A/N: I had a feeling so peculiar that this pain would be for evermore. Love and be loved. Read… and review!


Death Comes to My Door

[Early Spring 149 AG]

Ten years is a long time.

The body goes through evolutions in that time. The human memory strengthens and falters around certain moments. A physical structure can weather many storms in ten years but probably goes into disarray without attention. Wildlife will grow limitlessly in ten years when left unchecked. Scientific discoveries are made in ten years that completely change the scope of how we view the world. People are born and die every day for ten years.

Ten years is a long time. It's how long Azula has been away from Lonlhai. It's also how long Azula defended Lonlhai as The Guardian.

Her boat rocks slowly through the water and approaches her destination at long last. She wears the same clothes she had a few days ago when she left Toph at the gates of Zafou, but now with a red scarf to keep her warm. The port near the village had been destroyed and rebuilt in the time that she's been gone, she can see that clearly. Finally she stops rowing and her boat coasts the final distance into the dock. Once it comes to a stop she ties the rope on board to the spot. She rises up and looks out towards the village.

There's the famous Linlhao Island fog, still there even after ten years. It obscures the view around the island, but even after all this time she still knew how to navigate it. The air smells different than she remembers. It's heavier, darker. It's not as innocent as it once was, and neither is she. The sky is overcast, projecting everything into a grey tone that reflects her mood. She finally steps off the boat, onto the abandoned dock, and walks towards Lonlhai Village for the first time since Katara outed her; for the first time since The Destruction.

She doesn't realize that it was ten years ago on this very day that the last line of Lonlhai fell and the island was annihilated.


"It will burn if I leave. They'll be nothing. It will be a graveyard."

Those were her words. She had tried to warn them before the end could be met, but there was no stopping it. If she had stayed there was no guarantee that she would've been able to prevent the destruction. She very well may have met with her own fiery end, buried amongst the snow and ice. Yet that doesn't matter to Azula at this moment, because she wasn't there. She didn't protect them. She told Katara that it would become a graveyard, and now that's all she sees. Standing on the edge of the village, she sees a never ending wasteland of snow and soot. Without a word she steps forward.

"Do you think it's HONOR that keeps this place safe? Do you think HONOR staves off the killers and the madmen? It's FIRE! FIRE AND LIGHTNING!"

Azula steps slowly and cautiously through the frost covered land. There is a sullen reverence that she carries with her. This had once been hallowed lands but now they are just hollow. She retraces her path, starting first at her last place: her home. The old building had not been rebuilt, but instead was just an empty field. It is soul crushing to think that the memories she once forged in her home with Ty Lee are gone, erased with fire, snow, and time. She turns to the right though and finds the old home of Ganzaya and Achak's had been restored. She approaches it and finds a plate describing the place as the home of The Watchkeeper and Guru Achak, the Fifth Guru of Lonlhai. Azula had never even known there were four predecessors. She sees clearly though how the Water Tribe picked and chose which monuments to erect and which ones to forget.

Azula spends the next half-hour or so doing much of the same. She wanders from major location to major location, reviewing what was immortalized and what was lost to time. Her memory isn't what it used to be so she wonders how much of it she has forgotten and how much of it they chose to not be remembered. She reflects on her journey in Lonlhai. How she came here practically dead and was resurrected into a new life. She fought, bled, and killed for it. She defended it to the very end. Raised it up and saved it time and again. She did it, because no one else would.

"THERE IS NO AVATAR HERE! THAT'S WHY I STEPPED IN!"

It is a dreadful thing to be left alive like this; to wallow in the misery of it all. There's so much despair to go around that she could drown in it all. So it's a funny thing when Azula finally winds her way to the center of the village. A massive, hulking statue rises above what would've been the place where Ganzaya struck down Warden Thaki, and the last word was spoken. The memory of this moment brings with it the reminder of how she made an end of Harbinger Yong. How she set herself on redeeming not one but two young women who had been on her path of fury. She walks around the front of it and sees it finally at last.

"Two hands now. One hand guides, the other hand balances. Use it at your discretion - I know it'll be put to good use."

Buried into the ground in front of the statue is her former blade. The famed Moon's Veil, which she had carried and then passed on before leaving. For Azula, this moment is unnerving. She is struck with bouts of both grief and sadness, as well as sudden joy and overwhelming emotion. She never in her wildest dreams thought she would see Moon's Veil or Agni's Lament again. While the latter seems to be gone forever now, the former stood just before her, sticking out of the icy cold earth, just as she saw it so many times before in her time as The Guardian.

