Seeing the train come trundling down the line, slowing to a stop despite relatively clear rails and being half-way between stops, was something of a mixed relief for Hakoda. On one hand, it meant that somebody out there had done the unlikely, and gave them some way to cross the worst of Shinzoan territory without raising an eyebrow, let alone an alarm. On the other, he had no idea who this benefactor was. The Seamstress, as indicated by his lovely host? Or somebody else?
Or was it a trap?
It was for that latter reason that Hakoda went out on his own. In the grand scheme of things, to his eyes, he was a small part of something very much larger than himself. The war could continue without the aid of the Chief of the Water Tribe. Tribe. Even in his head, he still tried to add the plural to it. It'd probably take years for that to sink in, that there was no North Water Tribe anymore. That the hundred thousand Tribesmen in the South, and however many else lived in the southerly isles of Great Whales, were all that were left of his ethnicity. But it didn't matter. He had a successor – Yue could perform admirably, as she'd already done in holding together the shards of broken glass that were her people at Summavut – and he had his duties dismissed. He could vanish into this conflict, and it would continue. It was an odd, cold sort of comfort that that brought.
It was a strange thing to think of a dead woman, as that machine came to a halt ahead of him. It just seemed the kind of story that Kya always liked to hear when he came home. The impossible, bizarre things that he'd see on his journeys. The wonders and the horrors. A machine built to ferry men and women and all other things across a continent, cutting through snow that fell at the height of summer. A war of all the world's peoples, converging against a single force. An anemic hammer against a stalwart anvil. And there was more that his children wouldn't tell him, a layer of this fight that they were privy to, but never shared. Perhaps they thought it was kinder for him to push forward in ignorance?
"What age is this, when children have to make that choice?" he asked the cold. The wind answered him, blowing what snow was already on the ground around his ankles, which had sunk into the white expanse. There came a great clunk and hiss, as the machines finally settled, coming to a complete halt. A blort of steam came rushing out of the engines, which seemed to tinkle as it rose away, before descending in a great grey wave along the sides of the machine; ice formed where that steam had lost all of its heat so swiftly.
So unnatural, this weather. And it was the clearest thing that Hakoda could see.
The doors to the engine let out a clunk, as though something tried to open them, but couldn't. Hakoda gave a raised brow to it, then began to slog through the snow toward it. He could see why, even as he approached; the top of the doorway had iced over completely. He'd reached the foot of the door when came a great shriek of metal being ripped apart. The door to the engineering compartment bent sharply and unnaturally, its rigidity reduced to putty in the hands of a blind teenaged girl.
"See? That wasn't so hard!" Toph Beifong said happily, turning back to the other two in the compartment with her. The first put on a look of mild surprise when she gazed past the metalbender. Sativa's daughter reached aside, and began to tug at Sokka's arm, green eyes locked on his father. "What? Did I open us off a cliff or something?" Toph asked, peevishly.
"You should..." Nila said.
"Just a minute. I have to make sure this thing doesn't explode," Sokka said, as he scanned along what had to be a hundred little controls for the machine. "Why they couldn't make this thing any simpler, I couldn't tell you. Complexity for complexity's sake; it's gotta be!"
"Or you're driving a thousand-tonne bomb that's being coaxed into not exploding," Hakoda said idly. Sokka froze, then turned as did the Si Wongi girl had. He stared down at the man who was a level lower.
"Wait a minute. I know that voice!" Toph said, pointing roughly to Hakoda's left. "Ha! I told you he'd be waiting for us!"
"Dad?" Sokka asked, moving past first the Si Wongi, then even edging out the earthbender. The earthbender, unlike Nila, seemed very annoyed at that treatment. "You're here!"
"Of course I am," he said. "Did you think it'd just be Bato waiting for you?"
The answer he got was about what he expected; Sokka, though, had gotten a bit bigger, and a bit heavier since the last time Hakoda suddenly returned to the lad's life, so the tackling hug from on high sent Hakoda sliding down the embankment of the rails. For once, it was a good thing that there was snow in the Fire Nation; it hurt a lot less than sliding down a pile of gravel.
"Okay, that's probably enough," Hakoda said, extracting himself from his son's eager grasp. He pushed himself up, striking snow off of his coat, as Sokka offered him a hand for the last distance. At the mangled door of the engine, the Si Wongi had an amused look on her face, and was slowly shaking her head.
"You greet your father as you greet your sword. A woman might become jealous of such displays," she noted. It took Hakoda about a fraction of a second to make the connection.
"Aw, that's just Brain. He's always been a jump and grab kinda guy when he's excited," Toph said. She reached into the chamber, pulling out a metal rod, and clanging it against the frame of the machine, before jumping down into the snow. It was somewhat surprising, actually, to see the blind girl wearing actual boots. How grim things must have become for her.
"Well. Aware." Nila said.
"Where is everybody?" Sokka asked. "Did the entire fleet make it here? And how many came? Was it just Omashu or did you bring in everybody like you were hoping to?"
"It's days like this that made me wish I had more carrier hawks," Hakoda said. "You'll see soon enough. But tell me about yourself for a change!" he hooked an arm over Sokka's shoulder, and turned the two of them toward the compartment. Toph, having said her piece, started to wade through the snow past the portage cars. One of them – which lay covered over in a snow-coated tarp – let out a bass bellow. "So; you and miss Badesh?"
"What? How did you..."
"I'm your father," Hakoda said. Nila crossed her arms before her chest, hands tucked into her armpits against the cold. She no longer looked very amused. "And most notably, I remember what it was like to be a teenager."
"You are going to try to impress some barbaric form of counting-coup upon me, I suppose?" she asked.
"What?" Hakoda asked.
"My maiden-head is not a currency to be spent or transferred – doubly so as I was without blood in our meeting!" Nila snapped.
"What is she talking about?" Hakoda asked.
"She's afraid that you're going to try to marry us off," Sokka said easily.
"...why?" he asked.
"...sad and pathetic patriarchal practice, and I shall not what?" Nila broke off.
"You'll do whatever it is that you think is best," Hakoda said, clapping Sokka on the back. "Although, I have to say, I didn't expect you to pick one so..."
"Loud?" Sokka asked.
"I was going to say fiery, but I'll leave you to suffer the consequences of that one on your own," he said with a pat on the shoulder. He gave a nod toward his son's girlfriend. "We can catch up more later, miss Badesh."
The two of them, son and paramour, watched Hakoda leave, she by leaning out the door, he by walking up to the ladder at its foot. "Sokka?" she asked.
"Yes, Nila?" he asked, instantly recognizing the importance of it, as she'd called him by name and not 'Tribesman'.
"Is your father typical of your race, or a madman?"
"...Yes?" he answered.
Nila sighed, and palmed her face.
Hakoda, though, continued onward, following in the ruts left by the earthbender, who pulled herself up into the car just past the stowage which held a bison – from the sound of it – and little else. He pulled himself up as well, just a few seconds on Toph's tail. "Hey; remember how y'all said I should tell you when we arrived?" Toph asked. "Well... we've arrived."
"Really?" The excited words of the Avatar were the first to reach him. He shot up and out of the cot that he'd been sleeping in, clad in wrinkly, obviously-slept-in clothes, but looking a great deal more bright-eyed than many others. Probably because they'd let him have his sleep. The surprising faces in this car were the once Crown-Prince and Princess, who both leaned out of their own cots. Azula in particular pushed herself to a stand, and looked Hakoda up and down as though taking a very thorough gauge of his measure.
