AN: Just a little note to let you know how much I appreciate you. Thank you for reading. And if you take the time to review, thank you for that, too!


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"Bow your head when you attend your master," one of the old women said, rapping the back of Katara's head with a knobby finger until her chin dipped toward her chest. "A slave must never dare hold her eyes on the level of a prince's…"

"…unless it is the Prince's bidding that you meet his eye," the other old woman said as she poked Katara's back to make her sit up perfectly straight where she knelt by the table's edge.

"…in which case you may do so…"

"…bearing in mind what a great honor he has permitted you."

Katara adjusted her posture, carefully maintaining the calm, relaxed mask of a slave while her thoughts roiled like a flooded stream under the surface. After a week of Li and Lo's private instruction, and even more nights spent drilling Aang on waterbending, she was almost weary enough to regret baiting Zuko.

Almost. Whenever she felt exhaustion dragging her toward remorse, she pulled up a mental image of him saying that snide thing about betrothal necklaces or his accusations that she was only here to cause him grief. At those times, her slave mask sometimes faltered to reveal her scowl, which Li or Lo - who she still could not tell apart - would punish with a bony-fingered poke or a swat with a closed fan, or whatever they had at hand.

The worst, though, was the stillness. A palace servant did not look around the room or settle into a comfortable position or even sigh. She knelt with perfect posture for hours, awaiting the moment her services were required. All day, Katara knelt in the old women's large sitting room, practicing the indirect observation and menial skills that were her lot as a slave of the crown prince. The old women punished any break in form so that, by the evening, she had sore places on her arms and head and hands from disciplinary swats.

Presently, the afternoon was drawing to an end and the pounding in her head made it hard to keep from clenching her teeth - a habit of which Li and Lo were intent on breaking her.

"Now," they said together, "pour the tea."

Katara bent her wrist as a glimmer crane bends its long neck to drink. She grasped the handle as she would the hand of a small child and raised the pot from the table in the way of a tufted seed pod uplifted by the gentlest breeze. The arc of tea as she poured stretched no longer than half again the height of the cup and the sound - because Li and Lo were listening - was precisely the sound of tea striking the cup at the base just where the side began to curve up. She returned the pot to its place, the spout angled away from her imagined master, and sat back to her proper posture, all without ever raising her chin.

Katara did not know what a glimmer crane looked like, nor had she seen tufted seeds fly from their pods, but after this day, she knew the lectures on tea pouring down to her bones.

"An unrefined but tolerable finish."

"Presentable pouring at best."

"But pleasingly graceful!"

Katara hated the little throb of accomplishment she felt at the praise but held her blank expression. She had craved Pakku's rare approval, too. Though the cut bisecting her chest had faded, it itched in memory. Probably, it would delight her old master to know that his most despised student was now learning the particulars of being a slave.

Katara pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth and let her stung pride flow away. These lessons meant nothing. Kneeling and bowing and pouring tea were only another mask she needed in order to survive the coming weeks or months. Or years. She tried not to think of that. She absorbed the lessons and let her rage and frustration flow away with her steady breathing. She bowed her head and let herself become entirely Yin.

Later, when she trained with Aang, she would retake her Yang. Just thinking of it now, the hours of movement and forms and light sparring, eased the strain that had built all day in her back and legs. Motionless, she waited, kneeling with her hands arranged in her lap and her soft gaze fixed on the edge of the table before her. She never looked up, but watched the two old women who hovered in her peripheral sight.

"A slave."

"But also a princess."

"You will outrank many, but yours is a position of deepest shame."

"Rather than ruling your people, you serve your enemy for all the world to see."

"You will be despised by the Water Tribe for your submission."

"You will be vilified by the Fire Nation for your past deeds."

"And while the Fire Nation will not forget your royal status…"

"It is your master, the Prince," they said together, "that gives your life true worth."

Katara had heard this before and, though she still wanted to scowl and shout and flip the table over - anything to break the oppressive stillness - she did not move except to blink occasionally.

Resistance of any kind with Li and Lo accomplished nothing. In the first few days, she had snapped and argued that this was all wrong. How could they justify treating human beings this way? How could they fool themselves into believing that the serving class was fundamentally beneath them? Every time, the old women had only reminded her of her oath, then went on at length to explain that slaves spoke only when asked direct questions.