"I said that someday this would be your village to protect. The sun rose earlier than expected but it's yours now. And so I leave you with two final lessons, ones that Ganzaya taught to me. It's yours now. Until the last watch is kept, all the words are spoken, and all the ends are met."

She steps forward and crouches down to examine it, lodged in the ground. Her fingers run along the outline of the blade, not touching it but caressing its edges all the same. The blade is not the same. Exposed to the elements, and left behind in The Destruction, it is visibly different. Warped. Changed. It's luster is gone. Its glory is forfeit to age. She feels an even greater kinship to the blade now than she did when she wielded it after Ganzaya's passing.

"Which leads me to my second lesson, the final lesson: Even when your blade is down, you can't quit. You can't succumb to the feelings. You have to pick it up."

She finally pulls her eyes away from Moon's Veil and finds a plaque alongside it. There's a sketch of The Archer and The White Flame, her precious girls, at the top, and an inscription below.

The Last Line of Lonlahi

Tapisa (left) and Meng Shou (right) of Lonlhai Island are remembered as 'The Last Line.' When Lonlahi faced its destruction, they stood as the defenders to try and hold back the fires of their enemies. While most of the island still perished, Tapisa and Meng Shou's valiant sacrifice allowed for several families to still escape. The Southern Water Tribe honors their memory with this memorial. The blade before you belonged lastly to Tapisa but had been passed down through multiple generations of defenders of Lonlhai.

It is an impossible thing to accept. A mother burying her children is unnatural, a reversal of how the cycle of life is meant to take shape. Tapisa and Meng Shou are not the first children that Azula has seen go to the grave before her, nor are they even the latest. Young people who she had hoped to save, and instead met with terrible fates because of her influence. Ten years is a long time and Azula has had ten years to sit with her guilt and pain at knowing these two were gone. She has cried countless times when thinking of them, and what it must've been like for them on the day of The Destruction. How scared they must've been. How they might have hoped that she would come, save them, rescue them one last time from impending doom. How their hopes were unanswered, how they were left wanting. Now, presented with this memorial, hurt and confronted again with her failures as the Guardian and as a Mother, she weeps.

Azula was never particularly one of faith. Living in Lonlhai and seeing the Southern Lights, her two maybe three experiences interacting with spirits, her time with Achak and Tapisa, two Gurus of different eras, had impressed upon her the beauty of spirituality. Sitting here now, at their grave site, in front of the sword, she feels immersed in such spiritual overtures. She doesn't know why, nothing in her life has ever led her to this before, but she kneels now at the sight of the sword, the plaque, and the statue. She kneels down, bows her head, and brings her palms together.

For perhaps the first time in her life, Azula prays.


Hana doesn't remember the first time her parents brought her to the Lost Island of Linlhao. She was younger, much younger than she is now. She just turned nineteen at the end of last year, and they are now remembering 10 years of the fall of the island. Her mother tells her stories of how when she was an infant she would bring Hana here. As a baby she met the Watchkeeper and the Guardian, but as an adolescent she heard the cautionary tales about those people. One died in service to its people while the other was a traitor. Now she's a woman, an adult, legally aged and all. She's had to make her own way in the political scene of the Southern Water Tribe, trying to carve out a role. It's been challenging as of late and she's glad for the opportunity to get away - for the day at least.

No matter how many times they pass through it, she's never prepared for the fog that still surrounds the island. It makes the last little bit of the trip frightening and anxiety inducing. However, years of practice and execution allows her to navigate it. She guides the boat with both of her parents aboard into the safe harbors of the Lonlhai port. She finds another boat present taking up the ideal loading dock, so instead she settles for the next best spot. She knows from her previous experiences that this will be some devote acolyte or a scientist of some kind. Once the boat rocks to a stop, her father speaks up.

"Go on ahead, Hana. Your mother and I will secure it."

"You sure?" The lanky girl asks, twisting her upper body around to get a sideways glance at them.

"You did most of the hard work rowing," Suki replies. "You get out of here now."

Hana accepts this compromise. She rises from the boat and walks on ahead. She's not really sure what difference it makes, but she finds much solace in this spiritual retreat. She begins her ritual in the same place every time. She heads for the main statue.


Hana turns the corner to find a woman on her knees. Her clothes are conservative but don't look like they'd keep her very warm, almost as if she came from somewhere with warmer weather. Hana isn't all that surprised that there's someone of faith on the island. Afterall, it's been ten years so it's a milestone moment. Plus it's not unusual for people besides her family to be here, as there are every other year or so. Hana observes her in quiet prayer and she stares intently at her face, where flush, pink cheeks seem to indicate the woman may have been crying earlier.

