sugeatarc's Journal

Chapter 16: The Message

Azula watched her mother with fascination. Her voice was cold, yet an aura of heat pulsed off of the woman, a burning rage barely controlled. Ursa made a motion with her hands, and a ball of flame leapt to life in one palm, glowing with a searing white fire like none Azula had ever seen before.

“I believe you owe me a life, Ozai,” Ursa said.

Ozai did not cower or attempt to beg. He drew himself up straight. “Do I, Ursa?”

“That was the agreement, was it not? I would give you Azulon in exchange for the safety of Zuko and Azula. Not only have you not protected them, you have nearly killed both of them – Zuko by your own hand, and Azula by the corruption you seeded in her soul.” She turned her head to one side, regarding him. “In fact I believe you owe me a life for each of our children, but as you have only one to give, that will have to suffice.”

Azula moved, throwing herself in between Ursa and Ozai. “Stop!” Corrupt? she thought. Is that what I am?

Ursa drew back slightly, her eyes focusing on her daughter as if she had only just remembered the girl was in the room. “Azula, my dear – you should not be here right now.”

“You promised me a meeting with Father. You interrupted us.”

Ursa spoke gently, but the rage in her eyes did not dim. “I said you could have some time with him in private, darling, and you’ve had that. Enough to say goodbye.”

Azula was taken aback at the death she saw in her mother’s face. Her mother had always been the quiet, gentle one; her father the face of power and command. She barely recognized the woman who stood here now, blazing in righteous fury. “What are you planning to do, Mother? Kill him – “ -- in cold blood clearly wasn’t the right term – “with him a helpless captive? He can’t even firebend to protect himself.”

“Your father understands, Azula. He has always known I would kill to protect you and your brother. It was he who made me a murderess to begin with.” There was an undercurrent of anguish in Ursa’s voice. “Please, dear. This is for the best. Return to the Sages. I will come see you …after.”

“After you’ve killed Father, you mean? I won’t let you do that.”

“Azula.” Ursa’s voice was gentle. “My dear, you cannot stop me.”

There was a crunching, rending noise, and the roof of Ozai’s cell split open. The rock ceiling yawned wide to let the small shape of the Avatar pass through. “I can, Lady Ursa,” he said. “And I’m sorry, but I have to.” With a wave of a hand, Aang pinned Ozai to the wall of his cell with shackles of rock, then took up a defensive stance in front of the man.

Ursa pulled herself up straight, fury and disbelief mingling on her features. “You should not interfere in this, Avatar. Ozai knew his life was forfeit the instant he threatened either of my children. I paid for this, with my body and my soul.”

A second hole opened up in the ceiling on the outside of Ozai’s cell, and Zuko dropped through, followed by the Avatar’s earthbender girl, and, to Azula’s surprise, Lu Ten.

“Mother,” Zuko said, “No one has more right to vengeance on Ozai than you do.” He shot a glower at his father, who glared back. “But I can’t let you kill a defenseless prisoner of mine.” He sighed. “Apparently part of being good is being nicer to your enemies than they would ever be to you. Or so Aang says. And I have to trust him on this point. He’s a lot better at being good than I am.”

Ursa looked at her son, and at the Avatar. Then, reluctantly, she let the ball of flame in her hand flicker out. “You knew this would happen, didn’t you?” she asked softly.

“No, actually,” Aang said, an apology in his tone. “I mean, we knew you had good reason to be, um, upset with Ozai, but we were here to listen in on his talk with Azula. We didn’t expect you to show up.”

Ozai flashed a glance at Azula, one that clearly said, I told you so. Once again, her hand touched the slip of parchment in her pocket.

“Mikka came and told me what Lu Ten asked him to do,” Ursa said. “I thought it probably had something to do with Azula, though I didn’t know what. When I got to her cell, the Sages said the Fire Lord had come and taken her away. I made a guess at where they would go.”

Azula frowned at Lu Ten, who had the grace to look sheepish. “You set me up?”

“It’s not like that,” her cousin protested. “I really did want to help you see Ozai. I wanted you to see what he’d become. Zuko would only agree to the meeting if Toph was nearby to listen in, that’s all.”

Toph rapped a fist on the rock wall. “Sound travels through stone really well,” she commented. “We were upstairs the whole time.”

“It was to protect you as much as anything,” Lu Ten insisted. “Ozai’s still dangerous, and your firebending is messed up. If he’d gotten his hands on you he might have tried to hold you hostage.”

“Why the charade?” Azula asked, not able to keep the bitterness out of her voice. She had been a fool, thinking that Lu Ten might be an ally. He was already under Zuko’s control, it seemed.

“We thought you and Ozai would speak more freely if you thought we didn’t know about the meeting,” Zuko replied, with a shrug that clearly said I couldn’t care less about your privacy. “We hoped to learn something.”

Azula caught the brief, tiny smile on her father’s face. She hoped no one else had. “You should let Ursa kill me,” Ozai said, in a silky, malicious voice. “Let her murder me here in my cell. Let her make a martyr of me.”

Toph tapped the wall, and a rock gag sealed itself over Ozai’s mouth. “Thanks, Thumper,” Zuko said, giving his father a poisonous look.

“No problem. Didn’t want to listen to him any more myself.”

Ozai kept his eyes on Azula. See how they humiliate me? they seemed to say. A clean death would be better than this.

Zuko reached out and clasped both of his mother’s wrists. She bowed her head, not meeting his eyes. “Please, Mother. I don’t want you to do this. I don’t want him to make you a killer twice over. I just want us to, to – leave him behind. I think we can, if we try.” He looked at Azula, who met him with a steely gaze. “At least, I think you and I can.”

“But I must free Azula from him, too,” she said, her voice low and sad. “As long as he lives, he will try to involve her in his plots. With him gone, there is a chance – “

“A chance for what, Mother?” Azula snapped. “For me to become – what was it you said? – uncorrupted? Do you think I don’t know what I’m doing?”

Ursa looked at her, sorrow in her eyes. “That’s exactly what I think. You don’t know. But you have time to learn, my darling. You’re still a child. There so much you haven’t seen yet –“

“I am not a child!” Azula’s voice cracked like a whip. Everyone in the room looked at her. She wished she had her firebending so she could show them all exactly what they were dealing with, but although her rage roiled in her belly, it brought none of the strength with it that it used to. The fire remained unreachable.

“I don’t think you’re a child,” Zuko said, looking her in the eyes. “But then, I know you better than mother does.”

“You don’t know me half as well as you think you do, Zuzu. You should remember that.”

“I know you well enough, Azula.”

She allowed a predatory grin to steal over her face. “Really. Well. We’ll see, won’t we?”

“Stop it, you two!” Ursa said. “You’re squabbling like eight year olds!”

Zuko looked embarrassed. Azula did not.

“Mother’s right,” Zuko said. “There’s no point in this. It’s time we all got out of here, I think. Lu Ten, please escort my sister.”

Lu Ten moved to take Azula’s arm, but she glared daggers at him, and he dropped his hand. “Look, Zuli, I didn’t mean to –“

“Shut up. And don’t call me that.” She turned her back on him, pulling her hood over her face. She didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t want to look at any of them, even her father. Because her mother was right, of course – he had tried to involve her in his plots.

She didn’t know, yet, whether or not he had succeeded.

Azula put her hands in her pockets as the guards opened the doors to let them out. One hand brushed Roku’s crown, still giving off a gentle warmth. The other touched the cool, dry parchment with Ozai’s message on it.

An attack tonight, it said. Be ready to escape. And there was an address in the seedy part of town. A contact, no doubt. A place to go. A refuge? Or just another kind of cell? Was this like a Pai Sho game, where she could be either a lowly peasant or a lofty Lord? Which was she? Which one did her father think she was?

Could she choose not to play at all?

She stole a glance at Lu Ten as they went up the stairs, followed by her brother and her mother, who were talking in low tones. The Avatar and his earthbender remained behind for a moment to restore Ozai’s cell.

I wish you had been a real ally, she thought at Lu Ten.

And then they were out the prison door and onto the street, all four of them cloaked despite the warmth of the summer evening. She looked up at the sun, craving the light even as it disappeared down the sky.

And caught, out of the corner of her eye, the glint of a dozen arrowheads glimmering off a nearby roof.

She froze, struggling with her choices.

In that moment, the arrows flew.

To Be Continued

[Author's note: This one's a trifle short since I had a busy weekend. There'll be more next time, promise. Meanwhile, enjoy your cliffhanger! ]

Fic: Exile: Chapter 15: The Meeting

Chapter 15: The Meeting

After descending several flights of spiral stairs, they came at last to a steel door, heavily locked and barred, with two guards posted outside. Lu Ten spoke to them briefly, and they went to work on the lengthy process of getting the door open.

“So much security for a powerless man?” Azula asked.

“It’s more to keep other people out than to keep Ozai in,” the female guard replied, lifting the steel bar away from the door and setting it aside. She nodded at Lu Ten. “The Fire Lord’s command is that he be prevented from escaping at all costs, and the biggest danger is from an outside breakout, not Ozai himself.”

Azula found that interesting, as it suggested Zuko feared an organized attempt to release Ozai. Was there an actual group out there working toward that end, or was her brother simply overdoing it out of fear of their father?

The last of the locks clinked open, and the guard motioned for them to enter. Azula stepped forward, but Lu Ten hung back. “I’ve no wish to see my…father,” he said. “Let the lady in. She may speak to Ozai as long as she likes. I’ll wait here for her.”

The guards looked mildly puzzled, but voiced no objection as Azula, the hood of her cloak pulled tight over her head, stepped into her father’s prison. The door clanked shut behind her.

She was in a stone room. There was a cage on the far side. And in the cage was a cot, on which lay Ozai.

Azula padded forward silently and peered through the bars. Her father’s face was turned toward the wall, and she couldn’t see much more than a disheveled and stained prison smock, and long strands of dirty, uncombed hair trailing to the floor.

The figure on the cot stirred. “Go away,” it rasped.

The voice was harsh and coarsened, not the smooth, regal tones she was used to, but it was still her father’s voice. She pulled the hood of her cloak back, and spoke. “Father. It’s me. I want to speak with you.”

The shape on the cot stirred, then sat up. Ozai’s gold eyes locked on his daughter’s. His gaze seemed somehow flatter than she remembered. She could see no fire in those golden eyes at all.

“Azula…” Ozai breathed. “They told me you were ill.”

“I was. I’m recovering. They told me…you have lost your firebending. Is it true?”

Ozai’s teeth bared in a snarl. “It is. For now, at least. That cursed boy used some unknown magic on me to steal my bending, but I have not given up hope of finding a way to win it back.” The snarl transmuted into a narrow, vicious smile. “That fool of an Avatar and my traitor of a son chose to let me live. I will make them regret it.”

Her father focused his flat gaze on her. The dull eyes made her uneasy, though she was careful not to show it. Stripped of their inner fire, they appeared an unnatural, sickly yellow, no longer the gleaming sunlit gold that was part of the heritage of the Fire Nation’s noble bloodlines. “And what of you, my one faithful child?” he asked. “Have you come to free me from this place?”

She paused. Had she? She touched the crown in her pocket, seeking out the warmth as a shield against the dead coldness in her father’s eyes. “I…I can’t, right now,” she said, not entirely truthfully. If she really wanted to, she could take out the guards and Lu Ten as well without difficulty, even without her bending, and run off with Ozai into the night. But with both of them stripped of their fire, she doubted they would get very far. And she would never be allowed to see or speak to him again, if they weren’t both simply killed outright while escaping. “I have lost my bending as well.”

Ozai cursed again. “That blasted Avatar – may flame consume him slowly over a thousand years!”

“He swears he had nothing to do with it,” Azula said slowly. “And he’s not a very skilled liar. It seems to be something else. But I don’t know how to fix it, not yet. I think Zuko and the boy Avatar know, but they haven’t been polite enough tell me.”

The former Fire Lord considered that, then shrugged. “No matter. We will solve those problems later. Free me from this cage – between us we can overpower the guards even without firebending and escape this prison. There are loyalists out there who will give us shelter until we have recovered enough to reclaim what is rightfully mine.”

“Rightfully yours? Not rightfully ours?”

Ozai gave her a sharp look. “What?”

Azula started. She had been unaware that she had spoken aloud. “I…sorry, Father. I misspoke. I meant nothing by it.”

Ozai frowned, but let it pass. He stepped up to the barred door of the cage and rattled it. “You have gotten the keys from the guard, yes?”

“No…I wasn’t able to come here alone. My escort would have noticed if I had attacked the guards for the keys.” But not if I had palmed them quietly. Why didn’t I think to do that?

“An escort? Your brother?” Ozai looked around, and his eyes landed on a pile of scattered scrolls and a quill he had apparently been provided with to write down his thoughts. Before Azula could correct him, he snatched up a scroll and the pen, and scribbled furiously on it for a moment.

He held up the parchment. They will be listening, he had written.

“No. It’s not Zuko. It’s – “ She stopped, not sure how to describe Lu Ten. A friend? Was that possible? “ – someone else,” she finished. “Someone who agreed to help me get in to visit you.”

“Ah.” Ozai smiled. “I see you have not lost your skill in commanding people. You were born to rule, Azula. Never forget that.”

She hadn’t told him about Mai and Ty Lee deserting her at the Boiling Rock, not wanting to bear the burden of his disappointment – or worse, having him decide to take their fate into his own hands. Had he learned of it during the weeks she lay unconscious? Did he know what they meant to her? Would he even care?

“Father. I came here to tell you something.” She took a breath. “Mother has returned. You told me she’d been killed.”

Ozai recoiled. A mix of emotions flickered across his features and were gone, almost too fast to follow. Surprise. Rage. Disgust.

…Fear?

…Sorrow?

Azula stared. Had she really seen that? Her father feared nothing, regretted nothing. And now his ruler’s mask had closed down again. Whatever had been there once was gone.

“You knew she lived,” Azula said, watching him closely. “You let us think she was dead.”

Ozai seemed to recover some of his composure. “I did, yes. It seemed a kinder approach than to tell you she was banished, that she lived, but you would never see her again. It is easier to let go of the dead than of the vanished. I did it to spare you.”

“I see,” Azula said. And she did. With her mother gone, she would have no one to turn to, to learn from, except her father.

“Why is this of concern to you? Your mother never cared for you, Azula. She loved your brother, accepted banishment for his sake – she never thought about you. Only I did that. You are my daughter, Azula.”

She came for me, Azula thought. I was trapped and she found me. She brought me back to life. She touched the crown in her pocket again. She is the granddaughter of the Avatar.

“Did you know about her lineage?” The question burst out of its own accord, without conscious thought.

“What?” Ozai’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Roku,” Azula said.

“The Fire Avatar? What of him?”

“Mother is his granddaughter. Did you know?”

Ozai stared at her, irritation on his features. “Of course I knew. He was born high Fire Nation nobility. His blood flows in many of the best bloodlines. What does this matter, Azula? Why are you speaking of these things? We can discuss this later if it means so much to you – after I am free.”

Azula ignored that. “Tell me. If your plan had worked, if the Avatar had failed or run away…what then, Father?”

Ozai’s frown grew deeper. “Then we would have been victorious, Azula. Did your illness dull your wits?”

Azula wondered that herself. Her thoughts seemed to be moving sluggishly in new channels, long unused, or never used.

“And after our ….victory….what then?”

“Then the world would have been ours!” She could see her father’s temper beginning to slip. “Don’t you recall? You were the one who suggested burning out the Earth Kingdom!”

Azula nodded slowly. “Yes. I did, didn’t I? I knew it was what you wanted to hear. And I knew it would upset Zuko, perhaps cause him to speak out rashly. I wanted him back home, but I didn’t want him to take the throne from me. You’d always said it would be mine. And yet you restored him to his place as Crown Prince. I thought that after he spent so much time with those Earth Kingdom peasants, he would protest their wholesale destruction. But he said nothing. I underestimated him -- although he did leave to join the Avatar soon after, so perhaps it worked after all.” She rubbed her forehead with one hand. Her head was beginning to ache. “I didn’t expect you to take my suggestion so much to heart, Father. Burn out a few villages, perhaps, as a lesson to the others. But the entire Earth Kingdom? We had them beaten, Father. We had their cities. We owned the riches of the world. What did we gain from destroying them all?”

Ozai was plainly baffled by this outburst, though he tried to cover it with anger. “We gained victory, Azula. I thought you understood this. They would have opposed us, would have continued to fight. We would never have had peace!”

Azula shivered, just a little. “Peace. Yes. Well, a wasteland is peaceful. But what else is it good for? We couldn’t have put colonies on the burnt earth for years, perhaps generations. Once everything was burned down, the soil would have washed away in the first strong rain. What would our people have lived on?”

“The war would have been over, Azula. It had dragged on for over a hundred years thanks to my father’s failure of vision. He even wasted time attacking the Water Tribes – why, so that we might colonize acres of ice? That we might have waterbending slaves? How did that bring us any closer to true victory? It is the Fire Nation’s destiny to rule the world unopposed, Azula – the disappearance of the Avatar after the destruction of the Air Nomads proved that. It was time for the world to take a different path. Our path, Azula.”

“But the Avatar has returned.” She touched the crown in her pocket again.

Ozai hawked and spat. “A boy who got lucky. Does he think stripping me of my powers will stop our nation’s conquest? Our colonies have been on Earth Kingdom soil for over a hundred years – does he expect our colonists to meekly come home and begin living on bare volcanic islands? There are far too many of them for that. He is just a child, Azula. He has power, yes, but no experience. He can still be killed, if you wait for the right time, and the right place. But first, of course, you must kill your brother. He should be the easier target. Remove him and claim your birthright.”

“My birthright has been taken already. Killing Zuko wouldn’t be enough to reclaim it, not now. There are others standing in the way. What should I do after Zuko is dead – kill Mother and Uncle as well? And did you know Zuko found Lu Ten, alive, after all this time? He would have to go too. You want me to murder our entire family, Father?” She moved a step closer to the bars, feeling fire flickering at her fingertips, so close. “And of course, I would have to remove you as well, to truly claim my seat as Fire Lord. Deposed rulers are so inconvenient to have around, don’t you think?”

Ozai stared at her, but did not flinch. “You are my daughter, Azula. You are strong, and clever, and ruthless when necessary. I trust you will know best how to restore our Nation’s pride and supremacy. You will find a way.” He turned on one heel and moved to the small writing desk, and scribbled something down. Then he folded the sheet and held it out through the bars. “You will find a way,” he repeated.

Azula looked at the small parchment scrap and read the writing. Her eyes widened.

Before she could say anything, there was a commotion at the door. Azula swiftly slid the parchment into her pocket – the one not containing the crown – and turned to see what was going on. The door swung back with a groan, and a tall, slim, hooded figure entered. The door shut again.

Pale hands reached up to pull the hood of the cloak back.

“Greetings, my husband,” said Lady Ursa. Her tone was colder than any Azula had ever heard. The bitter wind of the endless winter nights at the poles blew through it. “I believe we have much to discuss.”

To Be Continued

Fic: Exile, Chapter 14: The Visitor

Chapter 14: The Visitor

Azula couldn’t tell what time of day it was. There were no windows in her underground cell. She guessed it was evening when the wary Fire Sages brought her a dinner slightly more hearty than her earlier invalid’s light meal.

She ate the bland food unenthusiastically. She had always preferred her food extra spicy, even by Fire Nation standards. It had been a joke, when she was younger, for her to show off by breathing fire after a particularly fiery item was served.

It didn’t matter much, though, as her mind wasn’t on food. She couldn’t stop thinking about Roku’s crown and the story her mother had told her of what it was and what it meant.

She had Avatar blood. Three generations back, true, but still there.

What exactly was she to make of that? Did it actually mean anything to her? The thought of being somehow related to the current Avatar was repellent. The story of Sozin’s betrayal of Roku was somehow fascinating, though. It made strange echoes with her own nearly-successful attempt on the boy Avatar’s life under Ba Sing Se, Sozin’s descendant bringing down Roku’s spiritual successor.

She suspected the story had had a more profound impact on Zuko than on her. He had always been a romantic dreamer. Finding out he was related, however distantly, to the Avatar would have fed his juvenile ideas of “destiny”, a future somehow planned for him, in which he was a prominent figure. Azula believed only in the destiny she forged for herself, even though she had once told Long Feng differently, in order to undermine his self-confidence and his men’s loyalty to his cause. The fact that they had believed her was the only thing that actually proved Long Feng’s unsuitability to rule. A real ruler never doubted her own authority, nor allowed her underlings to doubt it. This was the way she had always acted toward Mai and Ty Lee, and it had worked.

Until it didn’t any more.

Azula pushed that unwelcome thought aside. She didn’t want to think about Mai and Ty Lee.

