A/N- So sorry this is coming about four days late. Haven't had the best week and this story has arrived at a really stressful point in its plot here I can't afford to get anything wrong. Expect the next update on Wednesday next week, and know you could skip the wait and read the next two chapters as well as continuous updates on Pa-treon right now. Since I now qualify as an unemployed member of society, all subscribers on my pa-treon are much appreciated. If you enjoy my writing, then please don't hesitate to support it if you can. For Pa Treon, you can remove the hyphen between Pa and Treon and Google it, then search for my username—Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting it in your address bar. Please subscribe to my pa-treon using the website directly instead of using the IOS app. It's cheaper on the website.

Important Announcement: Changes made to my pa-treon structure mean its now cheaper to read the very next chapter with a lower-tier subscription. I'll be placing a discount on yearly memberships for a week or so to support this.

XXXXXXX

"So, what are we going to do about our healing friend and her lover?" Toji asked as he swaggered up to stand next to me as we watched the boats be loaded for our journey. For reasons beyond my understanding, Azula had deemed it necessary to make the journey here, but had still not waited for my army to prepare itself to leave for her to make her own exit. She'd left on an impressive Galley that flew the Insignia of the Fire Nation, except that instead of red, the flame was a bright blue to mark itself as her personal standard. Only the Royal Family got to do something like that. To adulterate the symbol of our homeland in such a manner.

"I have bigger problems to deal with" I replied almost instantly, still watching the ships be loaded.

"No. No, you don't. You think you have to deal with the Princess' insult. That you have to find some way to pay it back or to get your revenge. You don't. You can let it go. You should let it go." He said, almost begging with the way he pressed every word.

"You were there, Toji. You heard her. You heard the others afterwards. She humiliated me, and for what? For succeeding in a war her family has struggled to win? Or for my Grandfather doing what every Noble Lord in the bloody nation did?" I seethed as I turned to him, sure my eyes were blazing as the memories of the event came to forefront again. That had been my first introduction to what qualified as the 'higher-ups' of the Fire nation military. Six Generals, and half again as many Lieutenant Generals had sat around that table as Azula paid me that insult. When I tried to make connections afterwards, I could see it in their eyes. The mocking. They dared to mock me.

"And I also know your pride is nowhere near this fickle. So tell me what's really bothering you" He said instead of answering my question.

"I have no idea what you're talking about" I replied instantly.

"Sure you don't. But I don't really care much. All I do care about is that you tell me you understand and that you leave this alone".

"I've heard you, Toji. And as for Amara and Shin, I see little to do beyond a warning."

"Fuck that" He replied instantly.

"Azula has already made her displeasure with me clear. Losing a healer of all things on the word of an Earthbending assassin is just the kind of shirt people lose their heads for, and I have no desire to bet my life on her restraint." I replied.

"Then we find a different way to punish her" I turned to see the look in his eyes as they narrowed in thought. This was the side of Toji that few ever got to see. The truly evil impulses in his head.

"She spoke out for the Swamp Tribe benders, aye?" He said, spotting a baggage train that contained the prisoners.

"She did. Probably out of some misguided sen se of filial loyalty. Water-benders one and all" I said in reply.

"How many did we capture?" He asked.

"Close to a dozen?" I replied, not completely certain.

"How many men?"

"Three" This, I knew for sure.

"We all know how things work in the Fire Nation. The Women are useful prisoners. They will birth a new generation of water benders loyal to the fire nation. The men, however? They're collateral. What say you we make her be the one to get rid of the collateral." He said.

"That's one way to of punishing her" I pondered the suggestion.

"It's going to hurt her a lot. She's soft. She'd probably never get over it for as long as she lives. It's the kind of thing that stays with a person for life. Killing unarmed prisoners? I won't be surprised if she has nightmares for decades." I said.

"That's what makes it a perfect punishment."

"It loses any hope of having her loyalty, though"

"You never had it. She would have let you be captured or killed or worse. That means she betrayed the Fire Nation, and you by extension. We can not punish her too overtly without risking a mutiny of the men, but I foresee that while she deals with the mental effects of this punishment, she will quickly find herself becoming less and less popular with the men by her own actions. It's just a waiting game till her death can be arranged and we can move on from this and request a new healer for our division." He said.

"We can not afford any division in the troops. Not with Azula being as she is" I said instead of commenting on the plan.

"Allow me to handle it. Not a thing will go wrong".

"No, I was the one harmed. I will swing the sword in this case. Thank you for the idea, Toji. Have her meet me in my tent."

XXXXXXX- AMARA THE HEALER

She stared at the floor, sure that she had misheard.

"General Natsu?" She asked again, silently demanding that he repeat the order he had just given her.