So now Katara sat in silence, gathering the lessons she would need to satisfy the terms of her promise. Her time in the Fire Nation was not going to be easy, but if the price of freedom was only her pride, so be it. She was a waterbender. She could adapt to anything.

The lesson came to its end and Katara was finally allowed to execute the graceful rise from her kneeling position. It was not easy - her legs had fallen asleep - but she did not falter. Li and Lo had kept her late more than one night to practice this movement. Tonight, she succeeded on the first try.

"Excellent balance."

"Truly, the poise of a royal servant."

Katara said nothing, and did not allow her face to show her feelings, but inwardly, she corrected the old woman. Hers was the poise of a waterbender.

Roshu marched her from the room and down the familiar path back to the brig, his watchful silence as annoying as ever. Katara cast a glance back at him where he followed a step behind her. Her head still hurt and she was exhausted, but there was a giddy pleasure to being free of Li and Lo.

"You know, I've seen Loska going around the ship without an escort."

Roshu's heavy eyebrows drew together as he frowned down at her. "She isn't a warrior."

"So just because I'm not helpless, you don't trust me to behave myself?"

He did not respond for a moment and Katara rolled her eyes back to the front with a sigh. Finally, though, Roshu spoke. "In my experience, it's exactly when you think you have a waterbender under control that he becomes the most dangerous. I won't fail Prince Zuko a second time."

Katara looked back at him, but he didn't meet her eye, staring past her toward the end of the corridor. She let out a weary snort. "Don't tell me you blame yourself for my escape."

He flicked a steely eye toward her but remained silent. Katara turned back. She had come to face the stairwell yawning open before her. As she dropped from step to step, she sank into the hum of engines and the dimmer lights of the less-used corridors.

"I was intensively trained to escape those restraints," she said quietly. "You couldn't have stopped me with them. Trust me, what you've got now is much more effective."

They descended in silence after that, so it was easy to hear the approaching footsteps and terse conversation that announced more people were climbing the stairs toward them. Katara didn't alter her stride until the party appeared on the landing below. At the sight of them, she pulled up short.

Zuko stared up at her and stopped. Following just behind him, Yotsu grabbed the arm of a grease-stained engineer to prevent him from bumping into the prince. The engineer, in the midst of saying something about the latest malfunction in one of the pressurized chambers, cut off abruptly.

For a second, Katara only met Zuko's stare. To Yotsu, a royal servant for more than half his life, it was clearly an act of defiance. Roshu, on the other hand, had watched Katara closely enough these past weeks to know when she was taken off-guard. Yet the engineer, who had never seen the Water Tribe warrior-princess before, looked up at a beautiful, powerful woman deciding how to handle a brush with the unwanted admirer who now owned her life.

The ship, after all, was alive with rumors.

Deliberately, Katara stepped to the side of the stair and bowed her head, clearing the way for the Prince - as was only proper for a slave. She did not look up at him directly again, holding her gaze on the floor, but she could see how Zuko tensed and scowled. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth and did not smirk.

After more than a week of avoiding the sight of her, he had to face it now. Katara had not seen her reflection recently, but she knew she was transformed. From the modest silk tunics and lounge pants in which Sian dressed her, to the slim steel collar locked around her throat, there could be no mistaking what she was.

She hoped he choked on his guilty conscience.

After a beat of silence, Zuko's boots continued up the stairs, followed closely by those of his entourage. Katara listened and watched in the subtle way she had learned, but there was no outward indication of what Zuko was thinking as he passed. He stared straight ahead, his back stiff and his fists swaying at his sides. Then, he was gone.

Katara frowned up the stairs after him, but he had already disappeared on the landing. Roshu, looming over her with folded arms, cast her a bland frown.

"I don't care what those two fossils say," he growled. "You have a better chance of passing for a circus platypus bear than a royal servant."

Katara smiled. "Aw Roshu, is that supposed to be a compliment?"

Faint spots of color appeared high on his cheeks and he glowered down at her. "Absolutely not."

Katara grinned as she turned away to continue slowly down the stairs.

"You might fool them eventually," Roshu muttered as he followed, "but you won't ever fool me."

.

.

A chunk of ice whizzed toward Aang's head. With a yelp, he dropped low, only to feel the ice brush the short hair that had thickened all over his scalp in his weeks of captivity. Tiny flecks of dust fell on him from the missile, stingingly cold on the back of his neck.