She reached out a hand to touch the crown. She seemed strangely unable to stop herself. Even stranger was the continued gentle warmth she could feel in the crown – as if the Avatar spirit, incarnated as Roku, knew what she had done and still somehow forgave her, and welcomed her as kin. Which wasn’t possible.

It was also impossible that her bending had vanished.

It seemed that the impossible had become commonplace, though. Her fool of a brother ascending to the Fire Throne was more than enough proof of that.

Zuko had apparently had some similar kind of trouble with his firebending and had found a way around it. If he had found it, she was sure she could. Perhaps it would even come back naturally on its own, when her body and mind were at full strength again and ready for it to return. If not, she could find some way to trick Zuko or the boy Avatar into explaining how to undo the damage. Azula was sure of that much, at least.

But until that happened, she would have to find a way to take her fate into her own hands again without her bending.

She would manage, of course. She always had.

Even if she had to do it utterly alone, stripped of everything including the fire that had been her friend and companion for as long as she could remember.

Azula heard footsteps outside her door, and the murmuring of the Fire Sage guards posted outside. A moment later, a soft rap sounded at her cell door. Someone was polite enough to knock on a prison cell door, she thought with amusement.

She stood up and assumed the best regal bearing she could manage, despite the shapeless sack of a sickbed garment she was wearing and her own personal lack of decent grooming. “Come in.”

The door opened, and someone who wasn’t Zuko entered.

The stranger looked very much like Zuko, she had to admit, particularly dressed in her brother’s peasant outfit of tunic and trousers, with a cloak thrown over the top. And the fake facial scar was well done. But this person was several inches taller than Zuzu, broader in the shoulders, and the scar didn’t look quite right either. It looked fresher, somehow.

Just in case this was an assassination attempt, she settled into a battle stance. She might not be able to bend fire, but the moves of firebending could be quite deadly all on their own, if applied correctly. And she had the spoon they had given her to eat dinner with. It wasn’t much, but it could gouge out an eye or be plunged into a soft throat if handled properly.

The imposter dropped a sack at her feet. “Please put these on,” he said. His voice was similar to Zuko’s as well, although she could tell he was consciously striving to make it sound higher than it truly was. Aside from the excellent job he’d done with the appearance, he clearly didn’t know how to properly imitate someone. “I’ve decided to move you to different quarters, Azula.”

She eyed him carefully. He didn’t move like an assassin, but if he were a particularly clever one he might be able to hide his expertise behind a fake veneer of incompetence. Certainly Zuko – the real one – could afford to hire the very best to remove her, if he was so inclined. She knew his one and only other attempt in this area, the freakishly powerful Huo Hong, had not come cheap; she had had to triple his fee in order to ensure he would continue his hunt for the Avatar even after her brother fled the capital.

The other possibility was that the man was actually trying to help her, which she didn’t find likely.

“I’m quite comfortable here,” she told him. “The Fire Sages have taken good care of me.” She nudged the sack with her foot, wondering what it really held. It was soft, like the clothing he had implied was inside.

“I’m sure they have,” the stranger said. “But I thought you wanted to meet with your father.”

Azula frowned slightly. This was unexpected. She lowered her voice so the guards couldn’t overhear. “I do. But that’s Zuko’s decision to make. And we both know you aren’t Zuko. Why don’t you tell me who you really are, and what you want?”

The imposter looked startled, and then, to Azula’s surprise, smiled. In an equally low voice, he replied, “Heh, I might have known I couldn’t fool you, Zuli.”

No one had called her that in many years, and Azula found she didn’t like the familiarity. “No, you couldn’t,” she replied, her tone steely. “Now, tell me who you are and what you want, or I’ll call the guards.”

“You don’t know? Didn’t anyone tell you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Tell me what?”

“It’s me. Lu Ten.”

“Try again. Lu Ten is dead.”

“You try again, Runt Two. It’s really me.”

Azula blinked. “What…what did you call me?”

“Don’t you remember? You were only about this high – “ He waved a hand around knee height. “—when I left for Ba Sing Se. You’ve grown a little.”

“I wasn’t that short!” she snapped, then caught herself, surprised. That wasn’t a controlled response. “…You’re good, to know that. But I still don’t believe you. What did I get my brother as a present on his ninth birthday?” The real Lu Ten had helped her pick it out.

“A reproduction of Huà Jiā’s classic art book, The Flight of Dragons. It took us weeks of searching to locate a copy in good shape, remember?”

Azula stared at the man. There was no denying he looked like family. With that scar – was it real? – he really could pass as a slightly older Zuko. But it still didn’t make sense. “The real Lu Ten died during the Siege of Ba Sing Se. Some earthbenders collapsed a wall on his squad, killing them all. It broke Uncle Iroh’s spirit and he gave up on Ba Sing Se.” Which I later took, in less than a month, she added to herself.

The man – Lu Ten? – shook his head. “That's one of the things I came here to tell you. It was all a ploy set up by Ozai to get my father and myself out of the way of his climb to power. Someone else died beneath that wall, wearing my clothes. I’d already been captured by Ozai’s personal guard and taken away. He then let my father know I was alive and his prisoner. He used me to blackmail the great General Iroh into not opposing his power grab, you see. And it worked, for quite a while. Until last winter, I understand – when Father helped save the Moon Spirit, Ozai sent him a long detailed letter describing how he’d had me put to death. For whatever reason, he didn’t actually do it, though. He kept me imprisoned in the same place your mother was, so when Zuko and the Avatar found Aunt Ursa, they found me too.” He paused. “They tell me you’re still very close to Ozai, Zuli. I’m sorry if learning this hurts your opinion of him, but it’s a true story.”

“Close?” Until her father had sent her to babysit the capital instead of helping him destroy the Avatar, that had been true. Now, she was no longer sure. Now, she wanted to look him in the face and see what, or who, she saw looking back at her. “I was my father’s most trusted – “ Subordinate? Underling? Tool? “ – lieutenant. I did everything he ever asked of me.” And he left me behind. “I conquered cities for him.” And he tried to destroy them.

Lu Ten – if it really was him – looked taken aback. “And…are you still his most faithful servant, then? After everything he’s done?”

Something compelled her to answer honestly. Maybe it was the word servant. “I don’t know. That’s part of why I need to speak to him. Alone.”

“If I help you do that, will you promise to come back here with me when you’re done?”

“What makes you think you can arrange a meeting for me?”

He shrugged. “I had no problem convincing the Fire Sages I was Zuko, especially with the hood pulled up. They see the scar, and that convinces them. I’m sure I can handle the prison guards the same way. It’s not like I’m going to try to break Ozai out of there – I’m just taking you for a visit.”

“How did you manage that scar, anyway?” Azula asked. “Don’t tell me you just happened to have one like Zuzu’s.”

“No. A young friend of mind helped we with this, though he wasn’t very happy about it.” Lu Ten said. “It’s part stage make-up, part…something else. Not anything you need to know about. Do you want to go see your father or not? They’ll be changing his guard soon, which will be the best time to go in, when things are a little confused with the watch turnover.”

Impossible as it seemed, all Azula’s instincts were telling her that this man was who he said he was. Could he actually do what he was proposing? She could see no good reason not to try. At worst, they would be found out and she would be returned to this cell, or to another – she didn’t particularly care about exactly which prison Zuko decided to keep her in.

Still wary, she knelt down and opened the sack. Inside was a set of plain but comfortable clothing: loose pants, a jacket, a cloak, soft shoes, and a set of underclothes. She decided not to ask Lu Ten where and how he’d gotten the underclothes. There didn’t seem to be any traps in the bag – not even the classic poisonous snake-rat hidden in the shoes. “Turn around,” she ordered.

“Why – oh, of course.” He obediently faced the door while she quickly pulled on the new outfit. It made her feel more like herself to be properly dressed, even if they were peasant clothes. She put the cloak on, and then, after a moment, picked up Roku’s crown and slipped it into one of the cloak’s spacious pockets. “I’m ready to go.”

Lu Ten turned back around and looked her over. “You look better in real clothes,” he said. “Now, do I have your word of honor, on our shared blood, that you won’t try to escape, and that you’ll come right back here after your meeting?”

“My word?” He was willing to take her word as a promise? Had Zuko told him nothing?

“Yes. I’m willing to accept it if you give it to me, Zuli. The girl I knew was never one to break her word lightly.”

But I’m not the girl you knew, Azula thought. She’s long gone, and I haven’t seen her in many years. “Of course. I give you my word then.” She tugged the cloak’s hood up over her short hair. “Let’s go.”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Chènyī Dān was a new guard, recently promoted to duty in the capital, and proud of his station. When he saw the two cloaked figures approaching the dungeon tower, he snapped to alert, rapping his spear butt sharply on the pavement. “Halt! Identify yourselves!”

The taller of the two figures twitched back the hood of his robe, and Chènyī saw two burning gold eyes, the left one narrowed by ridges of red scarring that stretched back toward the ear. “Oh! Sorry, sir. I didn’t recognize you.” Chènyī had heard of the new Fire Lord’s tendency to run around in peasant garb at odd times. He didn’t really know why Lord Zuko would want to come to the prison on foot like a commoner instead of in a royal palanquin, but it wasn’t his place to question the Fire Lord. He got a brief look at the guest’s face under the hood – pale, female, dull dark hair cut short in peasant style – and did not recognize her.

“We’re here to see Ozai,” the Fire Lord said quietly. “Let us in, please.”

“Of course, sir.” Chènyī unlocked the door and swung it open.

Together, Lu Ten and Azula entered the prison.

To Be Continued

Fic: Exile: Chapter 13: The Recovery

Chapter 13: The Recovery

Ursa knelt by the side of her daughter’s cot, silent and still, barely breathing. She had placed Roku’s crown in Azula’s hands, then wrapped her own hands about them both. Aang, Zuko, and Shyu watched nervously.

The rest of the group had been temporarily banished to the corridor outside, an order which had resulted in a great deal of agitation and argument, particularly from Katara, who was determined to see that Azula never got the slightest chance to hurt anyone again, and from Lu Ten, who was equally concerned that no one hurt his helpless cousin. Zuko and Aang did their best to reassure him that no harm would come to the girl unless she forced it by her own actions. Lu Ten did not seem very reassured, but in the end there simply wasn’t room in the small cell for more than the four of them plus Azula. As Aang shut the windowless cell door, his last sight was of Katara’s worried eyes.

They had been prepared for some showy, glowy kind of spirit world activity when the crown was placed in Azula’s hands, but they had been disappointed. Nothing visible had happened. The only unusual thing was the continued sense of heat coming from the crown. Azula had continued to toss weakly in her delirium as Ursa took up a meditation position at the side of the cot and began attempting to reach her daughter’s mind. Aang had offered to try to help awaken the girl, much to the consternation of most of the rest of the group, who tried to argue him out of it. Zuko didn’t try to argue, but his face clearly showed that he thought nothing good of that idea. For better or worse, it had been decided that Ursa would be the first to try, thanks to the terrible history between Aang and Azula that would be unlikely to foster trust in Azula’s mind. Shyu also offered to attempt the journey, but he was a complete stranger to Azula, and she was unlikely to respond to him either.

Zuko tried to squelch his private thoughts that said Perhaps it’s for the best if this doesn’t work. His mind was a whirl of conflicting images – Azula tagging along behind him at age six, begging for a game of hide and explode; Azula on her ship, lying that Father had forgiven him and wanted him home; Azula begging him for help in the caves beneath Ba Sing Se; Azula’s mad eyes as she turned her lightning on Katara. He wondered, and not for the first time, how different their lives would have been if they had grown up allies, like Sokka and Katara, and not as enemies. Was there any chance at all that they might start over? Or even just move on, and find new ways to behave with each other? His hand drifted to the star-shaped scar on his chest. It didn’t seem likely.

He wondered, for the hundredth time, what his mother would do when it became clear that Azula was irredeemable. Would Ursa really leave him again? Of course, wherever she and Azula ended up, he would know where she was and would be able to visit, but that seemed a very poor meal after six years of starvation, particularly when all her time would be spent with his sister. Could he order her to leave Azula, on the grounds of Ursa’s own safety? He could perhaps force the issue, but he knew he would never again have his mother’s trust if he took that route. Would it be worth it, if he thought it was necessary to keep his mother from dying at her own daughter’s hands?

Zuko forced himself to stop thinking along those lines. He tried instead to focus on a calming breathing meditation, to think of nothing but that, and to simply await the outcome.

When it happened, they almost missed it. As time passed, Azula’s breathing gradually slowed and steadied, and the blind, seeking motions of her head and body stilled. Finally, after nearly an hour, she muttered something under her breath, and opened her eyes to look up at her mother’s relieved face. Zuko noticed that Ursa’s expression was not completely without wariness, however – something he was very glad to see.

Azula’s strong, commanding voice had gone weak and dry, but it was still recognizably hers. “So you’re really here,” she said to Ursa, her words rough and whispery. “I was sure you were dead.”

“No,” said Ursa. “And neither are you. Welcome back, my dear.” She took her hands away from Roku’s crown in order to caress her daughter’s hair, which the Sages had trimmed short. The lustrous shine, black as raven wings, had gone dull and brittle during Azula’s illness.

Azula’s hands remained on the crown, without seeming to be aware of it. “Could I have some water, please?” she murmured. “I’m very thirsty.”

Shyu reached down to help her sit up, and Zuko and Aang both took an involuntary step away from the cot. Azula noticed the motion and looked up at them. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the sight of the two of them standing side by side, watching her warily. A ghost of a smile flickered around her lips as she noticed their alarmed stance, but she said nothing. Ursa handed her a cup of water, and she drank deeply for several long moments. Finally, she cleared her throat, locked her eyes on the Avatar and her brother, and said, “So, will there be a show trial, or do I simply disappear?” She looked around at the walls of her cell. “Or have I already been disappeared? Does the world think I’m dead?”

Zuko started to say something, stopped, frowned, then began again. “You haven’t disappeared, or been tried. You’ve been ill and out of your head for several weeks. The Fire Sages have been taking care of you. It’s not my policy to sit in judgment on the gravely ill, Azula. As for what happens now that you’ve recovered, if you have -- that remains to be seen.”

Azula cocked an eyebrow at him. “Are you suggesting it would be in my best interest to continue to be a madwoman?”

Zuko’s eyes narrowed. He took a breath, trying to remind himself that he must not allow her to make him angry. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, you didn’t.” Her golden eyes regarded him steadily, traces of amusement and contempt both visible. “But I have to wonder if those are my choices. Will I live locked in an asylum the rest of my life? Or if I refuse that fate, will my illness become suddenly fatal?”

“That’s not how I do things, Azula. Murdering inconvenient people in their sleep isn’t my style,” Zuko said, not bothering to add, Though it would probably be yours.

“Hm. I imagine you’ll outgrow that if you manage to hang onto the Fire Throne long enough. That hairpiece you’re wearing says it is you in power, right? Not Uncle Kooky?”

“Uncle refused to take the Throne.” Don’t get angry. She likes it when you’re angry.

“Of course he did.” She coughed, and took another cup of water from Ursa’s hands, draining it quickly. “It’s rather dim in here, don’t you think?” She flicked her fingers at one of the lanterns.

Nothing happened.

Azula drew in a shocked breath. Zuko frowned, suspecting a trick. His sister repeated the motion, a simple bending intended to cause the lantern to burn more fiercely. But the fire did not respond.

For a moment Azula’s composure cracked, and a flash of panic showed through. Then the mask closed down again, with only her slightly wider eyes and faster breath showing a hint of her real feelings. “This…what’s happened to me?”

“You can’t firebend?” Zuko asked, very much distrusting this new event. It would be a typical Azula trick, to pretend to weakness and then catch them off guard.

“Not…not really,” Azula said, the smallest quaver in her voice. “I can feel my own energy, feel the flow, feel the fire – but it’s just…not responding.”

Ursa shot a look of terrible suspicion at Aang, but he shook his head frantically. “I had nothing to do with this, I swear! And besides, her bending’s not gone – I can tell that much. It’s just…blocked somehow.” He looked at Zuko and found the young Fire Lord looking back at him in the same sudden surmise. “Oh – you think it’s like that…?”

“Like what?” Azula demanded, looking not at all pleased to be the one not holding the secrets at the moment.

“Well, something like this happened to Zuko right after we brought him in with our group. His bending got really weak. Almost useless.”

Azula looked like she wanted to grind her teeth, but was refusing to allow herself. “It certainly didn’t stay that way!”

“No, it didn’t,” Zuko said, thoughtfully. “But this might not be the same thing. My firebending got messed up because –“ He stopped, and studied his sister’s face. “ – because of something I don’t think applies to you, Azula.”

“Yeah, doesn’t seem likely,” Aang said, doubtful. “It might just be some kind of shock after you went wild during that Agni Kai. Or some kind of overload from the Comet, maybe.”

“How very convenient,” Azula said, a definite edge of venom in her voice. “No more Agni Kais between us, eh, Zuzu?”

“I wouldn’t fight one with you anyway,” Zuko replied. “I’d only do that with an honorable foe. You proved you weren’t one when you attacked Katara during the duel.”

“When I…?” Azula frowned and touched her head. “Oh. Yes. I remember.” Unconsciously, she tightened her hands around Roku’s crown. “That…that was wrong. That’s not the right way to fight an Agni Kai.”

“It certainly isn’t!” Zuko snapped, looking at her sharply. He wondered if she had truly recovered all her faculties – sometimes she seemed like the old Azula, but then that mask would waver, and he would see what looked like a flash of someone else – someone who had once said Zuzu, look! Watch me firebend! and These are my new friends from school, Mai and Ty Lee! This is my big brother Zuko. I call him Zuzu but you can’t do that, only I get to call him that, because he’s a Prince.

He wished, very very much, that he dared trust her even the slightest little bit.

Azula rested her head in her hands. “Excuse me. I’m…rather tired.”

“Aang, let’s go outside,” Zuko suggested. “We need to talk.”

Aang nodded, and they left Azula to the attentions of her mother and the Fire Sage.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

“I haven’t heard any ka-booms,” Sokka said, pacing up and down the corridor. “There should have been a cell-shattering ka-boom by now. What’s going on in there?” He reached for the handle of the cell door, but Suki blocked him. “Oh, come on, Suki, what harm could one peek do?”

“If there’s a ka-boom, as you put it, it’ll probably happen just as you open the door. And I like your hair the way it is – I don’t need to see it on fire, thanks!”

“Toph, can you hear anything yet?” Katara asked. The waterbender was nervously twining two strands of water in and out, as if weaving a liquid blanket.

“Nope.” Toph shook her head. “Whatever the wall’s made of, it’s a good insulator. Sorry folks.”

“Thanks for trying,” Ty Lee sighed.

“No problem, Stretch.”

“It’s dragonbone,” Iroh said. The group looked at him, and he clarified, “The wall – it’s made of dragonbone. That’s why these are the Dragonbone Catacombs. Dragonbone is light, but extremely hard and durable, and it does not burn. That is why all of the Fire Nation’s most important documents are stored down here, in rooms built of dragonbone. And that is why Azula is being kept in one as well. So she is no danger to anyone in the outside world.”

“But Aang and Zuko are on the wrong side of the wall,” Katara fretted. “One good fireball and she could take out the two of them plus Zuko’s mother and that nice Sage.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Lu Ten protested, not for the first time. “Look, I’ll believe you when you say Ozai’s been a very bad influence on her – especially since Father confirmed it – but she’s not an unthinking killing machine.”

“You didn’t see her at the end of that Agni Kai,” Katara said, her tone heated. “She was out of her head, literally spitting fire everywhere. Ask Zuko if you don’t believe me.”

Lu Ten recoiled slightly from Katara’s vehemence. “I didn’t say I don’t believe you. I just – look, she’s my cousin and she’s not even fifteen yet. Nothing you say is going to make me think of her as some kind of monster. Sure, maybe she’s gotten out of control – I was pretty wild at her age – and confused, but –“

“I’ve never met anyone less confused than Azula,” Sokka chimed in. “At least, not until I heard about what she did during her one day as Fire Lord, anyway.”

Lu Ten threw up his hands. “Sokka, what would you think if you got taken away for seven years and when you came back, everyone told you Katara had become evil incarnate?”

“Honestly, I wouldn’t be completely surprised,” Sokka said.

“What?!” Katara glared at him and made a dangerous-looking ball of water with one hand.

“See what I mean?” Sokka said. “And you haven’t seen half the stuff she can do. But I get where you’re coming from – I wouldn’t give up on any of my family easily either. Just be really careful, would you? Your father and Zuko seem glad to have you back alive, and I think they’d be pretty upset if you made a mistake with Azula and wound up lightning-bolted for your trouble.”

Lu Ten started to frame a reply to that, when the door to Azula’s cell swung open and Aang and Zuko emerged. Mai stepped over to Zuko’s side and slipped an arm around his waist, which he accepted gratefully.