"...Kya was more impressive," she said flatly. The Avatar shot her a mildly baffled look, then turned to Hakoda again. In the time since Hakoda had last laid eyes on the boy, he'd gotten a fair head of hair on him. Were it not for the arrow that pointed down to the bridge of his nose, he could have been just about anybody, from anywhere.
"It's a relief to see you well," Hakoda said. "The men really need something to pick them up as it is."
The smile that Aang gave him was... oddly haunted. There was something that shifted in the boy, something so different from the last time he'd seen him. It wasn't the hair, or the clothes. His shoulders had a different set, his stance a different posture. He looked weighed upon. No, that wasn't it; he looked weighed down when he left their ship months ago. He looked angry. Not presently angry, angry at anything around him, but as though he'd discovered a wellspring of it in him, and it filled a void that he probably didn't know was there.
What kind of world was it, when a thirteen year old boy held the fate of the world in the balance?
What kind of world was it, when anger was something to be cherished?
"I'm just glad that something worked out right," Aang said. He had a chipper tone, at least. One more than a little exhausted, but given they infiltrated the Fire Nation by passing through Azul, it was a shining miracle that he made it through with all of his limbs. Grey eyes widened a bit. "Katara! She's in the next cart cooking something!"
"Her brother is right," Azula said darkly, inspecting her nails. "That girl is a horrific cook."
"Hey, I taught her everything she knows," Hakoda said.
"You horrible person," Azula said flatly. He knew when he was being jibed, though, so didn't rise to the bait.
"Where is everybody?" Aang asked, peeking through the slats which had been nailed in place to keep the worst of the snow from blowing into the car. The fragile smile on his face started to wilt a bit. "...you're not alone, are you?"
"Mistress Baihu thought this might be a trap. I thought it wasn't. This was our compromise," Hakoda said easily. "Come on. You might as well get a hot meal in you before we go and invade the Fire Nation."
"So you're abandoning your daughter?" the Prince asked, sounding confused.
"Just her cooking," Hakoda said with a smirk. He began forward, and rapped on the door to the next car.
"Just a minute, Sokka! You can't eat it when it's still raw!" Katara's muffled voice came through the door.
"That wouldn't stop him from trying," Hakoda teased. He knew his children well, after all.
All but one of them, it seemed.
The door was hurled open, almost clattering off of its rails from Katara's heave. She stared up at him for a long time, in his mind. She looked... older. Just like Aang did. Like she'd had to weather some terrible storms of her own. "Dad?" she asked.
"Of course, sweetheart," he said.
"DAD!" she screamed, and crashed into his chest, her arms pulling his ribs into a creaking hug. And for this one moment, there was no war, there was no terror, no end of the world. There was just a man and his daughter, reunited.
Chapter 17
Loose Ends
The encampment on the Baihu Estate's grounds was remarkably substantial. It was obvious from the way it was laid out that the various factions in this amalgamated fighting force had tried to separate themselves from ancient rivals, but were forced closer and closer together by the realities of the space they had, and the weather they were fighting against. Si Wongi and Dakongese rubbed elbows when they didn't exchange fists. Omashuans knocked heads with Ru Nani. Dividesmen, now at their most fundamental scale homeless, drifted as a sort of buffer between all of them. In a way, it was a fascinating subject, watching how the various forces all repelled each other, but not quite enough to spiral out in a dervish of destruction. They were held together just enough that they simmered, without boiling.
"Are you gonna eat that?" one of Tzu Zi's identical sisters asked. Then, without so much as waiting for Nila's answer, she stole the bun off of Nila's setting. The Si Wongi gave... Aan Jee, it had to be... a death glare, and took it back, straight out of the thief's teeth. She then bit into the bite, reclaiming it for her own, heedless of the unsanitary nature of the deed. If nothing else, she would not be one-upped.
"So tell me. Is it true what Rai Li said about you and Sokka?" Tzu Zi leaned in from the other direction, however not with any designs on Nila's meal.
"It would depend on what she said," Nila said, she then turned to the others. "All well and good, but how do you intend to win a battle dependent on us, without letting this Fire Lord know we are there?"
"That's the difficult part," another guest of honor at this table, General How, said. He ran a hand down his beard, teasing at the narrow streaks of gray which were beginning to spread down from the corners of his mouth. "If the Blue Turbans don't win at Yokaizo, then they will be of no use during the Day of Black Sun. If we help them, then we can use them, but we lose the element of surprise. They'd probably tear up the rails a hundred miles from the city. And in this weather, that's a death-march."
"Well... What if we help them in some way that doesn't need an army?" Aang asked.
"I don't see how anybody could," How said, shaking his head slowly.
"You're overthinking," Azula pointed out. "Zhao already knows that Aang is in the Fire Nation. He also already knows that he's going to attack on the Day of Black Sun. What he doesn't know, is from where."
The general turned a glance to her. "Really? That could be either catastrophic or useful."
"She said she heard you two... doin' some stuff," Tzu Zi broke into Nila's attention.
"Many people do many things. Be specific or stop interrupting," Nila chastised. Even though she had a fairly sure grasp of what Tzu Zi was trying to imply, she also had a fair notion that she'd never say it in public, which spared Nila an uncomfortable topic of conversation.
"Useful, I'd say," Sokka agreed with Azula, where he sat between the Avatar and Katara. "He's going to be staring east. And which direction is the Blue Turban Rebellion coming from?"
"So you intend to use them as screening troops. Somewhat ruthless, but very practical," How nodded.
"No! That's not it at all!" the Avatar shook his head and waved his hands in a grand gesticulation of his defiance. "I'm not going to sacrifice anybody to win this war. I swear it!"
"Some sacrifices need to be made," Zuko said quietly, from Azula's side. "Even if we don't want to. Even if we wish we didn't have to. Sacrifices that cut to the bone."
"The Prince is right, Avatar," How said. "Anything without cost is without worth, and we're trying to achieve something of monumental worth. There will be losses. Even in the happiest of days, some will not come out alive."
"If you keep thinking that way, then you'll make sure that happens," Aang said quietly. Almost sagely. "You should try, at least, to bring everybody through. You have to try."
How sighed, and ran a hand down his beard as was his nervous habit, before turning back to Azula, whom he obviously found more agreeable conversation. "As Zhao will be using your old plan, have you considered any other weak-points in your old strategy?"
"I've given it some thought," Azula said, but she sounded... Conflicted, maybe? It was hard to say. Nila wasn't the best of judges on these sorts of things.
"I was talking about how that morning... you two didn't come out until long after everybody else... if you get my meaning?" Tzu Zi kept pressuring.
"This is neither the time nor the place," Nila said.
"Come on! I've got to know if my best friend has fallen in love!" she pleaded.
"Love? Love?" Nila asked, rolling the foreign word in her mouth, and finding it alien and mildly distasteful. "He and I are intimate, and share common interests and aptitudes. That is the long and short of it!"
"So that was you that night!" Tzu Zi said. Nila growled and shook her head.
"N-n-nila? Where d-d-did M-m-malu go, anyway?" Rai Lee asked, leaning past Aan Jee's back, where she sat at a distant corner of the table. Somewhere as far from all others as social convention would allow her.
"I haven't the foggiest. Wherever she is, it is upon her head alone," Nila dismissed. "And you! You will cease this line here and now!"
"Now, if what you're saying is true, then that means we could leverage the Avatar... so long as it's not apparent that he's coming from somewhere else," How said.