"Katara!" Sokka admonished from the sidelines. "Aang's not gonna be able to defeat the Fire Lord if you take his head off!"

Katara was watching Aang with an intense stare, a look nearly as hard as the ice she had launched at him. The dark circles under her eyes only made them more piercing. At Sokka's interruption, she took a deep breath, and winced. "Sorry, Aang. I thought you were ready."

"It's okay, Katara," Aang said with a nervous chuckle. "The swamp benders didn't do a lot of hard style. I keep forgetting ice is an option."

The crease in Katara's brow deepened, then eased as she drew another breath. "I guess that makes sense. But waterbending is all about the duality between opposites; to master this element, you need to practice both soft and hard."

Aang hesitated. Looking at her weary face, he couldn't bring himself to point out that she hardly ever used soft style anymore. She had pushed him harder and harder every night, and it was easy to see the toll her exertions had taken on her. How could he criticize her teachings when she was so clearly giving it everything she had?

And besides, Aang had a bigger matter to address. He made himself smile, for her. "You're right, Katara. I'll keep trying. Can we just stream for a bit, though?"

She nodded and they began again, passing the water back and forth. Aang liked this sort of cooperation better than sparring. Sparring with Katara felt more and more like an actual fight.

"So," he began, rolling his eyes as if he'd find the right place to begin in some corner of the ceiling. "How long do you guys think we have before we get to the Fire Nation?"

"It's hard to say, really." Sokka sprawled against the wall, idly watching Toph pick nonexistent dirt from between her toes and Momo pick nonexistent bugs from her hair. "The trip from the Eastern Air Temple to the Fire Nation capital should take four or five weeks. With the delays we've caused, I know we're gaining days, but we've got no way of knowing how many exactly."

"Not to mention, we don't even know where we are to begin with," Toph grumbled. "I don't know about you guys, but I sure haven't been counting the days since the start of this joyride."

"Twenty-eight." Aang clenched his teeth and added a little speed to the water as he passed it back to Katara. She watched him with concern lining her tired eyes. "This is the twenty-ninth night."

"Okay…" Sokka tugged the hairs on his chin. "So we're probably getting close. We might have a week or two left, at most."

For a long moment, the cell was silent apart from the quiet rush of water. Then Aang dropped his bending stance and stepped away. Katara, frowning, guided the water into the pitchers.

"What's wrong, Aang?"

He stared at her. "How can you ask me that with that thing around your neck?"

He hadn't meant to begin with that, but the sight of the collar was a prickleburr against his skin. Its gleam was dull and ugly in the red light, but to the last Air Nomad, it shone clear as evil.

Katara did not move. "I already explained. I have to get used to bending in it so it won't distract me in a real fight."

"You wouldn't need to get used to it if you would just escape with us." Aang threw up his arms, casting his eyes over the steel ceiling, the steel walls. "We only have a little bit of time left before we reach the Fire Nation and you still choose to stay in these cells! Do you see all this? Tons and tons of metal looming over us like a boulder over a few bugs! We should be out in the wind, Katara! In the clouds and the stars! I don't belong here, and neither do you!"

Katara's frown deepened, but then she shut her eyes and, when she looked at him again, her expression had softened. She approached and settled a gentle hand on his shoulder. "You're right, Aang. None of us belong here. The world is… messed up, and we're all trapped in something a lot bigger than a few cells. I've been so caught up in my own struggle that I forgot what you must be going through." She pulled him into a hug. "I'm sorry I've been hard on you."

Aang felt a blush rising in his cheeks, but he hugged her back tightly. When they parted, he smiled up at her. "Does that mean we can leave now?"

Katara squeezed his shoulder. Her forehead puckered prettily. "You guys can leave at any time," she said softly, "but you know I have to stay."

Aang jerked away from her. "We aren't leaving you!"

She said nothing. Instead, her eyes slid to the side, to Sokka. He sat forward to brace his elbows on his knees. Slowly, resolutely, he shook his head. Toph went on picking at her toes like this conversation had nothing to do with her.

"See?" Aang stuck out an arm. "Sokka agrees with me."

Katara didn't look away from her brother. She only let out a sigh, her shoulders slumping as if that breath took the last of her energy with it. "I think I'll call it a night. Toph, would you close my wall?"