“So, no ka-boom then?” Sokka said, earning him a himself a look from Zuko that he had mentally dubbed the “Sokka-Is-Strange Stare.”

Aang picked up on his meaning easily, however. “Nope. No ka-boom. In fact it looks like she couldn’t make a ka-boom right now even if she wanted to.”

Ty Lee and Mai exchanged a glance. “Why not?” Ty Lee said. “Did you, uh, you know, do your Avatar-thing -- ”

“No, no, no,” Aang hurried to say. “Really, I had absolutely nothing to do with this. Her bending is still there. She just can’t use it.”

“So, she’s like Zuko at the Western Air Temple?” Sokka asked, looking intrigued.

“We don’t really know,” Zuko replied. “That happened because of everything I’d been through. Because I’d rejected my father’s philosophy of fire as a solely destructive force and didn’t know how else to interact with it. I know Azula’s been through some turmoil, but I wouldn’t care to bet anyone’s life on her having a profound philosophical insight of some kind that’s completely changed her world view. In fact, she seemed normal, other than the bending problem.” He stopped and thought for a second. “Well, mostly normal. For someone who’s been out of her head for over two weeks, anyway.”

“Well, I don’t really care why it happened,” Katara put in. “I’m just glad to hear it. It makes her a lot less dangerous.”

“Don’t underestimate her,” Mai said quietly. “Even if her bending is actually messed up – which I wouldn’t be too quick to believe -- she’s still a very dangerous fighter, and an even more dangerous schemer.”

“Good point,” Toph said. “Like, I can’t even check to see if her bending’s really gone south or not.”

“So the question now,” Aang said, “is what do we do next?”

“Do we have to do anything?” Suki asked. “I mean, okay, she’s not going to die, and her firebending is pretty much taken care of. Can’t she just be left here under the guard of the Sages?”

“I’m not at all comfortable with that,” Zuko said. “Too much potential for disaster. Not to mention, if she’s truly recovered from her breakdown, she shouldn’t be under the care of the Sages. She should either be locked up in a real prison….or let loose.”

“Let loose?!” Katara dropped the water she’d been bending and it splashed to the floor. “You can’t be serious!”

Zuko shook his head. “I’m not, not really. It’s just too dangerous. But unless I’m going to be exactly the same kind of arbitrary ruler my father was – and Azula herself, too, however briefly – I need a real reason to lock her up. Or…send her into exile.” He didn’t need to mention that exile would mean he would lose his mother a second time; his downcast expression said it for him.

“Trying to kill you and Aang isn’t a good enough reason?” Toph asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“It’s a good enough personal reason, of course,” Zuko said. “But look at it from the point of view of the average Fire Nation citizen – Aang was definitely an enemy combatant in Ba Sing Se, giving her not just the legal right to do everything she could to stop him, but, as a member of the ruling family, the legal duty.” He sighed. “And the same basically goes for me. I did join the enemy and turn traitor – trying to kill me was, once again, her duty. The fact that she enjoyed it is…not necessarily relevant. And unlike Ozai, she didn’t commit any war crimes in Omashu, Ba Sing Se, or during her short time as Fire Lord. So if I have her imprisoned, what’s my excuse? I need something, even if just as a pretext, awful as that sounds. Otherwise I’m just another Fire Nation dictator – with good intentions, but still just a dictator.”

“So, maybe you can’t have her locked up for what she did to you and me,” Aang said, “But what about what she tried to do to Katara?”

Zuko thought that over. “Well, Katara also comes under enemy combatant. But breaking the Agni Kai in order to attack a non-participant…hmm. People won’t like that at all. The fire challenge is pretty much a sacred ritual with us….” He nodded slowly. “Yes, that might be something I could use. What do you think, Uncle?”

Iroh stroked his beard. “I think any excuse you can find to keep your sister from becoming a problem again is a good one. I am very glad to hear you are committed to trying to be a fair and just ruler, but it will come to nothing if Azula seizes power.”

“I know. I’ll do everything I can to prevent that – as long as it doesn’t make me into the kind of ruler Azula herself would be in the process.”

The door to Azula’s cell clicked open again, and the discussion stopped as everyone looked to see who would come out. It was Shyu, a distressed expression on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Zuko asked. “Did Azula do something? Is Mother all right?”

“Oh, yes, Lady Ursa is fine, but wishes to remain with her daughter for a while longer,” Shyu said. “Azula has made a…difficult…request of the Fire Lord, however.”

“Does she get to do that?” Sokka said.

“She can request all she wants,” Zuko said. “That doesn’t mean I’ll say yes. What is it, Shyu?”

The Fire Sage grimaced. “I wouldn’t even ask, except the girl says Lady Ursa promised her this.” He took a deep breath. “Azula officially requests that she be allowed to meet with her – er, your – father, Fire Lord Zuko. She wants to talk to Ozai. In private.”

To Be Continued

Fic: Exile: Chapter 12: The Wasteland

Chapter 12: The Wasteland

Azula kept walking. She didn’t know where she was going, or what she was going away from, but staying still for too long always gave her a bad feeling, like the gray all around was creeping into her and leaching her of color and warmth. It was better when she was moving, even though the flat, featureless, dead landscape never changed in any way, so for all she knew she was walking in small circles. Still, she walked, clinging close to the small center of internal fire she was able to hold against the creeping chill that had settled into her limbs. The cold in her muscles and bones had been getting deeper lately, more pervasive, harder to shake off. Something had happened to her bending, so she couldn’t even warm herself. So she walked. And walked. And the ghosts walked with her.

Azula.

Just a ghost mutter.

Then a little louder: Azula!

She paused, wondering which ghost was getting full of itself.

The mother-ghost, of course. It was drifting closer with something that looked like purpose.

Strange.

Azula, it said.

“Shut up and go away. You don’t want me and I don’t want you. I’ve told you that a thousand times, and you never listen.”

But I do want you. Come to me, please, my daughter. My darling.

Azula was surprised by the sudden stirring of anger in her guts. It had been a long time since she had had the energy for real emotion in this place. “Liar. You never did. Father told me. You would have taken Zuko and gone and left me behind. You wanted to. Zuko was always your darling. Never me. He needed you and I didn’t, so you hated me. Go away.”

Azula, if you do not come to me, you will be lost forever. You will die, do you understand? You are dying even now, slowly. You can feel it, I know you can. You must come to me. Come back to me. My love.

Azula shuddered, suddenly confused and off-balance, a feeling she loathed. “I…you’re lying. This is …some kind of Avatar magic, trapping me here. Father will find him and stop him, and then we’ll make him pay. Him and my traitor brother.”

Your father can’t help you, my dear. He lies imprisoned, defeated and powerless. And no one has trapped you here but yourself.

“Liar! Father would die rather than be taken!”

He tried very hard to make that happen, yes. The Avatar chose to spare him. And you.

She clamped her hands over her ears. “Liar! Shut up!”

The voice – it was now quite clearly a voice, not a ghost-whisper -- did not weaken in the slightest. If anything, it grew louder. “Azula. If you come out, you can see him. I know he would like to see you. I am sure he is worried about you.”

That reached her. Yes, Father. She had forgotten. She had a reason to escape from this dead, dry, cold place. She had to find Father, even though he, too, had left her behind at the end. Father always knew what to do, was always certain, was always right. Father. She looked at the father-ghost, but it stayed at a distance, pale and indifferent. “Father?” she asked it, but it made no response. “Won’t you come for me? Please? I –“ They were the words she had never said out loud, and she knew Father wouldn’t be pleased to hear them, but they tore themselves out of her and she was unable to stop them. “Please, Father. Please help me. I need you.”

There was no response from the father-ghost. It did not turn to look at her.

“I believe he would help you if he could, but his bond to the spirit world is all but severed now. He has only enough remaining to allow him to live. He could never reach this place the way I have.”

“Stop lying! Father will come for me! He’ll come back for me!” She turned and ran away from the tormenting mother-ghost. It made no difference – the ghost, no longer quite so transparent, hovered by her side effortlessly until, exhausted far too soon, she stumbled and fell to her knees. She felt the sobs rising as they had before, the water that had torn her apart far more effectively than anything that little waterbender peasant witch could summon up. She pushed them back frantically, desperately seeking the steely control that had always served her so well in the past. Why was she so weak now? What had they done to her? She would wreak fiery vengeance – when she finally escaped this place. When Father came. She had to believe in him. He was the only one who had never, ever, left her or let her down.

“He left you behind at the end finally, Azula. He, like you, made his own lonely world by cutting himself off from everyone who ever cared for him – from me, from his brother, from his son, from everything and everyone – and it cost him everything but his life, and he retains that only because the Avatar showed mercy. You are still young. You have another choice. You can walk a different path.”

“If any of that were true, it would be no mercy at all for Father.”

“That is hard to say. It may be true, but Aang’s intentions were good. Ozai is not so very old himself; he has many years to rethink his choices, if he chooses to, though I doubt he will. He was not always a power-maddened monster. Once he was a man I found it easy enough to love, and to bear two beautiful and gifted children with. Once, he loved me, and them. Then he left all of us behind in his search for power, for control. All of us, Azula. He left you behind as well. But I will always come for you, my love, until my last breath leaves my body, and after if I can. I never meant to leave the two of you with him, but I did not fully understand what was happening until it was too late. It may be I never will truly understand why he became what he did, but that does not matter. What matters is your life, my little one. Please, come to me, so I can help you leave this terrible place.”

“You…you’re lying. Lying!” The sobs welled up again, the water that was putting out her fire, that was chilling her to the core and robbing her of…yes, of life. She could sense that. That much was true. She was dying in here. When the last of her fire died, she would die with it, for what was she if not a child of pure fire?

“Fire yes, but flesh as well. You are not the fire, Azula. It does not rule you. You rule it. You must. You know the death that awaits you if you let the fire take control and consume you, as it nearly did during the Comet’s pass, which you were not prepared to deal with mentally or spiritually. But the Comet it gone now. It is safe. You must come back, my dear. Please, take my hand.”

“You…you…you can’t lead me anywhere. You’re only a ghost.”

“Not any longer. I am here. Look at me.”

Azula jerked her head up, and Ursa was there. The warm colors of her skin and clothes blazing against the dead gray background of the wasteland. She gave off a soft golden glow that fell across Azula’s tear-streaked face, warming the dying fire inside with the almost-forgotten light of the beloved sun. Ursa reached for her, and Azula scrambled backward desperately, avoiding the touch of those suddenly too-solid hands.

Ursa lowered her arms and did not move closer, but simply stood there watching, sorrow on her features. For as long as she could remember, Azula had thought of herself as her father’s daughter, but there was no denying that this regal woman with her quiet beauty was also a part of her. The weak part, the part she had tried to strip from her soul for so many years.

“Won’t you come with me? Back to life? The choice is completely yours, my darling, but I will do everything I can to bring you back, because I cannot stand the thought of you dying here, alone, in this gray cold. There is still color and warmth out there waiting for you.”

“And what else waits for me?” Azula said bitterly. “If I believe what you say, Father is defeated. My dear brother challenged me to an Agni Kai and lost, but the Avatar’s water witch brought me down in chains. Chains! And then…I…I don’t know what happened then, but I ended up here, where they put me somehow. Don’t think I’ll forget it when I escape. My brother, the Avatar and his water peasant, Mai, Ty Lee – I won’t forget any of them.”

“I would hope not,” Ursa said. “One should never forget one’s friends and family, or the friends of family. Is that what returning to life would mean to you? Only a chance to take vengeance for past betrayals?”

“What else? That, and to rescue Father and repair whatever damage they’ve done to him. He is the true Fire Lord, and no one else!”

Ursa shook her head. “He was never that, my dear. His crown was stolen from both your grandfather and your uncle through murder and the cruelest of treacheries. I do not know if you will believe this of your father, but it is true.”

“He only did that to bring an end to the war!” Azula felt herself getting angrier. No one but she had ever really understood her father. “The way they were fighting it, it would have gone on for another hundred years! Father made more progress in six years than grandfather and Uncle Iroh made in decades!”

Ursa shuddered. “If by progress you mean the killing and enslavement of large numbers of innocent civilians, and finally their wholesale slaughter, then yes, that was….progress.” She let the word fall from her mouth as if it were poisoned. “I suppose that is one way to win, if you consider total destruction a victory. In some battles that may be the only way, but if you remember your history, Sozin began this war as a way to gain new territory for our colonies, a policy that Azulon expanded on and made successful. It made the Fire Nation wealthy and powerful beyond any dream of avarice Sozin might have had. Your father proposed to destroy all that, merely so he could claim to have finally won. He would have won nothing but a charred wasteland, but yes, he would have won.”

“That’s not true! Father didn’t –“ Azula broke off, remembering the massed fleets of war airships, the conscripted firebenders in their long ranks. So much power, she had marveled. Nothing could stand before it. And indeed, if not for the Avatar, nothing would have.

Nothing.

The entire Earth Kingdom, the glorious city of Ba Sing Se she had won in her Father’s name without taking a single life – her beautiful, elegant, tactically perfect victory, the start of the great legend she intended to make of her life – all gone. Swept away in the inferno. The cleansing fire, her father had said, needed to burn away the old so the new could arise. But Ba Sing Se was the work of centuries, and it would take centuries again to rebuild it. She would be long gone before that happened, and her priceless, precious victory would be dust and forgotten. As would her part in the taking of Omashu and the capture of King Bumi, most powerful of earthbenders. She remembered that mad old man, who was somehow also not quite mad, how he had leered at her when she had him imprisoned in cold steel – What a thinker! If you were a little older I’d marry you, girlie! She had laughed at him. But secretly, his respect had been the crowning glory of the conquest of Omashu for her.

Her own legend would have been left as ashes in the wake of her father’s dream of destruction.

A spasm wracked her body. She had known this, on some level. She had known what he meant to do, that he would throw away all her magnificent victories – won when she was barely out of childhood! – in order to glorify his own vision. She had not wanted to face it. Father was right, always right. Zuko was wrong to help the Avatar. Mai was wrong to help Zuko. Ty Lee was wrong to help Mai. Wasn’t that the chain that had hurt her far more than any iron bands? The chain of betrayal?

Azula looked up at Ursa, meeting her eyes for the first time. “What happened to Ba Sing Se?”

She had succeeded in throwing her mother off-balance, and that pleased her greatly. But after a moment, Ursa replied, “Your uncle and his friends liberated the city. King Kuei rules there again.”

“How bad was the damage from the fighting?”

Ursa looked worried, as if this line of questioning made no sense to her. Which it probably did not. Again, Azula felt that small surge of satisfaction. “There was very little. Your uncle was careful.”

“And Omashu?”

“Omashu stands also, and was freed itself on the day of the Eclipse by King Bumi.”

Azula found a small smile creeping over her face for the first time since….she couldn’t remember. But it was there. “I might have known that old bastard would find the right time.”

Her mother frowned a little. “Why do you care about the Earth Kingdom cities?”

“Because they’re mine,” Azula told her. “Or at least they were. I took them, you understand? And I didn’t have to kill anyone to do it. And I didn’t destroy them. They still exist, and so my victories still exist.”

Ursa frowned more. “But both cities are free again now.”

Azula shook her head. “You mean they’ve simply gone back to being ruled by the Earth Kingdom royalty instead of me. That’s all right, though. They’ll never forget that I conquered them. They’ll never forget me, now. And maybe someday…maybe they’ll be mine again. Those cities, or others.” She studied her mother’s worried face, then deliberately held out a hand. “Yes, Mother. I think I am ready to go back.”

To Be Continued

Fic: Exile: Chapter 11: The Question

Chapter 11: The Question

Aang swooped through the streets, ducking and weaving past houses and other obstacles in the dimness. The house which concealed Azula’s place of confinement wasn’t far away, fortunately. He saw a light shining through a window flung open to catch the cool air on a warm summer night. Rather than stop to open the door, he shifted his weight, flipped the glider neatly up onto its side, and skimmed through the window with inches to spare.

He found himself in the kitchen.

It was empty.

A steel door with a firelock on it stood open, the gaping maw leading down into the depths of the Dragonbone Catacombs that lay everywhere under Crater City. Miles of secret tunnels appeared to be required for cities of a certain size, Aang reflected. Ba Sing Se had its crystal caves, Omashu its extensive sewers, and he was sure that somewhere underneath the frozen palaces of the North lay vast, unexplored caverns of ice and stone.

He landed, folding his glider with a snap. In the sudden absence of rushing wind, he heard faint voices rising from below. Aang dove for the open passage, hoping he was in time to avoid some sort of disaster. He didn’t know exactly what he was afraid of, but there was no way that the combination of Azula and a confused and terrified waterbender with a rare and frightening power could possibly be good.

Azula’s cell was well below ground. As Aang descended he began to catch bits of conversation floating up. He heard Mikka, distraught, pleading with someone. Azula? No, there was someone else down there. A man with a soft voice, one that Aang knew and was overwhelmingly grateful to hear. Shyu was no stranger to dealing with panicked children, and could, Aang hoped, prevent Mikka doing something potentially catastrophic.

He rounded the last corner in the descending stairwell and saw the two of them standing by the door to Azula’s cell. Aang breathed a sigh of relief to see that the fireproof dragonbone door was still firmly closed and locked, and that Mikka appeared to be in one piece. Whatever the dubious ethics of Roku’s actions with the boy, he had managed to keep Mikka from breaking his neck on his reckless rooftop run.

“…might be enough,” Mikka was saying. “That’s all it took, last time. I don’t know why.”

“Well, I’m willing to try,” Shyu said in return. “Though I don’t think you should get your hopes up. And I’d like to be the one to do it – if it does awaken her, she’s likely to be dangerous.” The sage held a hand out to the boy. Aang saw Roku’s crown in Mikka hands as he slowly held it out for Shyu to take.

Aang made a quick set of gestures. A sudden sharp gust of wind smacked into the crown. Mikka lost his grip on it and cried out. A moment later the ornament rolled to a stop against Aang’s feet, and he leaned over to scoop it up. Yes, he could now sense that the crown had a very definite feel of Roku attached to it.

Aang looked up, straight into Mikka’s huge blue eyes. Aang had to spend a moment admiring the boy’s reflexes as Mikka immediately spun on one heel and started to sprint away down the darkened hall, heading deeper into the catacombs. Aang reached for the earthroot, found it, dug down with his bending, and snapped a hand upward. A solid wall of rock shot from the floor of the hall straight up to the ceiling. Mikka didn’t see it quite soon enough to stop. He slammed into it with an audible “Oof!”, and stood there for a moment, stunned, before turning unsteadily to face Aang. He’d managed to give himself a bloody nose. The scarlet dribbles were the only color his face had – he was white as snow, but he stood up straight to take whatever punishment was coming to him, now that he no longer had any hope of escaping it.

Shyu looked back and forth between the two of them, clearly at a loss. “Avatar…is there a problem here?”

“Yes, but not the one Mikka thinks. So can you calm him down? Because I think he thinks I’m going to kill him or something ridiculous like that.”

Mikka snuck a look at him, his eyes asking You mean you’re not?

Shyu looked at Mikka, who just looked miserable. “And why would he think that?”

“Because it’s been a really, really long day, and a whole lot has happened, and some people aren’t thinking too clearly. Mikka – Zuko’s not dead. He’s hurt, but it’s nothing Katara can’t take care of with a little time. And he’s not mad about it – well, not too mad anyway – because he knows he needs to keep working on his temper and he shouldn’t have shouted at you like that, okay? As for this – “ Aang held up the crown. “ – you didn’t realize it, but you weren’t acting entirely on your own when you grabbed it, okay? So just…relax, all right? You’re in hardly any trouble at all.”

Shyu had jerked when Aang had mentioned Zuko possibly being dead. “What happened to the Fire Lord?”

“An accident. He’ll be fine, although probably grumpy for a little while.”

Mikka seemed to be thinking things over. “I…I don’t know what I did to him. He screamed….” The boy shuddered, and Aang was glad to see that he was as horrified by what had happened as everyone else who knew about it. “And then he fell,” Mikka finished. “He’d just been telling me it was a fall no one could survive…”

“You probably wouldn’t have, but Zuko’s always flinging himself into open air like that. You wouldn’t believe some of the leaps he’s pulled off. I saw a few of them and I still don’t believe it. Really, only airbenders should be trying that kind of thing. And we’re smart enough to use gliders.”

Mikka was looking slightly less panicky, if not exactly calm. “And…what…what about what I did to him? I don’t even know how I did that. He screamed….”

“Yeah. You pretty much wrecked his arm with a single touch. I’d have yelled too.”

Mikka recoiled. “I swear I didn’t mean it!” He shoved his hands behind his back, perhaps so he wouldn’t have to look at them. “I never did anything like that before! I didn’t know I could!” Tears trembled at the edges of his lashes, but didn’t fall just yet. “I – I’m a healer, or at least I was – I don’t even know what I am any more!”

