Gladiator

by Seyary-Minamoto

In a world where the Avatar wasn't found, the Fire Nation took over two nations and they strive to overcome the last one. Water Tribe warrior Sokka seeks to fight for his people's rights, but he's captured by his enemies. His life is no longer in his hands as he fights as a Gladiator, and his fate will eventually depend on the Fire Nation Princess, who needs him for her own ends...

382. Chapter 382: Negotiations Compromise 4

Negotiations and Compromise

4

He had known he would blindside Azula with this revelation. He had never expected otherwise… but even so, Sokka wished he had thought of a way to explain it differently. That he could have broken it in slower, with more warning… so that she would not stare at him with eyes charged with confusion, fear, and utter denial.

"T-there's no way you… how? What…? Sokka, that's not…!" she gasped, covering her mouth with a hand and shaking her head. "She's… she's alive. You're saying she was alive, for all this time, and she was just…! What, in the fucking swamp, all along? She just left and never came back because…?!"

"It's… not as simple as that, but I don't know the whole story myself," Sokka admitted: Azula's chest heaved, betrayal and outrage clear across her face. "She wasn't free to go back to the Fire Nation, though… and believe it or not, I think she would have, if she had been."

"She wasn't free to…? Why?" Azula asked, frowning. "Was the swamp… keeping her there? Sounds like you guys got her out kind of… easily? So, I don't see how…"

She fell silent before staring at Sokka with uncertainty: his meaningful gaze, the tight line of his lips, said she hadn't weighed all options just yet.

"Out of what little I understand regarding… whatever happened, when she left?" Sokka said. "The night your grandfather died…"

"Yes?" Azula raised her eyebrows. Sokka sighed.

"She seems to have fled to Piandao for help."

Azula blinked slowly, awareness and realization dawning on her face gradually. Sokka swallowed hard, guessing she'd make the connection soon enough… but offering to do it for her, if she didn't do it yet.

"In the end… she was pretty much the White Lotus's prisoner."

"Fuck. Fuck…!" Azula gasped, a hand rising to her hair as she stared at him in horror. "All this time, they…! W-wait, but… you said she would've come back? Then she… t-they didn't make her join them? She didn't…?"

"She seems to not have a good opinion of the White Lotus in general, which, considering they kept her hidden for as long as they did, isn't too surprising," Sokka sighed. "Iroh knew, all along, and he never told you or Zuko, so…"

"Piece of shit would've never told me, but… fuck. He didn't… didn't tell Zuko?" Azula's eyes widened. "He… why? They were his favorite people in the world, he could've gotten Zuko to love him forever if he'd just reunited him with…!"

"Seems like he and your mother haven't exactly been on the best of terms since you last saw them together," Sokka said. Azula blinked blankly.

"What?" she said, her voice small. "You're saying my mother and my uncle don't get along anymore?"

"The way she puts it…? Seems like she only got along with him when you were a kid because she thought she had to," Sokka said. Azula's eyes widened. "And even if it wasn't always mutual? They definitely became way more hostile to each other once Azulon kicked the bucket, however that happened…"

"You didn't… ask?" Azula said, uneasy. "I mean… I get it if you didn't, but… she's bound to be the only person who knows what happened then."

"Well, she might be, but the truth is… I didn't dare," Sokka confessed, running a hand over his face. "I admit, I didn't always feel entirely comfortable talking with her… and the subject of whatever she did that night always felt like something that nobody should bring up around her."

"Huh," Azula blinked blankly. "But… curses, this is a lot to swallow."

"I know," Sokka said, breathing deeply. "Their feud caught your brother off-guard too. He thought they got along great too, so… it was a tough one for him to deal with."

"He used to say I always lied, you know?" Azula said, with a sarcastic grin. "Must be a shocker to find it's a family trait, in the end. From all sides. Fuck, my… my mother. How…? The swamp led you to my mother. That's so… so messed up. B-but… what happened? Did she wake up at some point then, or was she in such bad shape that…?"

"She woke up that night, yeah… and she said things that were confusing, when she first came to, but she didn't want to open her eyes," Sokka said. "She talked to Zuko kind of… normally, at first. He was an emotional mess, while she… seemed not to really register it as a surprising, uncommon occurrence."

"What?" Azula frowned. Sokka sighed.

"Well… your mother hasn't been entirely fine, mentally speaking, over the course of the last years," Sokka said. Azula tensed up. "It's not that she can't be reasoned with, or talked to, but… she's sensitive, you could say? She's seen and probably done things she doesn't want to accept, even now. So… from what she explained later, well, she experienced hallucinations in the swamp. Voluntarily. She… kept running there to see mirages of your family."

Azula froze up. Sokka swallowed hard, knowing the deeper the explanations went, the more disturbed she would be.

"So… well, the first thing she did upon waking up in Zuko's arms was asking him where you were," Sokka said: her eyes widened, denial threatening to burst from her at once. "It took a while for her to… to accept that she wasn't talking to a child. But eventually Zuko told her that we weren't in the swamp anymore, that she wasn't having any weird visions of the past… and she started acting differently. She touched his scar… and even before looking at him, she said things that, well, sounded like she knew about how he got it. But she kept talking like… like she couldn't believe your father had burned him."

"She… well, she wouldn't have wanted Zuko to be hurt at all," Azula reasoned, but Sokka shook his head.

"She didn't, yeah, but… I think what hurt the most was that it was your father's doing," Sokka said. Azula's eyes widened. "The things she said… it sounded like she was rejecting it because of him, not because she couldn't stand the thought of him being burned altogether. When she finally opened her eyes, she broke down in tears, apologizing to Zuko a thousand times, or so… she didn't stop doing that until she fell asleep. I… well, I was disturbed by the whole thing. I didn't know what to make of it, my idea of her was…"

"My idea of her," Azula finished for him. Sokka gritted his teeth and nodded. "Well… guess now you know how wrong I was."

"Or… how right you were. At least, about many things," Sokka said. Azula winced.

"Like… what?" Azula asked. "She… she didn't reject you, did she? She didn't act like you were unworthy of me, or so, did she?"

"No, no… well, fortunately not," Sokka said, with a small smile: the implications of his answer, though, floored Azula.

"Wait… s-she knows about us," she reasoned. "My mother…"

"Uh… yeah," Sokka nodded, wishing his cheeks would not heat up over something as silly as that. But Azula's own face reddened too.

"And you say… fortunately not? So… she's fine with it?" Azula asked, eyeing him warily. "How much does she know, exactly?"

"Well, uh, not sordid details, if you thought so?" Sokka smiled awkwardly. "But, uh, evidently she knows how far we've gone considering she knows you had our baby, so…"

"O-oh… huh. W-well… guess I should thank you for dealing with that part for me," Azula said. Sokka chuckled.

"Look… there's a lot of things you would likely need to talk about with her. I don't think explaining you've had a life should be the hardest bit…"

"Yeah, well, you've never had to deal with a mother who made you question if you could be loved at all, so…" Azula mumbled, lowering her gaze. Sokka's eyes softened.

"That's… one thing you were both right and wrong about, you know?"

Azula eyed him warily, and Sokka sighed.

"Well, carrying on… Ursa woke up on the next morning. She was calmer, struggling still with reality, but not as much as the previous night. Zuko introduced us all, and it looked like she had to know something or another about who I was, going by her reaction when he mentioned me. Then… well, he took to catching her up to everything that had happened in his life so far. But at one point, well, he was going to talk about you and I… walked away."

"You… you did?" Azula eyed him with uncertainty. Sokka smiled sadly.

"I knew I'd intrude. I knew I'd just… burst into their conversation to set things straight, to tell her things I probably shouldn't have, I might have just accused her of failing you, I… I knew I couldn't do that. They'd just met again… if I'd had the chance to talk to my mom and some jackass interrupted us, I would've strangled him. So… I walked away, sat by a cliff nearby, and I stayed there for most the day. But… well, she wanted to talk to me alone."

"After what Zuko told her?" Azula asked, uneasy. Sokka shrugged.

"It was either because of that or… because of everything she'd learned about us beforehand. From the White Lotus," Sokka said.

"But, if she was their prisoner…" Azula frowned. Sokka bit his lip.

"It's a little trickier, being their prisoner, than you'd think," he explained. "It's not that they'll keep people in chains… but they'll try to stop them from leaving their territories and not allow them to go wherever they please. At least, that's how it used to be. Anyone giving away the location of their headquarters would've been catastrophic for them, so…"

"Was it inside the swamp?" Azula asked, puzzled.

"I thought about it, but no. Nearby, though," Sokka said. Azula raised her eyebrows but shrugged.

"Still risky… but I guess the swamp is its own kind of protection," she concluded.

"It was, for sure," Sokka said. "Carried risks too, though. Your mother, well… as I said, she ran to Piandao, who sent her to them eventually. They tried to show her the error of her ways, of the Fire Nation's ways, to little avail. Evidently, she couldn't justify the war… but she wasn't ready to turn her back on her entire culture and accept that the Fire Nation was in the wrong as easily as that. So… I think that triggered her bouts of denial and depression, all of which escalated into the hallucinations, once she came near the swamp. By then… it seems that Jeong Jeong was at his wits' end with her. They must have wanted to use her as a hostage against your father, if the situation ever called for it… or just as a weakness to exploit, I don't know. When she didn't change her mind about things, and then started running into the swamp… it seems he was perfectly ready to let her lose herself for good in there."

"But… he didn't," Azula said, frowning. "I mean, she's been gone for so long that if no one had ever found her, she would've…"

"From the sound of it… it seems that someone, I don't really know who, contacted Piandao to ask for help in retrieving her," Sokka said. Azula frowned. "You know… when he vanished and left us high and dry."

"Wait, back when…? I… shit, I hadn't actually thought about the fact that he…" Azula frowned, eyes veering towards the floor. "The bastard worked with us, for however short a time it was, and he knew where she was and he…"

She trailed off, her face softening after a moment. She sighed, shrugging.

"Well, maybe he thought he was doing me a favor, all things considered," she said. "Though he had the gall to compare me to her… knowing exactly what that would mean to me. He's still a bastard."

"The lesser one, it seems, in the White Lotus," Sokka said. Azula eyed him sheepishly. "But yeah, he never said anything about her to me either. Sounds like they'd just permanently relocated to the base near the swamp, maybe they asked him to come find her just then. Either way, she… she wanted to talk to me about a few things, but among them, she… well, this is going to be tricky to explain."

That he reached to take her hand reassuringly probably shouldn't have come off as a bad sign, but it did. From the moment the conversation had veered into her mother's miraculous reappearance, Azula's tension had risen higher than before… she didn't know what to expect anymore. She felt unstable, unsteady... and she wasn't sure that even Sokka could help her reclaim her center.

"For starters, well… she confirmed that she hadn't just heard about me, but had outright seen me once before," Sokka said. Azula's confusion only increased, but she said nothing this time. "Believe it or not… she saw the both of us, actually."

"W-what…? How?" Azula gasped, her heart racing. Sokka's fingers caressed the back of her hand.

