Sokka was woken up in the middle of the night by whimpering and crying. He got up and rubbed at his eyes, staring in the direction of where Azula was sleeping. He only needed to hear the words "father" and "please don't kill me"to know what she was dreaming about. He quickly made his way over to the girl, doing his best to not wake his sister up.

"Azula", Sokka whispered, gently shaking her, "Azula, wake up. It's okay, you're safe now. I'm not going to let anything happen to you, I promise."

A couple of seconds went by before Azula finally woke up, gasping for breath. She turned around and saw Sokka staring at her, concerned and worried. When she did so, Sokka saw tears coming down her cheeks.

"Are you okay? Were you having a nightmare about…. What happened to your family?" He asked.

Azula looked at him, confused, until she remembered that Sokka and Katara had no idea who she actually was. They still believed what she had initially told Hakoda. A fabricated story. She slowly nodded her head, wiping her tears.

"Yeah ... .in my dream, the men who killed my parents and brother found the spot where my mother hid me at, and they…"

She couldn't bring herself to finish that sentence. Even though what she was telling him was a lie, the fact that she would have been killed by her own father that night very much wasn't a lie at all.

"Do you….want to talk about it? It's okay if you don't want to, though."

Azula shook her head. Bad enough that she had a nightmare about that night. The last thing that she wanted to do was talk about it.

Sokka nodded and then moved closer to her, wrapping his arms around her in a hug. Azula froze for a moment before she slowly returned his hug.

"Everything is going to be okay now. Those bad guys can't get you here. And if they try to, I'll beat them up! Dad will protect you, too. You're safe here, I promise." Sokka reassured her, rubbing her back gently.

Those bad guys can't get you here

Azula desperately hoped that he was right.

They sat like that for a while before they eventually grew tired again. The two of them laid down, and went back to sleep almost immediately.

Neither one of them had realized that Sokka still had his arms wrapped around Azula.

When Hakoda went to wake up his kids the next morning, the last thing that he had expected to see was Sokka and Azula sleeping next to each other, Sokka's arms wrapped around her. He was even more surprised that Azula was still there. Usually around this time she would already be out and about, going off to train. It wasn't like the girl to sleep in like this. Oh well. He'd get his answer soon enough.

He gently shook Sokka and Azula, "Wake up, you two. It's time to eat."

No response. He tried again, but to no avail. So he opted to go to where Katara was sleeping and wake her up. She woke up a few seconds after he called out to her. The girl stretched, yawned, rubbed at her eyes and smiled at her father, who smiled back at her.

"Morning, dad."

"Good morning, Katara. Did you have a good sleep?"

The girl nodded, "Good. Well, it's time to get up and eat breakfast."

"Ok! What about Sokka?"

Hakoda pointed to where Sokka and Azula were currently sleeping, and Katara gasped.

"Azula is still here? That's weird. She'd usually be out training by now."

"I know. I tried waking them up but they wouldn't budge."

Katara looked at her father, and then at her brother and Azula. She looked back at her father and smiled.

"I'll wake them up!"

Before Hakoda could say anything, she quickly moved towards Sokka and Azula, took a deep breath, and….

"HEY! WAKE UP, SLEEPYHEADS!"

Her shouting got the desired effect. Sokka and Azula yelped and rose from their sleeping position, glaring at Katara when they heard her laughing.

"I figured that would wake you two up. Good morning!"

The two of them grumbled "what's so good about it?" and began to stretch .

"Hey, Azula, how come you're still home? Usually you're already out training around this time." Katara asked

The question made Azula freeze. Was it really that late? She didn't even realize that she had slept in. That nightmare must have worn her out.

"I guess my body decided that I needed some rest. Since I get up early and all. It happens to me from time to time." A lie, but Katara didn't need to know that. The other girl nodded at this, but she didn't appear to be done with her questioning just yet.

"How come you and Sokka were hugging in your sleep?"

The two of them froze. They had been hugging? They both looked at each other, and that's when it hit them.