“You’re a waterbender with an unusual gift for healing that you’re not really in control of,” Aang said. “But you can work on that, okay? You haven’t had any training at all, right? Bending isn’t something you can just handle by instinct.” Aang winced, remembering his first try at firebending. “Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. Anyway, I have it from an excellent source that what you did to Zuko isn’t unheard of, and with the right training can be very useful for a healer to know. Just don’t use it until you’ve gotten thoroughly trained and your Sifu gives you the okay, got it?”

“I don’t want a Sifu. I don’t ever want to do it again.” His hands were still hidden behind his back. “I don’t ever want to bend again.”

“You probably don’t have a choice in the matter. I’ve never known a bender who could just stop bending. You really only have two options – get properly trained so that you can trust yourself never to use your abilities to harm anyone ever again, or stay untrained until the next time you get upset enough that you strike without thinking.” Aang had been practicing looking solemn, and he put it to good use here. “And I don’t really see that we could let you run around loose like that.”

Mikka jerked. “You’d – lock me up? …I…I guess that’s what I deserve. Next time I really could kill someone.” He sank to the floor and buried his head in his arms.

Aang smacked his forehead in exasperation. He wondered if he’d ever managed to irritate Katara, Sokka, or Toph this much. He was afraid he had. (With Zuko there was no question.) “Mikka, I know it’s been a really long and hard day for you – for all of us – so look, how about you just don’t decide anything until after you’ve had a good meal and a good night’s sleep? And a long talk with Katara. She’s my waterbending Sifu, and she’s really nice, and a really good teacher. Or if she can’t do it for some reason, she’ll help find someone who can, I’m sure of it. Just don’t go swearing off waterbending for life because you had a bad scare tonight, okay? I think you’ve got a real talent for healing, and I’d hate to see it wasted. There’s never enough healers to deal with all the damage the war did. We need every one we can get.”

Mikka didn’t lift his head. “I don’t know if I can make myself heal again.” His voice was muffled. “What if something goes wrong?”

“Stop thinking about that for the time being, okay? And stop running away. There are several people who are very worried about you right now, you know.”

“I know. I messed that up too.”

“Okay, I forgot to add – stop feeling sorry for yourself. I know you’re confused and scared, but you really don’t have anything to worry about. Except that bending, and we’ll deal with that. There’s no way Lady Ursa and Lu Ten are going to abandon you, so just settle down.”

Shyu made a wordless exclamation. Aang shot a look at the Fire Sage – he’d completely forgotten about Shyu’s presence while trying to talk some sense into Mikka.

“Ahem. Er. Pardon me, Avatar.” Shyu seemed torn between a desire not to get in the way, and a furious curiosity. The curiosity was winning. “Did I hear you correctly? Did you say Lady Ursa?”

“Oh. Right. No one knows about that yet. I forgot. Yeah, Zuko and I went out today and found her, and also Iroh’s son Lu Ten, who was imprisoned with her. That’s where we picked up Mikka too.” Shyu stared at him, his mouth hanging open in a very undignified way. “Keep it under your hat for now, though, okay?” Aang continued. “I think Zuko wants to give everyone some time to settle in before he makes a formal announcement.” He waved at Mikka. “As you can see, things aren’t very well under control right now.”

“I understand. But I would very much like to have some time to speak with her when she is able, to discuss restoring the Fire Sage histories and scrolls to their correct state after Azulon’s redactions. Ursa would have been a Fire Sage herself if she had not agreed to marry Ozai. Her father was one of the greatest Fire Sages ever. He was Avatar Roku’s youngest son.”

“Youngest? He had others?” Aang made a mental note to have a stern talk with himself. Roku was being very quiet at the moment.

“Oh yes. Three boys, two girls.”

“Oh. Wow. That’s….a lot of kids. And grandkids. And great-grandkids….”

“Indeed. In addition to being the Avatar, he was of high Fire Nation nobility. Many of our most talented firebending families bear a trace of Roku’s blood somewhere, or are related to him through cadet lines. I can show you the family trees – “

“Uh – not right now, thanks. Some time later.” Aang thought he could deal with being related, spiritually, to Zuko and Ursa. Possibly even to Azula. He wasn’t ready to be related to a huge chunk of the Fire Nation nobility.

Azula…

Roku’s crown was quite warm in his hand – not hot enough to burn, but just barely. Roku wanted it given to Azula, to the crazy girl who had killed Aang, almost killed Zuko, and tried to kill Katara. And then lost her mind.

It would all be so much easier if she simply drifted away in whatever half-life she was living now. Easier not to have to deal with the problem she represented. Easier not to ever have to face those mocking, malicious, clever golden eyes ever again – so much like Zuko’s, and yet so different.

What was Roku thinking, to risk bringing her back? Didn’t they have enough trouble and danger as it was? Weren’t there already too many threats to the infant peace he and Zuko were desperately trying to shield so it could grow and thrive?

Shyu had shrugged off his outermost robe and was settling it over Mikka’s shoulders and checking on the boy’s bloody nose, which had mostly stopped dripping. He said nothing to interrupt Aang’s reverie, but watched him, and the crown, closely.

Could he leave Azula as she was? Let her just waste away until her body stopped stubbornly clinging to a life her mind appeared to have abandoned? What would the monks have said?

They’d have said to try to heal her, no question about it. Air Nomad monks might, regretfully, kill in self-defense or defense of others, but they did not believe in punishing wrongdoing by death, because it gave the offender no opportunity to grow in wisdom and see the error of their ways.

But was he bound to the wisdom of the past? Even Yangchen had thought he needed to kill Ozai, but Aang had rejected that, rejected all of them, and with mysterious help had forged a new path for himself. One that might yet prove to be a mistake, he knew, but a path that was his own to walk. Should he walk his own path here as well? Should he let nature take its course and let Azula go?

He couldn’t.

He had to try and bring her back. If he couldn’t condemn Ozai to death, who so richly deserved it, he could not condemn this girl who was only a few years older than himself, who was in some mysterious way his own great-granddaughter, who was the little sister of his friend, the young man on whose back so much was riding.

Aang sighed deeply and looked up. “Mikka, if you’re doing better, I need Shyu to run an errand for me.”

“I’m okay,” Mikka muttered, sounding a little embarrassed. Well, it was an improvement on self-pity, at least.

“Glad to hear it. Shyu – would you please go and find the Fire Lord and Lady Ursa for me? We need to talk.”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

In the end, Shyu had been unable to bring Zuko and Ursa without bringing the whole crowd. Sokka had even managed to recover Momo from wherever he had put the lemur. Rather than hold the discussion in the catacombs or the small kitchen, they had settled into one of the front rooms of the little house. They all fit, though just barely, and there was hardly room left over to breathe. Ty Lee offered to help by sitting on Lu Ten’s lap, an offer which he refused, although with a genuinely amused smile that gave Ty Lee a fit of giggles. The only ones who got to snuggle were Mikka, who was curled up against Ursa, still wrapped in Shyu’s red robe, and Mai, who sat next to Zuko with her head on his good shoulder. Suki and Sokka’s attempts to snuggle were being resolutely foiled by Momo, despite both her and Sokka struggling to get him under control.

Iroh had insisted that no talking be done until he had made tea. Zuko would normally have taken the job of serving it, but his bad arm was bound up in a sling, so Lu Ten got the honor. Once everyone was seated, Aang did his best to summarize the situation for them. Then he asked for their opinions, and the room erupted in shouts and loud talk immediately. After about two seconds Aang had to stick his fingers in his ears. He wondered what the neighbors were thinking right now.

“Everybody SHUT UP!” he howled, using a subtle bit of airbending to magnify his voice. Much of the commotion died away, though a few people insisted on continuing to mutter. Aang glared them into silence.

“All right,” he said, when all was quiet. “That’s the situation. It’s possible we might be able to bring Azula out of whatever state she’s in. Lady Ursa was in something similar and she recovered with help from Mikka and Roku, acting through this crown.” He had identified the crown as Roku’s, but had left out the part about the family connections. That could wait until later. Much later. “I know it’s dangerous, but I feel we have a duty to try. We can’t just let her waste away and die down there if we can do something about it.”

“Yes, we can,” said Suki. “I have no problem with that at all.”

“Seconded,” said Sokka. “And I’m not just saying that because Suki will hurt me if I don’t.”

“It’s a kinder end than she had in mind for you and Zuko and me, Aang,” said Katara, frowning fiercely. After the way Katara had greeted Zuko at the Western Air Temple, Aang had known she would not be inclined to forget or forgive Azula’s actions.

“It’s pretty awful to just let her fade away like that, though,” Toph said. “I mean, I think we can manage to handle her, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” said Mai, a faint trace of sorrow in her voice. “We’ve been friends nearly all our lives and I think she was still willing to kill me after I helped Zuko escape from the Boiling Rock.”

“I want to help her,” Ty Lee said. “She wasn’t herself then, Mai. You know she wasn’t.”

“If she wasn’t herself, then who was she?” Mai’s voice quavered with uncertainty, something Aang had never heard before. Mai could generally be counted on to maintain her composure under all but the most stressful situations.

“I can’t believe you’re talking like you’re going to leave Zuli like that,” Lu Ten said, outrage just barely contained. “She’s neither alive nor dead. Either help her, or if you’re so eaten up by vengeance you can’t do that, kill her cleanly and quickly.” He scowled furiously around the room.

“Azula is not your sparkling little cousin Zuli any more, my son,” Iroh said. “She lost her moral bearings years ago. There is some real question as to whether or not she can ever get them back. I am not sure it would be so merciful to bring her back to this world only to be forced to execute her for the safety of the world and the maintenance of the fragile new peace.”

“Whatever’s happened to her is Ozai’s fault, not her own,” Lu Ten countered. “And he is still alive while she lies slowly dying. What’s fair about that?”

Aang looked at Zuko, who had brooded silently throughout most of the yelling. “Zuko? What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Zuko sighed. “I think I wish this were someone else’s problem. But it’s not. I don’t feel good about leaving her like this – Lu Ten’s right, she used to be different, back before Father got into her head and twisted her up. I mean, I don’t really have to remind any of you – “ He waved his good hand at Sokka, Suki, Katara, Toph, and Iroh – “just how good Ozai is at making you see things his way. You saw how bad I was, and that was just a little more than six months ago. And Azula’s only fourteen. If she should want to change, she has plenty of time. Believe me, I never would have gone against Ozai if he hadn’t made the mistake of burning and banishing me. She’s only a little older right now than I was when that happened, and it still took me three years – and a lot of help – to learn to think for myself.

“But, on the other hand – if she returns fully to her senses, the amount of destruction and the loss of life she could cause …is worth considering.” Zuko grimaced. “She would have very little trouble finding people to conspire with, to either free Ozai and restore him somehow, perhaps as just a figurehead, or to take back the Fire Throne on her own. She’s always been a stronger firebender than me – I know I’ve improved a lot, but will it be enough if she challenges me to an Agni Kai? Have her own abilities been reduced by her breakdown?”

“Can she even legally challenge you?” Aang said, alarmed. “I thought you took care of that.”

Zuko shrugged, his face grim. “It has as much legitimacy as the nobility decides it does, Aang. I can disinherit her, but not everyone agrees that I have that right. The biggest thing on my side right now is how badly Azula ruled during her brief time as Fire Lord – the nobles and the military don’t seem eager to have her back there. Some of them are not much more thrilled about me, but at least I haven’t gone on any banishment sprees. Not yet, at least. Some of them clearly expect me to do something like that, or worse. If Azula goes back to being her old self, as she was before she lost it, she’ll be formidable. You saw how she handled the Dai Lee – the Fire Nation nobility aren’t much harder to impress. She could put her breakdown off as a spate of comet-induced madness, or claim it was a side effect of an attempted poisoning….or many other things I’m sure she could think of that I can’t.

“So…what I think it comes down to is, we should try to help her. But remember that the consequences will likely be bad, and it will be our responsibility.” He sighed again. “Call me a coward, but I’m not at all eager to be put in a position where I may have to order my little sister executed.”

Katara spoke up. “Aang….could you deal with her like you did with Ozai? You know – take away her firebending?”

Aang shook his head. “I could only do that to Ozai because he was threatening the balance of the world. And I nearly failed – and you don’t want to know what would have happened if I had. Azula may be strong enough to win that battle of wills. But regardless, at the moment she’s no threat to the balance, so I can’t spiritbend her. If she becomes a threat, then I’ll have to try – but before she gets that bad, there might be a lot of destruction and loss of life.”

“That’s enough.” The voice was quiet, but carrying. Everyone else fell silent. Aang looked curiously at Ursa. She looked back at him steadily, but there was white fire in her eyes. “Under no circumstances will my daughter be left to wither away.”

There was a sudden uncomfortable shifting in the room. Nearly everyone stole a glance at Zuko. Would the decision ultimately be his and Aang’s, as it should be? Or would Ursa attempt to take authority from her son?

Zuko didn’t react, other than to look quietly at Ursa. “Mother,” he said gently. “What happened to Azula is not your fault.”

“Yes, it is. This would not have happened if I hadn’t left her in her father’s hands since she was eight years old, Zuko. Just as I would never have let Ozai touch you, had I been here. Or had I been smarter or faster, all those years ago, and managed to take you two with me.” Zuko opened his mouth to say something, but Ursa raised a hand to stop him. “No. Don’t tell me I wasn’t strong enough, fast enough, or smart enough to stop him. I was all those things, Zuko. I should have found a way. I failed. So now I must make up for that, no matter what it may cost me.” She held her hand out to Aang. He took a quick look at Zuko, who nodded. Aang placed the crown in Ursa’s outstretched hand.

“I promise you this – as my son and my Lord, Zuko, and you as the Avatar, Aang – if my daughter endangers anyone again, she will go into exile as I did.

“And I will go with her.”

To Be Continued

Chapter 10: The Guiding Hand

Azula didn’t like the ghosts.

She didn’t like the way they circled around her, always present but never more than vague gauzy shapes. Or the way they muttered and pleaded with her in words she could never quite understand.

Sometimes she thought she knew the ghosts. Sometimes they had names: Mai, Ty Lee. Sometimes they had titles: Grandfather. Father. Uncle. Brother. Mother. And Cousin, although that one made no sense, of course. But what did, in this place?

The Mother-ghost was the most annoying. Nearly all the time Azula had been here (and how long was that? And where?) the Mother-ghost had followed her close, calling, begging, nagging. Azula had ordered it to go away, had screamed and shouted, and even – loathe though she was to admit it – begged it to leave. After a very long time, it had mostly gone away, although she still saw its faint shimmering outline among the others on occasion. At least it had finally stopped calling to her so loudly.

As much as she disliked the ghosts, though, she didn’t want them to vanish completely. They were her only company in this place of exile.

_____________________________________________________________________

“Zuko, if you don’t sit still I’m going to make Ty Lee paralyze your legs,” Katara said. She leveled a glare at him. “If she and Aang hadn’t been nearby you could have been killed.”

Defeated, at least temporarily, Zuko stopped trying to stand up. He wasn’t entirely sure he could manage it, anyway. “Katara, I know how to take a fall,” he protested.

Katara recalled certain insane leaps and tumbles Zuko had somehow pulled off in the past, and grudgingly nodded agreement. “Well, yeah, okay. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re hurt, so sit still and let me work.” She pulled water from her drinking flask and got busy tending to Zuko’s injured arm. After a moment, she frowned. “What exactly did this kid do to you again? I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Don’t ask me, I’m not a waterbender. He just slapped my hand and my whole arm felt like it exploded.” Zuko winced, remembering the searing shock flashing up to his shoulder, so powerful and unexpected it had made him lose his balance and tumble off the roof. The reflexes of long practice had cut in and he had managed to snag a window ledge with his good arm as he fell, although it had nearly jerked that arm out of its socket. His precarious grip had held only a few seconds, but it was long enough for Ty Lee to reach him. The acrobat had locked her legs around a stovepipe on the roof, then clamped her hands around his wrist, holding him in place with her wiry strength until Aang arrived and lowered them both safely to the ground.

Aang had taken one look at Zuko’s discolored and swelling arm and had gone flying away to fetch Katara from the Palace. He had avoided mentioning that Zuko was injured until he had gotten her away from the others, not wanted to start a general stampede of concerned relatives and friends.

“The chi flow here is all – well, turbulent, in your whole arm. Like white water rapids on a river. Churned up.” Katara sounded caught between horror and fascination. “I can get it sorted out with a little time, but it’s going to take a while to repair all the damage.” She shook her head. “I hope Aang finds that kid soon. He’s dangerous. I think if you didn’t have a waterbender around to tend to this, you might have lost the arm – that’s how badly he mangled your chi paths.”

Ty Lee leaned over Zuko to peer at his injury. “So it’s sort of like my Dim Mak, but the paths are destroyed, not just blocked?”

“Not really destroyed, or I wouldn’t be able to fix it. Just so badly tangled up that the arm can’t function – blocked blood vessels, pinched nerves, torn muscles, all at once.”

Zuko grimaced at this description. “For what its worth, I don’t think he did it entirely intentionally. It seemed to be more instinctive. And he looked as shocked as I felt.” He sighed as Katara’s hands began to soothe away the crippling pain in his bad arm. “I think he’s almost entirely self-taught in his waterbending. He may have seen some scrolls, or tried to do it from descriptions my mother or Lu Ten gave him. He has no idea how to waterbend properly – can’t even manage a minor water whip stance.”

“And yet you say he can heal – and he can obviously harm, as well,” Katara said. “In fact, probably the best way to describe what he did here would be ‘reverse healing.’ That’s an amazing level of talent for someone who has no real idea what he’s doing. We’d better catch him and ship him off to the Northern Water Tribe for properly training by the healing masters before he kills someone.”

“We can’t do that,” Zuko said. “He doesn’t consider himself Water Tribe at all.”

“That doesn’t matter. Chief Arnook will be more than happy to take him in,” she said, reassuringly. “He’s a waterbender, so he’s one of us. And his name is Water Tribe, not Fire Nation, anyway.”

“I know that, Katara. That’s not what I meant. I meant Mikka doesn’t seem to want anything to do with the Water Tribe. He was raised Fire Nation, and thinks of himself as Fire Nation, despite him and his mother being badly treated in their home village, wherever that was. He considers my mother and cousin as his only family. If you tried to send him away to the North, he’ll run away – and maybe maim or kill someone, or several someones, in the process.” He gave her a sidelong look. “What he needs is a waterbending master who’s right here in the Fire Nation.”

Katara jerked her hands away, and the stabbing pain in his arm returned so suddenly Zuko gasped. “Zuko, I have no idea what to do with a student who can do – what this boy did to you. This is as bad as bloodbending. Maybe worse, in some ways.”

“Is it really that different than impaling someone with ice spikes? They’re both ways to hurt someone badly with waterbending. I mean, I know you don’t fight like that, but I’m sure plenty of waterbenders don’t hold back.”

“Then they’re the kind of waterbenders he should be learning from,” Katara said. “Not me.” She bent her head over Zuko’s bad arm to resume healing, though he could still see the stubborn set of her jaw line.

Zuko decided to try another tack. “I suppose I’ll just have to ask Aang to teach him, then.”

Katara pulled her hands away again and Zuko ground his teeth to keep from yelping. It might have been wiser to wait until she had finished healing him to bring this subject up, he realized belatedly. Well, no use trying to unburn charred wood.

“Don’t you dare ask Aang,” Katara snapped. “For one thing, he’s already much too busy. For another, he still has a lot to learn about waterbending. He hasn’t even begun to master healing yet, so how could he teach this boy?”

“Well, you and he are the only options I see. I mean, I could request a teacher for him from your father and Chief Arnook and I’m sure they’d try to help, but with half the Northern tribe away rebuilding the South, I don’t think they have waterbenders to spare.”

“No, they don’t. And I think you should stop talking now and let me work if you don’t want this to get worse than it already is.” She frowned fiercely and smacked his injured arm with her hands. This time he did yelp – and then resolutely kept quiet while she worked. There was no real need to say anything more anyway. The seeds had been planted, and he knew Katara would eventually decide that teaching Mikka was all her own idea from the start.

______________________________________________________________________

Aang glided over the rooftops, straining to see in the dim light cast by a street lanterns and nighttime hearthfires. He kept up a small wind-barrier, just in case anyone spotted him and tried to take a potshot, but still felt uneasy. It wasn’t fear of nighttime assassins that did it, though. It was the persistent image of Mikka, fallen to the ground with no one to catch him and no air cushion to set him safely down. Ty Lee had seen Mikka take off over the roofs at a speed which would have been dangerous in the day, and was nearly suicidal in the dark. Aang could imagine how frightened and confused Mikka must be by now, and wished he’d had the sense to keep a better eye on the other boy.

“Aang.” The voice was soft, male, and inside his head.

“Roku? What is it?”