Azula had been so deep in thought and prayer to Yue that she didn't hear anyone approaching until now. The soft crunch of the snow beneath footsteps awakens her to the reality that she isn't alone. She swiftly opens her eyes and looks up into the face of an angel. Standing above her is a girl, maybe a late teenager or maybe in early 20's, with beautiful hazel hair and bright, aqua blue eyes. She is strangely tall, with long legs, modest breasts, small hips, and not a muscle on her body whatsoever. She is somehow familiar and yet not at all. She does carry a bö in a sling on her back though. They stare at one another for a moment without saying anything. Finally, the tall girl greets Azula.

"Good morning, Guru."

Shrugging, Azula replies, her voice croaking from lack of use, "No ones ever called me that before."

"Are you not a faith member?"

The 60 something year old woman shakes her head. "Nope. Just someone who used to live here."

"Ah. So you're also paying homage on the anniversary?"

'The… what?'

"Anniversary?"

"You didn't know?"

"It's the ann…" She trails off as she considers the impossible odds of such a happenstance.

"Today's the 10th year since The Destruction. There's much to be remembered on this day. All the lives we lost."

She puts that aside, determined to not think for too long about fate and destiny bringing her here. She concurs with the young beauty.

"Yes. There is."

Hana looks up at the statue and at the memorial plaque. She thinks about how those items have survived the test of time and still stand today to remind people of what came before them. She sighs and tells the woman, "I've always believed that we don't get to choose what fades away with time."

"A harsh truth." Azula comments.

Hana smiles as she looks back at the woman, "But we do get to decide what we remember."

"I don't think we get to choose what stays and what fades away, Azula."

Those were Zirin's words that she recently remembered while with Toph. Now they come back with force again.

"What stays."

"Yes. Precisely! I really think if we keep this island and the people that died here in our minds and prayers, we can keep them alive. Like the girls on the plaque."

Azula doesn't look back at it. She replies, "Tapisa and Meng Shou."

"Oh. I'm sorry. Did you know them?"

"I did. Long ago."

"I'm terribly sorry for your loss."

"No, don't be. Thank you. Your words? They reminded me that I can keep them alive."

"Of course."

Azula and Hana stare at one another for a moment and Hana dawns a huge smile. Azula feels much comfort in the presence of this odd, lanky, fragile, somewhat familiar girl. She can't explain it but she finds herself asking her, "Would you mind joining me in prayer?"

Hana nods.

"I would love to."

Hana kneels down beside Azula. The two women, forty-four years apart and from completely different worlds, find much solace in each other's presence. They sit and pray and adore the quiet solitude of the moment. The wind blows, some snow trickles down, water laps against the dock not far away. There is no wildlife left in Lonlhai, but the crunch of the snow approaching them does not alert either woman. They are at peace in this moment, perfectly content with their thoughts and the company of the woman beside them. The peace is broken by the startled voice of a woman yelling out as she turns the corner and sees a ghost.

"Holy Kyoshi!"


Hana and Azula open their eyes to the stunned look of Suki and Sokka. Hana's father quickly reaches into the baldric on his shoulder. A familiar 'shing' noise rings out as he rips his space sword from its holster and points it at the old woman on the ground beside her. He wears a menacing look on his face while her mother is horrified.

"Hana, step back!" Suki reaches for her daughter and pulls her along the snow, away from the memorial.

Azula rises, and slowly pats the snow off of her legs as she does so. When she rises to her full height she is unphased by the blade pointed at her. She speaks to them as if they were visitors come to see her at her home when she lived here as On Jin.

"Hana? Your daughter, Suki? Why, I haven't seen you since you were a toddler," she smiles at Hana now affectionately, recalling the young one who Suki brought to this very village before. "You've grown into quite the woman!"

"You! You!" Sokka takes half a step forward and shakes his space sword at her, still in a fighting stance and ready to strike. "What are you doing here!"

Azula finally turns her attention to the Chief. Her head starts at Sokka's feet and then slowly she rolls her head on her neck to look up at him. When she does this, her black hair obscures her face ever so slightly, hiding one of her amber eyes. Out of the cover of the black hair though one single eye looks at him.

"Let's not stand on ceremony, Sokka."

She goads him in the same way she did Katara. She smiles wickedly at him, but it falters shortly thereafter. She once delighted in pissing him and Katara off, but time has corroded her lingering disdain away. Her tone softens and she straightens her head to look at him eye to eye.

