it was punctuated by the stomp of somebody hurling themselves through the air. Malu's eyes bugged right out when Sokka came flying through the window at Shard level, feet first. The boots slammed into the Shard, and cast the thing stumbling sideways, until it teetered at the edge of the tower. The instant it fell, it was standing securely on the edge, facing in. Burning eyes blinked, dumb and not understanding. Not that Malu understood any better. Sokka was getting to his feet, looking none the worse for wear.

"Aang's got Appa pretty much ready. We just got to get Jerk and Jerk-ette," Sokka said, his eyes forward and black blade in his hand. He brandished it, but the Shard turned its attention back to Malu. Better her than Aang. "What is this thing?"

"It's a Shard of Imbalance. If it touches you, you d..." Malu began, but was cut off when the Shard let out another moaning scream, and raced forward at Malu. Sokka, though, put himself in the way, slashing with his black blade. It passed right through the inky body without so much as a ripple. When that failed, Sokka just tackled the thing, and swept its legs. The burning red eyes went wide as it found itself flopping onto the floor with a Tribesman on its back. Malu didn't know why it wasn't consuming his soul.

"I think I've got it!" Sokka declared.

And when Malu looked up, there was another one, standing at the edge of the bridge. This one looked almost identical to the first. The only difference was the eyes. While the first was primarily red, with black striations through it, this one seemed primarily black, with red working to highlight them. It looked at Malu, and took two long strides toward her before coming short, and glancing down. It tilted its head at the sight of Sokka atop the Shard. A blink of non-comprehension. Then, comprehension began. The eyes narrowed, and a black hand reached down, grasping Sokka by the neck, and holding him up, looking at him. Trying to get his measure. Sokka favored it with a kick in the face, which didn't do much but make its eyes close for an instant or two.

"I DON'T GOT IT!" Sokka shouted, before the arm visibly began to squeeze at his neck. He very quickly turned almost purple from the pressure. Malu tried to blast air at the far Shard, but the near one was rising, and its attention was on Malu herself.

She wasn't prepared for the hissing of electricity, or the crack of thunder which lanced out of the building and smashed into the side of that distant Shard. The thing let out a squeal, and it's arm 'round Sokka's neck released as it recoiled aside. Sokka almost collapsed, but retook his footing. Malu only had to back up another step, before she turned her head and saw that Azula was standing on the outside of the tower with her, her arms spinning through a lightning kata. The Shard before Malu opened its maw, its arms reaching out. Then, the Fire Nation Princess thrust forth her hand, two fingers leading, and a blast of electrical force slammed into the Shard and carried it right over the edge.

"Nila! Are you alright?" Malu shouted through the door. She was sitting up amidst broken pottery. Pottery which had broken her fall, appropriately enough. But she looked stunned, and clutched her head where it had obviously bounced off of something. She pulled her rifle with her, staggering to her feet, and lurching out the door, even as the Fire Nation Prince once again spun his arms through the lightning kata; he, though, released a branching, brutal bolt from the knuckles of his fist.

"I will survive. These things are bulletproof!" Nila sounded more annoyed at the problem than terrified for her life. Typical Nila, really. Malu didn't waste any time. She darted into the room and hurled both she and Nila out of the door leading toward the back of the cave. The firebending siblings were fairly quick to follow, backing away from those unnatural things. Sokka was next around the corner, spinning on his heel, his stance low and his arms wide. A moment or so after he, the remaining Shard rounded that corner as well, advancing at a very steady, if unkind pace. Malu breathed deeply, trying to get her wind from the maniac dodging she'd had to do, and she released her grip on Nila when the nature of the beast was clear and obvious. The blackness was all the more pronounced when contrasted against the bright blue light that Azula was holding in her palms.

"Well, she managed to kill one of 'em," Sokka said, his voice a bit ragged from how it'd almost been squeezed out. The instant he said that, though, the second Shard walked onto the balcony, appearing at its very edge. It swung its burning eyes toward Malu in particular, and opened it's mouth wide once more, a silence blanketing them where a scream ought have been. Sokka got the most defeated look on his face, but only for a moment. Then, it transformed into a rage. He shook his fist at the heavens, and screamed "Can't you even let me have one?"

"They can't die, Sokka. They're not alive," Malu told him. "Keep backing up. Stay away from boundaries. Between light and shadow, doorways, anything like that."

Sokka glanced at the other, which was now advancing abreast of its nearly identical twin, and then to the edge where it'd appeared from. "They can teleport between edges? That's just not fair!"

"Imbalance seldom is!" Malu pointed out.

"How do we beat them?" Zuko demanded, spinning lighting into his hands once more.

"We don't. We run, or we die!"

"Lightning hurts them," Azula said.

"But it doesn't harm them. They eat its energy, but it stings a little," Malu shook her head. This wasn't the time to be a teacher. "Look, there's nothing we can do that will even skin their knees. Run, or die. Those are our options!"