“I will lead you to the boy. He in unharmed – so far.”

Aang found out it was not possible to give himself a puzzled look, although he tried. “What do you know about Mikka, Roku?”

“I’m afraid I’ve been guilty of using him.”

“Huh?”

Aang would swear that Roku’s voice sounded vaguely embarrassed. “I was able to reach him, very slightly, through the crown because of his close relationship with my granddaughter. Just as I used the crown as a conduit to influence Zuko to find Ursa, back in the Archipelago.”

“You can do that?” Aang wasn’t sure if he liked this idea or not.

“Only a very little, and generally only with my family, and with a strong anchor in the real world. I used it to help Zuko make the break with his father, although to the boy’s credit I am virtually certain he would have done it even without my minor influence. He’s strong, that one – stronger than he really knows.”

“So you can reach out through….things?”

“Not everything. Only things of long association and great emotional importance. If you were to use that staff for another fifty years or so it might become able to serve as an anchor for you in our next life. Remember when the monks told you that you were the Avatar?” Roku asked. “Remember the toys? Each one was an anchor for us. Some day you should make an effort to locate them, or finding the next Avatar will become much more difficult.”

“Uh – okay, I’ll make a note. In the meantime, what have you been doing with Mikka?”

“Using him as a courier for my old crown, to get it to where I need it to be. When I saw him deciding to run, I influenced him to take the crown along, and used it to help him choose a safe route over the roofs.” Again Aang heard that note of something close to embarrassment. “I never anticipated his encounter with Zuko or his instinctive use of a rather nasty waterbending technique. You might want to ask Kuruk about that sometime – it’s called fleshbending, and only a very few trusted healing masters know about it these days.”

“Fleshbending?” Aang recoiled physically and mentally.

“It is not entirely an evil art as you may think, although it is much prone to misuse in young or unwise hands. It can be used to encourage the body to grow new limbs, for example, although it is a long and grueling process. And it can be used to directly destroy damaging growths a healer may find. Of course, it can also easily be used to maim or kill someone very quickly. So you should find the boy soon, because he is even more confused and frightened right now than you think. He believes he killed Zuko.”

“Oh, monkeyfeathers! I was afraid of something like that,” Aang sighed. “So where did you send him?”

“To Azula.”

Aang nearly flew his glider into a tree. “What? Why?”

“I sent him to take my crown to my great grand-daughter. So I can do for her as I did for her mother, and guide her mind back to this world – if she will come.”

To Be Continued

[Author’s Note: Sorry about the lateness of this update – two unrelated computer malfunctions plus the starting of a new job kept me really, really tied up the past couple of weeks. I hope to get back on a regular schedule now, although that new job is still keeping me busy! – Sugeatarc ]

Chapter 9: The Flight

Aang bounded over to the washroom door and poked his head inside. “Hey, Mikka, you in here? It’s okay, these people are all friends.” The washroom was silent and empty, but Aang spotted a bundle of something in the corner. It turned out to be Mikka’s new blue and gray top.

Aang popped back out into the main room and held up the shirt, interrupting Lu Ten’s explanation to the gathered crowd of exactly who Mikka was and why they wanted to find him. “He left this.”

“Hey!” Sokka said. “I went to a lot of trouble to get that. What’s this kid’s problem?”

“I bet I can guess,” Zuko said, not sounding happy. Off of a set of puzzled looks, he continued, “Aang and I just came in out of nowhere and snatched the only family he had from him, and gave them to other people – my mother to me, and Lu Ten to Uncle. Who’s left for him?”

“So he was thinking we’d dump him on the street?” Toph said, incredulous.

“No, I told him we wouldn’t do that, of course,” Zuko said. “I think he’s just scared – and maybe more than a little angry – and thinks he’s been forgotten by the people he loves.”

“And having to deal with such a large crowd after so much isolation must be difficult as well,” Iroh added. “In any case, the city is not a very safe place these days, so perhaps we should simply find the boy and ask him what is wrong, rather than stand here and wonder.”

“Well, he certainly didn’t leave by the main door,” Mai pointed out. “We were all in front of it.”

“The servant’s door?” Aang didn’t have any servants – he had repeatedly refused to have any assigned to him – but his suite still had a door onto adjoining quarters for servitors. When checked, though, it was shut tight. And upon opening it, they found a layer of undisturbed dust on the floor.

“He didn’t come this way either,” Sokka said. “So what’s left?”

“No idea,” Lu Ten said, looking worried. “But I have an idea. Let’s see if HanPan can pick up something.”

“Wait, now who’s HanPan?” Ty Lee said. “I’m confused!”

Lu Ten picked up a small woven box from the floor. “Not to worry. This is HanPan. He’s Mikka’s pet.”

Ty Lee looked under the lid, and squeaked in delight. “Ooh, he’s soooo cute! I want one! Look at that little nose!”

“He’s a wind mouse,” Aang said. “We used to have them all over the place in the Air Nomad temples. They drove the cooks crazy trying to keep them out of the grain stores without killing them. HanPan’s the first one I’ve seen since I came out of the ice.”

“I wonder why he left HanPan here?” Ursa said. “I wouldn’t have thought Mikka would do that. Although he had to know we’d take good care of his pet for him, of course. What else did he take besides his old shirt?”

A quick inventory showed that Mikka had taken his old bag from the island, some soap, a fair amount of food from the cart, and one of Aang’s blankets.

And one other thing.

“The crown is gone,” Ursa said thoughtfully. “I had set it right here next to the incense burner. It’s not there.”

There was another frantic search to see if Roku’s crown had been kicked over and rolled under something, but it was nowhere to be found.

“Why would he take that?” Zuko said, trying to remind himself not to get angry at Mikka. The boy couldn’t know how precious the ornament was to Zuko. Which didn’t mean that the loss of it didn’t sting quite a bit.

“Maybe he grabbed it to sell?” Katara said. “If it’s a crown, it must be made of precious metals, right?”

“Yeah, but not just that,” Aang told her. “It wasn’t just a piece of jewelry – it was the Crown Prince headpiece that Sozin gave Roku, when Roku left to train. Back when they were friends.”

Everyone but Zuko, Ursa, Lu Ten, and Iroh stared at Aang.

“It’s what now?” Toph finally said. “Where did that come from?”

“Er….” Aang said, shooting a look at Zuko that asked if he wanted to go into the details about all that right now. Zuko clearly did not. “We’ll tell you about it later. For now, I think we should find Mikka before he gets into trouble, or we lose track of him completely.”

There were loud grumblings from his group about secrets being kept, but no one pushed the issue. Lu Ten picked up HanPan from his cage, made everyone clear a space, and put the little creature down in the center. “Find Mikka,” he said.

“Does he really understand when you talk to him?” Toph asked.

“I’m not actually sure. Mikka has him trained to do a large number of tricks, though, so I know he’s pretty smart for a mouse. It’s worth a try, at least.”

At first Han Pan seemed interested only in the circle of people staring down at him, and then in the food cart. But at Lu Ten’s repeated urgings of “Find Mikka!”, the wind mouse finally scuttled into Appa’s stable and stood there, squeaking. Appa looked down at the tiny invader and made a soft, curious “Hrmf?” sound.

Aang looked up. “Do you suppose he went out the skylight?”

Zuko frowned. “I hope not. The roofs are no place to run around in the dark unless you know exactly what you’re doing. He could easily fall and break his neck.”

“That’s what I keep telling you,” Mai sighed. Zuko flushed slightly, but made no reply.

“HanPan seems to think that’s where he went,” Lu Ten said. “And if that’s what happened, then we really do need to catch him fast before he gets hurt.”

“Let me go after him,” Aang said. “The roofs don’t bother me.”

“I want to come too!” Ty Lee said. “I’m good with kids!” She did a handstand, as if that proved something.

Zuko said nothing, but vaulted into Appa’s saddle and from there up to the eaves, and out into the night. Aang and Ty Lee followed close on his heels.

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Mikka huddled near a crumbling chimney, trying to get his bearings. He was having second thoughts about his hasty flight, and even more about his choice of route. He had been sure that going to the roofs would buy him a lot of extra time as people searched through the palace for him, but he hadn’t reckoned on how steep and slick many of the terra cotta roof tiles would be, nor how high some of the buildings in the capital were. And there was the fact that every now and then there were places where the houses had recently burned, forcing him to either backtrack, or to cross over blackened, rickety beams to make progress. He thought himself a good climber, having done his share of practice on the rocky walls of the island, but the city was presenting very different challenges.

More than once Mikka had thought about returning, but two things kept him going. One was the memory of the way he had been so completely forgotten, utterly left out, when Ursa and Lu Ten’s real family had appeared. The second thing was the heavy golden weight in the bag hung over his shoulder.

Mikka couldn’t even say for sure why he had grabbed the crown. He had been trying to figure out how to pick up HanPan without the wind mouse’s squeaks giving him away, and his eye had fallen on the ornament, standing next to the incense burner, glowing softly with the light from the embers in the dish. Without thinking, his hand had gone out and wrapped around it. It was warm and heavy in his palm, and he pushed it deep into the bottom of his sack to keep it safe. And then he had left, realizing only later that he had left HanPan behind.

He reached a hand into the sack to touch it. It was still there, still slightly warm from the heat of the incense burner. And it was still very much not his, and he was still a thief.

Mikka wondered what the punishment for theft of an item like this was in the Fire Nation capital. Would he be whipped, flayed even? Lose a hand? Lose his head? There were so many awful possibilities. He just couldn’t chance it. He would have to go on. Somewhere beyond the capital he would find a small village that would give him shelter in exchange for his healing skills, he was sure.

He stood up, swinging the sack over his shoulder once again. Time to get moving.

A hand fell on his shoulder. “Not a good idea,” someone said. Mikka gasped and whirled, and came face to face with the young Fire Lord. His expression was hard to read – part relieved, part exasperated, and more than a little angry.

Mikka squeaked like HanPan, and scrambled backward, trying to pull away from Zuko’s grip. Zuko’s expression became alarmed, and he let go of the boy’s shoulder to grab his wrist instead. “Don’t do that, you little idiot! You fall from here and you’re not standing back up again, ever.”

Mikka barely heard him. All he could think of was that Zuko had come to avenge the theft of his crown personally. And he had seen the Fire Lord fight Lu Ten – he was clearly not a person to be trifled with. But his hand had a grip like iron around Mikka’s wrist, and Mikka couldn’t pull free.

Acting without thought, without any real intention but to get away, he pulled water from the air and from his own reserves, enough to leave a shimmering film on his free hand. He curved it around, fingers stiff and straight, and slapped it down on top of Zuko’s white-knuckled hand that held his wrist captive.

Mikka was completely unprepared for Zuko’s cry of sudden agony, or the way his entire arm went limp and boneless.

Or the way he lost his balance, slipped, and vanished over the edge of the roof.

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Some indefinite time later, Mikka finally stopped running. By rights, he should have fallen to his death a dozen times in his panicked flight over the rooftops in the dark, but luck or the intervention of benevolent spirits had kept him in one piece. Now, however, he had gotten away from the city center, and the tall graceful buildings were giving way to squat, lower houses, often surrounded by small scrubby yards. The roof route had gotten him this far, but it would take him no further.

He found a vine-choked waterspout and used it as a ladder to reach street level, panting hard. Once safely down, he collapsed into a heap next to the wall and began to sob wildly, overcome with terror and loss. It was impossible to go back now. He would surely be killed for his crimes. He had lost Ursa and Lu Ten forever due to his recklessness and stupidity. He didn’t know what they would think of him now. Worse, he didn’t know what he thought of himself.

What had he done, back there in that moment of panic on the rooftop? He had just wanted to make Zuko let go. He hadn’t mean to hurt, let alone kill, anyone. He stared at his own hands, wondering whether he could ever trust himself to use them to heal anyone ever again.

“Do you need help, young man?”

Mikka looked up. A man was standing there, dressed in red robes and a cap. As Mikka started to scramble away, the man held up both hands and stepped backward. “Please wait, my friend. I mean you no harm. You look as if someone has been chasing you. Did you get in trouble with street ruffians? I’m sorry to say there are more of them around these days than there used to be.”

Mikka gulped hard. The man wouldn’t want to help him if he knew what Mikka had done – of that, Mikka was sure. But he didn’t know. And Mikka was suddenly, desperately lonely for the sound of a friendly voice.

“No, I…I mean, no, I just…” His voice trailed off. He had no idea what to tell this man.

The red-robed man didn’t seem to require an explanation. He held out a hand and helped Mikka stand up on shaky legs. “My name is Shyu. You don’t have to tell me yours if you don’t want to. I’m just heading out to begin the night shift at work. It’s very quiet there, most nights. Would you like to come with me and have a cup of tea?”

“I…uh…” Mikka wasn’t sure going with this man, kind though he seemed, was a good idea. On the other hand, he was desperately tired and beginning to feel the hurt of dozens of small cuts, scrapes, and bruises gained in his frantic trip away from the Palace. It couldn’t hurt to sit and rest in a safe place and have a cup of tea, could it? And maybe the man would be able to show him the way out of the city, so he could try to find a place safe from the wrath of the Fire Nation. “Yes. I mean – please. I’d like that.”

The man – Shyu – nodded calmly and pointed to an unassuming low building. “It’s in there. Walk slowly, now – I see you’re still unsteady.”

When they reached the building, Shyu unlocked the door with a large iron key. The lock was large and impressive, the first such Mikka had seen since arriving in the city. He hesitated at the threshold, wondering if the man meant to lock him in and then run for the guards. Shyu saw his glance at the lock, and said, “I’m supposed to lock it behind me, but it can stay open for a little while tonight, I think.”

With that reassurance, Mikka followed the man inside. The place was modestly furnished, but no one else appeared to be around. Shyu led him to a small kitchen in the back and set a pot of water on to boil. He offered Mikka a seat, which the boy took, and a plate of rice cakes, which Mikka refused. His stomach was still too unsettled to deal with food yet. Just to be polite, he reached into his sack to get a steam bun to nibble on. His questing hand brushed the crown, and Mikka jerked back with a cry.

The crown was hot to the touch, almost hot enough to burn.

Shyu looked around, alarmed. “It’s nothing,” Mikka hurried to assure him. Shyu looked distinctly skeptical about that, and Mikka rushed to add, “I stuck myself on something when I reached into my sack. I’m not hurt. It just surprised me.”

Shyu didn’t look convinced, and seemed about to say something when, perhaps in answer to Mikka’s cry, a low, haunting moan sounded from somewhere nearby. Mikka jumped and looked around wildly, hunting for the source of the sound. Shyu merely looked resigned, and continued preparing the cups of tea. “Please don’t be frightened,” he said, as Mikka eyed him with deep suspicion. “She can’t harm you.”

“Is – is it a ghost?”

Shyu looked startled. “A what? Oh, no. Very much human. Very ill, and very sad, but human. Although if one were feeling poetic, one might say she is a ghost of her former self, and that would not be wrong.” Shyu measured out tea leaves into the cups.

“What’s wrong with her?” Mikka had every reason to avoid getting involved with these people, and yet his healer’s curiosity wouldn’t be silenced.

“It is hard to say, exactly.” Shyu tested the tea water and found it not yet hot enough. “We do not think it is physical, but rather a disorder of the mind, and, more importantly, the spirit. We are seeking ways to help her, but she is a very recent patient, and the process has just begun. My job is to help investigate the spiritual aspects of her illness, since I am the First Sage.” At Mikka’s blank look, Shyu added, “Leader of the Fire Sages.” Mikka looked no more enlightened, and Shyu frowned. “Don’t you know of the Fire Sages? I assumed you were Fire Nation from your appearance – “

“Oh, yes, I’m Fire Nation,” Mikka said, much too quickly. “I’m just – just from an island a long way away. I’ve heard of the Fire Sages, of course. You’re just, um, not what I expected.” That much at least was true; Ursa had told him of the Fire Sages, their noble purpose, and the corruption of that purpose under Fire Lord Azulon. She had described the elegant, stately Fire Temples with the flames that never went out. She had never said anything about a small house with a very large lock on the door, however.

Shyu looked mildly embarrassed. “Ah, I see. Well, I’ve only been First Sage for a little over ten days now – perhaps I’ll become more impressive once I’ve had the job for a while. I rather doubt it, though. It does not seem to be my lot in life.” He gave Mikka a reassuring smile. “I find you a very interesting person, young man, but I’ll stop prying into your secrets. The tea is ready, if you would like some now.”

Mikka accepted the hot tea gratefully, though a trifle warily. The moaning had been very unsettling, but Shyu himself radiated calm and warmth like the gentle sun on a summer morning. It was hard to suspect him of secretly evil deeds. And the tea was very good.

A second moan sounded, and Mikka frowned as something nagged at him. He took another sip of tea and thought about it carefully, trying to track down the fleeting idea.

Oh yes, there it was.

He had heard that moan, or something very much like it, before. Many times. Coming from his beloved Lady Ursa, as she struggled, somehow caught in the web of her daughter’s madness.

“What?” Shyu said, astonished. “Well, she’s been disinherited for treason, of course, but yes, it is the former Princess Azula. We would appreciate it if you kept that information to yourself, though – there are many people out there who would like to use her in ways that would be very bad for her health. If you let it slip that you know where she is, there are parties out there who wouldn’t hesitate to torture you to get that information.”

“I won’t tell,” Mikka assured him. “But – can I see her?”

Shyu’s voice was doubtful. “I am not certain that would be wise. And why would you wish to?”

Mikka touched his sack. Again, he felt the heat of Roku’s crown under his fingers. “I think I have something that belongs to her.”

To Be Continued

Exile: Chapter 8: The Reunion

Lu Ten had known he would find things changed after so many years. He had tried to prepare himself. But it was still almost too much to take.

Aang had been the first shock. All of Lu Ten’s life, the Avatar had been a myth, a godlike being who had tried to destroy the Fire Nation, only to have his entire people destroyed instead. That was what they were taught in school. His father had said that he doubted the official version was the entire truth, but it hardly mattered – the Avatar was long gone and the Fire Nation was flourishing just fine without him.

To have the Avatar returned, in the shape of a cheerful young boy with a furry hill for a pet, was a lot to deal with. To find out that Aang did not hate the Fire Nation for the genocide of his people, did not even hate the Fire Nation royal family who were directly responsible, was even more difficult to comprehend.

Then there had been Zuko. No longer a happy, thoughtful boy who followed Lu Ten around like a mooselion cub begging for tales of heroic battles in other lands against evil but honorable foes, but a young man who looked like a tired warrior of far too many battles that were not at all heroic, and had the physical and emotional scars to show for it. A young man with tales of a cute and very clever younger sister turned murderous, and a father gone completely insane. A young man who had obviously formed an important bond with Lu Ten’s father, the last of the family to not desert him in one way or another.

How did this strange young man, who had once been the younger brother Lu Ten had never had, truly feel about Lu Ten’s return? On the surface he seemed overjoyed, but Lu Ten had caught a few glances from Zuko that looked thoughtful and not altogether happy.

And what about that father, General Iroh? How had he fared in the seven years since his son had been taken captive? Did he think Lu Ten was dead? Had Ozai been able to use Lu Ten as a crude weapon against Iroh, to force him to support Ozai’s false claim to the throne? From the bits of the story Lu Ten had picked up, it seemed Ozai had indeed broken his father’s spirit somehow – Lu Ten was certain Iroh would not have stood idly by and allowed Ozai to ignite a genocidal war against the rest of the world.

Even now, Lu Ten wondered if the rescue from the island was some kind of dream or fever hallucination. Could it really have been only this morning that he had looked up and seen Appa flying overhead?

At the sound of his father’s voice at the door, Lu Ten froze. Iroh sounded much the same – perhaps a little hoarser, voice a trifle less crisp than his sharp, commanding military leader’s bark. What would he see when that door was opened?

And then the door was open, and Lu Ten saw his father for the first time in seven long years.

He had a brief moment to take in the hair, much more gray now than it had been during the siege of Ba Sing Se, and the eyes, shadowed with years of sadness, before his feet took over and he threw himself into his father’s arms.

Iroh stiffened, perhaps wondering who this strange man hugging him was. Then he spoke, his voice breaking with wonder. “…Lu Ten?”

“Yes, father. It’s me. I’m home. I came back. I missed you so much. How are you? Are you all right?” The words came out in a flood.

Iroh’s arms came up tentatively, as if he feared to hug a ghost and have it vanish away at his touch. “Lu Ten. Ozai said he had killed you in retaliation for my traitorous acts at the North Pole last winter. He sent me a letter…detailing how you died. What he had done to you.” His grasp closed around Lu Ten, tighter and tighter, as if to hold the ghost here in the mortal world. “I thought I would die then myself. I decided to fight him instead, the way I should have from the start.” His hands traveled over Lu Ten’s strong shoulders and chest. “You…are you unharmed? He did not cripple you?”