"Sure thing, Sugar Queen."

Aang reached out for her as she went but she was already climbing through the hole in the wall. A moment later, the steel squealed and righted itself. Aang slumped across the room to sprawl on the floor next to Sokka.

"Ugh! A week or two. What are we gonna do?"

Sokka was silent, staring thoughtfully at the wall. It was Toph who finally stopped picking her toes and spoke. "Here's a new idea. We could all try listening to what Splatto's saying."

Sokka rounded on her. "Oh, so that's it? You're tired of your little helpless mannered-lady act and you're ready to just drop my sister and go?"

"No," Toph ground out, folding her arms over her chest. "But at least I can see past my own hurt ego to recognize that we're the number one reason Katara has to stay. As long as Azula can threaten one of us, Katara has no choice but to do whatever she says."

"There's a chance-" Sokka grimaced and raised a hand beside his downturned face. "I know it's crazy to believe this, but there's a chance that Zuko might still let her go."

Aang sat up to stare at him. "Zuko? The guy who followed her all the way from the South Pole, burned Kyoshi Village, and imprisoned her to start with? Is that the Zuko you mean?"

"Wow, Snoozles," Toph snickered. "Way to live the bromance."

Sokka rolled his eyes. "I know, I know! It's just that Zuko, despite all the crappy things he's done to Katara… he still loves her and wants to do the right thing. He's just the worst at figuring out what that means."

Toph said something pithy but Aang didn't really hear her. He felt his body distantly, as if he had lost control in a dive and was suddenly hurtling toward the ground unchecked. The words were ringing in his head.

He still loves her, still loves her, loves her…

Katara had tried to convince Zuko to go with them on the beach, and suddenly it seemed less likely that it was only the random generosity of a compassionate girl. But what else could it possibly be? Katara wouldn't fall in love with someone like Zuko. Scarred and shouting and dangerous and maybe even evil - that couldn't be the type of guy she liked. It just couldn't.

The others went on bickering, oblivious to Aang's stunned silence.

"Look, I'm not saying Zuko's smarter than a box of rocks," Sokka said, "but he's not entirely stupid, and he's not heartless, either - he's backed into a corner. I think he knows it's only right to let Katara go, but if he does it openly, he's committing treason, and that could mean banishment all over again."

"And what?" Toph demanded, leaning away from the wall. "You expect it to be less treasonous when we reach the Fire Nation? Maybe you're the one with rocks for brains."

"Maybe so. But we're running out of time and Katara still isn't budging…"

Aang watched Sokka frown at the floor below his folded legs. He could not have guessed it - because he was not familiar with Katara's posture and habits the way that Sokka was - but Sokka was thinking of the way his sister sometimes sat so prim and still now. Aang knew enough to feel a tremor of unease, but it was nothing beside the alarm Sokka felt. His sister was changing. Those old women were a forge and a hammer and they were beating Katara into the shape they wanted, whether she knew it or not.

"I know it's a huge risk," Sokka said quietly, "but I can't just leave her alone with these people. I have to believe that Zuko will find a way."

Toph made a rude noise. "Yeah, and never mind what Katara wants for herself. Does it even cross your mind that she may not want you hanging around and watching every indignity she has to endure to get through this? Or do you just not care?"

"Oh, you're one to talk. You act like it never happened, but I remember what you did on the beach-"

Aang didn't see Toph tense, and he didn't see Sokka's hands balling into fists. He only shut his eyes and pressed his palms to his forehead. "Enough!"

He sprang to his feet and took up a combative posture at the center of the room. Sokka peered at him warily and Toph just slouched, only the tilt of her head indicating her attention. "We're not leaving Katara," Aang snapped. "And we're not trusting Zuko! There has to be another way, but we're not going to find it by picking on each other and arguing!"

Sokka sat back and held up his hands. "You think you can come up with a better idea? I'm all for it, Aang. Frankly, I could use a little Avatar Wisdom right about now."

"Yeah, let's hear from the Avatar." Toph folded her hands behind her head and leaned back on a curve of metal. "Go ahead, Twinkle Toes. Show us the way."

Aang straightened and turned to peer at the door. He looked all around the cell, at the walls, the hole torn through one as if the steel was a slice of warm cheese. But it wasn't cheese, it was steel - it was all steel, impenetrable and inescapable. Aang felt the silence lengthening and his palms began to sweat.