"The men from the foggy swamp. Kill them, they are of no use to the Fire Nation. Those are my orders" he repeated them obediently with a smirk on his face.

"Why me? Spirits know that you have a thousand coldblooded killers in this army of yours" She could not argue against their deaths. It was military focus. Men were not as useful as women for the Fire Nation's future and in situations like this, it was settled practice that men captured in such situations were not to make it to the Motherland unless they had some strategic value that was worth their survival. It was barbaric, but it was the way of things. What she didn't understand was why she was the one being chosen as the executioner. She had made her peace with it, but could not do it herself.

"Because you betrayed me, Amara" She felt her skin become colder as all her blood flowed straight to her head. She felt her palms as they began to gather sweat. She felt for her water skin. If he wanted to kill her, she knew what kind of fighter General Natsu was and knew she would not win, but she could at least go down swinging. For Mother.

"I have no idea what you speak of" She denied. Even as she held a tight grip on the water in the skin and prepared to make the first move.

"You were there. The night I was almost taken. You saw it happen, and you left. You left me to my own devices. Rest assured, I won't be killing you. This is to be your punishment and I hope that after this, we can work together for the good of the Fire nation".

She stared at him. Just this? No other punishment? It seemed too good to be true.

"Thank you, General Natsu" She finally said, no longer fearing for her life.

"Get it done."

XXXXXX

In the end, she finally had the chance to realize that the punishment was a copout. It was a way for her to be punished without truly being punished. For all the love she held for her fellow water benders, nothing equalled the love she had for her own life. It was why she had regretted her decision to allow Natsu be taken on that very day. Sure, causing a scene against so many earthbenders would have brought an unhealthy level of risk to her life, but there had been nothing stopping her from warning Toji afterwards. Nothing but her own anger. But she had made a promise to her mother. She'd promised to live, and that promise alone ought to have been worth more than whatever anger she felt. It was a stupid action, and one she regretted to her core. She had first of all been certain she would never have been found out but that ha died with time. The way Natsu never quite met her eyes when she sought him out and the way Toji watched her every movement sometimes had given up the game.

She'd been sure that her execution had been coming sooner or later. And felt like everything had hit the boiling point when she was called in to the tent. But now, she had been given a lifeline. Maybe this intended punishment would be enough for those who needed her punished. She hoped it would be. Anything but her life was fine. She could give anything but her life. That was the one true treasure she had-the promise she had made all those years ago.

She looked at the three of them. Perhaps Natsu expected her to struggle to drag them from their cells to where she would end them but all she had needed to do was ask the guards to hand the men over to her, and they had done her the favour of escorting them all the way to her medical tent.

Now it came to the time to decide. They were quiet and sullen. She expected that they would be. They were barely even conscious at this point. The reality of having to secure water benders in captivity meant that they were practically starved of water. The amount of water that Natsu allowed into their wagon was severely limited. The amount that each of them got to drink was even more limited.

"Please. Wa…ter" One of them managed to murmur out at her. She remembered him easily. He was the one who had cursed at her when she healed their hands in such a way that they could not use the limbs. He had called her a whore, a Fire Nation slave, and a dozen other things that she could not repeat even in the safety of her own mind.

She looked towards the jug of water off to the side of the tent. She would have feared them taking a hold of it and springing some form of escape if they were any more lucid. But there was no chance of that in their present state. She left them sitting on the bed, chained to one another, and walked to her working table. The herbs she need were at the bottom of her pouch and she took no time getting them out and beginning to mix. Medicinal supplies had been in short supply since they'd taken Omashu, and Natsu had had her working with the natives to see what could be used from the earth kingdom's natural flora for their purposes to replace the supplies that should otherwise have been coming from home. She tested them using prisoners or disposable locals that were compensated for the sacrifice, of course. Natsu viewed his soldiers as being worth too much for experiments like that. That was why she knew that this particulate combination of herbs was fatal.

Fatal in the short term, as well, which was rare among natural occurring substances. Both herbs grew entangled around each other like lovers in an embrace, making them likely to be consumed in tandem. Grinding them together and mixing them with the water gave the liquid a subtle sweet smell but did nothing to affect the appearance of the liquid. She bent out a glob from the jug she'd used for the mixing and separated it out into two cups. The first cup she took to the one who had asked for water. She allowed him to drink his fill, emptying the cup in no time at all. She saw the way his eyes began to snap to alertness. In that time, she'd gotten the second cup and fed the other two men with smaller gulps of the liquid. They wanted more, and she bent even more of the poisoned water into the cups to give them their fill.