“No, no, I’m fine. Ozai never touched me after he arranged my fake death and had me taken to the island. He would come by sometimes to taunt me about how he’d broken you, how he was using me as a weapon to keep you tamed and harmless, the great General he could never hope to outdo by honorable means. I wanted to kill him so much – I tried, once, but he was ready and I failed, I’m so sorry –“

“For not killing your uncle? You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing at all. But oh, to have you alive and whole and in my arms again! I may die of joy.” Iroh eyes were shining with unshed tears. He pulled Lu Ten close again, his head resting on his son’s warm shoulder. From there, he saw the others in the room – Aang, grinning ear to ear; Zuko, shining quietly with happiness tinged with a small edge of anxiety; a boy about Aang’s age he did not know; and a stately, smiling woman of unusual beauty that, to pile astonishment on astonishment, he recognized.

“Ursa?” His eyes locked on her. She nodded and then gave him a small formal Fire Nation bow. “Oh, my dear – two such joys in one day! I fear I drifted off to sleep in the audience chamber and am having a wonderful dream. How did this happen? Both of you, home once again?”

“Zuko and the Avatar found us,” Lu Ten said. “Ozai kept the two of us in the same island prison, along with little Mikka there.” He nodded at the small boy, who was half-hiding behind Ursa and looking more than a little lost. “They still haven’t told us exactly how they managed to find us.”

“I went to Ozai and made him give me a lead on where he had put Mother,” Zuko said. “He gave me a half-true one. Aang insisted on coming along, so we went and searched. We found them in the Whitesteam Archipelago out west. Ozai told me to look in the south, but we found them in the north.” He didn’t mention the strange unconscious impulse that had guided them onward, when he had been ready to quit.

“Then we had to deal with Lu Ten attacking us,” Aang put in, “And with Ursa’s being ill. But we handled it – and now we’ve got three new allies!”

Iroh shook his head in wonder. “Truly, destiny was on your side. I cannot believe Ozai left my son and his wife alive and untouched all these years.”

“If Zuko hadn’t made him talk, we would have been dead within a month or so,” Lu Ten said. “The place we were kept couldn’t have supported us much longer than that. It would have been a long slow death from starvation if it weren’t for the runt and his friend.”

Iroh eased up on the bear hug, and motioned with one hand. “Come, Zuko, Ursa. Our family is much closer to whole than it has been in many years.”

Zuko hesitated a moment, but Ursa took his hand and drew him over, and the four of them stood together, arms linked and bodies close, for several long minutes.

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Behind Iroh, the door, which he had not closed, silently drifted open a few more inches. Sokka peeked through, ignoring Suki and Ty Lee poking at him to get out of the way.

“Tell us what you see, Snoozles!” Toph demanded.

“I see it, but I don’t really understand it,” Sokka complained. “There’s a lot of hugging and laughing going on. There’s this guy who looks like a bit older version of Zuko – a lot like that – and a nice-looking lady, and Zuko and Iroh and Aang hanging back. Aang’s grinning like a loon, so I guess everything’s okay, but I don’t get what’s going on, or who these people are.”

“Move aside, Sokka,” Katara said, and Sokka, knowing better than to stand in his sister’s way when she wanted something, meekly gave up his spot. Katara peered through the door. “Oh! Could that be – maybe – it would explain Zuko’s behavior – but I don’t know…”

“Could it be what?” Mai asked.

“I don’t know about the man, but could the woman be Zuko’s mother? I know he thought she was alive, and he was planning to find her. I didn’t know he’d started looking, though. Why wouldn’t he tell us if he had?...Never mind, dumb question.”

“Let me see,” Mai said quietly. Katara yielded the viewing space to the older girl, and Mai bent close to look through the space. “Oh my,” she breathed, and the emotion in her voice was clear enough that the others shared several startled glances. “Yes. That’s her. That’s Lady Ursa. And the man – Ty Lee, take a look. Is that who I think it is?”

Ty Lee bounced into place. “Oooh! Do you think that’s -- ! Ooh, I had such a crush on him when I was little! But isn’t he supposed to be dead? He looks really good for someone who’s dead, don’t you think, Mai?”

Mai sighed and didn’t bother to respond. Suki said, “Okay, who is he? Spill it, Fire Nation people.”

“We’re not sure,” Mai said, “but just based on his age and the family resemblance, and the look on General Iroh’s face, that might be Lu Ten.”

“Who’s Lu Ten?” Sokka asked.

“Iroh’s only child, and one time Crown Prince of the Fire Nation. He supposedly died seven years ago when he was only nineteen, as the siege of Ba Sing Se. A portion of the outer wall collapsed and he didn’t get out of the way in time. Or so everyone was told.”

“I cried for days!” Ty Lee said. “And he got the most magnificent funeral.”

Mai quelled her friend with a look. “That was back when Lord Azulon was still alive, and Iroh was expected to follow him to the throne. But losing his son broke his spirit, and he gave up on the siege of Ba Sing Se. Then Azulon fell suddenly ill and named Ozai as his heir on his deathbed. Everyone thought that was pretty strange, but Ursa and Iroh both supported the claim, so Ozai kept the throne. Of course, the next night Ursa left on a ‘spiritual retreat’, and no one’s heard from her since.”

“Something about that situation smells rotten,” Sokka said, frowning.

“You’re not the only one to think so,” Mai told him. “But poking into the affairs of the Royal Family was not a safe thing to do in those days. Everyone pretty much just decided not to risk the safety of their families and themselves by prying. Ozai had a reputation as a vicious guy even back then, and it only got worse.”

Katara gave Mai a skeptical look. “I thought your family did pretty well under Ozai.”

“Better than some,” Mai admitted. “But it was never a comfortable situation. Ozai didn’t tolerate failure well. At Omashu, we had emergency drills in case the Omashans attacked – and one in case the Blazing Swords came for Father.”

“Ouch,” Sokka said. “Did Ozai ever rule with anything besides terror?”

“Not as far as I know,” Mai said. “I think it was all he knew. So that’s what he taught Azula.” Her face sobered a bit, thinking of the Fire Princess in her tower, locked in the darkness of her own mind, but she shook it off. “This will be so wonderful for Zuko, having his mother back.”

“Not to ruin the mood,” Toph said, “But if that’s really Iroh’s kid, you think he’s going to challenge Zuko for the throne?”

“No idea. I was very young when Lu Ten was deployed to Ba Sing Se, and only knew him as the teenager who gave me candy and hugs whenever I visited the Fire Palace. He seemed like a decent guy, but who knows what’s happened to him since and what it’s done to him?...But if he tries for the throne, Zuko will probably step aside out of a sense of justice….if I let him. Which I’m not so sure I will. Zuko has the makings of a truly great Fire Lord, and Lu Ten’s a mystery right now.” She sighed. “And it won’t help with that stubborn group that thinks Iroh belongs on the throne. Now that he has an heir, miraculously returned from the dead, they’re going to be more of a problem than ever.”

Sokka groaned. “We can always count on you to kill a good mood, Mai.”

“It’s a gift,” she said, shrugging.

Sokka pushed his way back to the door opening. “Well, you think we can go in? They’ve barely touched that food cart. It would be a shame to let it go to waste.” He smacked his lips. “And I want to get one of those custard tarts before Aang eats them all.”

“Yeah, let’s go!” Ty Lee said.

“No! This is a private moment,” Katara objected. “If Zuko and Aang wanted us in there, they’d have let us in already.”

“Maybe we could split the difference and just knock,” Suki suggested.

A whispered argument started up over who would get the honor. Before it really got a good start, though, Toph ducked under everyone else and rapped firmly on the door.

The voices inside fell silent. A moment later, Aang stuck his head out. “It hasn’t been an hour yet!”

“We know,” Toph said. “But we’re tired of waiting.

“And we’re hungry,” said Sokka.

“And we want to know what’s going on,” Katara said.

Aang looked over his shoulder and asked, “Is it all right?” They heard Zuko say something, and then Aang swung the door wide. “You guys don’t really deserve this, but Zuko says to let you in, so come on.”

They entered single file – Toph first, followed by Mai, then Sokka and Katara, and finally Suki and Ty Lee. The group of four in Fire Nation red and gold split apart and lined up as well: Zuko and Iroh in the middle, with the woman next to Zuko, and the unknown man next to Iroh. There was a moment of silence as the two groups studied each other. Aang stood to one side, watching, smugly pleased at the array of allies he had acqured.

Sokka broke the silence. “So what’s left on the food cart? Any custard tarts left?”

The two newcomers looked taken aback. Aang shifted his stance, and a custard tart blew off the cart and sailed right at Sokka’s head. The water tribe boy yelped and ducked. Suki easily picked the snack out of the air and calmly took a big bite.

Zuko decided he didn’t want this momentous occasion degenerating into a food fight. He stepped forward. “I’ve got some introductions to make, so everyone just settle down.”

He started with Aang’s first group. “The clown with the custard obsession is Sokka, son of Hakoda, chief of the Southern Water Tribe. Next to him is his sister Katara, master waterbender and sifu to Avatar Aang. On the far end is Lady Toph Bei Fong – “ Toph growled at him. “ – who prefers to go just by Toph, a master earthbender and another sifu to the Avatar. Oh, and several times winner of the Earth Rumble Championship. Next to her is Lady Mài Lǐ, who you probably remember. She’s – ah, my girlfriend.” Zuko reddened a bit. “On the other end is Lady Ty Lee Sakasu, who you may also remember, star acrobat of the Mǎ Xì Tuán Circus and now a Kyoshi Warrior. And next to her is the leader of the Kyoshi Warriors, Suki.”

“I’m Sokka’s girlfriend,” Suki announced, to Sokka’s mixture of pride and embarrassment.

“I’m not anyone’s girlfriend at the moment,” Ty Lee pouted. Then she batted her eyes at Lu Ten. “So I’m, like, available!” Katara reached out and yanked on her braid. “Ow! What was that for?”

“For interrupting.”

”But Suki was the one who – Ow! Okay, okay, I get it!” Ty Lee subsided.

Zuko didn’t try to hide his smile. “And over here, it’s my honor and pleasure to introduce three friends, two old and one new. At my side is my mother, the Lady Ursa. On the end is my cousin, Lu Ten, son of my uncle Iroh. And standing over there is –“ He broke off. “Aang, where did Mikka go?”

“Huh?” Aang took a quick look around. “Uh…I don’t know. I didn’t see him leave. Hey Mikka!” he shouted. “Come on out! My friends want to meet you!”

There was no reply.

To Be Continued

Fic: Exile: Chapter 7: The Return

Chapter 7: The Return

The sun was lowering in the west as Appa flew over Crater City, making a straight line for his comfortable stable and the dinner that would be waiting there.

“It hasn’t changed all that much in nine years,” Lu Ten mused, peering over the side of Appa’s saddle. “And it looks like it recently got hit by a firestorm. Did the comet do that?”

“Well, sort of,” Zuko said. “All that happened when Azula and I fought our Agni Kai. With our power boosted by the comet, things got, well, pretty hot.”

“All of that? By one Agni Kai? Between you and little Zuli?” Lu Ten shook his head in amazement. “I really need to see these new firebending chops of yours, runt. How bad was the damage?”

“A couple dozen families left homeless for a few weeks,” Zuko said. “I’ve put them up in one wing of the Palace in the meantime. Fortunately there’s plenty of room – Ozai did a lot of unnecessary expansion to suit his ideas of his own greatness. The city had been mostly cleared out in preparation for Azula’s coronation, so no one was hurt, fire spirits be praised.”

“No one but you,” Aang pointed out.

“I asked for the challenge,” Zuko said. “I knew what I was risking. The civilians didn’t.”

Appa zoomed low over the roofs. Aang began to make a subtle airbending movement with both hands held low. “Lu Ten, could you stop hanging over the edge until we land?” he asked. “I can’t protect you very well if you aren’t inside my bubble.”

“Eh? Protect me from what?” Lu Ten pulled back inside the saddle and noticed that the air within had gone still. He could no longer hear the rushing sound of Appa’s flight. “What’s this for?”

“With any luck you won’t need to know,” Zuko said.

Lu Ten frowned at his cousin, and had just opened his mouth to reply when three bright flashes of color streaked through his vision. He instinctively flinched, but the three arrows with their wicked steel tips hadn’t been aimed at him. Two hung in the air a few feet from Aang, and one hovered over Zuko’s head. All three shafts were painted in swirls of bright red, orange, and yellow, fletched with eagle-owl feathers dyed bright crimson. Zuko gave the arrow that had been aimed at him a disgusted look, and peered carefully down at the city streets.

“Any sign?” Aang asked.

“Nope. Just a general idea of where they came from, as usual. I’ll ask Suki and Ty Lee to check it out, but it’ll probably be just like all the other times.” He reached up and plucked the arrow over his head out of the air. “Flame of the Phoenix’s turn today, it seems. And there’s something sticky on the arrowheads, so no one touch them, please.” He gathered up the other two and bundled them carefully into a scrap of cloth torn from one of Appa’s numerous saddle blankets.

Mikka was staring and huddling close to Ursa. “What – what just happened?” he asked, wide-eyed.

“Nothing,” Zuko said, trying to sound reassuring. “We’re used to this sort of thing. Aang can protect us from it with airbending. I don’t know why they still keep trying with the arrows – if they didn’t succeed the first time, they certainly aren’t going to manage it now that we’re on alert for them.” His expression went sour. “Maybe they just need a hobby.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Ursa asked, although something in her face said that she already had a good guess.

Aang sighed. “Any one of a couple groups. Some of them don’t me, some don’t like Zuko, and some -- like the ones calling themselves ‘Flame of the Phoenix’, who sent us these little gifts -- don’t like either of us. Or anyone connected with us. Our other friends have had to put up with some of this sort of thing as well.”

“We should probably get more active about hunting them down,” Zuko said. “Because they don’t look like they’re going away, and they could well get more organized as time goes on and be a real threat. Like that stuff on the arrows – never seen that before. It might be poison, meaning they’re already getting more serious.” He looked out over the city. “I had hoped they’d just….lose interest. But they seem to be getting more active, not less.”

“Assassins already?” Lu Ten said, his face grim. “What exactly is their agenda? Do you know?”

“There have been a few notices posted,” Zuko said. “Some of them want Aang gone, or better yet, dead. We haven’t had an Avatar in over a hundred years, and a lot of people are unsure what life will be like now that Aang is here. Some folks are scared of him, here and in the other nations as well.”

Aang picked up the narrative, looking unhappy. “And the others want the same for Zuko. That includes Ozai’s supporters, people who were in favor of the war, colonials who are determined never to give up their homes, some people who don’t want a Fire Lord at all, and some misguided types who insist on saying that the throne belongs to Iroh.”

“Well, it does,” Zuko pointed out. “And I know he’d be better at this than I could possibly be, but he won’t take the job, so what am I supposed to do? I can’t force him.” His face grew thoughtful. “Although, now that we’ve found you, Lu Ten, maybe he’ll change his mind. I certainly wouldn’t miss the work, or having to duck arrows and the occasional rock when I go out in public.”

“I can’t say I’m in favor of the idea,” Lu Ten said. “I’m really not cut out to be a bureaucrat. Although I’m not pleased by the idea of you getting stalked by assassins, Zuko.”

“I don’t think it would make much difference if Iroh did take the throne,” Aang said. “Like you said back on the island, Lu Ten, some people don’t want anyone from the current royal family on the throne at all. Things are going to be unsettled for a while no matter what we do.” He flashed a grin at Zuko. “But we’ll muddle through. Right, Sifu Hotman?”

Zuko glared at him. “How many times have I asked you not to call me that?”

“Can I call you ‘runt’ instead?”

“Only if you eat enough meat to grow taller than me.”

“Oh, yuck. Never mind then.” He caught sight of something over Zuko’s shoulder, and his grin widened. “There’s the palace! We’ll be home in just a minute or two. What do you guys want to do first when we get there?”

“A hot bath would be delightful,” Ursa suggested.

“I’d like to get changed into something other than rags and go see my father, first thing,” said Lu Ten.

“Can we get some food?” Mikka asked hopefully. “We won’t eat too much.”

“I think we can manage all three,” Zuko said. “But if it’s okay with you, and with Aang, I’d like you all to stay in Aang’s rooms for a couple of hours to give me time to get proper quarters ready.” He shot a questioning look at Aang, who nodded in agreement. Zuko continued, “You can use Aang’s washroom while I go out and get clothes and food and whatever else you want and bring it back. And I’ll bring Uncle too, of course.”

Aang piped up, “And then we can get busy planning your welcome home party!”

Less than two minutes later, Appa touched down on the straw-covered floor of his stable. Zuko and Lu Ten helped Ursa down; she was doing much better, but was still a bit weak from two weeks spent lost in delirium. She gripped Roku’s crown tightly and seemed to draw strength from it. Aang quickly unsaddled Appa while Zuko helped his mother find the washroom and started the huge tub filling with steaming water. When he began fussing about Aang not having any properly scented soap, Ursa smiled and shooed him out of the bathroom, insisting that plain soap was just fine.

Mikka was already nibbling on nuts and rice cakes from Aang’s private stash of snacks. Lu Ten paced nervously, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Something wrong, Lu?” Zuko asked.

“Oh, no. I’m just nervous about seeing Father again after all these years.” He flashed a quick smile. “Nervous in a good way.”

“I’m going off to get clothes and things right now,” Zuko said. “And then I’ll go get Uncle.” Without waiting for an answer, he dashed out the door into the hall, letting it bang shut behind him.

**************************************

Zuko ran down the hall, feet so light he might have been mistaken for an air bender. He rounded a corner at top speed and almost ran down Sokka and Suki, escaping a crash only thanks to Suki’s fast reflexes.

“Hey, watch it, Fire Lord Jerk,” Sokka said, picking up an armful of scrolls dropped in the near-collision. “What’s the hurry? Did you just come from Aang’s room? These are for him.” He made an attempt to shove the stack into Zuko’s arms. Zuko dodged. A couple of scrolls took to the air. Suki snatched them before they could hit the floor and deposited them back on the stop of Sokka’s stack. Sokka rolled his eyes. “You’re not helping,” he told a grinning Suki.

“Leave the scrolls in the basket next to Aang’s room and then get back here,” Zuko said. I need help with something. From both of you.”

Sokka scurried to get rid of his load, while Suki studied Zuko. “Huh. What’s up with you? You’re practically glowing.”

“What?” Zuko tried to get a look at himself.

“I didn’t mean it literally.”

“Oh,” Zuko said, reddening slightly. Suki always seemed to find some way to put him off balance. He suspected she did it on purpose.

Sokka rounded the corner, looking puzzled. “Who’s in Aang’s room with him? I didn’t recognize any of the voices. I was going to stick my head in but his door’s locked. Aang never locks his door. What’s going on?”

“We’ve got some special guests. I need your help getting things ready for them.”

Sokka looked at him suspiciously. “ ‘Special’? Special how? What aren’t you telling us?”

“An awful lot.” Zuko grinned widely.

Sokka stared. “You…you’re grinning. I didn’t think you even knew how to grin. Suki, you think you can get that door open? I’ve gotta find out what’s up.”

Suki shook her head. “I’m curious too, but I’m not going to go break down the Avatar’s door, silly. We’ll just have to wait.”

“Help me out and you won’t have to wait as long,” Zuko said.

Suki and Sokka exchanged glances. “What exactly do you want us to do?” Sokka said.

“Nothing hard. Sokka, I want you to go and get a cartload of food from the pantry and take it to Aang’s room as quickly as you can. Nothing too plain or too rich -- good tasty filling stuff, some sweets, and whatever really nice treats they’ve got on hand. You know what’s good and what’s not. Just try not to eat all the best stuff on the way back, okay?”

“You want me to go fetch food?” Sokka shrugged. “Okay. I should be able to handle that.” He trotted off toward the huge palace kitchens, but not without another suspicious look back at Zuko.

“And what do I get to do?” Suki said. “I hope it’s more interesting than Sokka’s assignment.”

“I need you to help me pick out some clothes, including at least one dress.” Suki stared at him until he reddened again. “It’s not for me! Oh, and I need to track down some scented soap. Lavender would be best -- it’s always been her favorite.”

Suki cocked an eyebrow at him. “Oh, there’s a ‘her’ involved in this?”

“It’s not what you think.”

“I don’t have any idea what to think. But I can probably help with the dress. And the soap. Let’s go.”

**********************************

Suki looked into the huge set of closets, marveling. “There are more clothes in here than I’ve had in my entire life. More than all the Kyoshi Warriors together have ever had! -- except maybe for Ty Lee.”

Not only were there more clothes than she expected, they were of the wrong type. Mostly they were formal wear for an adult woman, probably Fire Nation nobility, judging from the color and richness of the materials. So it wasn’t some young damsel in distress Zuko was clothes-shopping for. The garments, and the set of rooms in which they hung, were all spotless, yet had a definite air of disuse. She got the feeling no one had lived here, or worn these clothes, in years. At the same time, there was no sign of moth damage to any of the delicate fabrics, which implied scrupulous care over the years. It was all very mysterious.