"You know who I am and there's no reason to be surprised. I'm here praying with this girl - your daughter - for the lives of all those who perished here."

"You! How dare you! Soil the sanctity of this island, the resting place of so many lost souls. You tried to burn down the Earth Kingdom, and control the Fire Nation with your Kemurikage, you killed businessmen, soldiers, your own father! You nearly killed my sister and niece. Your empire of fire and lightning wrought devastation on everyone you encountered! You -"

Sokka keeps droning on but Azula stops listening. She has forgotten some of the things he accused her of doing. They were another lifetime ago, and she doesn't think about them anymore. She doesn't argue or fight back because she knows somewhere in her heart that he's right. She did do all of those terrible, nasty things that he's saying, and even worse things that he doesn't know about and isn't saying.

But she also knows she has done much good for the world.

"You're her." Hana speaks, interrupting her thoughts and cutting off her father. "You're the Dragon Empress."

"No," Azula denies it. Her face contorts and she scowls at the accusation. She replies, "I was The Guardian. That was the real me."

"I've read about you. You've killed so many people."

"Child, I'm the reason you're alive."

"How dare you!" Sokka shouts, taking another step forward, threatening to stab her with his jian blade.

Azula now turns her attention back to the mother, who has remained silent since pulling Hana away from her.

"Tell them, Suki. Remind them. "I sit beneath the eyes of Kyoshi. No harm can come to me here." Those words were yours, not mine."

"You're insane!" Sokka shouts.

"That's right." Suki replies meekly.

"Huh? What is?" Sokka asks, turning slightly to look at his wife, while keeping his blade up.

"Those were my words. That's what I said, right before Koh's Disciples nearly sliced my throat open."

"Mom…"

"I know they are. I never forgot those words. The unshakable faith that you would be protected. But it wasn't Kyoshi that saved you. It was me. I stopped them. I saved you."

Suki grips her fan tighter.

"I repaid that debt. Many times over."

"And so have I," she replies defiantly. The trio all look up at the 62 year old Azula and she wears a face of anger and emotion. "For all of my wrongs, I have tried to do right."

She is exasperated. She throws her hands down at her side and slumps her shoulders. She looks him in the eye and tries to reason with him.

"I'm so tired, Sokka. Of the running and the hiding and the fighting. I don't want to do this anymore. I want to just be with my wife and be free. So won't you give this up? Let go of your hatred for me and move on from what was done? I offer to you: Release Ty Lee to me, and we'll both disappear forever. You'll never hear from or see either of us again."

Suki has seen the good that Azula has done. She knows it well, better than most. Even with the book that On Ji published, Suki knows more that was not widely released. She knows that Azula never took payment for saving Kyoshi Island. She knows that Azula set her on the path to topple Yakone. She saw first hand, with Hana, how hard Azula worked to rebuild this island. And she knows how much Ty Lee wishes to be free with her as well. She turns to her husband and pleads.

"Sokka, do it. Just let her go!"

"Mom! No!" Hana protests. "You know she's hurt people! She's killed people! We can't just let her go!"

"Hana's right," Sokka answers, ice in his tone and fire in his eyes. "She's just like a forest fire. She burns everything in her path. She destroys anything she touches. It doesn't matter if it's friend or foe. She's a destroyer. An endless blaze."

Azula doesn't reply initially. She looks down at the memorial to Tapisa and Meng Shou. She remembers those words she once told to Tapisa.

"Even when your blade is down, you can't quit. You can't succumb to the feelings. You have to pick it up."

All throughout the early parts of her life she was treated this way. Her mother, her uncle, Zirin, they all saw her the same way. She grew up, broke away, built a life of her own, then another, and another, and another. The Kemurikage, Xai Bau, Zirin, Katara, Sokka. They all wouldn't let her be something else. They couldn't accept that she wasn't the endless blaze they once knew. She replies to his savage attacks on her.

"I wish I was the monster you think I am."

She reaches down and grips the handle of Moon's Veil. Even though she is tired, she can't quit. She can't succumb to the feelings. She has to pick it up.

She pulls Ganzaya's sword from the ground and lifts it up above her. She looks at the brittle blade and the amber eye that reflects off of it. She sees an old woman, worn down by time and defeated by her search for peace. She looks up and she prepares.

One last fight.