"Remember your swamp dream?" Sokka said. Azula tensed up. "Turns out… the swamp somehow linked the two of you that night. It seems you both dreamt of each other in the most unflattering light possible…"

"Oh," Azula said: her tone, flatter, suggested that notion came as no surprise. "Well… surely she was used to thinking of me that way, huh?"

"Actually… doesn't seem like it," Sokka said. Azula glared at the horizon, failing to give his words credit. "I really don't want to say it, given what happened not long ago, but… she dreamt of you as a child, and, well… it seemed you'd, uh, killed half your family."

Azula froze up. She raised her eyebrows and stared at Sokka in disbelief. He breathed out slowly.

"The way she put it…?" he said. "She didn't believe you'd do that… she said you were crying, laughing, it sounds like absolute madness."

"No kidding," Azula said, dryly. "Then again, I suppose I did dream of her being the one advocating for you to die, so… she might just think we're even."

"Doesn't seem that she would, because… well, she actually didn't care much about what you were doing in that dream. The main thing that mattered to her was that you were in it."

Azula slowed down, blinking blankly before scrutinizing Sokka warily: the worst part of what he had to share was not here yet, she realized…

"That doesn't sound like her," she said. Sokka breathed deeply.

"Well… she wanted to see you desperately. For years," he said. "She hallucinated vividly about your father and Zuko… but the way she saw it? The swamp was punishing her by never letting her see hallucinations of you."

Azula's eyes widened. Her lips parted, and she stared at Sokka in further confusion.

"Excuse me… for not taking that as a good sign," she said. "Why would she not…?"

"The way she thought of it, she assumed it was because of how much she failed you," Sokka said. Azula's eyes widened.

"She… thinks she failed me?" she repeated. "So, it wasn't a sign that she was right about me being a monster all along, and that maybe her perfect, ideal family was just… not something I had any right to intrude upon?"

"Doesn't seem like it," Sokka said, biting his lip. "I know this is hard to take… part of me wonders if I should've just left her to do it herself. If you ever feel ready to see her directly, that is…"

"I… I don't know that I do," Azula said, with a dry smile. "But I can certainly tell some things don't change. This… this stupid feeling of inadequacy whenever she's involved? Right there, as usual. Can't even shake it off after all this time…"

"Might be a good idea for you to meet her, then… because it might just be the only way to get rid of it. But I'm not saying you have to do it right away, okay?" Sokka said, earnestly. "In fact, take as long as you need. She's halfway across the world as it is, she didn't come to the Fire Nation with us, and unless she ran away at some point, she should be in Ba Sing Se…"

"Heh. Well, that's good to know. Far enough indeed that I should have enough time to… to decide if I want anything to do with her," Azula smiled sardonically. "I… I don't even… why would you believe her? I mean, about the whole 'I can't see her because I failed her' thing?"

"Because I know she failed you," Sokka said, with a shrug. Azula eyed him with uncertainty. "And I think… she wanted to talk to me because she knew I'd know it, too. She couldn't talk about her past properly with Zuko for who knows how long, no matter how much she loved him… but it was different when she talked to me because I wasn't idealizing her, or pretending she was beyond reprieve. She's… well, a bit self-flagellating, in a sense. Punishes herself in ways that, uh…"

"You considered oh, so familiar?" Azula smiled awkwardly. "That's rich. The one person I hoped would never say I had anything in common with her…"

"Well… I can only hope you'll feel differently about that once you see what she's like these days," Sokka said, uneasy. "I'm sorry if you feel betrayed, but… maybe it'll make you feel better if I say that the main thing you two have in common isn't anything physical? Or about how you carry yourselves, or anything of the sort?"

"And what might that be?" she said, her voice dripping with skepticism: while a part of Sokka should have been mortified to hear that tone of derision in his lover's voice, another reckless part soared with joy, delighted to recognize the harder edges of the woman he loved most deeply. He smiled a little, but the grin faded quickly.

"Well… I'm pretty sure the two of you are the only people in this world who… who truly gave a shit about your father."

That wasn't what Azula had expected to hear at all. She tensed up, staring at him in confusion, and Sokka breathed deeply, caressing her hand again.

"Backtracking to where I was at… well, she saw us on the day after we had those dreams. Seems like the swamp told her where she'd find you… but like I said, she was in denial about the passage of time, she thought you should still be a child, and she didn't want to confront reality at all. But she saw us by the fire, at night, after… after we beat Iroh and Toph, yeah. It was that night."

"And she… what, hid among the trees?" Azula asked. Sokka nodded. "She just… saw us? D-did she see anything…? Well, we didn't do anything that incriminating that night, did we?"

"Maybe not too openly, but you know we weren't exactly hiding properly in those days. Even if we had been discreet, though, she had White Lotus contacts, Piandao chief among them, and he always guessed that you and I might just become what we did," Sokka explained. "She had some warning about it… but she didn't reject the notion because she thought you couldn't be loved or that I was a lesser savage or anything of the sort."

"No… she just wanted me to be a child still," Azula said, puzzled. "Is she genuinely aware of… of the fact that I'm not one anymore, or…?"

"Yeah, that ship's sailed," Sokka nodded. Azula swallowed hard and nodded. "So you won't have to worry about her going into denial if you two do meet, or at least, not the way she did when she met Zuko again. She has a better grasp of reality now. Either way, though, uh… she asked me if I loved you."

"Oh," Azula grimaced. "And, knowing you…"

"Told her I always had and always would, yep," Sokka said. Despite herself, Azula smiled a little. "And then… I asked her if she had, too."

"W-wait… if she had loved me?" Azula's smile waned right away. Sokka breathed deeply.

"That's when she explained that she knew she had failed you. She was aware of how complicated your relationship was… she told me she was foolish enough to think that she'd have a chance to fix it after you grew a little older. And she truly believed that… that the swamp was punishing her for not being the mother you deserved. That it didn't believe her worthy of seeing you at all… hence why she didn't see you until that dream bridged you together. It's also why… why she'd asked Zuko about you, as soon as she gained some semblance of consciousness. It's what she always did, when she saw mirages of your brother or your father."

"She… asked to see me," Azula said, almost breathlessly. "B-but…"

"Look…" Sokka sighed, reaching over and cupping her face now. "Much as it was in the past, I'm not going to pressure you to think of her one way or another. My new perspective on your mother doesn't negate your experiences or your feelings: if anything, she regrets so many things about how she treated you because you weren't wrong to think she was unfair to you. She knows you weren't. She feels guilty over it, no doubt, but she wanted to speak to me that night to find out just how much you mattered to me. If… if my quest was one of revenge, or one of hope. If I cared more about avenging myself against Ozai or about saving you."

"You weren't on a vengeful quest," Azula said, frowning, eyeing him with uncertainty.

"I wasn't. And… she didn't offer to help me find the White Lotus until she confirmed as much," Sokka said. Azula's eyes widened. "She tested me, you could say…"

"That's not so surprising, either," Azula admitted. Sokka smiled and shrugged.

"She wanted to know what I'd choose to do, if I was stuck between saving your life or taking revenge by killing your father," Sokka said. Azula frowned. "When I told her I'd choose you… well, that convinced her to trust me."

"Really?" Azula asked. "You say… she cared about him? I know, well, no child would have a perfect perception of what's going on with the adults around them, and I certainly must have been no exception to that, but… even if they had better days, they happened so long ago that I hardly remember them. I mostly recall… distance, arguments, clashes between them. And then she was gone, never to be back, and… it felt like he loved her, but that maybe she just didn't love him back."

"Sounds to me like… maybe they loved each other and weren't even aware of it," Sokka said. Azula winced. "She was angry at your father, more than I thought she would be, and even so, she made that request. She couldn't forgive him, not for Zuko… but perhaps even more because of you. She believed you were the child he favored, after all… she couldn't fathom that he'd ever decided to hurt you as he had, when you were supposed to be the one he actually cherished and wanted as his heir. She admitted, too… that you weren't wrong to dream that her regal self might have thought nothing of me. Back in the day, she said, she wouldn't have approved of us. But after living as she has… well, most people wouldn't venture to guess that she was ever noble, much less royal, if they saw her now."

"I guess she's… older?" Azula said, before smiling awkwardly. "Heh. Maybe we really are alike, after all. I can't help but think of her exactly as she was when I last saw her… much as she couldn't stop picturing me as a child. Weirdly, I… hadn't quite imagined that she might look different now."

"I suppose she's… more wrinkled than you'd remember her?" Sokka said, with a shrug. "Her hair's graying, too."

"Damn…" Azula said, with a small smile. "Well… she really wouldn't look much like the mother I recall, then."

"She's changed, I expect… maybe not as much as you'd want her to, but she has," Sokka said. "Knowing that you and I had been happy together relieved her. And knowing that I meant to fight for you no matter what, well… it might just be the main reason why she trusted me at all. After I convinced her that I would privilege you over everything else, she finally agreed to take us to the White Lotus. That's when she said shocking things to Zuko… like that she never got along with Iroh, not truly, and he didn't take that very well. But after all was said and done, I approached her and I asked her if she was ready to choose you, saving you, fighting for your sake, over your father."

Azula's eyes widened. Sokka stared at her solemnly.

"That was, after all, what our choices were going to entail," he said. "If she led us to the White Lotus, and I earned their loyalty somehow… we would go to war against her husband. Clearly, she cared about him still, even if it seemed the main thing she wanted to do was scream at him for all his horrible choices… so I had to ask. Because just as she wanted to know if my thirst for revenge wasn't greater than my love for you, I wanted to be sure that she wouldn't stand in the way if your father… if he had to go down for me to save you."

Azula shivered, lowering her tearful gaze. Sokka breathed out slowly, caressing the back of her hands.

"Her answer was… that she was ready to choose you over everything."

Azula tensed up again. She glanced up at him, and Sokka's earnest eyes met her astounded, lost ones.

"She… said that?" she asked. "W-wait, but… that's… I mean, not everything. Surely not… not Zuko?"

Sokka shrugged. Azula's eyes widened.

"She wouldn't have. There's no way she…" she said, shaking her head.

"I know you two had some… competition, so to speak, on who could get the most approval from either of your parents," Sokka said. "I know it's hard to believe that you could've ever won it. It's actually a lot healthier not to have a competition at all, and not to hope for one either, much less to win or lose it or whatever…"

"I mean, yes. Evidently," Azula said, lowering her gaze. "But that's why I… I mean, I know you'd expect me to give her more credit, but it's not exactly easy. The way it always looked… Zuko was her whole world. Me and my father, we… we didn't seem to be that important. For her to choose me over… everything? That… that's odd. It doesn't really make sense…"

"Well… all I can say is that you'll have to gauge for yourself one day whether she was honest about that or not," Sokka sighed. "I can't exactly convince you of anything, myself… but I can say that, in all the time I've known your mother, she has treated me far more respectfully than I ever imagined she would. She has stood her ground over certain matters with Zuko, reprieved him when he made any choices she didn't like…"

"Huh?" Azula's eyes widened. "That sounds unlikely…"

"She consistently asked for Ozai to be spared…" Sokka continued. Azula's heart clenched at those words. "I… kind of implied as much, when we faced him. You weren't the only one trying to keep him alive, Azula. She only trusted me because I said I wasn't out to kill him, above all else. She knew, yes, that maybe he'd have to die… but she gave me the benefit of the doubt, in a sense, in accepting that even if I did kill him, I might do it solely because I couldn't find another way out. And in a sense… she as good as accepted that, if I had to do it to save you, it had to be done. So…"

"It makes no sense," Azula sighed, shaking her head. Sokka reassured her, caressing her hair.