"Exactly. A double bluff. Make Zhao think that he is a part of the Blue Turban Rebellion, so that he'll watch it with his entire focus," Azula said, her enthusiasm starting to mount.
"And when he tries to rearrange his defense to make up for what he sees as a hole in his defenses, the other force hits from the direction he'd almost prepared," Zuko continued. "We can't discount Long Feng... much as I'd like to..."
"We've all learned how dangerous it is to discount Long Feng," How said grimly.
"Long Feng will play his part in this war, mostly because he doesn't know who the other players are. As long as you don't feel any particular kinship with the soldiers of Ba Sing Se bearing the brunt of Zhao's counterattack, they could allow for a three-pronged attack on Caldera City," she said, punching a fist into her palm.
How chuckled. "Had I known this meal was going to turn into a strategy session, I would have had somebody lay out a map."
"Any time is a good time for strategy," Sokka's father noted lightly, where he sat out of easy eye. If that was what Sokka was going to look like when he grew older, then Nila would account herself very fortunate indeed.
Assuming things didn't explode into flames and recriminations, as so often they did with her.
"You never talked about it! That's what best-friends are for, am I right?" Tzu Zi continued to press. Her other sister, the acrobat, was making doe-eyes at Zuko, who in turn didn't seem to notice she was there. Fitting. He and the earthbender were a far finer match, in that she had backbone. Unlike the acrobat, in a seemingly literal fashion. "So what was it like? Was it fun? Did he do that thing you did when we..."
"You swore you would not talk of that," Nila said, thrusting a finger under Tzu Zi's nose. She batted it away easily.
"Oh, you were just flustered and confused. Now, what about that Sokka fella?"
"I swear to whatever god you believe in..." Nila muttered darkly, her temper at the fraying edge.
"But won't that mean that Zhao... throws everything he has at me?" Aang asked. "I don't know if I can stop an army all on my own."
"You don't have to," How said. "You just have to be there, at the right place at the right time. If things work out less than terribly, you won't be involved in a fight at all."
"I don't like those odds," Aang said, fiddling with his sleeves in a nascent nervous habit. "Something always tends to go a little wrong."
"You're not being asked to win a war in a single stroke," How said patiently. "Fong made that mistake, and nearly died because of it," the Avatar turned away, shame on his face. "I'm not going to make that same mistake. And you're not going to have to lead an army, because both the Mountain King and Badesh are there."
"I wish there were some way that this wouldn't have to happen," Aang said. "There are so many more important things that have to be solved, and I don't know how I'm going to solve them, either!"
How sighed, and turned his eyes to the Avatar after a moment contemplating his navel. "If there is one thing that I've learned in my years, young Avatar, it's that you have to deal with the stone in front of you, rather than the mountain down the road. I know that this damned unnatural weather will be the death of the entire world if it isn't stopped. I have no idea how that's going to happen. I know that the Fire Nation is going to burn Ba Sing Se to a crater filled with cinders if we allow them the aerial advantage when the Comet returns. That's something I can solve. Let us deal with the problems before us. After that, we leave to you."
Aang just nodded, obviously not feeling the best even after having so much responsibility removed from his shoulders. He would perennially be the sort to blame himself for the failures of others, Nila figured. That was going to break his little mind one day. Say what you would about Nila's hubris, at least she didn't assume that the entire world was rotating in the palm of her hand, to save or crush by her decision.
Of course, with the Avatar, that may very well be the case.
"Maybe I'll go talk to Sokka, then," Tzu Zi noted.
"You shall do no such thing," Nila said.
"Agni's Flame, Nila! Are you blushing?"
"NO!" she snapped.
"You're embarrassed! I didn't even know you could be embarrassed!" she said.
"Stop this," Nila said.
"Come on. If you just filled me in on everything, I wouldn't have to keep pulling at you."
"You ought not feel a need to pull at all!" Nila answered her.
"But you're... you've been somewhere none of us have been... if you get my drift."
"Speak for yourself," Aan Jee chuckled from Nila's other side.
"Tzu Zi, end this, now."
"Come oooooon."
"I AM NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT MY SEX LIFE!" Nila shouted at her.
Silence suddenly overtook all conversation, as Tzu Zi leaned back, embarrassment now clear on her face. Nila slowly turned, to see that all others were now watching her. Sokka's sister had her face in her palm, and was muttering something that, were she more proficient in Yqanuac, would know meant 'gods help us, she really is a female him.' The father of those two seemed to be holding in a chuckle. The others... just looked baffled and aghast.
"...fine. I'm leaving," she said, grabbing her platter and turning from the table. "Do you see what you made me do?"
"I'm sorry..." Tzu Zi said, even though she did look at least a little amused by it. That amusement was at least buried in contrition, so she made a point of not hating her for it. She nevertheless shook her head, exited the room, and slammed the door shut behind her.
In the room, How blinked without words for a few moments, then turned to Hakoda, who was likely the oldest man in the room other than he himself. "You know, for a while there, I forgot that much of our plans and preparations are in the hands of the young," he noted.
"Speak for yourself," Azula unknowingly echoed the criminal Baihu. "Now, how do we get the Avatar into position before they move on Yokaizo?"
In the end, he had to get out of the room. It wasn't Nila's massively-out-of-context bellowing that knocked him out of it, but rather, the weight of what everybody was saying. This was pretty much it. The Day of Black Sun was a week and a half away. If they didn't beat Zhao there, then he'd have a straight run to the return of Sozin's Comet. And if he used it...
No, that wasn't the worst part, Aang decided. The worst part was that even if they stopped Zhao dead in his tracks, then the world still had a couple weeks to live regardless. He leaned against a pillar that held up the awning, which had so often before now held off rain, but now, had talons of ice reaching down almost to his eye level where he stood. They grew longer every hour, as the water melted off the roof, then fell to some place cold enough to refreeze. Everything went down. The path of least resistance. Never reaching the ground, but forever divorced from the sky. Stuck in limbo.
Kinda like him.
"Hey," a friendly voice came from Aang's back. He turned, and gave a weary smile – the best he had to offer – to Katara. "I noticed you move out. Something on your mind?"
"Too much," he said. He rubbed his face with his hands, catching his fingertips on his headband. With a groan, he pulled it past his hair and dropped it onto the floor. So long inside that thing, and air against his forehead felt a foreign thing. "So much is dependent on me doing things that I'm not even sure I'm capable of. And no matter how well we do... people are going to die."
"I know," Katara said. She moved to Aang's side, and bent the icicles out of her way so she could lean on the railing without the water sliding down her back. "I wish I had something I could tell you. Some way I could make you feel better, but you're right. I'm looking at the people around that table, and I can't help but think... am I going to see them at the end? Or is this going to be another Summavut?"
"No. No I won't let it be," Aang said.
"I know you won't," Katara said, giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. She turned to face as he did, out into the obscured bay, hidden by fat flakes of snow that blew on ceaseless winds. "I... I'm worried about my sister."
"Hikaoh?" Aang asked.
Katara nodded. "I talked to Kori for a while, and if half of what he says about my sister is true, then she could be out there, all on her own, and in danger. For all the wrong reasons, too!"
"Well, we can only hope that she'll be alright."
"No. Hoping isn't enough for me anymore," Katara said. "The Fire Nation tore my family apart more than a decade ago. I don't care if the world ends next month; if it does, then I'm going to face it with my family."
"Are you sure you'll be able to save her?" Aang asked.