The wind blows and the snow falls. There is an absolute quiet in Lonlhai Village on Linlhao Island. A proverbial and literal graveyard for the lost life of The Guardian and the lost villagers who died without a powerful guardian to protect them. Azula and Sokka stand a few feet away from each other, with the latter flanked by his 19 year old daughter and wife. Suki is conflicted beyond reproach. She can not in good conscience fight Azula, but she also can't let the woman tear her husband and child to shreds. She grips her fan but doesn't know who to direct it at or how to stop the bloodshed. Sokka shatters the silence with a question, his jian space sword pointed at her.

"Tell me, do you bleed?" They ask, tightening their grip around the hilt.

No answer comes.

They huff, "You will."

Hana draws her bö and twists it in the air. She has read the legends of the Prodigy with Blue Fire, she has heard about her throughout her entire life. Hana has never been much of a fighter, but alongside her parents she prepares to do whatever is needed to protect them.

"It doesn't have to be this way, Sokka. We can still walk away." Azula offers.

"She's right. We can all just go our separate ways!" Suki replies.

"Whose side are you on, Mom?" Hana asks, upset that her mother would offer such a compromise to a villain.

"I'm on the side of making sure all four of us walk out of here alive!"

"After we're done they'll only be three," Sokka declares. "I'm going to do what her ancestors did a century ago. I'm going to slay the last dragon."

"Do you know the Parable of the Fisherman?" Azula asks with an evil smirk. "No? You'll learn it soon enough. Because I'm afraid I'm gonna keep my word to your sister."

"But you, your brother, and your husband? You better protect this place. Or else I swear to Agni and Yue that I'll kill each and every one of you."

Azula summons the words of her former lover and lifetime enemy. A phrase she hasn't used in many years comes to her at this moment. She knows these words to be true.

"No more half measures." And Azula dashes forward.


Sokka runs forward and they swing their respective swords at each other. The space sword and Moon's Veil clang together and they remain positioned against one another. Azula tries to use her physical force to push him back, but the two remain relatively equal. Unbeknownst to Azula, Ganzaya's blade is weak and not what it used to be. She has no idea what the passage of time, mother nature, and the cataclysmic fires of The Destruction have eroded the one proud longsword.

Hana runs forward to join the fray. She rears her bö back to jab at Azula, but a force yanks her back. She falls backwards and looks up to see it was Suki who betrayed her.

"Mother!"

Sokka's attention is briefly divided by this shout from his daughter. Azula sees his eyes flutter for even a moment away and she takes advantage. She pushes with all of her might and he stumbles backwards. As he is regaining his footing, Azula turns and runs. She is trying to create separation from herself and the three family members, for Suki and Hana's sake as much as for her own. Sokka launches forward to give chase.

"You're not equipped for this fight! Stay out of it!" Suki scolds her.

"I can fight!"

"No you can't!"

Azula slips in the snow and instantly knows she must turn back. Sure enough by the time she gets back around, Sokka is advancing with his jian spinning in his hands. She rears her hand back, partly as a trick and partly because in the heat of the moment she briefly forgot she couldn't bend. Sokka, anticipating a fire ball or lightning strike, quickly hits the ground and rolls towards some cover.

He hears no attack and feels nothing come at him. Sokka isn't sure why they didn't come, but he has no time to hesitate. He quickly reappears from behind cover and dashes towards her. She quickly raises her longsword to guard and they clang together once more. They stare one another down from inches apart, and for the first time Azula can feel the once reliable blade faltering, wavering.

Sokka goes to kick her and she evades it, juking away from him and disembarking from the blade struggle. He raised his jian over his head and she pulls the longsword up to engage again, but just as they do snow crunches quickly nearby and then a warrior appears.

Neither Azula nor Sokka dares to swing at Suki, but all the same she slides in between them and throws her handheld fan out to parry their swords away from the combat. In one fluid motion she spins around to punch Azula in the face, and then wheels on Sokka and kicks him in the groin. They both cringe away from the fight in pain.

"Stop this!" She yells at both.

"Suki!" Sokka shouts back. In between huffs of breath from the pain he tells her, "You're either…with her … or … against … her."

"I can be both, Sokka! She is not the villain you want her to be!"

Sokka does not believe her but he feels himself wavering. He hasn't fought like this in many years, if not decades. He's out of breath and fears for his life. He is terrified of the fire and lightning. Azula, listening to the defense that Suki has raised for her, lets her guard down. She never hears the girl running up at her from out of view.

"HIYA!"

Hana flies through the air and Azula only has a moment to recoil away. The bö smashes into her shoulder, nearly clipping her in the head.

"Yes, Hana!"

"No! Stop!"