"I guess it sounds like it," he said. "But… ultimately, I just hope that you know this is all up to you now. Though, uh… worth noting that she begged me to explain certain things?"

"Certain things?" Azula asked.

"Mainly… whatever you'd told me about the pain she'd caused you," Sokka said. "I didn't want to share much, but… part of me was vindictive, I guess. It was on that first conversation between us, she wanted to know just how much she'd wronged you and… I shared some of it. I told her… how you dreaded that she believed you were a monster."

Azula remained silent, frozen on her seat. Sokka leaned close, pressing his brow to hers.

"I'm sorry. I know… a lot of this was bound to be yours to share or not to. I didn't mean to give anything away without your say so… but I wanted to make sure she understood how much she had wronged you. It felt like I had to be as blunt as possible, and…"

"Did it work?" Azula asked, softly. Sokka breathed out.

"I think so," he said. "I… may have said that I'd thought she was a worse monster than you."

"You… you still have no sense. Never did," Azula said, though she smiled slightly. Sokka grinned back.

"Are you okay?" he asked. She breathed deeply before shaking her head.

"Don't think I will be for… for a while, still," she said. "But… thank you for sharing this. I know it must have freaked you out, when it happened… and maybe even more, knowing that you'd have to tell me about it. I know I wouldn't have wanted to be in your shoes now, that's for sure…"

"I just want you to be okay," Sokka said, softly. Azula closed her eyes tightly. "That's why… you don't need to decide how you feel about any of this yet, alright? You don't need to go see her now, or within the next five years, or ten… you don't have to see her at all if you don't think you want to. Just… do whatever will bring you the most peace of mind and heart, Azula. That's all I want for you."

"And… it doesn't worry you if my peace of mind and heart means that she won't have any, herself?" Azula asked. Sokka hummed.

"She said she'd choose you over everything. I did too," he said. "Too bad for her if she can't be happy in life, but… priorities are what they are."

"You're weird," Azula whispered, pressing her brow to his shoulder. Sokka smiled slightly. "I… I'll need time. Can't really say I'd be ready to face her yet, but… I think I'll want to, one day."

"Then we'll give it time," Sokka said, reassuringly. Azula breathed deeply and nodded.

"She… she's the one who led you to them, then?" she asked. Sokka nodded. "Where…? Unless you're still sworn to secrecy, that is…"

"Pretty sure I can do whatever the fuck I want," Sokka said. Azula's earnest smile brought one to his face too. "Couldn't at first, sure, but… that changed over time. Ursa told us where to fly… and we found a fortress in the mountains. It belonged to an Earth Kingdom General, General Fong …"

"Right," Azula nodded.

"It was the last bastion left of the old Earth Kingdom regime," Sokka explained. "The Fire Nation never found it… it was actually by the shore, but nothing too important was nearby and it's well hidden. After the White Lotus leadership struck a deal with General Fong, they joined forces and it became the headquarters for the Order. So… we flew there, and I sent Zuko ahead of us, so that he'd find his damn uncle and secure us a meeting, at least."

"That worked?" Azula asked, frowning. Sokka nodded.

"He did his job pretty well," Sokka smiled a little. "Not sure how he got Iroh to agree to it while knowing I'd want his head for everything he'd done to us, but… still worked. The old bastard keeps apologizing and looking at me like a kicked puppy or so… it pisses me off beyond belief. He has no right to play the heartbroken remorseful man when he's objectively to blame for the course things took after he gave us away. No number of apologies will ever make up for it."

"No… certainly not," Azula sighed, shaking her head. "Seeing my mother's a possibility, but… if I don't see that bastard ever again, I think I'll die happy."

"It's odd that… that I'd wind up hating him that much when your father did so much wrong too," Sokka said, frowning. "Not saying I didn't hate him too, but… when it looked like he'd make the right choice for a change, the notion of taking revenge for what he'd done to us was nowhere on my mind anymore. Iroh, though… whenever he tried to do better, I still couldn't get over what he'd done. Still can't."

"He knew what he was doing. He's even stupider than we thought if he pretends he didn't," Azula said. "I guess… that he used my father to cause us that much pain makes it harder to forgive. Not that I'll ever tell you to forgive my father either, but… we knew why we had to be careful. We hid, we kept things quiet… only someone who truly means you harm would push you into the lair of a beast and then pretend they're sorry for it after it tears you to pieces. I don't care how genuine he is about it… he wasn't blind or oblivious to the consequences of his actions."

"He wasn't," Sokka agreed. "I don't really know how I held back from gutting him the minute I laid eyes on him, but… I mainly tried to ignore him, to not look at him, to just… keep focusing on what I was doing. But unfortunately, Iroh wasn't the worst problem I faced anyhow."

"The Deserter," Azula said, breathing deeply and releasing the air slowly. "I admit… teaming up with people who tried to kill you once is certainly a skill of yours, but one I don't appreciate much. Not even when it worked in my favor. Knowing you were working alongside that man, after what he did to you too, I…"

"We did talk about joining forces one day, with the White Lotus," Sokka reminded her. Azula scoffed.

"I don't think the reality of it dawned on me when we discussed it back then," she said. "It blindsided me, how much I hated him… all things considered, it's no surprise that he gave you a hard time. What's really shocking is that he stopped doing it long enough to let you lead his armies. How…?"

"It wasn't straightforward, of course," Sokka said. "Well, for starters, he agreed to talks but not to working with me right away. I established from the beginning that I had no intentions of joining the Order, that this was an alliance, not submission. While I wasn't sure what to expect, they agreed to my initial terms, provided we stayed put and promised that, if we failed to find an agreement, we wouldn't give away their headquarters' location and they, in turn, had to promise not to give away that I was alive to the Fire Lord. Of course, I doubt either side trusted the other at all… I didn't trust them one bit, but it was the only place where it looked like I might find an army to contest the Fire Nation's. After that initial encounter, Piandao turned up just as Jeong Jeong was leaving, and… well, I know it might feel crazy that I still felt attached to him after all this time, but…"

"It doesn't. I know how much he meant to you," Azula said, softly.

"He was so proud of me…" Sokka said, with a sad smile. "I thought I'd stand side by side with him now, as equals… but he didn't want that. He wanted me to lead… and to be the one that followed."

"Really?" Azula raised her eyebrows. Sokka nodded. "That's… surprising."

"Out of any of them… he's the only one I did trust. He helped me navigate all the obstacles the others put in my way, he had my back at just about every turn… he really helped me a lot. But, well, on that day he… he also was the one who told me about your circumstances."

"Oh," Azula grimaced. Sokka smiled sadly.

"You didn't mention you'd been forced to marry Zhao during our connection… makes sense that you wouldn't have, too, we didn't have time, and I doubt you wanted to think of things that made you miserable," Sokka reasoned. "But it… it broke me. I… I didn't even know, after he told me about it, whether the child was mine or his. In fact… I forced myself to think it was better if it was his, if that would mean you'd be safer."

"Sokka…" Azula's eyes widened. He offered her a sad smile. "I… I mean, that's awfully generous of you, but… as much as I adopted Rei, that doesn't mean I ever would've wanted to…"

"I know, but… I knew this had to have destroyed you. Even if it hurt me… every time I thought about how much it had hurt you, I grew angrier," Sokka said. "I was moments away from finding your mother and telling her that I'd backtrack on what she'd asked of me… that I'd kill him for good measure after forcing you into that position. But… all I really wanted, in the end, was your safety.

"After the initial rage passed, someone else came to see me. Someone who definitely lifted my spirits in her own way… your favorite Dirt Worm, naturally."

Azula smiled with genuine affection, and Sokka grinned back.

"I suppose… even when things got more complictaed for me, when I found out what you guys were doing, I still found some relief in knowing that Toph was with you," Azula admitted. Sokka nodded. "I had no idea where she'd wound up… clearly, Iroh had taken her with him someplace, but…"

"She despises him as much as we do, if not more so," Sokka said. Azula snorted.

"Serves him right," she concluded. "Though I feel bad for her anyway. She tried that hard to help, to make me get along with that piece of shit, and then…"

"He dragged her away without telling her what was going on," Sokka said. Azula's eyes widened. "They were halfway across the sea when he finally told her… she couldn't go anywhere. Jumping off the ship then would've been suicide, and she had no idea where to go after he took her to the Fortress. By the time we showed up, she was as good as lost, desperate… hopeless. But because I was there, she knew that I meant business. She was ready to throw her lot with me, come what may… ready to stop being a prisoner of the White Lotus, too."

"Good," Azula said, with a small smile. "And I take it Jet was with her there, too?"

"Seems like Iroh told him and Longshot to go there, the last time they came across them," Sokka said. Azula hummed. "If you're curious, yeah, Toph's got something going on with him, but I don't really know what the terms are. I do think you'll have fun teasing her over it, though… at least, a bit. But she's not as shy over intimacy as she used to be before…"

"Ugh. That's not good. Knowing her, she's bound to be even more crass about it than Ty Lee…" Azula said. Sokka actually laughed.

"That's probably not wrong," he admitted, smiling warmly at her. "Either way… we didn't look like much of a team just yet, but we kind of were one already. We were just missing… one member."

"Who?" Azula asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You know him, it seems," Sokka said, smiling. "Though it's worth admitting that Anorak didn't exactly join us willingly, at first."

"Oh… huh," Azula blinked blankly. "He did mention he'd joined you in Omashu. Is that… is that what happened next?"

"Well, kind of. But Foo-Foo came first," Sokka smiled. Azula snorted and nodded.

"Ah, yes. He mentioned that, too," Azula smirked. "Your beloved friend came back to the rescue, somehow?"

"It was a really weird coincidence," Sokka laughed. "A herd of moose-lions just snuck up on the Fortress's territories. They were pondering how to attack them, what to do to get rid of them… I just rolled up to them with apples and the rest was history. Foo-Foo recognized me, too. He was one of them and made it a lot easier for the others to trust me…"

"You're utterly ridiculous," Azula smiled fondly at him. Sokka chuckled again. "That such an unthinkable, coincidental matter would come back in that shape eventually… I take it you left him back in the Earth Kingdom?"

"Yeah, he's bound to be the terror of the Agrarian Zone with his herd at the moment," Sokka smiled. "He ate too well with us, don't really know if he'll want to go back to his desert after that."

"Might not," Azula smiled. "And from what Anorak said… you used the moose-lions to take Omashu?"

