A. N. : Exceptional Tuesday update today, for the only time this semester. College is weird. More Suki earlier can never be a bad thing though, right ? ... Right ?

Sokka woke up.

Suki thought she'd be relieved – and she is, she really is, but –

She feels terrible.

She brings down the sword for the seventeenth time – the sword that almost killed Sokka, the sword that was supposed to kill her. Between the executioner and Suki, is there really a difference ? It might as well have been her hands holding the sword when it struck him.

Twenty one now, she plans on fifty before a short stretching break. Her shoulder still hurts some, but Sokka's awakening allowed Katara to have a look at it and soothe most of the pain. Suki can't let this much stop her – she needs to train, to grow familiar, intimate even, with the way this blade feels and moves, needs to build back the specific muscles she couldn't quite maintain at the Boiling Rock.

She needs to grow stronger. Strong enough that no one will ever suffer for her sake again.

Strong enough that she can look Sokka in the eyes once more.

Jet – she finally caught his name – offered a spar with her yesterday, but he's gone with Aang and Appa to do some reconnaissance work right now, to try and find a place they can get supplies from, and so Suki instead focuses on exercises she can do on her own.

Forty eight, forty nine. Fifty. She places the sword down on a cloth Katara gave her. Not having a scabbard really is an issue. Hopefully whatever village Aang and Jet find will have a weapon's shop, or a wood-worker capable of making a sheath for this kind of blade.

Suki stretches her arms, shoulders, back. Five repetitions of each movement, twisting her body to the limit, right before pain. Hands joined behind her back and then rising, arms extended. Hands trying to meet at the shoulder blades, one from the above and the other from below, and then switch. Fingers laced in front of her at shoulder height, arms extended, and then reaching for the sky. One elbow held to bring her arm in front of her face, twisting the upper body without moving neither hips nor head, to the right, then to the left.

She is at her fourth exercise – sixth if she counts left and right arms as different ones – on her third repetition – bringing her to twenty eight total – when the Prince walks up to her.

He asks if he is – twenty nine – bothering her – thirty.

Lowering her arms – she can finish later, she didn't stop in the middle of a series and she remembers which exercise was next – she says he isn't. What is it ?

He looks to the side, unsure. Between his attitude, the baby in his arms, and the haircut change, Suki can barely see anything of the person who ordered her village to be burned down in him anymore.

Knowing where his scar comes from makes it look different, too.

He bows down, low.

There's an odd taste in Suki's mouth.

The Prince apologizes for what he did. He was – desperate, he says, and he knows it doesn't excuse his actions, but maybe knowing that, and that he has changed a lot since… maybe it would help her tolerate the idea of fighting alongside him.

He doesn't ask for forgiveness, Suki notices. She doesn't know if that's because he thinks he doesn't deserve it, or because he thinks it's a package deal with her tolerating his presence.

Both options make her uneasy.

The old her, maybe, would have forgiven the second he proved he was both on her side and the world's.

But the old her didn't know evil the way she does now. Didn't know the difference between the evil of a storm and a girl who knows nothing of good, and the evil of a kind man who sacrifices his kin with a smile. Evil that knows itself, that knows there are other ways – in Suki's opinion, that's the kind that hurts the most.

The Prince said he was desperate. Not that he didn't know any better.

Who's to say, then, that he won't get desperate again ?

Fourteen breaths have passed when Suki opens her mouth again, enough for the Prince to dare raise his eyes a few times to glance at her reaction, lips pinched with worry.

I don't forgive you, she says, watching the Prince flinch. Please spar with me after I finish stretching. The Prince raises his head so fast that Suki thinks he's going to break his neck. He stares at her, confused, eyes darting to the side three, four times, as he tries to understand what she means.

There is no hidden meaning, though. She tells him as much. She needs a sparring partner, and since they'll be fighting side by side in the future, it's best to learn how they each work as early as possible. Forgiveness has nothing to do with that.

Suki trusts the Prince's strength, and trusts herself to stab him in the back if he ever turns back to his old ways. It is not the trust she shares with her Warrior sisters, nor the one she shares with Sokka and the others, but it will have to do.

If the Princess and her friends can do it, so can she.

She will grow strong, no matter what.