When he looked back at his friends, the pressure in him only mounted. Sokka was watching with a pitying tilt to his brow and Toph was shaking her head as if at the antics of a child. Aang had never been uncomfortable with befriending kids who were older than him, but in this moment, the few years separating him from these two felt vast.

"I… I need to go meditate on it," he said, trying not to hunch his shoulders.

"Aang," Sokka started, but Aang had already darted through the hole in the wall, and through the next wall into his own cell.

It was as far as he could run from them in the confines of the brig, and it wasn't far enough. He could still hear their low voices, his own name said gently. Finally, Toph closed the hole in the wall, and Aang was alone.

.

.

Toph could feel the little airbender pacing in his cell, and she could feel Katara sleeping in hers, but she couldn't tell what Sokka was thinking. He sat six feet away, rubbing his face from the sound of it. His heartbeat sounded like a slow, angry throb.

Toph's heartbeat was a little more fluttery. She stomped it down mercilessly.

"Alright," she snapped. "Clearly you and me need to straighten some stuff out."

"Do we? Because everything seems pretty clear to me."

"Then those rocks rattling around in your skull are also effecting your vision. What happened on the beach was an accident. Katara forgave me for it, so whatever your problem is, you need to let it go."

His heart sped up, but he didn't move, didn't speak. Toph waited, at the ready.

"Accidents seem to happen an awful lot with you, Toph. First you almost kill my sister. Then you bate Zuko at lunch, practically handing him your tactical advantage just so you can razz him. And, most recently-" He repositioned to sit facing her, and Toph could hear the scowl in his voice. "-when Katara and I were fighting for our lives, you just didn't show up."

"It's not my fau-"

"We were depending on you! We were waiting for you! If not for you, we could have left before Azula forced Katara into making that oath."

"And what?" Toph folded her arms tight over her chest. "You think Katara would have just left Aang behind? I'm the reason we could have all left that night, and I'm the reason we could leave right now if you'd quit filling Twinkle Toes' head with false hope. You should count yourself lucky I don't decide to leave on my own without any of you."

Sokka made a disgusted sound. "Yeah? You need us, too. How else are you gonna cross the miles and miles of ocean to the nearest land?"

"I'd figure something out! I'm not helpless! I don't need anyone!"

The words hung like smoke in the air. Toph nearly choked on them. Scowling, she climbed to her feet. She would have stomped out of the cell, but Sokka leaned forward and caught her hand. It froze her in place, a jittery point of warm, human contact against the world of metal and rock that Toph could understand.

"I'm not saying you're helpless. You do need us - but we need you, too. That's what being part of a group is. We support each other, we back each other up." He let go of her hand and sat back. "We don't leave each other behind."

Toph stood still, her face angled downward and her hand still tingling. She rubbed it against the hip of her skirt. "I don't want to leave Katara behind any more than you do. She's kind of my only friend. After I hit her on the beach, I was so…" She swallowed it down, stiffened. "I was so ashamed. I thought she would never forgive me. But she already had."

Sokka was silent, but the steady pound of his heart was like a fist on the door of a debtor. Toph turned her face away.

"Look, I know you want to stay and watch her back. I want to do that, too. But Katara isn't going into a fight. She's going to court. She's going to have to do a bunch of really humbling things and, if we're there in the palace with her, we'll be a constant reminder of what she was before. It'd be like if Wanjo Naru walked up to me at a fancy dinner when I had to act demure in my stupid little dress, or else get in trouble." Toph frowned. "And whatever else she might have to do, I don't want Katara to slip up and get in trouble in the Fire Nation court."

Sokka was quiet for a moment, then spoke rapidly. "But if Zuko releases her from the oath, she can go free. None of that will matter."

Toph tipped her head back toward him. "Do you really think he will? Because I have my doubts. Even if he wants to let her go - which is debatable - he's gonna have his image to think of, and it's gonna take time. Which, I don't know if you've forgotten, but we don't have a lot."

Sokka let out a hissing breath that grew into an annoyed sound.

Toph stuck out a hand toward him. "Listen, Snoozles. The only reason I can justify leaving Katara is that it's not forever. We only have a few months to take down the Fire Lord. After that, getting one waterbender out of the capital should be a snap. I think she can handle Fanboy and his legions of charcoal-heads for a few months."