"I have to," Katara whispered.
"She's not wrong," Azula's voice instantly pulled Aang's attention away from the grey haze before him. The look on Katara's face went from distant to hard and edged like a tomahawk in the blink of an eye. But that glare faltered, when Azula approached. Because the look on her face was much as Katara's had been. "You have to stand by your family. Even in the hard times," she said. Then, a sigh, as her eyes slid closed, and she leaned against the rail herself, heedless of the water that dripped into her phoenix-tail. "Especially the hard times. If you don't, then you never deserved to have them for the good. It took me a long time to figure that out. And honestly... it's been on my mind."
"What do you mean?" Aang asked.
"...my father," she said.
"Ozai?" Katara asked, more confused than angry, but the anger was certainly there. Azula simply nodded, eyes still closed. "Why would you be thinking about him?"
She took a step away from the rail, and planted her back against the wall, instead. She turned slightly, as though half-glancing through the window there, into the 'banquet', such as it was, that continued on without either the focus or the schemer. "Because he's my father," Azula said simply. She turned those eyes on Katara, then. "You of all people would understand that your family can't be turned away, no matter what they do. Your sister tried to kill you, and yet you not only forgive her, but you try to save her. How can I call myself a daughter if I don't do the same?"
"You want to save Ozai?" Katara asked. "The guy who turned my sister into a weapon? The guy who killed thousands at Summavut? That guy?"
She shook her head, slowly. "No. I want to save the man who taught me how to temper the flame inside my soul. I want to save the man who taught me how to read. I want to save the man who gave me the best of teachers, the best of opportunities. I want to save Prince Ozai... not Fire Lord Ozai."
"They're the same person," Katara said.
"No. They aren't," Azula said. "It's obvious to me. Father... he once believed that he was the best thing for the nation. That he would be able to steer the Fire Nation down a glorious path. One that didn't live under the pall of Azulon's atrocities. Somewhere along the way, he got... sidetracked. Power lured him. Seduced him," she ran a thumb under one eye... as though to crush out a tear before it formed. "...turned him into something cruel and vain."
"Azula..."
"And I know what it was. Me," Azula continued. "If I hadn't 'become ill', he wouldn't be who he is now. Your slaughter at Summavut would never have happened. Your sister wouldn't have been brainwashed and turned against you. Everything that went wrong in this world, went wrong because of me. I am responsible for the man that my father has become."
"You aren't," Aang cut in. "Even if you changed the way things went, that doesn't mean that it's your fault."
"I never said fault. I said responsibility," Azula said. Katara had settled into a glare, but one not as lethal or deathly as Aang would have anticipated.
"What are you going to do?" Katara asked.
"The same thing you are, only with a different target," Azula said. "I need to know that my father is alright."
"Even after all he's done?" Katara asked. Azula nodded slowly, bangs hanging aside her face.
"He's still my father."
"But... what will you do when you find him?" Aang asked.
"Honestly? I have no idea," Azula said. She gave a mirthless laugh. "How very unlike me. Traipsing off into peril and disaster without so much as a plan."
"That's not what I heard from your brother..." Aang said.
"Zuzu has... a version of me in his mind," she said. She turned to Katara. "If you want to know what I want to save in Ozai, look at Zuko. All of what Zuko is... he came by honestly."
Katara's glare became a gape. "Really?" she asked. "Ozai used to be him?"
"The unfavored son of a spiteful father? Absolutely," Azula said. "There was one time... in another life... when I had to fight him. 'The Phoenix King', he called himself. He'd lost himself into a megalomania that even I couldn't foresee. Threw me aside. Left me to rot. I didn't take it well," she puffed out a breath. "It was ironic... that you would come to save the Avatar then. That you'd find me there, in that dungeon."
"Ozai captured me?"
"Ty Lee," Azula clarified to Aang's query. "As I said, another life. The way he twisted up, I saw in him a shadow of his father. A shadow of his grandfather. A man desperate to make a difference. Sozin started a war he couldn't win. Azulon fought a war he couldn't escape. Ozai... was desperate enough to do anything. And in another life... Zuko was a lot like that."
"Really."
Azula nodded. "You don't know how bad things got after Ozai was cast down. Zuko was a divisive Fire Lord. He had a lot of enemies. A lot of people wanted him dead, on both sides of the national line. It didn't help that I was actively opposing him, but... There were times, when he struck down my plans, I could see Ozai in him. And honestly? That concerned me deeply, even then."
"How could Zuko turn into Ozai?" Katara asked. "Yeah, your brother's infuriating, but he's not evil."
"Neither is my father," Azula said quietly. "He's done evil things. Lost his mind to megalomania. But evil?" she shook her head. She took in a stern breath, and raised her gaze to meet the waterbender. "I know you're not going to want to hear it, but all it takes to make a good man into an evil one, is bad circumstances, bad luck, and bad decisions. I'm a product of a man who wanted a weapon, not an heir. Or of a man who was so disappointed in a broken tool, that he cast it away. He favored me out of necessity, and despised me out of necessity. And he abandoned me, out of necessity. Cruel? Yes. Terrible father? Absolutely. But..."
She just shook her head.
"You're not used to talking about this kinda stuff, are you?" Aang asked.
"Oh, what was your first clue?" she asked, her tones returning to the more cutting and witty tones that he was familiar and comfortable with. "The fact is, what we're doing... what they're doing? It's not going to matter much. And I know that the best good I could do is to stop existing."
"I'm not going to let that happen," Aang asked.
"And somehow, I knew he was going to say that," Azula sing-songed to Katara. Then she shook her head. "Have you come up with anything? A way to stop the end of the world?"
"...no," Aang said.
"Not yet," Katara clarified.
"Then search harder," Azula said, with a whisper of... it was a vulnerability, that Aang detected there. A splinter of undiluted fear. "Because I have some certainty that you're the only one who can. Much as I'd like to be able to claim credit for mankind's continued existence, I don't think that's in my power."
A brave showing, hiding deeply held concern. Fear. Fear inside somebody who hated being afraid.
"We'll come up with something," Aang said. He turned, looking out into the snows once more. "There's no puzzle that has no solution. We've just got to find one that doesn't cost us our souls."
"Nila?" Sokka asked, as he leaned out of the doorway, to the upper floor balcony. It, like the lower, had an awning that stretched over it. That one had been put in place to keep rain from ruining a pleasant sitting-area. Now, it was a catacomb, walled in ice that froze as it fell from above. It pooled and mounded inside, before spilling further, onto the floor below. Nila, dark and brightly-attired as she was, stood out starkly against that grim grey background. "There you are," he said.
"Tribesman," she said. She was sitting in one of the chairs, her feet up, as though staring through the ice.
"...something on your mind?" Sokka asked. She was staring into the distance in an oddly disconcerting way. In a way which, honestly, reminded Sokka a little bit of her brother.
"Yes," she answered simply.
"...mind sharing?" he asked.
There was a snap of silence, before she shook her head, and glanced in his direction. "I see little use. It is a topic which has little sense or sensibility about it."
"Hey, those are some of the best things to talk about," Sokka offered, trying to pull a chair to sit next to her. He was stymied, when he found on of its legs encased in ice. He tugged for a long moment, before scratching his hair. Then, he pulled Space Sword and cut it free with a couple of pokes. "So?"
"You are going to speak to a lady with blade in hand? How brutish," Nila teased, even with her voice very flat and emotionless.