After he had successfully woken Azula up from her nightmare, Sokka hugged her in an attempt to calm her down. Neither of them realized that he hadn't released her before they went back to sleep.

They looked back at Katara, who was giving them a teasing smirk, "Maybe I was cold and wanted more body heat, and so I subconsciously went over to Azula because she's a firebender, and fire is warm! That's gotta be it!" Sokka said, hoping that Katara would accept his reason and stop asking them questions. He had a feeling that Azula didn't want to talk about her nightmare, so he decided that the best option was to lie. Going by the look on his fathers face, however, he didn't believe Sokka at all.

Once again, Katara seemingly accepted this answer.

"Ok. Well come on, breakfast is ready!" Katara said to them, before running out of the room.

The two of them sighed a breath of relief, before they realized that Hakoda was still in the room, staring at the two of them. They had a funny feeling that he hadn't believed a word of what they had just said.

"Sokka, why don't you go ahead and follow your sister? Azula and I will be there in a minute."

Yeah, he definitely didn't believe them.

They both looked at each other before Sokka reluctantly got up and walked out of the room, giving one last reassuring look to Azula.

Once he was certain that Sokka was gone, Hakoda sat down in front of Azula, "Are you alright? Did something happen? Something like a nightmare?" He asked.

How did he know? Were all adults this perceptive?

Seeing the look on her face, Hakoda chuckled, "I don't know if you've realized this, but Sokka isn't a good liar at all. It's very easy for me to tell when he's lying about something. This time I figured he had a good reason for lying to Katara, so I decided to not say anything. What was the nightmare about? Was it about what happened that night?"

She nodded,"I can't get it out of my head. I keep on having these scenarios about what would have happened if I hadn't stayed behind to listen to that conversation between my father and grandfather. I would have been killed! Or what if you and your crew hadn't come across me after the ship that I was on got destroyed by that storm? I probably would have died then, too. Every time I sleep, all I see is my death. I try to outrun it, but it eventually catches up with me, and it makes me feel like I should leave here so that way I don't put you all in danger. You've done so much for me and I -"

"There is no way I'm allowing you to leave, kid."

"But-!"

"Listen to me. Even if you were to leave, where would you go? You're a little kid, you won't be able to survive out here on your own, let alone in the Earth Kingdom. And besides, Sokka would be devastated if you left. Katara would too, now that she's slowly starting to come around to you. My mother definitely doesn't want you to leave and neither do I. You're safe here, Azula. The South Pole is the last place that your father would think of to look for you. Going to the Earth Kingdom would endanger you even more since there's Fire Nation soldiers there. You're better off staying with us. And besides, you don't want to leave, right?"

Azula shook her head. Sure, the freezing temperature and the snow had taken some time for her to get used to, but she liked it here. She liked the family that she found herself with. The people here may have been initially cold towards her at first, something that she completely understood and couldn't fault them for, had slowly started to warm up to her. The other kids were starting to like her as well, asking if she wanted to play with them whenever they saw her. For the first time in forever, she didn't feel alone. And she liked that feeling. She didn't want to give it up.

Hakoda smiled, "See? Don't force yourself to leave if you don't want to. Now come on, let's get you something to eat."

Sokka decided to spend the rest of his day with Azula. The girl still seemed shaken up from her nightmare, and he didn't like seeing her this way. So he decided to do something about it. He asked her if she was interested in weapons, and when she had said yes, he went to grab his boomerang and told her to follow him outside. They found a quiet place a little ways from the village, and Sokka explained to her how to throw the boomerang.

"You move your arm behind you like this, make sure that you have a firm grip on the boomerang, and then you throw it!" Sokka explained, giving her an example of what she was supposed to do. He handed her his boomerang, and she looked it over for a minute, seemingly interested in the way it looked.

"Why is it curved like that?"

"So that way it can come back to you!"

"Come back to me?"

"Just throw it. You'll see what I'm talking about."

Azula nodded and recalled what he showed her. She got into position, extended her arm back, hand firmly clutching the boomerang. When she was ready, she brought her arm forward and released the boomerang, watching as it flew off into the air.