"What if there isn't enough time for Aang to train before he fights the Fire Lord?" Sokka asked quietly. "And if Katara is still trapped alone in the Fire Nation when the comet comes? What if we lose the fight without her?"

The question came like a cold wind. It made Toph want to curl her toes under. Instead, she just straightened. "The Blind Bandit doesn't lose, Snoozles. With me on your side, Team Avatar is gonna pound the Fire Lord into ashes."

Sokka said nothing for a moment, and his heartbeat did nothing to reveal the worry that creased his face as he looked toward the hole in the wall where Aang had disappeared. Then he swallowed and looked back at the blind girl standing beside him, grinding a fist into her palm. "Not gonna lie, I'm pretty jealous of your confidence right now."

"Of course you are," Toph blustered, turning to go so that he wouldn't see her blush. "Those rocks you've got for brains are actually pretty smart. Sometimes."

.

.

Aang paced for what must have been hours, because Toph came shortly before dawn to put his chains back on and ungently tell him to keep it down so that she could sleep. After that, he spent some hours meditating, or tried. Every little sound - the guards marching in the corridor and delivering his meals, Momo grooming himself in the vents - scraped the surface of an anxious sore in Aang's chest.

He tried to sleep, but every time he shut his eyes lately, nightmares bloomed like mold. He dreamed often of fire, and a huge evil man commanding it. Every time he tried to run away, he found himself trapped in a river's current, and dragged inexorably back toward the flames. Every time he tried to fly, the air puffed out from under him. Gone, just gone.

Tonight, Katara was in the water with him, staring toward the flames with something between fear and anticipation. When he tried to pull her toward safety, Aang found himself dragged along even faster.

He sat up, breathing hard, and stared at the red-lit walls with wide, quivering eyes. Momo, who had been sleeping on his chest, screeched and flew back into the vent. Aang stared after him for a long moment.

"I wish I could fit in there, too, buddy," he said, then immediately sighed and straightened up. "No, I don't. Even if I could leave on my own, I couldn't leave the others behind…"

Although, a part of him wondered, wouldn't they all be fine on their own? Appa was drugged and chained up somewhere. He needed Aang, and he'd been with him for years, not at all like his new friends. Toph could get Sokka out pretty easily, and Katara… Well, if she wanted to be with Zuko so badly, that was just fine by Aang.

He knew that wasn't right, though, and even as the scowl built on his face, it faded away. Whatever Katara was feeling for Zuko, surely it was nothing beside her worries for her people.

Aang returned to his meditative pose, but his mind was weighed down with worldly sorrows and residual anger. He needed to reach Avatar Roku. Sokka was right about that - a little Avatar Wisdom was definitely in order… only Aang had meditated for hours and he couldn't seem to find that misty state of mind. The longer he tried, the more hopeless it all seemed.

Two unhurried knocks preceded a tearing sound, and the wall opened up to reveal a groggy, irritable Toph. "Alright, Avatar Angsty. What gives?"

Aang sat up in a rush at the sound. "What?"

"Every time I start to drift off, I feel you wiggling around in here and your heart starts fluttering like a batterfly." She flopped down on her belly next to him, pulling up a hump of steel to lay on like a pillow. "So how's the deliberation going?"

Aang glanced at the door, the viewing panel that could slide open at any second. "Toph, shouldn't you stay in your cell? The guards might hear us."

"It's early evening. They're all down at the station waiting for Splatto to get back. …speaking of flutter-hearts." She smirked. "Don't worry about them, Twinkle Toes. I got it covered. Now-" She yawned, her blind eyes barely open. "Talk to me or I'll knock you out for real this time just so I can get some sleep."

Aang hesitated. He wanted to lie and hide the vulnerable truth from this hard girl, but she always knew when he was lying. She could see right through him.

"You were right, okay?" he snapped. "Is that what you want to hear? I don't have any solutions! I'm just a kid and it's a huge joke that I'm the Avatar!"

Toph sat up at once, astonishment clear on her face. "I never said that."

Aang stared at her for a long moment, then turned away in a rattle of chains. If he could have flown off to a distant mountain, he would have done it. Instead, he wrapped his arms tight around his legs and braced his chin on one knee.