The bass groan and the swoop of wind told Malu that her options were swung sternly in one direction in particular. Aang was atop the brow of the beast, and Toph was already clinging to the saddle. She was soon the first of many, as Nila made that bound, followed by Sokka, and then all others who hadn't yet boarded, leaping for their very lives away from the Shards which continued to advance. They stopped at the edge, though, staring at the gang which was scrabbling into the bison's howdah from only a few yards away. It was hard to assign a creature with no real discernible facial characteristics emotionality, but she had a real feeling that they were staring at them with confusion. As though they'd just violated the rules of reality.

"We've got to go!" Malu called as she leaned precariously down over the front of the howdah. "Appa! Yip Yip!"

The bison let out another bellow, then started to rise forward, moving away from those Shards and the temple that they'd captured. The two remained, staring up after the bison as it cleared the edge of the precipice, and rose up out of sight. There was a blink, and the two were now standing at the top of that precipice, but could only watch as the bison rose yet higher, grumbling with strain and annoyance as it did so. They flew, and the Shards watched them. Until with no word spoken, the Shards turned, went their separate ways, and walked until they reached a different edge; one an arch of fallen trees, the other the boundary of a hippo-wolf's territory. As they reached it, there was a flicker, and they were gone as though they'd never been.

Mai grumbled as Jet continued to prod and nudge her as she was sleeping. The grumbles turned to blasphemies, and from there, to promises of a horrible and righteous retribution. The cockerels were not even crying as yet, and Jet wanted her up? Was he insane? "Go away," Mai muttered at the end of one such spiel.

"Nope," Jet said. "You've got to wake up."

"I will kill everything you care for," Mai promised grumpily, trying to pull a pillow over her head.

"I didn't know you were suicidal," Jet teased. Mai shot him a glare, and tried to go back to sleep.

"I could say the same about you. Let me sleep."

"You've been asleep long enough. The sun's almost up, and..."

"How could you even notice?" Mai asked. A glance through the tiny window showed that it was raining in an insistent, if not heavy, rate. Jet waved the technicality aside. There was another groan, this one of utmost frustration at having to be romantically connected to somebody as... energetic... as Jet. There was much to say for it, but frustrations as well. "Fine. What's so important?"

"Get up," Jet prompted.

"You can tell me here," she muttered, lying on her back. Jet, though, hooked a toe under the end of her blanket, kicked up to his grasp. "No, don't you dare..." Mai warned. With a smirk, Jet heaved the blanket off of her, letting the cold smash into her as she was wearing only her smallclothes. She sat bolt upright, instantly at a shiver; it hadn't taken her long to reacclimatize to living in the Fire Nation. And for the Fire Nation, this was frigid weather. She glared long and hard at Jet, who simply smirked with a sprig of barley rolling 'twixt his teeth. "There will be a reckoning for this," she promised.

"I don't doubt," Jet said.

"I'm up," she said, slowly getting to her feet, even as the lethargy continued to drag her back toward the bed. She as not an early riser. Not for any reason, nor for any price. Mai only beat the sun to rise when she hadn't slept the night before. So it was not with glee and enthusiasm that she pulled her still-damp clothes back on. That was the great annoyance of the Fire Nation; if you didn't have a firebender in the family, it was dreadfully hard to ever get dry clothing. She felt dirty, and a bit slimy. She was just thankful that she hadn't tried to clean anything in the river. It'd have made it all worse.

"So what's so important that..."

"Come on," he said, and motioned out into the plaza. She sighed, threw on her dark, hooded cloak, and followed him. The 'square' which had been uninhabited the day before was now crowded with people, all of them staring with an uncanny and unsettling intensity. Most of them were wearing the filthy, stained clothes of those living in the town. She immediately picked out Xu under his ridiculous hat. No sign of Dock, though. The newcomers were a small squad of men and women in black and red armor, and they didn't look happy.

"This isn't acceptable. Your produce is getting worse an worse, so you can't honestly expect to get the same value for it," the leader, who was remarkable mostly in his badly scarred face, said. The village leader glanced back at the racks of fish which had been packaged for offer. Honestly, they looked disgusting.

"Please, reconsider; if we don't get that medicine, the children will get sick again. We can't have another outbreak; it'll decimate us!"

"If you want the medicine, then you'll have to earn it. The Fire Nation rewards ambition and innovation. You're digging through the muck with sticks," the scarred man said. "If we wanted those kinds of people, we'd let the Gorks across the border."

"But this is the best we have..."

"Then find a way to get better," the National snapped. He snapped his fingers next, and the crew he had with him started to reload the few boxes which had been brought out. A murmuring started throughout the crowd, one which was obviously presaging anger, and beyond that, violence. The scarred man knew it. He grabbed somebody from the crowd, a frail looking woman probably only twice Mai's age, but her haggardness made her seem much older. He opened fire into his other hand, and the murmurings died down. "Don't make this more difficult than it already is. You've already forfeited a shipment of medications by your own laziness. If you add rebellion, you're going to find yourself without any for the rest of your lives. And by the looks of this place, that won't take long."