And Zuko continued to behave strangely. He ducked into one of the clothes closets and pulled out a lovely red robe with gold accents, then just stood there staring at it for several minutes before putting it back. Then he went hunting in the closet again, found another gown in sunny yellow with orange and red trim, stared at it, and once more put it back. Suki, unable to stand it any more, took charge. She demanded Zuko describe what kind of dress he was looking for, and when he told her, she rapidly selected three gowns, simple in design but made of luxurious materials in bright colors. Then Zuko wanted to go through the jewelry chest and pick out some baubles, which Suki again had to help him with, since he had no taste when it came to a lady’s shiny things. She made a mental note to tell Mai never to ask for jewelry as a gift from Zuko, without insisting he get an outside consultant. Like the clothing, the exquisite jewelry looked to have been put away with care many years ago, and not touched since except for perhaps an occasional dusting. As far as she could tell, not even one piece was missing, which was very strange given the number of servants present in the Fire Palace.

She asked Zuko about that, and got only an astonished look from him, plus a non-explanation of “None of the servants would be stupid enough to steal anything from here.”

Zuko was ready to charge out the door with just the dresses and the jewelry, until Suki pointed out that whoever the lady was, she might appreciate shoes, and some other minor items such as underwear. At the mention of ladies’ underwear, Zuko became completely useless, and Suki had to go rummage in the drawers for all the right items while Zuko stood by, face almost crimson with embarrassment.

Finally, the stack of necessary items was complete enough to satisfy Suki. Zuko gathered it all up carefully and headed for the door, when Suki pointed out they hadn’t gotten the soap. Zuko halted so quickly he dropped a couple of shoes and one very expensive-looking necklace. Rather than go raid Ty Lee’s bathroom, with its soaps and lotions and every beauty product known to man or woman, Suki ducked into the bathroom attached to the suite and found a basket filled with scented soap carved into very lifelike flower shapes. Suki quickly identified lavender, jasmine, orange blossom, and rose scents, snapped up the basket, and hung it over Zuko’s wrist, since he didn’t have a hand free to take it.

“So you’re going to let me meet this mystery woman, right?” Suki said.

Zuko nodded, his head barely visible behind the stack of clothes in his arms. “Of course. But she -- and the others -- need a little time first. So I’d like you and Sokka to go and round up people for me, and have them meet at Aang’s suite in an hour or so.”

“Who do you want?”

“Well, Katara and Toph, of course. And Mai. Ty Lee too. I’ll get Uncle myself.”

“Okay, shouldn’t be a problem as long as we can figure out where Toph is. You need to find something official for that girl to do -- she’s going a little stir crazy.”

“She’s going to be crucial to our efforts to weed out the bad eggs in our bureaucracy, but we haven’t even gotten started on that job yet.”

“Just letting you know,” Suki said. “A bored Toph can be a dangerous Toph.”

“Good point. I’ll find something to keep her busy. Before she starts rearranging the palace grounds to suit her tastes.”

“Yeah. She could give an entirely new meaning to ‘rock garden.’” Suki held the door open for Zuko to get through with his load, then headed off on her search mission to find the requested people.

*****************************

Zuko returned to Aang’s quarters to find Sokka leaning against a wall, chomping happily on a koalamb-filled steam bun. “Hi Zumfko!” he sputtered, then swallowed hard, and coughed. “I got some meat dishes -- these guests aren’t all like Aang, right? Of course, I could eat all the meat by myself if necessary…”

“I appreciate your sacrifice, but no, the guests eat meat. I’ll take the cart in myself in a moment. I have another errand for you.” Zuko set down his pile of dresses and other things on a handy chair. “I need to you go get some clothes.”

“What’s wrong with the ones I’m wearing?”

“Not for you. For a guy a few inches taller than me -- “ Zuko measured off Lu Ten’s height with a hand -- “and several inches broader in the shoulders and chest. Oh, and they should be comfortable, and in Fire Nation colors. You can probably find stuff that fits down in the Palace laundry. It won’t be the first time you’ve swiped clothes, after all. Just let the head washer know what you’re taking so I can make sure the owner gets paid for his clothing. Okay? Oh! And I almost forgot -- some clothes for someone about Aang’s size. Those clothes should be in a neutral color, probably. Something in gray and blue if you can find anything.”

Sokka raised his eyebrows. “Water Tribe colors?”

“Exactly. And before you ask, yes, I’ll explain everything to you -- and Katara, she’ll want to hear this too -- in about an hour. If you get done with the clothes fast enough, can you pay a quick visit to your father and ask him if the names ‘Ossa’ or ‘Mikka’ mean anything to him -- are they common names in the Southern Water Tribe? Or the Northern?”

“Ossa and Mikka? Hm. I don’t know anyone by that name…”

“It would have been before your time. I’d be looking for an older person who might have either of those names in the family. That’s why I want you to ask your Dad.”

“Oh. Okay, sure. So I’m to swipe two sets of clothes, one for a guy bigger than you, and one for someone the size of Aang.” Sokka eyed the pile of clothes on the chair. “Well, at least you didn’t make me steal a dress. For that, I’m grateful.”

“You’re welcome. Get the clothes back as fast as you can, then meet up with Suki and the others and be back here again in about an hour.”

“Gotcha. Steal clothes, talk to Dad, find Suki, return. Anything else?”

“No,” said Zuko. “That’s enough. Thanks, Sokka.”

“Hey, no problem. As long as I get an explanation.“ He paused. “And some more of those buns -- they’re really good!” He grabbed another treat and took off down the hall.

Zuko knocked on the door, and Aang opened it. Zuko promptly dumped a load of clothes in his arms. The pile rose higher than Aang’s head. Zuko heard some muffled noises coming from under the pile, but ignored them in favor of taking Aang’s shoulder and guiding him back into the room.

Lu Ten was still pacing. He looked up anxiously as Zuko entered, then sighed, and shook his head.

“I’ll be going to get him in a minute, Lu,” Zuko said. “In the meantime, I’ve got someone digging up some clothes for you. Is Mother done with her bath?”

Ursa appeared at the door of the washroom, wrapped in a huge fluffy towel that covered her head to foot. “I am, although I’d happily get right back in.” She spotted the garments and essentials piled on the floor. “Oh! My clothes! Where did you find these?”

“In your room. Ozai kept it just the way it was when you were taken away. I don’t know why, but he would never let anyone touch it except to clean a little.” He did not add that he had gone in there himself several times a year before he was banished, just to sit and imagine that his mother had returned from wherever she had gone.

Ursa frowned. “That does seem strange. But then, I found out the hard way that I never really understood the man I married. Mikka, would you pick up those things and bring them into the washroom for me so I can get dressed? Then you and Lu Ten can bathe -- there’s easily enough room for both of you in the tub. Lu Ten, please watch out for Mikka – he doesn’t know how to swim and the tub is deep enough for him to go under.”

“I’ll look after him, Aunt Ursa. I’ll even make sure he washes behind his ears.”

“Good. Mikka, would you please bring me the maroon robe with the cream-colored trim on it?” She pointed at the dress she wanted, and at a few other items, and Mikka scrambled to get her what she asked for.

When she emerged from the washroom a second time, she looked like a changed woman. She was still a bit pale and her eyes had hints of shadow under them, but the gown made her into a stately matriarch, not a woman haggard with illness. Her hair was glossy and swept up into her Fire Lady crown, while gold glinted at her throat and around one wrist. She looked every inch the Princess she once again was. Studying her fine features, Aang saw the distant echoes of Roku’s face there. He shot a glance at Zuko, who was staring raptly at his mother. Yes, the profile there was familiar too. Aang wished Zuko had confided in him earlier about their shared past; he still wasn’t sure what it meant or what results it would have, but he couldn’t help but feel it might be important.

Lu Ten and Mikka disappeared into the bath, and Zuko, after giving his mother another hug, headed out on the errand he had been both anticipating and dreading ever since finding Lu Ten alive. He knew it was stupid, but in a small corner of his soul, the fear that Lu Ten’s presence would mean his uncle wouldn’t want him anymore coiled, whispering unsettling things. He may not desert you, the voice said, but it won’t be the same any more. How could it be? He’ll have his real son back. He won’t need you as a replacement.

He shook his head hard as he jogged down the hall, banishing those thoughts back into the darkness where they belonged. Iroh would not abandon him. Zuko would just have to get used to sharing his uncle with his cousin. Lu Ten always been more of a big brother to him than a cousin anyway. You’re not losing anyone, he told himself. You’ll have both of them, which will be even better.

Iroh was in the audience chamber, talking to someone while a long line of visitors waited their turn. Zuko saw that his uncle’s attention was currently taken up by Pào Mò, and rolled his eyes. It was just as well he had Suki running errands – she had a vast dislike for her fellow Kyoshi Islander who claimed to be Aang’s “number one fan!” -- whatever that meant. She would have happily tossed the man out on his head.

“I’m sorry, Pào, but the Avatar is simply too busy to meet with you at the moment,” Iroh was saying with admirable patience. The man started to argue with him, but Zuko’s appearance at the door set the whole place murmuring, and Pào slunk away to the side of the room.

Iroh looked glad to see his nephew. He bowed low, as formality required (a necessity Zuko privately hated with a passion.) “Fire Lord, you honor us with your presence. How may I assist you?”

Dressed in his worn and dirty travel clothes, and rather in need of a bath, Zuko didn’t feel very kingly at the moment. Yet he still found himself the center of attention, with all the supplicants staring at him – some in awe, some in curiosity, some in approval, some in barely concealed anger or disdain. He tried on a polite and reserved smile, the sort his father had been so good at, but without the sharp edge of malice that had always lurked behind Ozai’s public face. “Uncle. I require your presence. Come with me, please.”

The petitioners began to mutter and grumble. Iroh pointed to the man who had been helping him, saying “Zhì Lǐ will assist you now,” and the grumbles died down a bit. Zuko bowed to Mai’s father and ushered his uncle out of the room at an appropriately sedate pace, restraining the urge to just yank Iroh away at top speed. Once they were out of the audience room, he gave in partway to the impulse, wrapping his hand around his uncle’s wrist and darting off, intending to drag Iroh along with him. He was pulled up short after only two steps, as Iroh declined to be dragged.

“Uncle, please come.” Zuko tried not to snap in frustration. “It’s important!”

“I take it you have discovered something about your mother?”

Zuko blinked, disoriented for a moment. Oh yes. Aang had made him tell Iroh he was going to look for his mother. And Iroh would no doubt be very pleased to see Ursa. Zuko had been so focused on Lu Ten he had forgotten for the moment that his mother and uncle had been great friends before Ozai’s ambition had torn the family apart.

“Yes,” he told Iroh. “I have. And…something else as well. Something I wasn’t expecting. You have to come, quickly.”

Iroh raised his eyebrows. “I hope you are not getting overexcited. You can’t expect to find Ursa in a single day, Zuko.”

The difference between Iroh’s calm and reasonable assessment and the actual facts of the matter robbed Zuko of all speech for a few long moments. Come to think of it, perhaps Lu Ten wouldn’t mind a few more minutes to get ready. Sokka might not even have gotten decent clothing for him yet. He ground his teeth and resigned himself to proceeding at Iroh’s leisurely pace. “All right. I’ll slow down. But don’t say I didn’t try.”

Iroh’s eyebrows went up even higher at that. “I promise not to say any such thing. I admit, you are making me eager to see whatever has gotten you so worked up. But unless it is a matter of life or death, a few minutes won’t make any difference.”

It is definitely a matter of life and death, Zuko thought. Just not in the way you mean, Uncle.

They moved off toward Zuko’s room at what would be a decent clip on a normal day, but which Zuko still found excruciatingly slow. Finally he couldn’t take it any more. “Uncle, I – I have to run. Please promise me you’ll come directly to Aang’s room? You won’t make any side stops?”

Iroh looked resigned. “We must still work on your patience, nephew. Yes, run ahead if you must. I promise to come directly.” He made a shooing motion with one hand. “Go on now.”

Zuko took off at a flat run, not caring what kind of gossip this might start among the servants. He had to cover most of one huge wing of the palace to get from the audience room to his the Avatar’s quarters, and he did it in record time.

Zuko pulled up short as he entered the corridor leading to Aang’s rooms. A small crowd was assembled in front of the door. He ground his teeth and advanced on them. “I said one hour! It hasn’t even been a half!”

“We’ve been trying to convince Aang to let us in, but he won’t,” Ty Lee said, faking a pretty pout. Mai rolled her eyes at the other girl.

Toph grinned at him. “We wanted to be early so we didn’t miss any of the fun. Whatever it is.”

“Fun is…not exactly the right word,” Zuko said. “But I can’t explain – you’ll have to see for yourselves. Can you duck into the room next door and wait until I call you, please? It’s important.” He spotted Sokka in the crowd. “Hey, did you get the stuff I asked you to?”

“Yep, it’s all taken care of,” Sokka said. “Don’t Suki and I deserve a sneak peak after running all over for you?”

“You do, but you’re not going to get one, sorry. You’ll understand when you see what’s happened.”

The door cracked open and Aang stuck his head out. “Yeah, take it out of the corridor,” he said, grinning. “We can barely hear ourselves think in here with all the noise.”

Sokka and Ty Lee both stood up on tiptoes to try and look over Aang’s head, but he ducked back inside and shut the door. “Rats, didn’t see anything,” Sokka commented.

Zuko put his head in his hands. His image of a dignified and joyful homecoming for his mother and cousin was beginning to shred at little at the edges. “Look, just – go next door, okay? Now!”

“Oh, the Fire Lord commands,” Katara said. “And we must obey.”

“Speak for yourself!” Toph said, but she started moving away from the doorway anyway. Zuko stood in the hall, fuming, while all six of the visitors – Suki, Sokka, Toph, Katara, Ty Lee, and Mai – filed past him and into the guest room next to Aang’s quarters. Mai flashed him one of her looks, which clearly said, “This had better be good, or you’ll be hearing about it later.” He flashed her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

Finally, they were all safely out of sight. Zuko knocked at the door, and Aang warily stuck his head out. “You got them to go away?”

“Temporarily. They’re in the guest room next door. I swear I told them not to show up for an hour.” Zuko sighed. “Generals and Admirals have to listen to me, but not two water tribe kids, two Kyoshi Warriors, an Earth Kingdom noble, and my girlfriend.”

Aang smiled. “Yeah, clearly you’re a terrible Fire Lord. Come on back in.”

Zuko saw that Sokka had been as good as his word; two piles of clothes had been added to the general mess in the room, one for Lu Ten and one for Mikka. But neither of them had come out of the washroom yet.

“We’ve heard some yelling and splashing,” Aang said. “Sounds like Mikka didn’t understand that it was possible for bath water to get too hot.”

Zuko peered into the washroom. Mikka and Lu Ten looked up at him from the sunken tub. “Sorry to cut this short, but – Uncle will be here shortly. I thought you might like to get dressed before he arrives.”

Lu Ten shot up out of the bath in a split second, then reached down and snagged Mikka under the arms and hauled him out as well. For the sake of propriety Zuko made them stay in the washroom while he handed clothing through the door. It took only a few moments for the two of them to don tunics and trousers. Lu Ten had a deep carmine top over brown pants with short boots, and somehow Sokka had found a top for Mikka made of sky blue with gray sleeves and a gray belt.

Mikka seemed a little confused by his shirt’s colors. Seeing the look on his face, Lu Ten said, “They’re water tribe colors, Mikka. You’ll be meeting some other water tribe kids soon.”

“But I’m not water tribe,” Mikka insisted. “I’m Fire Nation, even if no one in the Fire Nation likes me. I was born here. I want to stay with Lu Ten and Aunt Ursa.”

Zuko and Lu Ten exchanged glances. Zuko spoke up. “Mikka, as far as I’m concerned you can be either, both, or neither, whatever you want. But you should meet Chief Hakoda and his kids before you make any decisions, okay?”

Mikka looked stubborn and said nothing. Zuko decided to drop it. The tricky question of Mikka’s citizenship could wait.

Lu Ten was studying his own image in the polished silver mirror. “Hm. One last thing to fix. Do you think Aang would loan me his razor?”

Aang had no objections, so Lu Ten went to work. In a few minutes he had expertly stripped the short beard from his chin. Underneath, his cheeks and jaw were noticeably paler than the sun-browned parts of his face. “There. Now maybe Dad will recognize me.”

The joke was feeble, but Zuko smiled in encouragement anyway. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

Zuko and Lu Ten exited the washroom side by side, with Mikka trailing. Aang looked at them, then did a double take. “Wow! That’s amazing!”

Zuko looked at Lu Ten. Lu Ten looked back and shrugged in puzzlement. “What’s amazing?” Zuko asked.

“You two really look like each other now, without Lu Ten’s beard. I mean, Lu Ten’s a bit older, and he doesn’t have your scar, but at a distance you could easily be mistaken for each other.”

Zuko looked at Lu Ten’s strong, handsome, unmarked face, and scoffed. “Get real, Aang. We don’t look at all alike.”

Lu Ten looked at Zuko, his eyes thoughtful, but didn’t say anything.

Into that silence fell the sound of a knock at the door, and Iroh’s voice called, “Avatar Aang, may I come in?”

To Be Continued

Fic: Exile: Chapter 6: The Connection

Chapter 6: The Connection

“And that is why I was exiled,” Ursa finished. She had recovered enough that she was able to sit up on her own now, although Zuko still hovered anxiously.

The reactions to Ursa’s tale varied wildly. Mikka stared at her, eyes wide and mouth open –this was all new to him. Lu Ten was looking out over the sea, frowning slightly. He seemed familiar with the tale, although hearing it again was probably not a pleasant experience. Aang was looking at Zuko, who was staring down at his own hands, though not seeing much of anything at all, Aang would bet.

Ursa noticed her son’s preoccupation. She reached out a hand and cupped his chin, as she had done to a much younger Azula so long ago, and tipped his head up so he faced her. He still didn’t meet her eyes. “Zuko. Love. Are you all right?”

Aang saw Zuko’s usual blocking reaction start to take hold – then Zuko looked at Aang and sighed. “No, not really,” he said, to Aang’s relief. “Father let us believe you were dead. I only found out the truth about a month ago. During the eclipse. If I had known sooner I would have come for you. I’d have found you – I’m pretty good at that,” he added, looking at Aang with a faint smile. “I shouldn’t have believed him. I should have known you weren’t dead. I should have found you earlier.” He looked at Lu Ten. “Both of you.”

“Pretty tall order, runt,” Lu Ten replied. “You’re, what, sixteen?”

“Seventeen this past spring.”

Lu Ten snorted. “You’re still a kid, Zuko, even if you did win the Fire Lord’s crown – and I want to hear all about how you did that.” He looked at Aang. “And did you say you have him locked up? How? Ozai’s not one to give up power short of death.”

“He didn’t have any choice,” Zuko said. “Aang stripped him of his firebending.”

Lu Ten recoiled. “He did—what?”

“I took away his firebending,” Aang confirmed. “So he can’t hurt anyone any more. Like I told Mikka, I don’t kill.”

“So he’s alive but can’t firebend,” Lu Ten mused. “Well, that cuts down on the potential for him to cause problems, but it doesn’t eliminate it. He’s still a sneaky bastard, and quite capable of killing someone with his bare hands, you know. No fire needed. Plus there’s the political risk – I’m sure he still has loyal followers.”

“We’ve got him securely imprisoned,” Zuko said, trying to sound more confident about that than he truly felt. “Azula’s actually a bigger worry right now.”

“Really? At fourteen years of age? How big a threat can she be?”

Aang and Zuko exchanged looks, neither sure how to explain the deadly puzzle of Azula to Lu Ten.

“She has lost her mind,” Ursa said, her voice steeped in sorrow. “But not her power.”

She looked up at Zuko for confirmation. He grimaced, turning away from her eyes once again. “….Yes. That’s pretty much it. But…how did you know?”

“I believe I have been wandering in her mind for – did you say two weeks? Since shortly before the comet arrived. It has not been a pleasant experience.”

It was Aang’s turn to stare at her, open-mouthed. “You can do that? How?”

Ursa looked confused. “The same way you can, Avatar.”

“I can’t do anything like that!”

“I’m sure you can. If you can reach into someone’s spirit and reshape it, mindwalking should be easy for you. Haven’t you ever known it when someone you loved was in pain or danger?”

“No! I…wait.” Aang thought carefully. “Yes. I did, once. When Katara was in trouble in Ba Sing Se, I knew it. But I thought that was because I love her, even though she doesn’t think of me the same way.”

Zuko shot him a startled glance, but let the comment pass.