"Well… that was what I'd been arguing about with the White Lotus leadership back then," Sokka said, with a heavy sigh. "They kept putting up hurdles for everything I suggested. My plan was pretty solid, but they refused to lend me any of their forces for it… I needed something outside the city walls, something to take away attention from the group that would infiltrate the city directly, but they wouldn't budge and let me use their soldiers. Piandao kept supporting me as best he could… your mother took me to a small temple where I tried to communicate with you again. Didn't really work, but I felt our connection strengthen again, if just a little. And then the herd was right outside the Fortress, right after I did that. Was kind of a funny coincidence, almost as though my pleas had been answered by that crazy moose-lion…

"Either way, once I handled them with the apples, Jeong Jeong was hysterical because he didn't want to feed them and, all in all, couldn't stand that I had proven I could solve problems in unforeseen ways. Even so, he couldn't deny that I'd fixed what could have been a huge mess… so I took advantage of that opportunity and offered to get the herd away from the Fortress. Anorak had been a little supportive of the whole thing until then, he didn't seem to hate me as much that day as he did every day before…"

"He didn't care for you much?" Azula asked, amused. "Why am I not surprised…?"

"What can I say? I piss off people pretty easily," Sokka smirked. Azula laughed.

"Yeah, and then they're swearing eternal loyalty to you before they know it. You have a knack for that," Azula pointed out, raising her eyebrows. Sokka chuckled and shrugged.

"Fair enough," he smiled. "Jeong Jeong sent him with us, supposedly to ensure that we wouldn't lose our way while leading the herd wherever we wanted to… and that we would go back to the Fortress after it was done and not stab him in the back. Obviously, what Anorak didn't realize is that we had no intentions of going back to the Fortress at all. So, me, the group that left the South with me, Toph, Jet, Anorak, the lemur and the moose-lions… we wound up in Omashu sooner than later."

"And… you took control of the city with that strategy?" Azula asked, raising her eyebrows. "Using the creatures as bait?"

"Mainly as a distraction, but yeah," Sokka smiled. "See… Toph built an earthbending bridge, for me, Jet and her to cross. We found rebels inside Omashu, joined forces with them, and they were ready to fight alongside us. The first thing we had to do was hit the prison, set all other rebels free so that they'd help us out… and the second one, to neutralize all communications offices to keep word from reaching Ozai about what was going on."

"I figured you'd have done something like that, but… you actually pulled that off?" Azula asked, frowning. "With such a small number on your side…"

"I caught them off guard, I guess," Sokka smiled. "Doesn't hurt that we found a fair number of people who were ready to join us, not just the rebels. But yeah, it was a matter of almost perfect coordination. I sent Kino to play the spy again, this time by the walls, infiltrating their soldiers… he helped by reaching out to the earthbending slaves who controlled the gates, he set them free, and they cooperated with us too. Most their soldiers were too busy trying to understand what was going on with the moose-lions to realize that there was something happening inside the city…"

"And by the time they realized it, it was too late?" Azula ventured a guess. Sokka nodded.

"I sent Aang and Katara to the gates, with a group of rebels. I went for the main Communications Office, and I sent Zuko to the Governor's Mansion with Toph and Jet. Once Zuko was ready, since he was the one who had to travel the furthest, Toph sent a signal… an earthquake, because she's subtle that way, and we all knew it was time to strike. Three simultaneous attacks, no means for the Fire Nation to send word anywhere… Kino handled the birds over at the walls, Anorak and I the ones in the Communications Office. It was a big messy battle… but it was probably the least costly one, frankly. We took more prisoners there than anywhere else."

"Really?" Azula asked.

"Trapped them in the ground, buried to their necks," Sokka smiled awkwardly. Azula snorted.

"How delicate," she smiled.

"Hey, at least they made it," Sokka chuckled. "Anyway… after we succeeded, Anorak and I, helped by some slaves we liberated from the sled system, went to the Enforcers in Omashu. They were a little more willing to help us than I'm sure the Fire Nation expected them to be, heh. They turned on their Fire Nation leaders, joined us, and then we attacked the square. Toph was supposed to head over to break free King Bumi, as well as tear down your father's statue… she was in a bit of a pickle, there were far more dangerous foes at that pyramid's peak than she expected. But after winning down at the central square, I went to help her with Aang… we recruited a former gladiator along the way, Shanyuan, and we helped them defeat everyone up by the statue."

"Which… she did take down. And I assume the king was freed, too," Azula finished. Sokka nodded. "What of Mai's family? Her father sent her a really odd letter…"

"Ah, yeah. I had to let him do that," Sokka sighed. "But at that moment, Zuko succeeded at making him surrender. They're unharmed, or they should be, just… out of power now, of course. So… yeah, that's basically how Omashu fell at our feet."

"The way you tell it no doubt sounds much easier than it had to be," Azula said, with a weak smile. "Good that it worked out, though. And that it wasn't as costly as it could've been, too."

"I guess you didn't learn about it for a while, though… but Mai got the letter, huh?" Sokka said, grimacing. Azula nodded. "I had to ask him to do that because… well, a stupid situation happened, it sabotaged things. After the White Lotus joined up with us in Omashu, and Jeong Jeong finally offered me respect and even started calling me General Sokka, we had trouble dealing with merchants who wanted to come to the city. Evidently, if they got to see what was going on inside the city walls, they were going to spread word that Omashu wasn't quite what Ozai thought it should be. But one crazy guy, a cabbage merchant, I think, pushed past our intimidating defenses of moose-lions and… yeah, he fucked us over. It seems he told the story of how these idiots from the White Lotus had taken his merchandise, how they didn't look Fire Nation… and word of that reached your father, who then sent a letter demanding for explanations. I went to Ukano, to ask him to respond with outright lies about what happened, and he didn't want to cooperate until I allowed him to send a letter to Mai, too."

"I see," Azula frowned.

"Your mom also came along with the White Lotus forces… she gave Mai's family one hell of a shock when they saw her again. Well, her parents. Her brother had no clue who she was, of course," Sokka said. "Anyway… guess that was my side up until then. I can imagine yours wasn't exactly uneventful, but…"

"Wasn't nearly as chaotic as things were for you, I think," Azula said, eyes wide. "Those days were actually… my most peaceful, I think. Right after our spiritual encounter, well… things went pretty well for me. So you'll have to brace yourself to start talking again soon."

"I guess so," Sokka smiled sadly, before pushing himself off the couch. "Want some water?"

"Yeah," Azula smiled back: he marched into the kitchen, and within moments, he returned with fresh cups for both of them.

He sank in his seat again after offering her the first cup. They downed them fast, breathing out in relief afterwards.

"Maybe I should just bring the jar over," Sokka decided. Azula smiled and nodded: he took off again, returning shortly afterwards with two jars, rather than one.

"Guess we do have that much more to discuss," Azula said, her eyes drifting to the backyard: the brightness of the day was already beginning to dim. "Curses, we'll be doing this all night, at this rate."

"If I may… I don't think we can afford to be brief," Sokka said.

"Sokka, you haven't slept in hell knows how long," Azula pointed out. He smiled and shrugged.

"I hadn't been with you, talked thoroughly with you, in much longer. My body may be tired, but I barely feel it," he said. Azula sighed, clasping his hand gently before placing her head on his shoulder. "And you got badly hurt and you're still talking my ear off…"

"You're doing more talking than I am…" Azula hissed, pinching the back of his hand. He chuckled deviously. "Not too tired to say ridiculous things, I see…"

"Wouldn't be me otherwise, now, would it?" Sokka said. She smiled at him, shaking her head before stealing a quick kiss from his lips.

"Stop being cute when you're being irresponsible. It's not fair," she said. He laughed, relaxing against the couch's backrest and watching her with intrigue in his eyes.

"What did those peaceful days look like, then?" he said. "Honestly… I never knew if you had any respite from your father's bullshit, but if you did… that's really good to know."

"Well… I guess I did because he felt guilty about what he did to me that night," Azula said, with a dry grin. "As I had a meltdown right in front of him, upon hearing you were dead… I don't even know what the hell I did, frankly. It's kind of a blur. He panicked, and I didn't give a damn that he did. I screamed at some point, too… it was bad enough that he must have been terrified of having pushed me too far. But anyway, I didn't see him right away after that. I went back to my room… Renkai had realized I had gone missing, he found Song and Rei, and all three of them were freaking out about where I was, and that's when I showed up. They were surprised that I was so… so calm, after you were supposedly dead. Renkai left, but I did tell Song and Rei that I'd seen you in that spiritual connection. Oddly enough, she doesn't believe in spirit libraries, but she did give that particular vision credit…"

"Those two are terribly hypocritical with that whole thing, honestly," Sokka scoffed. Azula laughed, shaking her head.

"We'll have to take them there one day," she smiled. "Either way… as I actually had fallen asleep while we talked, I wasn't too tired, so I left those two to sleep while I wrote more letters for you. Felt much easier, and… things were calm enough until Zhao intruded, that afternoon."

"Ugh," Sokka grimaced.

"I don't know why he turned up as often as he did on those days… but I didn't take any of his shit on that day in particular," Azula said, shaking her head. "He was confrontational, irksome, drunk… or rather, hungover. He threw up on the floor, just like that, at one point…"

"What?" Sokka's eyes widened.

"You know, the bastard went drinking and whoring and who knows what else he was doing," Azula rolled her eyes. "It's disgusting to ponder, but still… he told Rei to clean up his mess, and I'd had it with his attitude so I told her not to do it. Poor kid didn't know what to do… but then Zhao said that, if she wasn't going to clean up after him, she wouldn't clean up after me either. I don't really remember how I sent him running on that day, really… I know I told him you were dead, of course, and he was completely astounded by that notion. He kept pretending he cared more about your death than I did because I talked about it so casually…"

She chuckled at the notion, rolling her eyes.

"The bastard had it in his head that I was ready to use everyone and everything to my advantage. He started warning Rei, too, that that was what I wanted from her…"

"This… this was your peaceful day, Azula? Really?" Sokka asked, eyes wide. The Princess snorted and laughed. "Fucking hell…"

"It got better," Azula smiled, patting his thigh kindly. "I managed to scare him off eventually, I offered to clean up, they didn't let me, but I still insisted on doing my fair share of work provided the pregnancy didn't get in the way much. I was starting to show by then… Rei did teach me how to make my bed, or rather, she tried. Still can't do it remotely as well as she can, but… uh, yeah, that's when a stupid incident happened. See, pregnancy has weird symptoms…"

"You got hungry?"

"That's way too normal," Azula said. Sokka raised an eyebrow. "My… scalp was weird. Oily? It was a mess, I ran my hand over it, it got gross and sticky and I accidentally set the sheet on fire while trying to make the bed because of that."

"Huh?!" Sokka exclaimed. Azula bit her lip and smiled.

"As you might imagine… Song promptly accused me of being worse at making a bed than you were."