"I thought ladies liked it when men were armed and at the ready," Sokka answered.
"Ugh," Nila muttered. "Can we not go this direction right now?"
"You started it," the tribesman said, as he slid the blade home. He certainly was no master of the sword, no matter what Piandao had promised when the two had parted, but the blade was now as at-home on his back or hip as his boomerang was. He sat, and kicked his feet up as she had. "You're thinking about your brother, aren't you?"
"I had no idea I was so transparent," Nila muttered.
"You don't try to hide things. I like that," Sokka said. "It's refreshing."
"Ice down your back in the morning is 'refreshing'. I am annoying. There stands a great difference."
"You're not so bad," Sokka said. "I'm guessing... that means your brother is still free, but you're worried about how you're going to find him?"
"I will find him as surely as the rains find the Fire Nation," Nila said.
"I haven't seen much rain recently," Sokka noted grimly.
"As have I," she said. A silence stretched, punctuated only by the murmur of voices behind and below. "How do you deal with this deathsome waiting? To know that you are an ant in the presence of gods, powerless to change what you find yourself within?"
"I'm not powerless," Sokka said. "Sure, my surrogate little brother is the Avatar, my buddy's the Prince of the Fire Nation, my other buddy decided to break the rules of the universe because she thought that not-metalbending was too annoying to deal with, and everybody over the age of forty seems to be in some globe-spanning conspiracy, but that doesn't mean I'm useless. If we didn't have a train, there'd be no Black-Sun invasion, period. And whose idea was it to steal a train?"
Silence once more.
"This is the part where you're supposed to say 'you did'," Sokka said.
"I was not aware that this was pantomime," Nila answered him.
"Well, I did," he said. "You're selling yourself short. You've done a lot of good, just like everybody has. We're all fighting together, in the ways that we can."
"The only good I do is in the purview of explosives," she noted.
"And you helped bring hundreds of Tribal children out of captivity," he said, reaching out and taking her hand. He gave it a reassuring squeeze. "There are hundreds of families, right now, that are going to be whole again for the first time in more than a decade, and that's because of you."
"Me? No. Because of you, your sister, Malu and the Prince. I merely provided tools."
"If you didn't have those pepper-gas bombs, we would have never made it out. And then you made it so that prison was uninhabitable, so nobody would use it again," Sokka pointed out. "And that's not even counting saving Sato from the Spider, or..."
"I get it, I get it. I understand," Nila said distractedly. "I am valuable. Whoo."
"There you go! Engage that sarcasm!" Sokka said enthusiastically.
"It's fortunate that you enjoy sarcasm. Many are simply angered by it," she said. But she didn't pull free of his hand. Not until she sat forward, pulling him forward as well so that the connection didn't break. "Wait... He is free, which means..."
"Which means what?"
"I must go to sleep," Nila said.
"...why?"
"There is a fair to good chance that I will enter the spirit world in my dreams. There is something I need to know from my brother."
"Oh. That sounds like a good idea. Shouldn't we just ask Aang to do it, though?" He asked, casting a thumb over his shoulder.
"And potentially waste eight hours he could better spend in preparation? No. Let him do as he does, and let me do as I may do."
"Alright," he said. He pulled his hand from hers, and turned to the door. "So, should I get you some soothing tea or something?"
"Tea keeps me awake," Nila said, staring earnestly into the distance. "I need something which shall make me exhausted, body and mind, enough to slumber deeply and quickly."
"...Well, Katara might know of something," Sokka offered.
"Or perhaps," she began, turning a glint of green eye toward him. "...perhaps there is some small part in this you can play."
He clapped his hands together. "Alright. What do you need me to do?" he asked.
She started to smile, in a way that she very seldom did.
"...oh," he said. Well, that was certainly going to make his evening. "Wait, I thought we agreed..."
"Shut up, Sokka."
"Yes, ma'am."
He rapped on the door of that had been offered to General How. Aang didn't really know what he was supposed to say, or do, right now. 'Yes, I'll play decoy for your army'? There was a certain degree of leeway that he now knew that he had to afford himself – as he was not simply an airbender monk anymore. He was the Avatar. Like Azula said, the Avatar only had the principles that who lived with it placed upon it. He wanted to have principles... but at the came time, he didn't want to let everybody down, again.
"Yes?" How asked from within.
"May I come in?" he asked.
"Avatar? Of course," he said. Aang slid the door open, to find the man hunched over a table too small for him, reading reports by candle-light. "What is on your mind at this late hour?"
"Your battles. And the Day of Black Sun. And... and everything, really," he said.
How nodded slowly, and set the reports aside. "I'm a military man, Avatar. I fought at the wall against the Dragon of the West. My father helped put down the Daughter of Blades in Ru Nan. And his father crushed the Eunuch's Rebellion. It's in my blood. But, I gather, it's not in yours," he said.
"How do you do it? Choose so quickly between who lives and who dies?" Aang asked, leaning his back against the wall next to the door.
"Quickly doesn't mean easily, young Avatar," How said. "Speed is something that you gain with experience, whether you'd like it or not. Sometimes, the fast choices are the wrong ones," he nodded slowly. "There are times I wish I could take back decisions made in the snap of the moment. That I could have had more time to understand. But that's folly, because time and destiny wait for no man, generals and Avatars included."
"...I want to help, but I don't want to hurt anybody," he said.
"Mutually exclusive in your mind," How said. He rose to his feet, and beckoned Aang to follow him as he moved to the doors which lead out onto a balcony. He had to shoulder into the door to snap it loose of its icy mooring, and his first steps were unsteady until he cleared their slick purchase. He went to the rail, and grasped it, ice or no, as he looked out onto the field of tents below. Some of them seemed in desperate peril of simply having a bank of snow blow over and crush them. "Do you see those men, down there?"
"The soldiers?" Aang asked, taking a place beside him.
"No. Not them," he said. He pointed further, to where there were campfires burning, pots bubbling even in the night. Where weary looking men and even women were gathered around those places of warmth and light in the night. "Them. They are the followers of an army. They never touch a blade except to sharpen or repair it. They never don armor except to mend it. They never fight, unless everybody else has already died, and even then, they seldom do. But without them, this army dies in the gutter, starved to death, coughing with disease, and their weapons and garb crumbling away with rust."
"...you're saying that not everybody in war has to fight to make a difference," Aang clarified.
"Exactly that," How said with a nod. "If Chief Hakoda were awake, he'd probably say it in some... meaningful way of his. He's got a bit of poet in him, that man," he shook his head. "But enough of that. Yes; in a war, everybody fights in their own way. Soldiers put steel to their fellow man. Smiths build them armor to prevent that steel from returning. Cooks and surgeons keep them on their feet, or get them back on their feet, as the case may be. Wives and children give them something to want to return to... if they aren't already growing the food, tanning the leather, smelting the iron, or ten thousand other things which make either war or peace possible."
"It's all connected," Aang said, the revelation dawning even against his own fatigue. "I've... always seen soldiers as something to be feared or reviled... but they're just like everybody else. A part of a greater whole, one that, without them, is made simply lesser."
How nodded. "A soldier's greatest wish – if he's sane – is a life without war. A man-at-arms' greatest wish is – if he's sane – to have peace," he said. "You might not understand, young Avatar, but life as a soldier teaches you one very important lesson."
"What's that?" Aang asked.
"That there's no such thing as an evil people," How said. "Some men can be cruel, ruthless, sadistic, but there will always be a thousand men-at-arms who just want to go home, to be with their families, for every one who fights for the joy of fighting," the long-bearded man gave a scoff. "...joy of fighting, as though it were even a thing."