The one who had cursed her was the first to gain true lucidity. Half starved as he was, the water in his system gave him enough vim to rush to his feet. The others were pulled along by the chains connecting them and one of them even fell to the floor shamefully. "You're dead" He snarled out at her, and somehow the water in the drum rose and began to move towards her. How? She wondered for only a second before she saw that he was making gestures with his feet. Bending with his legs, huh? How innovative.

Still, she reached out to the water and shredded whatever hold he had on it before returning it to the drum in one piece. "You-you bitch" He snarled, and then he began to cough. It was fascinating, the poison. If asked for an official name, she would call it The Strangler. He coughed even more and then his coughs began to get stuck in his throat. She watched as he struggled to lift his broken hands up to cradle his throat. He turned to her, levying begging eyes at her and she just raised an eyebrow. He had been so willing to kill her not even a second ago pathetic. The other men, still weaker, began their own coughing fits in no time at all. From what she had been able to tell from autopsying a few subjects, the poison made the muscles in the throat swell. It blocked the airflow from within while irritating several other body parts. Hives broke out across the body. A cold sweat formed around the armpits and forehead. The pubic areas developed pus filled boils in no time. It was a painful, unsubtle thing, and it ran its course in no time.

She stared at the three dead men, trying to feel something, anything. But she did not. Not for them. They were men, after all. They deserved it.

XXXXXX- THE DRAGON OF THE WEST

He stared at the letter he'd just received and felt his inner flame stoke itself into being separate from his will for the first time in years. He brought it all under control once again even as he silently admonished himself for failing in his discipline.

Natsu the Thunderer. He was going to put a wrench in the plans the White Lotus held so dear. Their first plan to see Zuko bring an end to the war with his ascendancy to the throne had been accelerated by the return of the Avatar. With the bridge between the two worlds among them once again, the goal then became to have the Avatar himself defeat Ozai and end the Century long war. Iroh could not deny that the Avatar's return had brought no small amount of peace to his heart.

Before, he'd been weighed down with the knowledge that he would one day have to turn his fist against his brother. That was the only way to secure the throne for Zuko. He would challenge Ozai to Agni Kai and then after killing his brother, his nephew would take the throne and banish him as the first action of his rule. It would have consolidated the Fire nation under Zuko for decades. But the thought of a banishment and having to kill his own brother had not been things he'd looked forward to. The Avatar came on that august day and everything changed.

Now, things were changing again. The word was that the Earth Kingdom would fall. There was no doubt about it in the hearts of the White Lotus. Natsu Wu had taken Omashu, Gaoling, a dozen smaller towns, and now had his eyes on the City of Walls herself. He remembered the boy. How could he not. His father had spoken of him with no small amount of pride. A prodigy, the Wu General had named his son.

He'd thought it an exaggeration. Every father would be proud of their son. Most would overestimate and overstate said child's attributes before others. Even more-so before a Prince. And then the boy had called forth lightning with no training in the matter. They called him the one blessed by the cold fire. If not for his Father's actions, Iroh knew that Ozai would have formalized a betrothal between him and Azula immediately. But then the ruling of Azulon had stood in his way.

The ruling of Azulon was the only thing that the White Lotus could count as still working in their favour. He had hated to see a man he called friend made into a cripple for nothing more than words spoken in anger, but he could not deny that the rest of that ruling was working in their favour now. If Azula and Natsu were to marry. The war would never end.

Zuko could take the throne but the Wu family were old, wealthy, and well connected. They would support Azula's claim, and as a former member of the military, Iroh knew well enough the loyalty that the Fire Nation Army held to their own. Half a dozen Generals had pledged to disobey Azulon's will and declare for him in just two hours after his Father passed. He knew more would have declared and pledged their support with time. And that had been against Ozai, a popular Prince. Zuko was banished. An exile. No, the Wu bloodline could not be allowed to join Ozai's. That could mean the end of the world.

"Uncle, are you okay?" his wonderful nephew called out to him, and he schooled his expression into a calm one.

"I am. Just smelt something foul about the tea." He said, nodding at the shopkeeper who pocketed the letter he had just been reading and stood up.

"How do you feel about working on the 13th Kata once we get on the road?"

Important Announcement: Changes made to my pa-treon structure mean it's now cheaper to read the very next chapter with a lower-tier subscription. I'll be placing a discount on yearly memberships for a week or so to support this

A/N; Amara is just as psychotic as the nation she serves, in the end. An Iroh POV to add to it. That's the chapter. Like I said earlier, you can either wait till Wednesday next week for the next chapter or skip the waiting and read the next two, as well as continuous updates as I write on pa-treon (same username as up here- link in bio). Both are equally valid actions, so no rush. For Pa Treon, you can remove the hyphen between Pa and Treon and Google it, then search for my username—Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting it in your address bar.