"You… pfft! I mean… sorry, but yeah. I never set a sheet on fire, just wrinkled them like nobody's business, but fire? Azula…"

"I am a firebender! Hardly my fault that I got a little confused with what I was doing there," Azula laughed. "Though, well… that also resulted in a funny problem coming up. Up to that point, well, we'd tip-toed around the truth behind who Song was with Rei. She didn't really know yet… but when Song made it so very obvious that she'd known you, Rei picked up on it and we had to explain more. Not everything yet, no, but she learned a few things then. Still… what mattered most there was that Zhao had mocked me at one point, saying I was playing at being stepmother to Rei or so, to train for when Hotaru was born. Though, of course, you can imagine he didn't say it so nicely… but after we talked things over, and Rei made it clear that she wanted to stay with us and didn't want to be forced by her father to do anything she didn't want to do, I thought there was one way to make sure I'd have equal say on her life as Zhao did. At least, until she became of age. He was threatening to take her away again, saying that bringing her to the Palace had been a mistake… she didn't want to go, and I figured I'd help her avoid it. So… I proposed I could adopt her legally."

"Huh," Sokka smiled. Azula raised her eyebrows.

"See? Wasn't that bad a story after all, now, was it?" she teased him. He chuckled and shook his head.

"Can't rule out that it might get worse yet," Sokka smiled. "Come on. What else happened?"

"We just handled it on the next day, went to the Temple… unaware that Zhao fully intended to make good on his attempt to take Rei away," Azula said, raising her eyebrows. "Once there, the Head Sage looked for her records… and that's when we learned that she had none. Upon sending word to the local sage in Hong Qu's district, turns out that there was no information on Rei's birth whatsoever… which meant she had no legal parents."

"Her mother never even…?" Sokka asked. Azula shook her head.

"The irony about it is… I wasn't her birth parent, but I am her only legal parent, always have been," Azula said. Sokka's eyes widened. "Once I asked if she wanted me to be her sole guardian, which meant I'd have full say upon her life unless Zhao stepped up and acknowledged her… well, she jumped at the chance right away. Things didn't change immensely because of that… we had been close to accepting that our relationship was something familial that way. But that it took the shape it did… well, it definitely encouraged me to face motherhood far more. If I'd done right by Rei… I might be able to do right by our child, I thought."

"As you have," Sokka smiled. Azula squeezed his hand gently.

"Later that day, I brought Rei to visit Xin, though we couldn't make it inside that time. But once we came back to my room, Zhao was waiting… and he was blindsided by what I revealed I'd done. He had no power over Rei anymore… so I guess he decided to go to the one who had power over me. Ironically… my father called me later, he questioned me about my intentions with Rei, and once I told him I wouldn't put her forward as an heir, he was satisfied. He had always known Rei had to be Zhao's child, it seems… Zhao, apparently, wasn't very bright when it came to such things. But whatever conflict they faced then was bad enough that Zhao stormed out and left for quite some time… and I was free to return to my room and to the others after that."

"He didn't give you a hard time…?" Sokka asked. Azula shook her head.

"That was… the first time in ages that he didn't trouble me much after we spoke," Azula said. "You could even call it… a civilized conversation. So… yeah. The next thing that happened was… well, the festivals. He summoned me then, too, mainly in case Zhao didn't turn up on time for the parade. He didn't want me to take part in it, and I didn't want to either, frankly…"

"Didn't feel comfortable?" Sokka asked. Azula sighed.

"It really didn't feel right to parade myself before the Fire Nation in any sense," she said. "I didn't want to be seen… so I was lucky that Zhao did return on that day after all. But I did ask for leniency for Xin Long on that visit…"

"You did?" Sokka asked. Azula nodded.

"The restraints you tore apart… they were the lenient ones," Azula said. Sokka snarled. "It was worse before."

"Of course it was," he said, shaking his head. Azula sighed.

"I was fully allowed to visit him after that. Another small relief among so much stress and anguish," Azula said. "The one other thing I negotiated with my father was related to the festivals again… I had no interest in partaking, but I wanted Rei and Song to do it while I couldn't. He allowed it, so they were escorted by Renkai and they saw the stalls and the parade on the first day, for the first time for Rei. They also found… well, a rather strange group of people who were my eager supporters, it seemed. Once they explained more, I realized it was people who rallied together after my fall from grace… apparently, their ringleader was none other than Shoji."

"Oh, really?" Sokka smiled. Azula chuckled.

"Him, Mei Xun, Yang… they were in touch with the Head Sage, too. Seemed that they were ready to do whatever I asked of them… only, I didn't intend to put any of them in danger for my sake, no matter how much they wanted me to do that," Azula explained. "It was nice, knowing they were rooting for me… but that's all I allowed it to be. I'd already done enough damage to those I cared for without meaning to, I wasn't about to spread the misery further. But then… well, I kind of found myself in a position to do exactly that again, by the next day. It was Memorial Day, as you might remember…"

"I do," Sokka nodded.

"I only joined it because my father expected me to… but at first I wasn't even supposed to be involved in the lake's ceremony," Azula said. "That changed after I crossed paths with my father there. I was… well, paying my respects at my mother's shrine. That… hits different, after everything you shared."

"I told her about that," Sokka mentioned. Azula raised her eyebrows. "That he'd set those shrines for her… she seemed moved by it."

"Must be awfully confusing, hearing that you've spent such a long time gone that people have as good as taken for granted that you must be dead," Azula said, shaking her head. "Either way, even though I wasn't going to trust him all that openly, my father didn't treat me callously then… but things changed once I was done with my prayers. There was a ruckus outside… and it was caused by me, if unintentionally. The… the people wanted to see me. They hadn't learned anything about my condition besides the fact that I was with child, heard nothing of me since the wedding and such… I didn't particularly care to be seen in public either, but at that point, it seemed that they wouldn't calm down until I made a public appearance. So… against my father's better sense, he allowed me to address the crowd."

"He did?" Sokka's eyes widened. "But… I bet it wasn't all that great, huh? He had to be watching you even more than on the other festivals, when you gave the big speech…"

"He was," Azula said. "Hence why I couldn't say anything compromising, or too rebellious. I… settled for something else. A gesture, when he wasn't paying attention. Neither were his guards… but the people were watching."

"What…?" Sokka raised an eyebrow… and then he gasped when Azula offered him a thumbs up. "Wait… wait! You… goodness, you gave them a thumbs up? Did they recognize…?"

"Oh, they certainly did," Azula laughed. "They went wild, my father didn't understand why… it was a little bit of mischief, surprisingly harmless in the long run. He didn't get upset over it, or at least, not enough to enact consequences… and I even convinced him to let me go to the lake, under the logic that this way they'd follow me away and leave the temple to the solemnity of the occasion. The plan worked, I think… and it also allowed me to send lanterns into the water, both for your dead and mine."

"You did?" Sokka asked, with a tender smile. Azula nodded.

"As many of the gladiators as I could remember… wasn't everyone," she said, breathing deeply. "I figured there were a few others you would've sent some for… Rhone. Combustion Man."

"Oh… uh, not sure I would have. You may have given me too much credit," Sokka reasoned. Azula laughed, shaking her head.

"Whatever, I did it anyhow," she said. "I… also sent some for the guards. I didn't know what had happened to them, but as I'd done that for my mother too… I figured it wouldn't be so bad to do it for those whose fate was unknown to me. My staff as well, and, well…"

She sighed, eyeing him remorsefully.

"I knew you weren't dead. The world didn't, though," she said. Sokka tensed up. "I… I figured it would be for the best if I did it. Even if… if it hurt in ways I never imagined it could. Doesn't matter how certain I was that you were alive… I never thought I'd have to send one of those with your name on it."

"Fuck," Sokka grimaced, shaking his head before hugging her. Azula smiled.

"To my surprise, though… I wasn't the only one who did it."

"Who… sent candles with my name?" Sokka asked. Azula chuckled.

"They used your gladiatorial name, of course, but… I saw them," Azula said. Sokka's eyes widened. "So very treasonous of my father's people to mourn the mysterious disappearance of his greatest foe… and yet they did it anyhow. The candles would melt, no one would know who sent them after a while… still happened, though. It relieved me… it thrilled me, too, to reaffirm just how much you had meant to them, no matter all the reasons that dictated that they should have cared nothing for you. But… they did care."

"I guess… that makes things worse, huh?" Sokka sighed. "I mean, regarding what I did later…"

"I don't know. I frankly… I frankly have no idea what the public opinion is right now. I suspect we'll have to contend with a lot of unsettling, disparaging comments, as well as wholehearted support," Azula mused. "Either way, the festivals weren't much more trouble after that, but Song did explain herself to Rei on the night of the Ball. We were in my room, with no intentions of joining the revelry, if it can even be called that… after Song and I told Rei as much as we could, we wound up visiting this house again. All three of us."

She smiled, and Sokka grinned softly too. Azula's hand fell upon his thigh, squeezing it gently.

"Song really had wanted to come back and see it again," Azula explained. "She panicked over the food in the kitchen, I hadn't told her the guards had taken everything… she also worried about Hawky, but Rui Shi had handled that, too. We visited your room, and… well, something slightly embarrassing happened there."

"Really?" Sokka asked, perplexed. "Here I thought…"

"That it would've been disturbing?" Azula asked. "It probably would have been, but… I was so certain that you were alive that I just took to looking through the things you'd left behind. I felt guilty when I couldn't find my necklace where it usually had been, of course… but then we saw your art, too. Rei was quite impressed that you had an artistic knack, and I loved seeing your paintings again."

"You did?" Sokka smiled. Azula nodded, resting with her head on his shoulder.

"They were beautiful memories of better days. How could I not?" she said. "But, uh… some may have been a little more than just beautiful."

"What do you mean?" Sokka blinked blankly. Azula chuckled.

"Rei… pulled out one of them while I was admiring another one. No doubt she was wondering if she'd see some masterpiece… and it was, uh, the last one you made. Which, yes, might be a masterpiece but it wasn't exactly meant for everyone's eyes…"

"The last one I made?" Sokka asked, puzzled. "The one of… Shu Jing?"

"No. The one you made in my room."

Sokka blinked blankly… until reality dawned on him. His yelp was remarkably adorable, and Azula couldn't help but laugh as he glanced at her, cheeks flushed.

"R-Rei… picked that one up? And hey, it's not my masterpiece, it's ours! Take responsibility too!" Sokka squeaked. Azula laughed, shaking her head.

"Was your idea. So I'd dare say it's more your responsibility than mine, but… fine. At least partial responsibility is fine," Azula smiled. "Evidently, though, as much as it wasn't too revealing, seeing any art of what was, unquestionably, her adoptive mother in bed with her lover wasn't exactly what she had been expecting…"

"Ugh, crap… I hope we didn't scar her for life," Sokka grimaced. Azula snorted.

"Nah, I think she was amused more than anything. Worth noting that, due to where she was raised, Rei's ideas about sex are… a lot less restrictive than those of most people," Azula said. Sokka raised his eyebrows. "She didn't seem to think too much of it. As far as she was concerned, people had sex because they felt like it and that was that. She never judged me for what we did out of wedlock… never seemed to think I could've disgraced myself in any way through our relationship. But she wasn't exactly trying to confront the reality of how intimate we were… still, the whole thing was quite funny in the end."

"Well, I'm glad she was amused more than anything," Sokka smiled. "Damn… uh, is it still here?"