"I have to admit... you're a lot different than I imagined a general would be," Aang said.
He took a breath, his eyes closed as he stood resolute against the blowing snow. "I've had to be," he said. Then, the turned a glance to Aang. "I'm not asking you to fight, young Avatar. I'm only asking that you do your part. The same way that I will. As Hakoda will. As the Tribesmen, as the forces down there – as even the Ghurkas if your words are true – will."
"Everybody is fighting together," Aang said. "The world's going to be very different when this war is over," he said. If it survived, anyway.
"I hope it is," How said. "Because anything has to be better than this."
The older man turned, and moved back toward his room, out of the cold and the snow. Aang, understandably, followed him. For some reason, it seemed there was just a little bit of Monk Gyatso in the old, broad-chested general. Then again, Gyatso had been the one to tell him, so long ago both relatively and chronologically, that the most profound of wisdom could come from the most unexpected sources, and that nobody is below notice. "So what will I do?"
"Frighten them," How said. "Just show yourself to them, and they'll fill in the blanks themselves."
"But what about secrecy? The Day of Black Sun... right. He knows its coming. That I'm coming," he wiped a hand down his face, causing a black lock to tumble before one eye. He flicked it away as he turned to How. "I don't know how, though. I'm not this... military guy."
"Then have faith in those around you who are," How said.
Nila yawned, stretching her arms over her head, as she slowly sat up, and dusted the dead earth off of her back. As plans went, this one had a very promising start. She blinked a few times, looking around the domain that she had once known front and back. Not so, now.
"Now this isn't even fair," Nila muttered to herself, as she looked upon a Spirit World torn asunder. Still, it wasn't with a tenth of the vitriol that she ordinarily would have brought to this kind of situation. While she was most definitely not a happy person in general, right now... she was feeling pretty good about herself. So much so, that there was a curl to her lips and an idle humming of a tuneless song, such that people who didn't know Nila would say 'she's happy'. People who did know Nila would be hopelessly confused, and a little afraid.
She didn't notice, as she turned about, that she had the same hum in her throat, the same tuneless song, that her brother so often had uttered.
When she took a step, she felt rough, dry dirt on bare feet. She looked down, and saw a notable problem. "This simply will not do," Nila said. She closed her eyes, and thought of something besides nudity. There was a slight shift in her perceived weight, and behold, she was now clothed much as she was when she was awake; a roughly-tailored men's shirt made to fit her, and a pair of pants for maximum mobility. "Now... where are you, Sharif?"
Islands hung in the void, separated by great expanses of empty space. But at the same time, she felt that she still knew this place. That there was still direction that she'd instilled down into instinct. She closed her eyes, her fingers tweezing at her brow as her lips fell into a far more Nila-like scowl. It started to congeal in her head, her map of this place. But at the same time, though the map was still there in her proprioception as much as she knew where her own arms and legs were, it now took a different shape. It was as though she'd awakened to suddenly have legs sprouting from her shoulders, arms hanging out of her back, and eyes in her groin.
Still... she had a direction.
She started walking, before opening her eyes, and her crunching turned from the rasp of bootleather on gravel, to the paff of that same bootleather on dry clay. Even as she opened her eyes, she knew that there would be a path, leading her where she needed to go. She didn't know why. Not really. Her brother probably did, but not she. She might learn, but not today. All that mattered, was that if she walked this path, she would reach her brother.
How odd, that so much of her life in the last year had been centered around that every concept?
While she walked, she passed familiar sights in unfamiliar places. The ship of the Moorage, drifting now on the tide of oblivion. The metal frames of the Cage. The statue of the head and shoulders of an oddly featured man, balding and large-nosed, inscribed with letters in a language she could not read.
Then, at the end of her journey, there was a door. It hung there, no walls surrounding it, but the path of sun-baked clay leading to its precipice. She slowed as she approached, looking the aperture over. It was a golden brown, much like the houses in her once-home of Sentinel Rock. It didn't look a Si Wongi creation, but it had a Si Wongi material to it. Inked fingers drifted toward it, running gently down the frame. The door's structure crumbled away like badly made bricks, or pressured sand. A groan sounded from within the black passage, one that spoke of something great and massive, suffering. Something wounded, even as it dreamed.
New rule to the list; don't touch the dying doorway.
Oddly, not the strangest rule she'd ever had to make.
It was a strange sensation, to pass forward. It slid along her like walking through a pane of freezing water, before a fresh step found her on mosaic tiled floors. Ahead of her, she heard an electric zap, as lighting bounded amidst some unseen barrier ahead of her. All that it touched had already been rendered into ashes, but the lightning continued to bounce. She turned, and looked. Stacks of books. Thousands of them. Millions perhaps. But that wasn't what held her attention.
What held her attention were the traps.
She'd learned so early on what traps did, the damage they could do, and how hard they were to detect. Not so, now. It was like a secretive layer of reality had been stripped away, and the hazards of the Spirit World, where one thing gathered to a critical mass without intellect giving it purpose or path, into a deadly whirlwind. Flames roiled in the air, burning without casting appreciable amounts of light. Seemingly begging to burn. Dust on the floor turned in lazy circles, describing the outline of a Springboard. The floor outright bubbled when she circumvented that, and saw a Fruit Punch ahead and beyond it.
"Well," Nila said into that silence, her quiet words almost sounding like a gunshot to the dead library. "I will have only myself to blame for falling into them now," she said. She could at least rationalize her failures with the traps before as having been tricked into thinking what was not safe, was. Repeated lessons instilled the first rule, that everything was trying to kill her. Important rule.
She closed her eyes once more. She could feel him. He was in this place, this broad and dead library of a forgotten time, and a forgotten place. Staffed by forgotten servants. Built by a forgotten hand. Well, wing, actually.
"Sharif! Where are you you foolish boy?" Nila shouted. Beyond a gunshot, to shout in this place.
She walked the library, and gave only half a look to the feathers that lay at the foot of bookshelves. "Sharif!"
An echo.
She scowled, her earlier good humor now finally being replaced by her usual sour scowl. She knew he was somewhere nearby. Perhaps amidst the rows? But if then, why hadn't he answered her?
She glanced to the feathers for a moment, then strode to one of the shelves, picking up a particularly thick, metalled-leather bound tome. 'From Stone: The Complete Histories of the Earthbender Empire'. She shrugged, not being one who cared much about ancient civilizations, and stepped out of the stacks. Then, she turned, and heaved the book onto the floor near where she'd gotten it.
It landed silently, throwing up dust which settled entirely too quickly. That would explain it. But it didn't make anything easier.
"Stop rewriting the rules," Nila demanded. She could practically hear the universe laughing at her.
So she went back to the rule she knew. She could feel the way, but couldn't see it. So if she walked without seeing it... Her eyes slid closed once more, and she started walking. Every step she took was tentative, because every part of her kept screaming 'you're going to step into a Meat Grinder', one that she would easily have seen coming. But she continued.
She found her way.
The direction shifted, and she walked with it. Her eyes pressed shut, her feet barely whispering against the floor, crunching lightly against mosaic tiles which were slipping out of place. As far as her body could tell, she was adrift in a sea of non-perception, with only the sensation of her weight in her boots tethering her.