Azula turns to her and she tries to lift Moon's Veil up in a guard position, but Hana swings her bö. This is the final straw, the strike that breaks the blade. Her bö jams into the longsword and the force snaps the top half of the blade off! Moon's Veil breaks!

As the top half of her weapon flies off, everyone looks in astonishment. This is a crushing blow for Azula, a devastating realization setting in that the gift left to her by her mentor has been broken in half by a girl who only is alive because of her. She can not fight in these conditions and turns to run away.

"No!" Hana shouts as she watches Azula try to retreat.

She sticks her bö down in between Azula's legs and trips her up. Azula falls flat on her face, into the snow. Hana feels victorious and turns to her father, "I got her, Dad!"

Azula doesn't give her the opportunity to celebrate any further. She expertly twists on the ground and uses one foot to kick the bö out of her hand. She spins on the ground and then lurches forward until she raises what remains of Moon's Veil to the girls neck, stopping Hana in her tracks and freezing everyone instantly.

"You're not a warrior. You're not a chief. You're just a girl. Don't get yourself killed because of an old grudge your father can't let go of."

Azula whispers to her, but in the quiet it's loud enough for mother and father to hear. They both watch and fear for their daughter's life. Azula sees the worried expressions. She offers an olive branch.

"We don't get to choose what fades away, but we do choose what we remember. He only remembers his anger. You can let it fade away."

Suki interrupts their conversation.

"Azula, I swear to Kyoshi if you cut my daughter I will deliver your head on a plate to Ty Lee's door. You will find no mercy from me."

Azula just smiles.

"I know you will, Suki. After all, you're the most powerful being on Earth."

Azula rears back Moon's Veil and then uses the pommel to smack Hana across the face! The young girl falls away, quickly going unconscious. Azula turns and runs away again, leaving the girl behind but otherwise unscathed.

"Hana!" Suki screams and runs to her side

Sokka, finally feeling his strength return, rises up and gives chase.


Her pulse is pounding, her lungs are tired, and her breath is visible in the icy cold chill of the island. The pain in her legs with each step is not something of concern because she is running for her life, something Azula has done only so often. Unlike other times though, now she runs through a once familiar land. The homes had been demolished in the fire of the destruction, but some of them had been reconstructed. Azula uses these to duck and hide behind. She scampers between buildings, old homes of people, villagers, friends she used to know. She wonders if she'll find her finally resting place among them.

"RAGGGH!"

When she finally thinks for too long, that is when Sokka appears, flying through the air with his blade.

"Fuck!" She throws up what remains of the sword in her hand but it is too weak and he overpowers her.

Azula staggers backwards. Catching her temporarily off balance, Sokka goes on the attack. He swings his left, free hand in a fist and connects with her face.

"Oof!"

Azula's torso twists away from him. Sokka does not relent. He grips his jian with both hands and swings low and sideways, to eliminate the ability for her to dodge or evade it. He slices along the front of her leg, intentional in not trying to cut too deep. All the same she screams as he cuts just below her right knee.

"AHHHHHH!"

Sokka raises his right leg up and kicks right into her chest, shutting down her scream and tumbling her to the snowy ground.

"UGH!"

Sokka looks down at her leg, the fabric instantly growing crimson after his slice.

"I knew you'd bleed." He whispers to himself, stepping towards her, pulling the space sword backwards and preparing to stab her. "I bet you'll die too!"

At that moment, Azula remembers one of her first fights in this village. She had offered peace to a young boy. Instead he chose to venture down a path where he eventually became the embodiment of Death. Azula takes a page out of his book.

"You haven't beat me," she tells him. "You've surrendered positioning for a killstroke!"

She grips a handful of snow, looks up, and whips it at his head.

"FUCK!" Sokka screams as he is briefly blinded by the attack.

"RAGH!" Azula swings what remains of Moon's Veil.

All in one felled swoop, Azula uses the broken blade to slice along Sokka's left thigh and then she sticks the broken tip into his right kneecap.

"YAHHH! FUCK FUCK FUCK! AHHHHHH!"

Sokka falls to the ground and his space sword goes flying away. He lays in agony on the ground beside her, screaming in pain, gripping his kneecap and his cut thigh. He bleeds, but Azula was careful not to dig too deeply. She lays there on the ground, right beside him, exhausted, bleeding, struggling to breath, and unable to move. His moans become annoying very quickly.

"Oh, relax. I didn't stab you!"

"You bitch! You fucking bitch! I can't move my leg. I can't get up!"