"No… we took it with us, it was extremely incriminating and if anyone decided to come here and snoop around, well… it'd just stir too much trouble," Azula said. "But it's safe, even after what happened to the Palace. I gave Rei a box where all valuable papers have been kept… including all my unsent letters, your haiku, and all our art. It's safe."

"Heh… that's nice," Sokka smiled. "Don't want to lose that one. Still got to frame it and…"

"You're not going to… curses, you were just embarrassed beyond belief upon hearing that someone saw it, and you're still saying that?" Azula laughed. Sokka snickered. "Still got your mind in the gutter, as usual. Well… good to know you do."

"You're glad that it is, huh?" he smiled, reeling her close and kissing her brow. "So… the festivals went down without a hitch?"

"They did. The main noteworthy thing left to bring up is… we decided on repairing what we could in the house on that night," Azula said, nodding. "Rei had ideas on how to do it, experience at it too, since they forced her to patch things up often in the Scarlet Oasis…"

"Every new thing you say about that place sounds worse than before," Sokka grimaced. "How old was she when Zhao got her out of there, exactly?"

"If I'm not mistaken… fourteen," Azula said. Sokka's eyes widened. "And who knows how old she was when they put her up to that kind of stuff. But yeah… she seems to just soldier on, taking advantage of those awful experiences to help others. In many ways, that girl is beyond admirable."

"Definitely," Sokka nodded. "I'm really glad you could take her in. She deserved better… and she got the best, nothing more, nothing less."

"I don't know about that, but…" Azula smiled, caressing his arm now. "Thank you. As for… whatever happened next? I guess a few months of calm went by and that's when I realized something was off with my father again. He acted oddly, he needed to talk to Zhao desperately once… oh, I forgot, Zhao actually moved out from my room in the festivals. I was utterly thrilled to see him go, that's probably the very best of the tantrums he threw…"

"Well… sounds like he hardly lived there at all at that point, right?" Sokka asked. Azula nodded.

"And after that, we had less reason to cross paths, though it still happened here and there. I also bumped into my father one day, on one of my daily walks… he acted a lot like he did before he started offering me leniency. I wanted to understand what was going on, but I didn't dare push it until Song was summoned one day to report on my activities to my father. That… that just unnerved me enough to convince me to take action. I visited Mai, for the first time in ages…"

"Oh. Did he allow it, or…?"

"He did. I knew he would, she was his chosen spy, after all," Azula said. Sokka hummed and nodded. "Had I asked to see anyone else, he most likely wouldn't have relented. This way, he had the means to ask for a thorough report on my behavior from Mai, as he expected me to be more forthright with my treacherous intentions with her rather than with 'Lady Wen', so…"

"Did it go well?" Sokka asked. Azula nodded, though she offered him a tense smile.

"It was fine, she was surprised to see me, more emotional than usual… we talked about a lot of things. But, uh, I made a rather selfish request of her. I asked her… to spy on my father right back."

"Oh?" Sokka blinked blankly, raising his eyebrows. Azula offered him an awkward grin.

"I shouldn't have, I know that, but… I was a little desperate to understand the changes again," Azula said. "From being distant but cordial to growing hostile and suspicious of me all over again? I'd done nothing to warrant it…"

"But I had," Sokka frowned. "That's… what happened after we took Omashu, isn't it?"

"Surely," Azula said, nodding. "Mai told me about the letter she got from her father… I read it, it seemed strange indeed. Didn't sound like the normal stuff he would write to her, even if it didn't have enough information to really unravel his circumstances. Undeniably, though, you messed up my father badly enough that he couldn't seem to tell up from down for a good long while. I knew, too, that something bad would come of it eventually… but I made the best of those days, even so. I was more heavily pregnant by then, too… around six months in, I think. Rei's birthday came up, we celebrated it for her, for the first time… we saw Ty Lee again on that day, she of course leapt to hug Rei even if they'd never met before…"

"Naturally," Sokka smiled. Azula sighed, closing her eyes and dropping her head against the backrest of the couch.

"But after that… well, we came across Zhao one day. Right after seeing War Minister Qin running off like someone was hunting him. Zhao's behavior was worrisome. Renkai outright feared that he might have tried to hurt me… I didn't really understand what I'd done recently to warrant that kind of thing," Azula said. Sokka, beside her, tensed up.

"He didn't… didn't dare do anything to you, did he?" he asked. Azula shook her head.

"Not yet," she said. The words hung between them, and Sokka gritted his teeth. "Renkai had also tried to look further into Shaofeng's business by then… hadn't found much of a breakthrough, I gave him some ideas… I don't think he's had any chances to follow up on them yet. But yeah, that strange tension continued until… until I was summoned for a war meeting for the first time since before you left."

Sokka grimaced. She eyed him remorsefully, and she sighed heavily.

"There was a small respite before that, I guess… on our wedding anniversary," Azula said, her gaze charged with hope: Sokka's eyes widened. "I… lit our candle. I had brought it to the Palace, I found it here… I started at midnight, I didn't know if you'd remember, or if you'd even have the chance to do anything at all, but…"

"I did," Sokka said. Azula smiled.

"I thought you might have," she said. "It… felt weird, that night. Like you weren't that far away…"

"I felt that too," Sokka grinned. "I found a candle of my own, got it from the local sage shrine in Ba Sing Se…"

"Huh. Yeah, I suppose it makes sense that you were already there," Azula said, tensing up. Sokka sighed.

"I really did wonder if that one had been a real connection. Maybe it wasn't as strong as others, but… it sounds like it worked, even so."

"It did," Azula smiled, leaning in and pressing her brow to his shoulder. "But I suppose… you ought to talk about Ba Sing Se now, yourself. The war meeting… it didn't happen until after you won there."

"Well… I don't know how much I ought to explain about that one," he said.

"How about you explain how you moved a massive army from Omashu to Ba Sing Se while setting off only occasional alarms, none of which were conclusive?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. Despite himself, Sokka smiled at that question.

"You'd think I had planned it out thoroughly, but… it was a lot of improvisation, actually," Sokka said. "After our first day on the road, we found there were Fire Nation watch towers on our way to the city. So… I overworked the earthbenders and made them build a massive tunnel, through which we progressed rather slowly all the way through the central mountains of the Earth Kingdom."

"Y-you… huh?" Azula's eyes widened. "How big was that army?"

"Uh… at that point? I think around seven thousand, all around…"

"And you… stuffed them all inside the mountains?" she asked, perplexed. Sokka shrugged. "Heh. Sokka…"

"What?" he smiled awkwardly. She snorted.

"Just… Sokka. That's about the only thing I can say," she muttered. "Nobody else would think about a solution quite as strange as… wait, but that means you voluntarily put yourself into a massive, shifting cave? Were you alright?"

"Strangely… I was. We didn't stay inside all the time, we stopped at nights, and we could catch fresh air outside," Sokka explained. "But yeah, it was a whole experience for sure. Not easy, but the best way to keep the Fire Nation guessing. The biggest problem was crafting the bridge to cross to the city…"

"You… needed safe crossing over the river. Of course you did," Azula frowned.

"There were a few options, but nothing too promising, so… I figured I'd overwork the earthbenders some more!" Sokka grinned. Azula snorted.

"I'm shocked that they didn't rebel against you, honestly…"

"Come to think of it, so am I," he laughed. "Though this time I made waterbenders work with them too. They had to help the earthbenders by slowing the river so that the earthbenders could build up proper foundations for a huge, thick enough bridge for all our mounts, beasts of burden, carts and more to get through. Not easy at all, but we made it across in one night… and I don't really know the full details of this, so you'll have to ask Rui Shi about it? But in order to pull it off, I sent Kino with the music squad to distract the one village that would have a vantage point in the nearby mountains to see what we were doing. Kino had taken up the tsungi horn then to help with communications on the battlefield, he was working with them… so he did his best to fulfill that mission, but he bumped into Rui Shi in that village, somehow."

"Really?" Azula asked, perplexed. Sokka smiled.

"From what he told me, he had taken three of his guards, I think Han, Qiang and Wuhan, and they worked as wandering musicians. Which kind of put Kino in a bind since he and his group were going with the same story, pretty much, and now needed to contend with Rui Shi and his grand talent at playing the pipa."

"I do not envy Kino and his people one bit, then," Azula smiled. Sokka chuckled. "Is that how he came to join you, though…?"

"Nope. He thought Kino was suspicious, apparently, but not so much that Rui Shi could figure out he was an ally of mine," Sokka explained. "So he didn't join us then, and Kino succeeded at distracting the village anyway with Rui Shi's help. Strangely, Rui Shi supported us without knowing he was doing that, so…"

"He's always reliable that way," Azula smiled. Sokka nodded.

"Once that was done, though, Aang and Appa picked up Kino's group and they all made for the Fighting Cliffs, where we had set up camp for the night. After one day of planning and organizing our forces… we took off by the next morning, on our way to Ba Sing Se."

A shiver down Azula's spine made her inch closer to Sokka. He bit his lip before reminiscing on one of the hardest battles he had fought to return to her…

"At first, Toph and her earthbenders, yet again, had to go underground and set up chasms underneath Ba Sing Se's walls. Basically, they shattered the walls by tucking them underground. That's how we progressed through the whole city. She sent a signal to say they were ready… we had all our forces standing by until that moment. Me and the cavalry charged in first… I was riding Foo-Foo, of course."

"That crazy creature wound up being far more helpful than I ever imagined he would be," Azula smiled. Sokka chuckled.

"He's a good buddy," he said. "The first impact against the Outer Wall was smooth, perfect even. Exactly as planned. We tore that wall, took down everyone who tried to contest our passage… and the huge army made it into the Agrarian Zone as quickly as that. Of course, word spread all the way inside the city after we did what we did. I knew there would be no hiding anymore once we attacked Ba Sing Se, controlling communications there would be impossible… so I didn't bother trying. Once we reached the Inner Wall, though… it was the time for me to fully take responsibility for what was going on. I outed myself, revealed my identity… the guards by the walls were terrified. I was mainly buying time, so Toph and her people could breach the next walls too… we opened three holes this time, the frontlines charged in the center, Jet led the cavalry on one side, I on the other, and we rushed into the city by flanking their defense forces. Aang and Katara helped out too from Appa's saddle… things looked promising even if the Fire Nation's defenses weren't all that weak. We definitely lost a lot of people there, much as we killed many… then, Tiang showed up."

"Did… did he join the fighting right away?" Azula asked, eyes wide. Sokka shook his head.

"He was leading at that point. He actually commanded the survivors to pull back, retreat, mainly so that they could set up traps for us and stop our progress. Didn't work, but… it was tricky at one point, no doubt. Navigating the Lower Ring isn't easy, much less with an army of that size," Sokka explained. "I had Katara give them a fright by rushing out on Foo-Foo's back instead of me. Part of the fright was her waterbending, of course… I gave her my helmet, she was dressed in blue colors, they couldn't tell she was a woman from afar. So, they thought I was a waterbender all of sudden… all that confusion allowed me to sneak up suddenly and strike down the tank they had been threatening us with."