Until she opened her eyes, and saw a young man in black robes turning a corner ahead of her. She blinked a few times, then picked up her pace to an outright sprint. Which was a mistake, because she only noticed the Springboard at the last possible second, and to avoid it, she had to bound inelegantly over it. Thus, when she landed, she did so on feathers, which had less grip than the ground. She clawed at the stack of books beside her, but only succeeded in dragging them down with her as she fell into the path between bookshelves.
The clatter of books falling on her sounded in a muted way, through the gray and featureless 'darkness'. It wasn't really dark. Nor light. It was just... nothing. She pushed a book off of her head, and looked up.
"Hello, Sharif," Nila said direly.
"Sister? What are you doing here?" he asked. There was a faint glow in the scar on his brow. Obviously he was 'thinking with a false brain', as he'd described it.
"Trying to find you, as it would turn out," she said. She pushed herself to her feet quickly, and struck the dust off of her clothing. Quite pointless, because she was here only as an astral projection, but still, some habits were hard to shirk. "We must speak."
"About?" her brother asked, snapping a tome shut in his hand.
"There are things you discussed with the Avatar when he was stolen from a train. He has not taken them to heart, so I feel one ought in his stead."
"You would learn his lessons for him?" Sharif asked. He shook his head. "My dear sister, however clever you may be, you aren't clever enough for that."
"You mock my intellect?" Nila asked. "There was something that the Avatar did not want to hear. I don't care what he wants to hear. What is it?"
Sharif sighed, and gave a nod aside. She fell in behind him, as there was a sort of twisting to her perception. A straight section of stacks instantly became a corner, and nestled at its point was a desk that hung with a lamp that burned no earthly flame. "There are many things I believe the Avatar did not learn properly. He holds a belief that he can save everybody. In that, he is a foolish optimist."
"He wishes not to slay a woman he loves," Nila said.
"Love? Really?" Sharif said. He raised his brows in surprise, then turned to sit in the chair that creaked ominously at his arrival. "It would explain much. I have had words with Irukandji, and his intransigence made little sense before. Of course he would not slay a beloved."
"Which means that there must be another way."
"...well..." Sharif said, his eyes growing distant again, but not in the mind-impoverished way that they so often did in the mortal world.
"Speak, brother," Nila demanded.
"There is nothing that speaks of Imbalance in this library. For how could there be?" he asked. She shrugged. "Instead, I have researched the underpinnings, the fundamental science of the spirit."
"You? Employing a scientific method?" Nila asked, honestly impressed.
"You were not unique in the brilliant mind passed to you from our parents," Sharif said with a humble shrug. "I simply had ways of using it that did not reek of abject hubris."
"You were lazy," Nila contended.
"Ah, but did anybody expect highly of me?" he asked. She glared at him. "There is an art to sloth that is not to be undersold. Of it, I have learned more of the spirit kin in the first ten years of my life than most gather in their sixty."
"And then forgot more than most living know upon a fateful day in your twelfth," Nila said quietly.
He sighed, and nodded. "I cannot apologize enough, for leaving you as you were in that place. Surrounded by stupid people."
"Ironic indeed that only an idiot would survive our home town's destruction," Nila said. Sharif turned a look of confusion to her. "Gashuin lives."
"That pompous ass!" Sharif muttered. "I have not forgotten the insults he has levied upon me! I would strike him in the mouth if my mind would allow me to remember why I ought. Ashan ibn-Ali was a far better man to survive," he said. Then, he looked to her. "I am sorry, for losing him. I know that he cared deeply for you."
"He did at that," Nila said.
"But... you've moved on," Sharif said. Nila leaned back. His eyes were sharp to know that at a glance. "Don't look so surprised. Much as you deny, you are your mother's daughter. You grieve hard, you grieve swift, and then you press on. I only hope that whomever has caught your eye is worthy of you. Even a crippled shaman can levy an iron-threat on a worthless lout."
"He is not a lout," Nila said. "In fact, he's the closest thing to an intellectual equal that I have ever met."
"High praise."
"Isn't it, though?" she asked. "You are dissembling. What have you found?"
Sharif turned a look that was half way between annoyance and embarrassment. "Little. Little of use, at least."
"You might be surprised the use of things," Nila said.
"Oh, I am very much aware," Sharif told her. He laid a tome out on the desk, and pushed it open with a fingertip. "This, you see? The Well of Oblivion. It is the only thing which operates as Imbalance does, in its rapacious hunger and obliteration of spirits."
"I thought it a place of punishment in the Eastern Pantheon."
"It is," Sharif admitted. "Not its initial purpose, but it functions. No, the bottom of the Well is an oblivion worthy the name. What falls into it, is unmade to its very least. Which ought sound familiar."
"As does this 'Imbalance' eat," Nila said. "Supposedly."
"Ah, but you might have the eyes of a shaman yet," Sharif said, tapping her in the center of the forehead. She swatted his hand away. He flipped the page with his other hand. "There was a point during some war of Spirit-kind, when the defeated were denied consumption and absorption, but instead consigned to annihilation. They were cast into the Well. And their destruction was not instantaneous."
"Which means?" Nila asked.
"If Imbalance operates as the Well does – and I have some strong evidence that it must – then its appetites might well be infinite, but its capacity to sate it, is not."
"How could this possibly help us?" Nila asked.
"I honestly don't know," Sharif said. "But it is something. A rule that Imbalance must follow."
"A rule that offers no tactic towards killing it."
Sharif sighed. "What was Archeophthese's answer to the 'paradox of existence'?" he asked calmly.
"That until there is a constant established, nothing can be truly known," Nila repeated. "I'm surprised you were paying attention."
"I am a man of many surprises," Sharif said, but not smugly. More distracted. "Even if this offers no advantage of itself, it is something. From there, I can expand my search – as I had been doing when you arrived."
"You are trying to find ways that this Well can be used to fight Imbalance and the Shards?" she asked.
"No. It would be as a bath of water to us, for it," Sharif said. "But Void undoes It. Imbalance operates as the Well. With two points of knowledge, much can be discerned. A third would... be most valuable."
Nila scratched at the hair which was passing between 'boyishly' short and 'femininely' short, trying to think. Then, her brow rose. "The thresholds. It passed between thresholds of one thing to another. Ledge and naked air. Doorways. Edges of shadows. What does that say of it?"
Sharif stared into the distance. "I don't know. But it is something. And a something I will have to note for myself when next I come here."
She sighed. "I can only imagine how aggravating this must be for you."
"I have a simpleton's mind in the waking world. While there, my worries are few, my needs, easily met," Sharif said. "Some would beg for so 'pure' an existence. I know better."
"There is no bliss in ignorance."
"And knowing what lay in the dark, allows the fear of it to be overcome," Sharif completed. He then turned to the book for a moment, before turning to her once again. "How did you know to come here? And in fact, how did you manage to? It was difficult enough for me to find the paths, let alone a non-shaman."
She looked into the infinite distance of scrolls and books. "I don't know. Not yet. I had an... intuition."
"You sound so bitter to say the word," Sharif joked.
"I shall find the mechanism in time," Nila said. "But... it felt like trying to find... the rest of me."
Sharif nodded, and sighed quietly. "How it is amongst twins," Sharif said, and patted her on the shoulder.
"Is there noone you can speak to on this?"
"Koh... but I fear what answers I would get from him," Sharif said. "If he allowed answers at all. He is notorious for being... unkind. Other than he? Irukandji. Agni, perhaps, though she has vanished from my sight, I know not where."