Behind him, Toph sighed. "Okay, so maybe I implied it. Look, I don't know anything about your life, but for me, people have always told me what I couldn't do. My parents, the servants, that hogmonkey's auntie Woo Jin - none of them believed I could be anything but a helpless blind girl."

Aang didn't look back at her, and he didn't ask who Woo Jin was. He only frowned straight ahead as Toph went on.

"But that never stopped me. In fact, it made me work even harder to prove them all wrong. I guess I just assumed you wouldn't doubt yourself or your abilities. Because you are the Avatar, Twinkle Toes. You have the power to change the world, and nobody - not Zuko or Azula, not the Fire Lord, not even me - nobody is gonna stop you."

Aang looked back over his shoulder at her and smiled half-heartedly. "Good pep talk, Toph."

"That's Sifu Toph to you, Lily Liver." She smirked. "I'm not some namby-pamby puddlebender. When we start your earthbending lessons, you'd best not complain about how much hard style I choose to focus on. 'Cause I'll tell you right now-" Her knuckles cracked like falling rocks. "It's all hard style."

Aang let out a nervous laugh, then fiddled with one of his chains. "I guess that was pretty ungrateful of me, wasn't it? Katara's trying so hard to teach me everything she can before we get to the Fire Nation. It's just a lot sometimes. And it doesn't help me focus when I'm constantly worrying about how we're all still trapped here."

"Yeah," Toph said grimly, folding her arms over her chest. "About that. Have you got any ideas or not?"

Aang hesitated, then sighed, leaning back on his arms. "I've been trying all night and I can't reach Avatar Roku. I have no idea what to do about Katara. There's gotta be some way to convince her to go with us, though. I can't just leave her behind again like I did at the resistance base."

Toph huffed out a sigh and came to sit beside him. "I've gotta level with you - I'm not really the touchy-feely reassuring member of our group. You're not going to talk Katara out of honoring her oath. It doesn't matter how unfair or stupid it was that she made it in the first place - you heard her reasons for keeping it. The second it became about protecting other people, it turned to stone, because annoying and self-righteous as she is about it, Katara really cares about other people."

Aang rattled to his feet, hunched slightly under the pull of his chains. "She could help so many more people if she'd just come with us! We could travel and help people along the way. But she won't even think about it!"

"Look." Toph clambered to her feet as well, smoothing out the floor with a stomp. "And consider this your first lesson in earthbending. Either you bend the rock or the rock bends you. There's no in-between, no middle ground. Either you have a way to get Katara out of her oath, or you don't. And you don't. So quit moping about what you can't change, quit trying to convince her she's wrong, and focus on what you can do, which is learn everythi-"

She stopped short and tipped her head to one side, then scrambled back toward the hole in the wall.

"To be continued, Twinkles!"

"Why? What's going-?"

She bent the wall back into its proper shape just as there was a rattle and scrape from the door. The viewing panel shuddered, evidently jammed, and someone on the other side swore. Not a second after Toph had smoothed the dents from the wall, the door swung open and a pair of guards hustled in, looking around as if expecting an attack. More hung back in the corridor at the ready. When they saw Aang was still in his restraints in the middle of the room, they relaxed a measure.

"What was all that noise?" one demanded, his mustache bristling.

"Noise?" Aang hesitated, tapping his fingers together, then straightened. "Uh, oh yeah. That was me."

The guards shared a suspicious glance, and the one with the mustache frowned more deeply. "All that shouting was you?"

"Er… yes?"

"Well, what do you want, Avatar?"

"Uh, right! It's very important, actually. I want, uh…" Aang rubbed his chin and peered askance at the guards, trying to look wise beyond his years. What sort of thing would an Avatar ask for? What would Avatar Roku say?

Aang did not know enough about Roku to guess, but he did remember what another wise man had once told him about the Avatar.

The Avatar is the bridge between our world and the Spirit World, but he also negotiates for peace and harmony between the four nations. Giatso smiled and sliced the cake into five pieces for the five council members. Which is why, if you are going to sneak a bug into Councilor Miang's dessert, it would be prudent to sneak one into them all.

Aang blinked, and suddenly a pathway opened up before him, a flicker of clear blue sky. He might not be able to convince Katara to break her oath, but she wasn't really the one deciding. After all, Sokka thought there was a chance…

The guards were watching him with mounting uncertainty, but Aang didn't really notice. Solemnly, he peered back at them.

"I want to talk to Prince Zuko."