"Tanks…" Azula repeated, breathing deeply. "Well, they did have several in Ba Sing Se…"

"We took down most, but that was the first one we dealt with," Sokka nodded. "I actually did come across Tiang then, face-to-face. He… accused me of betraying you, so I fired right back. He had Space Sword briefly, I'd had to fling it at the tank to make sure I'd take it down… wasn't fun, fighting against my sword that way, but Aang showed up at the right moment and revealed himself as the Avatar to help both me and Katara. The shock of his revelation was enough to push Tiang to retreat into the Middle Ring after he relinquished Space Sword… so, that first leg of the battle was won. I gave them a chance to surrender, one hour… in that time, we found supplies and new willing recruits in the Lower Ring. Toph struck underground again, but this time she did find resistance there, she handled that before tearing down the wall again. The Middle Ring had more tanks, pits of traps that Toph and her earthbenders helped us overturn… the spikes and lances they set up in those traps were rather helpful weapons for us, especially for those who had none, so we turned everything they threw at us against them. But of course… the Upper Ring was trickier.

"The initial battle became a disaster after Toph tore down the wall, the waterbenders on our side made a mess that got worse with the earthbenders… they basically created a sinkhole of a sort in the wall, and it was absolute chaos after that. We had to split up in three groups… I led one, Toph and Katara were with me. The point was to reach the Palace… ah, I sent the Enforcers to recruit the ones from Ba Sing Se, too. They succeeded at it, so we had reinforcements too… either way, the defenses that far back in the city were far more resilient than before. Clearly, they had bolstered the Upper Ring and the Palace the most… so I had to do something unexpected to win. Which… I did once I suggested that Toph could pull off her weirdest earthbending feat yet."

"I suspect I'm not ready to hear it, and yet I need to. What was it now?" Azula sighed, with a resigned smile. Sokka chuckled.

"I… told her to bend the tracks of Ba Sing Se's train and fling them at their defenses?"

"You…? Huh?!" Azula's eyes widened. "That sounds…!"

"Absurd? A bit, yeah. Toph and her earthbenders were hiding inside one of the trains: from there, they could bend the tracks they were standing on… launched themselves at the front doors of the Palace and all hell broke loose. Things weren't looking all that great until that happened, we were spread out, split up, they had more tanks… so we needed something a little more intense to push things past their breaking point," Sokka sighed. "It was sundown by then… we started in the morning, shortly after dawn. You'd think a battle of a single day is nothing to scoff at… but part of the issue is that we knew that giving the Fire Nation any amount of time to gather and bolster their forces would turn the battles on us. We had to strike fast and hard… and that's what we did. I entered the Palace… asked Tiang to surrender again. Then, after he refused to stand down, we somehow settled on single combat instead to decide who'd win the whole thing. I promised him my forces would leave the city if I lost… mainly because I knew I wouldn't lose."

"I did tell Anorak… he mentioned this part, the single combat?" Azula said, shaking her head. "It was awfully unfair of you to do that to Tiang."

"Unfair?" Sokka repeated, amused.

"We both know it takes at least four firebenders in perfect synch to take down one Sokka. Maybe more than four, nowadays," Azula said, simply. He chuckled.

"He was a firebender with weapons… doesn't that count for something?"

"Honestly? No," Azula said, eyeing him skeptically. "Acknowledge the truth, you weren't going to lose against him, and he was crazy for agreeing to it… but I guess maybe he figured you'd just kill him, and he'd be done with the humiliation?"

"Maybe. But when I had the chance… I offered him one final opportunity to surrender," Sokka said. Azula gazed at him with wide eyes. "He took it at last. Mostly to do right by everyone still left… to keep Jin from having to grieve his death, too. Didn't stop her from slapping me for all this, though…"

"Yeah, Anorak mentioned that, too," Azula said, with a dry grin. Sokka bit his lip.

"I didn't really have to contend with those things in Omashu," he said. "Obviously Mai's parents were horrified that they'd hosted me twice and suddenly I was invading the city they called theirs, attacking them and so on… but that didn't matter nearly as much as it did with Jin, Myeung, and Tiang. Their disappointment, their displeasure… well, Jin still must hate my guts to this day. Myeung eased up after Rui Shi showed up. Tiang… I talked with him in prison, and, once I made my intentions clear, he even asked me to go all the way and stop at nothing until I succeeded. To make my every effort count to save you."

"He did?" Azula shivered.

"He had a lot of regrets regarding who he had been during the war," Sokka explained. "He thought there was only one way out when I turned up: death. He believed it was his reckoning, I guess. Once he understood that I was trying to set many things right… he decided to trust me, to some degree. I haven't talked to him in a long time… but I hope he's not more upset at me than he was back then."

"And the king…?" Azula asked. Sokka nodded.

"Free, but not reinstated," Sokka said. Azula frowned.

"You didn't think he should have been restored to his throne?" she asked.

"It was hard to say when Jin was right there, frankly," Sokka smiled awkwardly. "They have a tense situation going on regarding who should rule. I wasn't about to decide for them… I just left Piandao in charge since it felt like he has enough sense to hold back all warring sides and push them towards a reasonable conclusion.

"So, yeah… Ba Sing Se was trying in many regards, and I knew things weren't going to get any easier from there on. We weren't sure where to go from there, and we were only starting to plan that when your father sent a letter to Tiang… and I answered it without hiding any truths this time," Sokka said, breathing deeply. "He was asking to be told that all rumors were baseless and that the city remained in Fire Nation control… I made certain to prove that wasn't the case. I thought about it quite a bit… how could I make sure that he would know it was me, and not someone faking being me, who wrote that answer? There was one conversation I had with him, right after Jeong Jeong's attempt to kill me… you were outside, so you didn't know what we had talked about. I still remembered one thing he'd said that day, quite vividly… so I brought it up again. I knew that, once he realized it was me who sent the letter, he'd understand I was alive and in Ba Sing Se. It would indeed protect the South Pole… and it would push him into a complicated position where he'd have to try to retake the cities, I figured, or jump out to make clumsy choices that would only worsen the Fire Nation's situation. But… that's not exactly how it went."

He sighed, averting his gaze from her: they both knew the story would grow far more complicated now. Sokka closed his eyes, settling against the backrest of the couch anew.

"After that, Rui Shi turned up with the guards. They called me to the ferry station… after I heard it was ten men and that they looked Fire Nation, I suspected at once that it might be them and I went there right away. Everyone else was wary that it might be a trap… but of course, it wasn't one. Reclaiming them was definitely a boost for my morale… even though it dipped badly on that very same day, and I didn't quite know why. I guess I realized why, sometime later," Sokka said, eyeing her again, remorsefully. "But I think… it's up to you to go on now."

"I… I suppose," Azula said, swallowing hard: the easygoing mood between them grew heavier anew. "Well… Shaofeng told me to go to the meeting. I didn't know anything about the letter you sent to my father, I… I was just told to be there. I made sure to hide Rei and Song safely… Renkai was summoned to offer a personal report to Shaofeng. They would only be safe from Seethus underground, I… I always worried that he'd do something to them when I was gone. I felt him often, resonated and found him near my father so many times. I thought I couldn't be too cautious. But, of course, the greater hazard on that day was… was in that meeting. The meeting itself, you could say…? Either way, it's… it's not a day I like to remember."

She frowned, and Sokka wrapped an arm around her shoulders, reeling her closer to him still. Azula shivered, though: this time, it didn't seem that she was all that ready to accept his comfort.

"I… was forced to sit at his left. The seat of my uncle… the seat of a traitor," Azula started. Sokka scowled, but he kept his silence. "Zhao, of course, was at his right. His council… it seemed that they had no idea why I was there. I knew something was wrong, of course… my father offered me no leniency with any of the rites even though I was heavily pregnant by then. I had to stand, to sit, to kneel… to do whatever he wanted me to do, no matter how difficult it might be. Any mistakes, and I knew I'd pay dearly. But of course, sticking with protocol was the least of my concerns once… once War Minister Qin started explaining what was happening in the Earth Kingdom, and who was behind it."

"He called you in there to… to force you to give up any information you had about me?" Sokka asked. Azula shrugged.

"Mostly… he wanted to humiliate me, I think. To show me how my so-called mistake of loving you, of saving your life, might just cost us the victory in the war. He wanted me to grovel, to apologize, to claim I had no part in it… or maybe he wanted to push me into a corner and discover that everything so far had been part of some grand master plan that you and I had set up together, somehow. That was Zhao's favorite theory, actually…"

"Fuck off. If we'd come up with a plan as perfect as that, it would've included never being apart," Sokka growled. Azula nodded.

"They didn't take that into account… Zhao certainly didn't," Azula said. "I… was cornered, of course. I was caught entirely off-guard, terrified, shocked by what my father had said. I was, though… quite angry at you, too."

"That… doesn't surprise me," Sokka said, with a resigned sigh. "I knew I was putting you in a complicated position, but… I hoped to break you free before it got any worse."

"You didn't account for how twisted my mind is, I fear," Azula said. Sokka grimaced. "I… I was angry enough to see red, for you'd just run off, put yourself in danger, caused the deaths of who knows how many people even though you'd never wanted to kill again, and attacked the Fire Nation openly… allied with people I despised, to make matters worse. My concern for you, my frustrations… and my absolute fear of consequences, my knowledge that my father wanted answers, punishments, all of that converged to make me do the worst thing I could have. I… I told him I did know you, after he accused me of being an utter fool for thinking I'd understood who you were. He was outraged, ready to trample over anything I said… but I spoke over him to claim that because I did know you, I… I could guess as to what you'd do next."

Sokka gritted his teeth, nodding. He'd known that already… but it didn't hurt any less to hear it from Azula. She sighed, shaking her head.

"I was blinded by fear and anger all at once. I didn't realize what I was giving him, what I was doing, until it was done. I told him you'd go to the North Pole… that the only choice ahead was to cut off their potential chance to reinforce your troops."

"On one hand… I'm frustrated that you did that," Sokka admitted. Azula grimaced. "On the other, I can't help but appreciate how similar our minds can be sometimes. Not always a good thing, considering how that worked out, but…"

"You've always been better at improvising on the go, you told me so long ago," Azula admitted. "A fucked up part of me hoped… that if I predicted your larger plans, you'd still find ways to turn them in your favor once you were putting them into action. But unfortunately… even if it had worked out that way, what I did on that day is unforgivable."

Sokka swallowed, keeping his silence. Azula breathed deeply, taking it as a sign of agreement. She shrank slightly in herself, almost pulling away from him.

"My blind fury… it cleared up briefly after I told him what to do. I realized… he was listening. He wasn't dismissing it as my attempts to hide behind my knowledge of the enemy when I had to face dire punishments… no, he took every word I said about your future plans seriously. Zhao, though… he thought I was indeed enacting our wicked plans to have him killed. He didn't want to go back to the north… it took quite some convincing for him to do it. Then, there was the matter of the Mechanist… my father remembered your bombs from the Grand Royal Dome and asked me how that had come to pass. I… I should've shut the hell up, but I…"

"He would've figured it out even if you hadn't talked… I imagine anyway," Sokka frowned.