There was a silence which was broken only by the drum-beat of rain against the wood. The scarred man looked over the crowd, as the last box was lowered into the steel skiff. With a nod, the scarred man shoved the woman back into the crowd, and turned.

"If you can do better than that," a point to the fish that they'd produced, "by next week, then your shipments continue. Otherwise, I can promise nothing."

He hopped down into the skiff, and it began to steam up the river, cutting a trail through the floating scum. Jet looked about ready to spontaneous light on fire. "What are we going to do?" Jet asked, obviously at the ragged edge of control.

"What can we do?" she asked. Jet fumed for a long moment, and then closed his eyes. The stem of barley rolled in his teeth, as those lips pulled into a smirk.

"You know what? I think I've got an idea."

"Agni preserve me," Mai said, almost on impulse. Jet only laughed at that.

Aang fussed over the bison, as he was wont to do, while the others huddled and shivered in the howdah, with the ubiquitous gloom slowly parting as they traveled further inland; they'd be naked to the sun, soon, but as the day was yet barely dawning, they were for the moment safe from being spotted, being recognized, and being shortly thereafter killed. Sokka was just glad that they were away from those black things. He turned to the other airbender amongst them, who kept glancing behind them, as though afraid that the 'Shards' would somehow find a way to catch up in an instant. Then again, Sokka'd seen what they could do, and wouldn't put it past them.

"Now that it's obvious we aren't going to die... what was that thing?"

"Imbalance in manifested form," she said. "If It touches me or Aang, probably you as well, Nila, then you die. You worse than die; it'll be as though your soul had never been."

"Well, what about the rest of us?" Sokka asked.

"You're inedible to It. It doesn't know what to do with you," Malu said. Sokka got an urge to pump his fists into the air – one he obliged – at that proclamation.

"Who's just a guy with a boomerang now, huh?" he shouted up at the universe.

"If those things come back, it'll be up to you and Zuko," Malu hesitated as the earthbender's expression got darker, "...and Azula," darker still. "to keep them away from the ones that can't take their touch."

"So we're a wall?" Azula asked.

"Hey! What about me?" Toph complained.

"Too small a wall," Malu pointed out. Toph fumed. Nila, who was pretty much on the opposite side of the saddle from him, muttered something and turned her attention to lamenting all of the things that she'd had to leave behind at the Air Temple. Not that anybody sane would go back for them. He felt a bit odd, at the distance between them. Of course, there seemed to have been a lot left unsaid, and neither was willing to talk about it the next day. Or the day after that. Then the Shards came, and there was running and screaming...

Sokka straightened his back, and purposefully kipped across the howdah to Nila's side. She turned a hot glare at him, before continuing to dig through a sack, muttering under her breath. "Are we going to talk about wh..." Sokka began, his voice pitched low enough that it wouldn't carry over the wind even to where Azula sat two yards away.

"I thought it clear that you didn't want it spoken of," Nila snapped. Eyes turned toward the two of them for a moment, but each had their own concern, so their attention soon faded. "You have been avoiding me."

"You looked mad. I wanted to give you time to calm down," Sokka said.

"I was angry because you were avoiding – good gods. I can see the circularity already," her tone changed abruptly as the words, and the understanding with them, tumbled from her head. She shook her head, a wry look on her face. She then turned a much less rancorous look to the Tribesman. "We are truly idiots. Never would any fall to such a trap of poor logic."

"I don't know. I've heard stories," Sokka said. He raised an arm, and Nila moved under it, obviously grateful to have something warm to lean against; for all they were in the Fire Nation in the beginning of summer, it was oddly chilly up here. Like there was a trade wind blowing down from Henhiavut. "So... are you still angry?"

"Yes," she said. "At myself. For being an idiot. Also at you, for also being an idiot."

"D'aaaaaw," Toph said.

"How would you like to be deaf as well as blind, earthbender?" Nila snapped.

"You know you love me," Toph said with her feet kicked out ahead of her, the small girl trying to take up as much space as possible. Not a good idea, given the cold fog that the clouds provided. Sokka turned back to Nila.

"So... are we going to talk abou–"

"Yes, but not here," Nila cut him off. "This is not a conversation to be had in public."

Sokka frowned. "Really?"

"You are uncouth, barbarian," Nila pointed out.

"And that's one of my more endearing features," he said. So what if Imbalance was going to destroy the world and eat everything. In this moment, Sokka had his girl at his side, a meal in his stomach, and a plan in his brain. What more could anybody ask for?

I love the interplay between Nila and Sokka. The two of them are so oblivious, and she's so anti-romantic, that it makes any scene where they're trying to deal with each other hilarious. And as for Azula... Also fun, because no matter who's side she's on, she's still kinda a bitch. But she's a very amusing one.

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