"Now what?"

"Now we wait!"

They stood there for a few minutes, staring at the direction Azula had thrown the boomerang in, when they saw a flash of light in the distance. Just like Sokka said, the boomerang was coming back.

"Hold your hand out so you can catch it!" He told her. She nodded and raised her hand into the air, waiting for the boomerang to make contact. A couple of seconds later and the boomerang was in her hand, the impact causing her to stumble somewhat.

"You did it, Azula! Pretty nice for your first try."

"Why thank you. You know, you aren't bad for a teacher."

Sokka beamed at her. She complimented his teaching skills!

"Hey, Sokka?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you. This is the second time that you've done something to cheer me up. You're a good friend."

Sokka smiled at her, "You're welcome. You seemed really down after that nightmare and I don't like seeing you sad. I want to see you smile more! You deserve to be happy after everything you've been through."

He really did care about her a lot, didn't he? It felt nice to have someone care about her as much as Sokka and his family did. At the same time, however, it made her feel bad for lying to both him and Katara about who she really was.

She just needed more time. She would tell them eventually.

"Hey, can I ask you something?"

Azula nodded

"What's the Fire Nation like? Do they really burn people to a crisp so that way they can eat them?"

"What?! Why in the world would you think that we….eat….. people."

Huh

This must have been how Hakoda felt when she asked him that back when they were on his ship.

"What's wrong?"

"Oh nothing, just…. nostalgia."

Sokka looked confused but didn't say anything.

"Anyway, to answer your question, no we don't eat people in the Fire Nation. I'm pretty sure that eating people would taste disgusting."

"Oh. Well that's good to know. So then what do you guys eat over there?"

"We have fire flakes. Snacks that are really hot and spicy but are so worth it. We also have komodo rhino meat, and…."

For the next hour, the two of them spent time talking about food. Neither one of them minded at all.

When they got back to the village, Sokka had insisted that they should do something called a "snowball fight". Whatever that was. It was probably some kind of game that they played in the water tribes.

"So how exactly does this game work?"

"It's easy! All you do is pick up some snow, shape it into your hand like this", he showed her how to change the shape of the snow into a ball, "and you now have yourself a snowball! Which you then throw at whoever you choose, like so", he said with a smirk, and promptly through his snowball at Azula.

"Hey!"

"And now you know what a snowball fight is! Pretty fun, right?"

She had to agree, it did seem like fun. All you have to do is throw snow at the other person to win? Seemed easy enough. Azula would make Sokka regret challenging her, though. She made her own snowball, just like Sokka had shown her, and threw it straight at his face. She started laughing when she saw the look on his face.

"Oh, so that's how it is?" He said, grabbing some more snow and reshaping it until it resembled a ball, and threw it at Azula, who immediately dodged it.

"That's cheating!"

"Says who?!" She responded, laughing even more.

Soon enough, they were in an all out snowball war against each other, with Katara and the other kids joining them soon after they started. It eventually became boys vs girls, with Sokka and Azula leading their teams respectively. When they had finally stopped because all of them were starting to get tired, it was unclear as to which team had won, but Sokka and Azula were adamant that their team won, which was something that the two of them would be in disagreement about for the rest of the day.

When Azula woke up the next morning and prepared to go train, she noticed three things: her inner fire felt weaker than what it should be, and the sun was nowhere in sight. Which was odd, because she could usually see it rising at this time. So where was it? And why did she feel so different? The third thing that she noticed was that it felt even more cold than what it usually felt like in the South Pole, which she didn't think was even possible until now.

That was when she remembered what Hakoda had told her when they were getting closer to the South Pole.

"We also have something called the Polar Night, where nighttime lasts for more than 24 hours. When this happens, the sun isn't visible, which makes it colder than usual."

"How long does it last?"

"A few months."

So this is what Hakoda had meant? If this was how she was already feeling on the first day, Azula didn't even want to think about how a few days would feel like, let alone a few months.

She really hoped that she wouldn't die.