"Tell this Irukandji then," Nila said. "Troublesome though that craven thing might be, it at least fights within our force. That is more than can be said of many."
Sharif nodded, then started slightly. "Oh my. I seem to be awakening," he said. He turned to her, and turned her to face him squarely. "Whatever you have done to do this? Remember it. If nothing else, it will allow us communication, a precious resource in terrible times. And tell the Avatar what I have spoken of. There is a chance – however small, admittedly – that it might mean more to he than to us."
"Of course," Nila said. "I have no desire to see the world end, after all."
"Good," Sharif said. He looked around. "So. Regarding this new 'gentlemen friend' of yours? Have you told him your real name, yet?"
"Yes."
Sharif leaned back. "Really?"
"He prefers 'Nila'," she said. "Easier to pronounce to a Tribesman's tongue."
"He should gain a more dexterous tongue, if only to do us proper respect," Sharif noted.
"His tongue is quite dexterous enough, I have found," Nila said with a chuckle that was, admittedly, quite unlike her usual manner. Sharif turned to her.
"What is that supposed to mea–"
And in the middle of his word, he was gone.
"That could have been awkward," Nila noted to the silence and the abandoned library. Perhaps the universe wasn't strictly out to ruin her life after all.
"Hey. Prince Pouty," Toph said. Zuko turned from where he was about a minute away from settling down and going to sleep. The night was hardly young at this point, and just about everybody else was asleep. Probably Brain and Boomstick as well. Although, more power to them for what they'd done before they went.
While it could be occasionally horrifying, having a sense of hearing as acute as Toph's made for excellent blackmail and teasing.
"Toph," he said. "Do you need something?"
"Kinda," she said.
From the complete lack of movement on his part, she knew he was staring dully at her. "...and it would be?"
"Remember... that sliver?" she asked.
"The one that makes people blind," he clarified.
"Yeah. That one," she said. There was a bundle of nerves in her that honestly she'd rather not have admitted was there. Well, she'd rather it was not a part of her at all. Nervousness and Toph Beifong went about as well together as Twinkletoes and cold-blooded mass-murder. And yet, she found herself in this scenario. "About that..."
"Something happen to you while you were using it?" Zuko asked. He approached a bit, stopping about half way across the room. She was glad to have her toes on stone rather than wood, and the next step, however cold, was a comforting one.
"...kinda."
"Toph, something's obviously wrong, because you're not acting like yourself," the Prince said plainly.
"Let me preface this before I get to the important bit," Toph said, a hand raised toward him, her useless eyes on the floor. "The end is right around the corner, and we're still fighting blinder than I am. I ain't exactly got a heaping helping of hope that we're all gonna get out of this alive. So I figure, there's not much point in beating around the bush and letting a bunch of nervous shull-shit stand in the open."
"I have an idea where this is going," Zuko said.
"Shut up and let me get there then, Pouty Pants," Toph cut him off. "Remember how I said that the sliver lets me steal other peoples' perception?"
"I do recall."
"...I want to steal yours."
"Excuse me?"
She pulled it out of her pocket, and rolled it in her fingers. "I've never seen anything in my life, before I saw the clouds over Azul from some bored guy. Which is a pretty shitty thing to be the first thing my eyes behold, if you get my drift. So I figure... Let my second one at least let me know what I godsdamned look like."
"I didn't know you had such vanity in you," the prince joked. She shot a cloudy-eyed glare at him. Then, slipped the sliver behind her ear. "Aren't you concerned the others are going to freak out when they find themselves blind?"
"Everybody but you, me, and Sugar Queen's dad is asleep. And he's at the other side of the building. Out of range," she said.
"If you say so," Zuko said. There was a moment of silence between the two. "Is it working?"
"You'd be the judge of that," Toph said. She took a few quiet steps forward, and prodded him hard in the ribs. He recoiled with a movement of involuntary shock. "I guess it is."
"Yeah. I'm blind," Zuko said, a tone of boredom in his voice. "How long is this going to take?"
"I'm not really sure," Toph admitted.
"Then do you mind if I sit down?" Zuko asked.
"Be my guest," she said. He tilted a look in her vague direction, one of 'are you kidding me?'. "Just back up 'till you hit the bed, dummy."
"You're enjoying this too much," Zuko said.
"I've gotta get my kicks somehow," Toph said with a shrug.
She saw the shrug.
"Your eyes are open, right?" Toph asked, leaning forward. That strange form in her sensorum leaned forward as well.
"Much good as it's doing me," he said. Bit by bit, features began to form up, clarify, gain resolution. At first, it looked like simply overlaying 'color' onto the body-shape sensation she got with her earthbending.
Then, it turned into something... else.
The girl in Zuko's eyes stood tall. Taller than Toph knew she was. Her arms and legs, far from spindly and tiny, were strong. Her body, far from underdeveloped, was shapely. And her face... Toph never had a standard of beauty instilled in her, mostly because she had about as much idea what a face looked like as she could discern by picking her own nose. But it was obvious, the girl in Zuko's eyes, was beautiful.
It took Toph a minute to put all the pieces together. When she leaned back, and the girl in Zuko's vision did too, she finally grasped it.
He thought she was pretty.
"Huh," Toph said.
"Huh what?" Zuko asked, his voice betraying none of the surprise she felt in this. Probably because he was so damned used to it by now. The girl in his eyes smiled, her eyes sliding shut and her head shaking slowly. Lustrous black hair waved before her face as she did so. She reached up to her ear, and pulled the shard away.
In that instant, the green eyed girl in the bright red dress vanished. All that could be 'seen', was the impression of Zuko where his feet hit the floor.
"You think I'm pretty," Toph said. Zuko hemmed and hawed a little. She leaned forward just a little, and pecked her lips to his. Then, she launched her fist into his gut, driving the wind from his lungs. "That's for being such a hopeless damned romantic."
"Ow, what the hell?" Zuko muttered, rubbing his gut. Toph, though, breezed out of the room like she was some kind of giddy airbender. And if anybody saw her do that, she would beat the hell out of them until they were sworn to silence.
"Are you sure about this?" he asked her.
In truth, it was entirely too late to turn back already. Black locks were already laying in a loose pile to one side, the razor's job done in full. The ground was cold, but if nothing else, the skins that had been provided kept it from freezing her body – her chest in particular – into an icicle. She was pretty sure only one airbender in this generation would be able to pull that trick. You know, and live.
"Do it," she said.
"It's going to hurt," the Tribesman warned her.
"I know," she said. "But it won't be the worst I've endured. Not by a long shot."
"If you say so, girl," he said. There was a tap, and a sting, at the base of her spine. Many would have felt insanely vulnerable, laying utterly naked in a tent of a South Water Tribesman, and in particular, a Tribal warrior. For Malu, though, it was something that she needed to do.
Something she'd put off for too long as it was.
The tapping started again, and the stinging came with it. She looked back at the man, as he dipped the tattooing needle into the ink of his trade. It wasn't a proper Air Nomad blue, but in the spirit of nations fighting together, Tribal Blue was more than sufficient. After all, what would she be, if it weren't for the Water Tribes right now?
Likely, dead, because without Sokka putting a machete into her brain, she would have eaten the Avatar in the spring.
The tapping, the stinging, became something of a rhythm, as a line began to slowly etch up her back; a straight line from the rear of the Water Chakra, which would proceed all the way to the crown, and then, finish into the arrows of airbending mastery.
She'd already shaved her head. There was no going back now.
And thus begins the end of the story, after two years writing it.