"You will. Just not," Azula huffs and puffs. She catches her breath slowly. "Yet."

He cries and doesn't know which one to try and address first. She feels sorry for him, watching him struggle. She offers a new olive branch. Azula removes the red scarf from around her neck. She throws it at his immobilized body.

"There," she tells him. "Use that to clot the bleeding on your thigh."

"Huh?" He grabs the scarf, which had landed on his chest and looks at it.

"I didn't get the kneecap deep enough I don't think. Shouldn't have anyway. It won't bleed too much. Clean up your other leg though, that could get ugly quick."

Sokka lays dumbfounded on the ground, looking at a red scarf, in intense pain, trying to rationalize what is even happening.


After a few seconds, Sokka finally decides his pride isn't worth the pain. He leans forward, his back arching and aching, and wraps the red scarf around his left thigh, using it as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding and cut off the circulation until it can be properly addressed. Once this is done, his back hurts, his leg hurts, and he leans back to lie down. The 64 year old Chief looks straight up into the pale blue sky, sucking in air through struggling lungs and damaged legs. He feels so exhausted and weak that he doesn't think he could get up even if he tried, maybe even if she hasn't cut his thigh and knee open.

Azula, lying only a few feet away, is in a similar boat. She huffs for breaths from the Lonlhai air, once filled with noxious fumes that could've shaved years off her life. Now, after a decade of efforts from the top scientists in the South Pole, the air quality has finally returned to normal. Just in time for the Guardian to try and catch her breath while the Chief wonders if the bleeding has stopped yet.

"Hey," Sokka interrupts the tranquil quiet to ask a question. Neither moves as they both just inhale and exhale and look up at the sky together. "Why didn't you use your fire? Your lightning?"

"Ha!" She laughs in response. "My fires went out a few years ago. Never came back."

"I was so scared of your bending," he pauses in between short, successive breaths. "And you don't even have it anymore?"

Azula almost laughs again as they lay there in the snow. She tells him, "Couldn't have used it on you even if I had wanted to."

Two of the greatest, most accomplished warriors of their time lay a few feet apart in the deep snows of Linlhao Island. Despite all of their triumphs and success, it is ultimately victory that has cost them in this battle. Neither has been in a real fight for years, since at least when Azula took down a bar full of undercover operatives, and she can't even remember when that exactly was anymore. Sokka's last fight was even further in the past. Sokka's legs still bleed and burn, Azula's leg continues to bleed, although it is subdued and she knows it will be fine in the end. She's been cut like this too many times in life to think anything else.

It's an astonishing thing, to have these two historical figures together again for the first time in almost half a century. In that time, Sokka has built a life in the Southern Water Tribe and served dutifully as it's Chief almost the entire time. Azula, on the other hand, lived the world over. She has traveled to every corner and every crevice, searching for meaning to her life, looking for something that could finally redeem her. They are two minds of the same kind, who could've built bridges and tore down walls, if they only ever could've been on the same side of things. Instead, they were out for blood, until they both fell down amongst the cold snow and looked up at the same sky. They sit in quiet contemplation and think of the same thing: the inevitable end to their dance; Death.

"Are you going to kill me now?" Sokka finally breaks the silence.

The question has all of the levity of a heavy foot stepping onto the brittle ice of a frozen river. The sound of his voice asking it was akin to the spider-web like cracking beneath the boot, and the subsequent feeling one would experience of instantly fearing the next moment and what may happen next. This is the way that Sokka feels, immobilized and defeated, on the ground, his space sword some distance away in the snow. After all, Azula had said she blames him for the Destruction. She said she'd keep her word to Katara, whatever that meant. He had come at her with everything he had, she had no fire or lightning, and still she defeated him. His life is forfeit in her hands.

Azula doesn't think for long about it, the answer comes naturally to her.

"I'm still mulling it over."

He feels his breath catch.

"But no. I don't think I will. Not yet anyway."

Despite the good news, Sokka still can't exhale. Azula continues.

"Even though you tried to kill me. Even though it was your job as the Chief to protect this place. Even though your sister cost me my peace and you won't let me be with my wife. No, I don't think I will."

"So you're not going to tell me about this 'Parable of the Fisherman?'"

"Not today."

All the same thoughts that Sokka had, Azula shared. He deserves death and much worse for his failures. He should rightfully die on this island with the hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives that perished because of him. However, for Azula, in her wizened age, she has seen how that only furthers the cycle of violence. It was something she lost sight of while she was The Guardian, proof that her best moniker did not mean she was right all of the time. Killing Sokka would only beget Hana and Suki to come after her with increased vigor and rage. Katara and Aang would redouble their efforts. The world would collapse upon her in new, unimaginable ways. She prefers her quiet life. The only thing missing is a certain Kyoshi Warrior she wishes she could have back.