"Doesn't matter. I endangered them further because I talked," Azula said, shaking her head. "I… I was still mad at you, of course I was but… at that point I was angrier yet at myself. I knew you were doing the right thing, no matter how dangerous it was… and I was doing the wrong one, all be it to save my miserable hide, all so I could go on protecting those in my father's reach. Be it Xin, my friends, our unborn child, at that point… it felt like utter stupidity, though. Nothing I told myself, nothing I told anyone, could justify what I'd done. Once the meeting ended… well, Zhao looked livid about the whole thing, and my father said something else that… that angered me so much I nearly lashed out at him right then and there. I think something about how my reaction to the horror he had revealed proved my education hadn't gone to waste… it was infuriating. I admit… there were moments when my hatred for him truly rose beyond belief, and that was one of them. He had pushed me into betraying you, time and again… and he still wanted to humiliate me further. I don't know how I held back that day, but I somehow returned to my room without causing a scene… because that came later."

"What Qin said…" Sokka frowned. Azula shrugged.

"Guess he must have heard about it, to some extent… would surprise me more if he hadn't," Azula said. "The bastard was screaming his lungs out after all, but… before Zhao turned up, I brought Rei and Song out of the tunnels. I told them what had happened… and while Song was thrilled to know what you were doing, she was confused and worried about my behavior. I didn't tell her what happened, what I'd done, right away… because that's when Zhao showed up and tried to oust me as a grand traitor to the Fire Nation, right then and there."

"Of course he did," Sokka sighed, shaking his head.

"I don't know how stupid someone has to be to believe that I wanted to be in that fucked up position," Azula hissed. "But he, of course, believed that I'd always known you were alive, that that's why I wasn't so affected by your alleged death… sure I knew, but I couldn't hope to explain how. He thought everything about me was theatrics, an act… he accused me of every stupid thing that crossed his mind and I… I didn't help matters at all. Rei and Song wanted things to calm down, Song even tried to send him away, but it didn't work. I defied him… he accused me of bearing your child and I didn't deny it. He threatened… to have her killed as soon as she was born, and obviously I reacted against that. But eventually… I realized that he was terrified of you. That he didn't want to go to the North if you were going too because…"

"He thought I'd kill him," Sokka said, eyes narrowing.

"Of course… he didn't take it well when I said it. When I told him I thought he was pathetic," Azula said, with a sardonic smile. "When I told him that there was no right choice for me to make because he would always be ready to convince himself that I was setting up a trap for him, one way or another. It's ironic but… that's how I used to view him. That's why I couldn't trust him. Next thing I knew… it turns out he was even worse about distrusting me than I was."

"What did he do then?" Sokka frowned. "Is that when he attacked you?"

"Well… he did that after saying I was the one who ought to be scared, yes," Azula said. Sokka snarled. "I… I didn't know what to do when he started it. Evidently, I was going to protect the girls, but… I was pregnant. I hadn't trained in almost a year by then. My firebending… it had been weakened for a long time over the chi corruption. My fire wasn't even blue, it was orange, regular fire, and… and I still had to fight back to protect them. At one point he attacked Song, if not intentionally, I don't know… I had to move in to take the fire for her. That's… when Rei tried to intervene."

"She did? How?" Sokka's eyes widened. Azula's dark scowl spoke for itself.

"She clung to him, begging him to stop… no doubt hoping that being his daughter would mean something to the bastard at last. But he just shoved her off him… and he burned her when he did."

"Fucking…" Sokka snarled, bringing a hand to his brow. "Was she alright?"

"She was tended to briefly afterwards… she made a good recovery," Azula said. Sokka's snarl didn't weaken, even so. "I… went wilder still after he attacked her. I lost all sense, I just… just wanted him away from her. It became a lot more violent then, and… and unfortunately, I wasn't going to win. I wasn't strong enough, I was out of shape… and if Renkai hadn't jumped in when he did, I would've been a goner. Song had run out to get help, she found him… he and the other new guards from the Third Squad charged in and restrained Zhao."

Sokka let out a heavy breath, throwing his head back.

"He kept… screaming that it was all my plan, all my doing, that I was the true problem, not him," Azula said. "I… I checked on Rei, hugged her, as they dragged him away. That was the last time I ever saw him."

Sokka gritted his teeth, glancing over at Azula as she breathed deeply.

"It's not that I could ever miss him… it's not that I ever thought our forced marriage would be better than the disaster it was. But I never imagined Zhao would… would spiral to that extent," she said. "A part of me feels responsible… no doubt I could've tried to trust him with the truth about the child, asked him to be my ally, but that would have been about as stupid as trusting my uncle. He proved just what he was capable of… and I couldn't risk making the same mistake twice. Even so… did anything truly justify him going as berserk as he did? It… it doesn't really make sense to me. I didn't want him to care for me, I certainly never loved him and had no intentions of doing that, but Rei was his daughter and… and it was as though she meant nothing to him anyway."

"He blinded himself willfully to anything but his hatred of you," Sokka concluded. Azula sighed and shrugged.

"Seems so," she said. "But I guess… that wasn't the most shocking thing, in the end, to happen on that day."

Sokka frowned. He eyed her with suspicion as Azula tensed up, closing her eyes, hugging herself with uncertainty.

"I don't know… how he heard about it, if it was Zhao's ruckus, but… he showed up then. My father," Azula said. "I… I expected a punishment, of course. What else was I supposed to think? That was… that was all he'd inflicted on me for months, so I tried to take responsibility for what had happened, I tried to say whatever needed to be said so he'd walk away… but I failed. He… he didn't leave. He knelt before me, asked what had happened…"

"And?" Sokka raised his eyebrows, as Azula fell silent. Her voice trembled when she spoke anew.

"He… he picked me up, across his arms, and carried me to the physicians' wing."

Sokka's eyes widened. Azula gritted her teeth, eyes flooded with tears anew.

"I never really imagined… a-after everything he'd done to me until then, every moment of pain, all of them his doing, t-that I… that I would ever be in his arms like that. That he'd try to protect me to that extent… that he would hear me say I antagonized Zhao, and decide that I wasn't to blame for it. He… he carried me to safety, he seemed proud that I'd stood my ground, even, I…"

"He… after all that?" Sokka grimaced. "He'd just… tortured you, on that very same day…"

"He had. And then… he did it in a whole new way," Azula said, sniffing and wiping the tears from her eyes forcefully. "They checked me then. Well, Song did, mostly… Fei Rou knew I didn't want him anywhere near me, so he left it to her while giving occasional advice. I was hyperventilating, panicking… it got worse yet when Song found that I was bleeding."

"Bleeding?" Sokka's eyes widened. "What… bleeding how? Did he hurt you with…?"

"Bleeding… down there."

She pointed at her groin. Sokka's questions were muted at once as he paled. Azula shook her head.

"It… it wasn't severe in the end. Evidently… our baby's strong and as perfect as she could ever be," Azula said. "But I… I lost my mind to panic when Song said that. It was a bad… a really bad day. The worst one, maybe, after having parted ways with you, I don't… well, I don't know. There have been too many bad days by now."

She breathed deeply, covering her face with her hands. Sokka watched her remorsefully, his heart clenched…

"Rei saved me that night," Azula whispered, startling him. "She… started asking questions about the eclipse, and Sozin's Comet, and all such things. It… it was random. It made no sense, had nothing to do with what had happened, but it caught me off-guard to such extent that I had to answer. So… I did. And before I knew it, my racing heart was slowing down. The anguish Song was telling me to reel in…. it faded. All because she was there to help me, to comfort me when I needed it most. It had been too much… I had made too many mistakes, I… I was terrified of what I could've cost our daughter. It devastated me…"

She shook her head, glancing at him with unease. The mood had lost its lightness by then, for the darker stages of their stories were about to arrive. He met her eyes, remorse alight in both their gazes.

"Things… didn't get any better for me after that," she said, earnestly. Sokka nodded. "And you've known for a while now that… I did terrible things, whether for the right or wrong reasons. If… if this becomes too much to bear, Sokka, just tell me. Because honestly, I… I hate myself enough for it that I can't imagine how anyone can hear about all this without wanting to strangle me for it."

"Guess you forgot what I'm like, to some extent…"

"I remember, Sokka, but this is… is this forgivable, in your eyes?" she asked, hopelessly. "Is it fine, truly, that I'd give my father what he wanted… that I put so many people in danger, secretly hoping that you'd be able to outsmart me, outthink me, when you weren't expecting to be fighting against me at all? I made everything that much more difficult for you, and… and hating myself for it doesn't feel like enough of a punishment compared to what I deserve."

"Well… maybe it's time I used my authority for something," Sokka said, closing his eyes. "You're not the one who gets to decide that, Azula."

"I'm not the one who decides… what consequences I need to face?" she asked. Sokka nodded. "Sokka…"

"I'm not done deciding what I think," he said, his words unexpectedly slow, as though he were thinking harder on how to speak them than he usually did. "I can't make up my mind about… about the severity of your choices as easily as that. So… we have to keep going. I need the full picture, you said I did…"

"You do, I just…" Azula said, breathing slowly and shaking her head.

She leaned forward: she couldn't say those stupid words. She couldn't dare. She wasn't about to beg and plead for leniency she didn't deserve. He wanted to hear more? Then he'd hear more. It wouldn't be long before he understood that there was no way up from where their story had sunken now… at least, not for her. Remorse and guilt weren't enough to make up for all the sins she had racked up to her name.

"Yes?" Sokka said: his voice was, she realized, colder than before. Of course it was. He didn't want to confront the darkness of what had transpired while they were apart… he didn't want to think of that part of the story. Everything else had been so much smoother, for it had been so easy to pretend she was blameless in what she had explained so far… but this betrayal was different.

She sighed, glancing back at him. There was no more physical contact between them. He had withdrawn his arms, folding them over his chest. His blue eyes had turned analytical… he was shielding himself from the pain, putting up a cold front… all be it so he would avoid telling her how he truly felt about all this.

"Hold nothing back," she said, earnestly. "Don't… don't lie to me. You were never good at it, but you did get better. If… if any of what I say breaches your boundaries, if it angers you enough that you… t-that you don't want to do this anymore, just tell me. Just say it and I… I'll understand."

Sokka breathed deeply: the darkness in his gaze lightened, and he met her eyes with his own, strength and certainty across his visage. He leaned over the table, pouring water in their cups again, and ensuring to drain his own before speaking anew:

"Tell me more," he said: her heart twisted and turned as with vertigo… for she didn't want to explain any further, and risk alienating him for good. She truly didn't want to… "What happened after that day? What changed for you… changed in you, Azula?"

She gritted her teeth… but she nodded. There was no point in being scared… much less of something she had known was coming.

With her heart in her throat, Azula swallowed some water too before endeavoring to share one of the brightest memories of their time apart, the birth of their child… starkly aware that everything that would follow would appear to be unfathomable darkness.

A/N:

Hope you guys have had happy holidays, and here's to a great 2025!