Sokka exhales and takes a deep breath. The chill of Linlhao's once dangerous fumes swoops through his lungs and body and gives him warmth. He stares up at the clouds billowing up above and steels his resolve once more to ask yet another difficult question.

"How do you want to die?" Sokka asks her. Azula turns her head ever so slightly to look at him, surprised to hear these words. "Do you want it to be quick? Do you want to know it's coming?"

This isn't a threat. Sokka is just asking the question to her. For so many years, it was always Azula who would ask this of others. She would begin the conversation with that question, but in a strange twist, it is Sokka who reverberates her words back at her now. They lay in the snow and recuperate while Suki is far off, nursing Hana back to consciousness, fretting over which dead body she'll find later: her husband and the father of her child, or her former nemesis turned trusted friend.

Once again, Azula feels like the answer flows naturally from her, as if she has always known.

"For so long I've wanted to walk hand in hand with Death. But I'm too much of a coward to do so. Whenever Death comes to my door, I'll be ready."

"So you don't fear death? You welcome it?"

"I guess I do."

Sokka shrugs on the ground, dismissing her indifference to the fear of death.

"Well, for me, I want the person to kill me to look me in the eyes. I don't want to be tortured. I don't want it to be slow. If I'm going to die, just look into my eyes and make it quick."

"You're so sure it's going to be someone? Don't think old age or illness will do you in?"

"If it's not going to be you, it'll be someone else. My life hasn't been one designed for a happy ending."

These words pierce Azula and disarm her. She finds them to be incredibly relatable to her own life, words she herself has spoken at times. Invigorated by this moment of connection, she pushes up off the powdered earth. She rises up, first into a sitting position, and then up until she stands. Once she is at her full height, she replies.

"I guess you and I are the same in that regard."

Something glistens in the snow a few feet away, Azula lumbers with beleaguered, injured legs over to the sight. Lying on the ground is a jian the color of the darkest midnight. She reaches down and rises back up, holding it. Despite its all black material, it still reflects light. She strains her eyes and even in the darkness of the blade she sees her own reflection. She reflects on all that has transpired in her life since she last held this blade. The girl she was all those years ago, on a boat in the Mo Ce Sea, on the precipices of an Empire life. The woman she is now, holding it atop a graveyard where she once lived, on the precipices of meeting Death.

"I saved this sword for you. I'm the only reason you have it again. Do you understand?" She asks him without looking his way. He knows and truth be told he's always known. Ever since the sword came back from its watery grave, it's never felt like it was truly his to hold. Rather it felt like it served a new master. She tells him, "This time I'm keeping it."

Sokka doesn't fight her but he still yells something back.

"Do you know what the Captain said to me? When he brought that back to me?"

It's been so long, Azula recalls the man but she can't even see his face in her memory. But she does still sees him lying there on the deck, defeated, bleeding, and telling her it belonged to Sokka. She shakes her head to indicate she doesn't know what he told Sokka.

"He said you were 'a monster with a conscience,'" Sokka replies from the ground. He smirks a bit as he tells her, "All these years later, you proved him right."

This is about as close as Sokka is going to get with conceding the point that maybe Azula isn't so bad after all. Still, the Guardian of Lonlhai stares down at the space sword. She remembers everyone who ever said such things about her. A monster with a conscience. She turns and walks back to Sokka. She stands over him and points his space jian down at him. This is what he wanted, someone to look him in the eyes and make it quick. She issues final words.

"Tell Katara. I want her to know it was me."

She lowers the blade to his throat. He is still too weak to move. He gulps as she stops a few inches away from cutting him open.

"I want her to know that I could've killed both you and her… but I didn't."

Terrified but understanding, he nods, careful to not get nicked by the tip of the blade.

"Good."

Azula withdraws the blade. She turns and walks away from him. She limps and struggles her way towards the docks. When she arrives, she gets back into her boat. She safely secures the space sword. She picks up the paddles. She pushes back against the water and departs the island, disappearing into the fog of Linlhao forever.

Azula finally leaves Lonlhai behind.


A/N: This chapter's OST is "Ecstasy (Instrumental Edit)" by Crooked Still.

Love always. Lonlhai forever! Meng Shou and Tapisa forever! ? ゚リᆳ

Notorious