Ursa nodded. “Yes, it would start that way. It’s not a talent you can force – it will grow as you do. How old are you, Aang?”

“I’ll be thirteen in a couple of months.”

“The Avatar is not informed before age sixteen!” Ursa sounded astonished. “I had assumed you were my son’s age, just not yet into your adult growth. Dear spirits, you are much too young for all of this. It must have been terrible for you. How did this happen?”

“Aang’s different than the previous Avatars,” Zuko said. “At least, the ones I’ve read about. Which is just as well for me or I’d be dead at least twice over, once at Zhao’s hands, and once in a killing blizzard.” Lu Ten gave him a questioning look, and Zuko clarified: “He has this bad habit of saving his enemies.”

“Why were you the enemy of a child Avatar, dear?” Ursa asked. “You have never been a bully.”

Zuko hung his head. “I wish that were still true. Ozai sent me to hunt for the Avatar to win his favor back, though he never really thought I’d be able to find him. When I found Aang -- which doesn’t seem as accidental now as it did at the time -- and I saw he was just a kid, I didn’t understand how that could be, either. But I’d have done almost anything to make Father take me back again.” He closed his eyes in pain. “And I did do almost everything. I’m thoroughly ashamed of my behavior now, but it doesn’t change the fact of what I’ve done. I know you’ll be disappointed in me when I tell you everything, Mother, but I’m doing all I can to make up what I did.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” she said soothingly. “Especially when young. As long as you’ve learned from them, I won’t be disappointed.”

“He has,” Aang assured her. “He’s just running himself down again. I mean, yeah, he did bad stuff – especially that thing with Sparky Boom Man – but we’d never have defeated Ozai and Azula without him. And he nearly died saving Katara – twice! – so I’d have forgiven him pretty much anything after that.”

Ursa placed her hand over Zuko’s heart. “Was that how this happened?”

He covered her hand with his own. “Yes. How did you know?”

“I witnessed the fight between you and your sister,” she said, sorrowful once again. “I think the comet gave a certain amount of power to my other abilities as well as my firebending. Before, I could only tell when you or your sister had been hurt.” She gently touched her son’s scarred face. “I couldn’t tell how, or why, only that it had happened. But as the comet drew close, I found I could leave my body and travel as if I were in the spirit world, without actually entering it.

“I went to seek out you and Azula at the Fire Palace, but only Azula was there. I found her in her room. She was chopping off her hair with a knife, and I could see into her mind, just a little. Your sister is in desperate pain, Zuko. She feels has been betrayed by the only people she ever loved – first me, then you, then her friends, and finally her father. There is nothing inside her any more but rage, desperation, and the urge to hurt those she feels have hurt her. I tried to speak to her, to bring her back from the edge, but I’m afraid I only made her worse. I have been trying to reach her ever since then, but I’ve failed. I almost lost myself. If grandfather’s crown hadn’t called me back, I might never have been able to return.”

“Mother, Azula doesn’t love me,” Zuko said, sadly. “I don’t know if she ever really did. She wants me dead.”

Ursa shook her head. “She wants you dead because she loves you, Zuko. When she overhead the talk of Ozai killing you, why do you think she came to your room immediately?”

“To taunt me about it,” he said.

“To warn you. So that you could get away. Even at that young an age, she was learning to cloak her real motives with falsehood, something she learned watching her father. Do you understand? I am not saying Azula was never cruel to you – she was cruel to everyone she loved, except her father – just that, if she had never loved you, she would never have hated you enough to try to kill you. You and your sister are both true children of fire, Zuko. Your emotions burn hot, both the good and the bad. Have you never had the urge to try to destroy something you love, so that it can never hurt you, never be used against you?”

“I –“ Zuko broke off, troubled. “I don’t know….Maybe.” He glanced at Aang, then quickly away. Aang thought Zuko was probably remembering his betrayal of his uncle at Ba Sing Se.

“Please think about it,” Ursa urged him. “I believe it is going to be important that you learn to have some real understanding of your sister. It will reduce the danger she presents, and may help her as well.” She turned back to Aang. “How is it that you know of your destiny at only twelve, Aang? And how did you survive Sozin’s massacre of your people?”

He told them the tale of his running away from the Air Temple into the storm, his hundred years’ sleep inside the iceberg, and his shocking discovery of his peoples’ genocide at Sozin’s hand when he was awakened by Katara and Sokka. Ursa frowned thoughtfully when he finished. “So you have never visited the Avatar Shrines of the Water or Earth Sages? Only that of the corrupted Fire Sages?”

“After what happened there, I didn’t really want to visit the other Shrines,” Aang shrugged.

“So what do you truly know about what it means to be the Avatar?”

Aang shrugged again, grinning. “Only what I’ve been able to learn from my past lives, mostly. I’ve been kind of busy learning bending and trying to figure out how to master the Avatar State.”

“And you have mastered all four elements in less than a year?”

“Not mastered, really,” Aang said. “All my sifus say I have a lot more work to do. Ask Sifu Hotman, here.” He nodded to Zuko.

“It’s true,” Zuko pointed out. “He’s got the basics of firebending, and even one advanced move, but not much stamina or energy capacity, except in the Avatar State. I think it’s partly because he won’t eat meat.”

Aang scowled at him. “Hey!”

Ursa interrupted the incipient squabble. “Zuko…you are one of Aang’s teachers?”

“I almost wasn’t, but yes, I do have that honor. He’s a fast learner, except for his short attention span.”

“HEY!”

“Don’t act like you don’t know it, Aang. Katara and Toph both say the same thing.” Smiling slightly, he turned to his mother. “Airbender, you know. Flighty.”

“Katara is the girl waterbender who freed you from the ice?” Ursa asked. “And Toph is…?”

“Indescribable,” Zuko said. “You’ll have to meet her and see for yourself. She’s an earthbender – probably the best in the world, or at least second best. As if that weren’t enough, she’s only Aang’s age.”

“Truly?” Ursa was growing more intent by the moment. “Who taught her?”

“Badger moles,” said Aang. “And Zuko and I got taught by dragons.”

“Dragons are real?” said Mikka, mouth agape.

“Very real,” Aang assured him. “But don’t talk about it, okay? They like their privacy.”

“I won’t,” Mikka said. “I promise.”

“And your Katara was taught by the sacred selkies?” Ursa said.

“Huh? Oh, no,” Aang said. “Or not as far as I know. She pretty much taught herself from some scrolls we found, and she got help from Master Pakku at the North Pole. But mostly we figured it out working by ourselves. We kind of had to, because there was this crazy Fire Prince chasing us to the end of the world.”

Zuko had the grace to look embarrassed.

“Normally, the Avatar’s teachers are chosen from a small pool of very carefully selected possibilities,” Ursa said. “The Avatar forms strong bonds with his or her teachers, you see. Unbreakable bonds.” She studied Aang carefully. “Bonds that last a lifetime. Do you understand what that means?”

“Er…I’m not sure. I mean, we’re all good friends now…”

“It goes well beyond friendship,” Ursa said gently. “Whether you know it or not, you have made a serious commitment to your teachers. And they to you. And to each other, through you. And you are all so young…I don’t know what that will mean to the shape of your lives, but to a certain extent you are all ….well, stuck with each other now. If you lose one of your teachers, or are even separated from her, or him, for too long, your abilities will suffer. The Avatar must stay firmly linked to humanity, or he will not be able to carry out his duties. It is a way to remind a being with that much power what his power is intended for.”

Aang looked unsure. “I…well, that doesn’t really sound so bad... it’s not like I want to break up the group.”

“It isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Ursa said. “It just means that you don’t have the option of cutting any of these people out of your life – and they don’t have the option of cutting you off, either.”

“How do you know so much about being the Avatar?” Aang asked, curious.

Ursa smiled. “My father was one of the people selected as a possible teacher for you – before you vanished. After that happened, and after Sozin’s War started, he became the leader of the Fire Sages and kept them faithful to the Avatar until he was betrayed and killed by Kaji, the leader of the corrupted Fire Sages you met. When I was much younger, I wanted to join the Fire Sages as well. My father taught me as much as he could of their lore before he died. I believe you met my father before you were frozen. His name was Kuzon. Zuko was named in honor of him.”

Aang felt like his eyes were going to cross. “Of course I remember Kuzon! He was one of my best friends! Wait – was he Roku’s kid? My… son?”

Ursa smiled. “Yes, he was. As I am your granddaughter, in a manner of speaking. Should I start calling you Grandfather Aang now?”

“Ack! Please don’t. This is all confusing enough as it is without that too.” Aang rested his head in his hands. “I thought I finally knew what it meant to be Avatar. Seems I still have a lot to learn.”

“It can take up to fifteen years for an Avatar to be fully trained, in normal times,” Ursa said. “But these times aren’t normal, even now that Ozai has been removed. I think we may all have a great deal to learn, Aang. Fortunately, there will be time.”

“Yes, but not just now,” Lu Ten broke in. He pointed off to the left. “Crater City’s right there. We’re almost home.”

(Author’s Reminder: This takes place after the time Zuko went to talk to Ozai in prison, but well before the final scene of the finale, with everyone in Iroh’s tea shop and the “big kiss.” So that hasn’t happened yet.)

Fic: Exile: Chapter 5: The Betrayal
Chapter 5: The Betrayal

Ursa dreams.

Once again, she is back in the Fire Palace, in the room she shares with her husband. Or with this stranger who stands before her, who wears her husband’s face but who is saying things Ozai would never say, speaking of doing things Ozai would never do. Or so she had thought, back when she was younger, and innocent.

“You…you can’t be serious,” she says, once again. “He can’t be serious. Why would your father make you do such a terrible thing?” She had never held a high opinion of her father-in-law, but this is much worse than anything he has ever done before. “Why should our son be punished for your ambition?”

“Does it matter? He says if I don’t do as he tells me, he’ll disown me. Banish me. I can’t have that, Ursa. We can’t have that.” Ozai turns to her, this man she thought she knew. “I…don’t really think he’ll harm the boy. He’s just testing me to see if I’m obedient, that’s all.”

Ursa thinks about the cold, hateful expression on Azulon’s face, and her stomach roils. She is not convinced, and will not stake the life of her firstborn on such meager reassurance. “And what if he asks you to do the deed? To slay your son with your own hands? What then, Ozai? Will you be obedient?” Ursa is certain this will make him take the threat to Zuko seriously, and he will help her and the two children escape to some safe haven where the Fire Lord’s cruelty cannot touch them.

She is wrong.

“If that is what it will take to regain his good favor – then I will do it,” he says, this stranger who used to be her husband. In the dream Ursa sees what she did not notice in reality – her daughter listening, wide-eyed, from behind a curtain.

“You – Ozai, no. You must take that back, take it back right this instant, Ozai –“

His expression hardens, and suddenly she sees his father in him, and she shivers. “I will not. You know what my brother is like; if Azulon passes the throne to him, we will be at war forever thanks to Iroh’s ideas of ‘civilized warfare.’ There is nothing civil about warfare, and all that my father’s and brother’s ‘civilized’ methods have done is buy us more than a hundred years of war. How long has Iroh been laying fruitless siege to Ba Sing Se while ignoring easier targets such as Omashu? I won’t have it, Ursa. It is time that we win this conflict, win it forever, by any means necessary. How can I ask the Fire Nation to sacrifice its children when I will not sacrifice my own?”

“Both of our children will join the military when they come of age, just as you and Iroh did! They will share the same risks as the other children! None of them will be…be…butchered for a parent’s ambitions, Ozai!” This cannot be happening, she thinks. He cannot be serious.

But Ozai continues to argue, stunning her with horror. “I know you will miss the boy, but you have a daughter, and we can have other children. He has always been weak, Ursa. He should never have lived to begin with, and you know it. Perhaps this is why the spirits allowed him these years, so that his life could be put to a better use.”

“Zuko is not weak! And you can hardly hold him responsible for the circumstances of his birth!”

“Then who should I hold responsible, Ursa? You? He was born two months too early, only two days after the spring equinox – barely even a summer child! And so small and stunted….he was fortunate even to survive the birth. His firebending is laughably weak, his physical development is slow, he clings to your robes like a barnaclam – and I have seen no sign that he will ever improve, ever be anything but unfit to rule. I have already decided that Azula will follow me to the throne, Ursa – I will not have the brother who was lucky to be born standing in her way!”

Ursa can only stare at him. “You are not Fire Lord,” she says. “You cannot have a royal heir without a throne, my husband. You can only have your children. And if you think there will be more children for you after this, you are sorely mistaken.”

It is the wrong thing to say. Ozai’s eyes narrow, anger lighting them from within. “It is you who are sorely mistaken, my wife. I shall be Fire Lord. And Azula shall be my heir. And you shall bear me more children, if I desire it.” There is no mistaking the threat in his tone now. Who is this man? Did she ever really know him?

“I don’t know what you are planning, Ozai, but Iroh will never allow you to get away with it. He is despondent now, yes, but he will not stand idly by while you do these things!” She hopes, desperately, that what she is saying is the truth.

Ozai’s smile lacks even a trace of mirth. “I have…insurance…against my elder brother’s interference, Ursa. When my father passes, Iroh will not contest my claim to the throne, I assure you. Growing too fond of your children is a serious weakness, my wife. You will learn this, too. My father is very old and must die soon; until that time I will do as I must to prevent him from removing me from my place.” He turns in a swirl of crimson robes. “I am going to get the boy and take him to Azulon. If you wish to say goodbye to him, you should come now. Whether or not Azulon carries out his threat, or asks me to do so, I have decided Zuko should see no more of you. You are infecting him with your own weakness. Should he survive my father’s wrath, I will give him the opportunity to prove to me his is not the weakling I believe he is. But he will never find his strength, if indeed he has any, while he has you to hide behind.”

In the dream, Ursa sees herself stretch out a hand to him, a desperate ploy blossoming in her panic-stricken mind. “Wait! Ozai, my husband…my lord…Wait. Please.”

He is unused to hearing her beg. The novelty of it brings him to a halt, causes him to turn to witness this intriguing new thing. “Do not try to delay me, Ursa,” he warns.

“I have an idea. A trade. I would make a bargain with you.”

“I do not haggle with my wife like a merchant in the marketplace, woman.”

Ursa swallows her pride, swallows it down as far as she possibly can. It is difficult, for she comes of a proud lineage, but she has no time for that now. She falls to her knees before him. “I know you do not, my lord and husband. I would never ask that of you. I simply wish to ask – would your purpose not be better served if it were Azulon who were to die tonight, and not your ten year old son?” She holds her breath waiting for his reply, for although she knows there is no love lost between Azulon and Ozai, what she is proposing goes well beyond the scope of typical familial strife. But then, it is Ozai who crossed that line first tonight. She hopes he will remember that.

Ozai studies her, no doubt wondering what she has in mind, this gentle, inoffensive woman he has been married to for a dozen years now. “What treason is this you are speaking, Ursa?”

Despite the severe tone, she sees that she has managed to capture his interest. She talks quickly, not wanting to lose her opening. “If Azulon were to die tonight, my lord, the throne would be yours, if what you say of Iroh not contesting you is true.”

“Iroh will not interfere. I have a hold over him he could never bring himself to risk breaking. But that will not mean I can keep the throne. You show how poor your grasp of politics is, Ursa. If my father dies without explanation and my brother steps aside, again without explanation, the nobility and the general staff will suspect something. There will be questions asked, possibly challenges made. Doubts will linger long after I am crowned. I cannot have that – it would make putting my plans into action much more difficult for many years, perhaps my whole reign.”

She puts her last tile on the Pai Sho board. “What if Azulon himself were to name you heir over Iroh, on his deathbed?”

“He would never do such a thing.”

“It is not required that he does. Only that it is believed that he has.”

Ozai frowns. “I do not understand what you are suggesting, Ursa. You should stop this useless prattle and compose yourself, or you will upset the boy unnecessarily. Let him remember his mother smiling – it is the last thing you can do for him.” He begins to turn away.

“I will bear witness to Azulon’s deathbed oath,” she swears. “No one has any reason to doubt my word.” Quite the opposite, she thinks; those who know of her ancestry, Iroh included, will be certain to believe her.

Ozai turns back, his face calculating. “That…is a good thought, my wife. But it is not quite enough. You want the boy kept safe, yes?”

“I want both my children kept safe, yes.” And you should as well, she thinks bitterly.

“In that case, I think a life for a life is the appropriate exchange, don’t you?” His smile is sharper than even the best Piandao blade.

Ursa is wary, wondering where the trap is here. But she dare not risk letting Ozai slip away and carry Zuko off. “Yes. That would be fair.”

“Then it will be you who does the deed of ending my father. A patricide would not be an auspicious beginning to my reign, I feel.”

There it is. He wants her to commit murder – or to show that she cares more for her own honor than she does for the life of her child.

The choice is not difficult. “If you will promise never to threaten the lives of either of our children ever again, then yes. I will do this terrible thing for you.”

Ozai’s eyes widen. Had he expected her to back down? Or is he merely surprised that she has agreed so quickly?

No matter. The offer is there. Ozai wastes no time in claiming it. “Then I will agree. But it must be done tonight. My father’s spies are everywhere. The more time passes, the larger the chance you will let something slip. Also, when the deed is done – you must leave, or die. I cannot have you holding the threat of this knowledge over my head.”

“You need not worry. I would never take such a chance with the lives of my children.” My children, they are now. No longer ours. If Ozai hears the hidden message, he gives no sign of it.

Ozai’s smirk is decidedly unsavory. “I find it fascinating how many otherwise intelligent people feel that way. But it will not do. What if the children should die of illness? My hold over you becomes empty, then. No. It would give me no joy to kill you, Ursa, but never doubt that I will do it if it is necessary. Will you agree to leave?”

She bows her head. She would be more than pleased to get as far away from Ozai and the murderous atmosphere at the Fire Palace as possible. But she must have her children with her. They must not be left to grow up here, with this man. But while she might persuade him to agree to let her take Zuko, he will never let her take Azula, her baby girl, that much is clear. So she must be clever.

“As long as you hold to your promise to keep my children safe, I will accept banishment. You may say I have gone on a retreat for my health, or to undertake a journey of spiritual enlightenment, or whatever pleases you.”

“Very good. Then we are agreed. I must make some arrangements first -- meet me here tomorrow at dusk, and be sure to pack for travel. Also be sure you give no sign that anything out of the ordinary is occurring, or our deal will not hold. Do you understand?”

“I do. And I will do as you say.” She will need the time as well, to make some arrangements of her own.

Ursa sleeps only fitfully that night. She has sent a trusted servant down to the market to buy supplies and regular clothes for herself and the children, and another down to the docks to secure passage for three at a high rate of pay, with a guarantee of secrecy from the ship’s captain. She tries to think of some way to warn Iroh of what will be happening, but he is too far away; no message would be able to reach him without being intercepted either by Azulon’s spies, or the ones Azulon believes are his but that in truth belong to Ozai. Finally she thinks of her grandfather’s crown, carefully stored away in a well-padded marble case. She bundles it up with a brief message asking Iroh to look after it for her, and hopes he may somehow understand the hidden message – this crown belongs to the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, and that is you, not my husband, no matter what else you may hear me say. She has a servant deliver the wrapped box to Iroh’s home quarters, into the hands of her brother-and-law’s housekeeper, a ruggedly fearsome woman who rules her part of the household with an iron fist.

The children are already in bed, or so Ursa thinks, but she cannot resist the temptation to check on them. She goes to look in on Zuko first, the boy whose father is willing to kill him. As she nears his room, she hears his voice, high with alarm – “Dad would never do that to me!”

How could word of the impending family tragedy have gotten out already? Ursa rushes into the room. “Your father would never do what to you?”

Both of her children are in Zuko’s bedroom, and both are awake, which they should not be at this hour. Azula has a slyly cruel expression on her face, and Zuko is clearly terrified.

“What is going on here?” she demands, looking at her daughter.

Azula shrugs and with cloying, obviously false innocence, says “I don’t know.” It is clear she knows far too much.

Ursa pulls her from the Zuko’s room and into an unused antechamber. She brings the girl close and sets her hand on Azula’s chin, turning it upward so she can clearly see her daughter’s face. “Azula. This is not a game. Tell me what you’ve heard.”

Reluctantly, Azula tells her. The girl has witnessed all of Ozai’s encounter with his father, even parts that Ursa herself had not heard about. Then Azula had followed her father back to her parents’ chamber and listened to all of their argument, and to the deal that they had struck. Azula does not seem very bothered by what she has heard – what little upset shows on her face is caused by the fact that she got caught eavesdropping. Not for the first time, Ursa wonders what her daughter is learning at her girls’ school, and is glad that she had insisted that Zuko be tutored in the palace instead of being sent away.

Ursa assumes Azula simply does not understand the gravity of what she has overheard – she is only eight, after all. She makes Azula give her a solemn promise not to mention anything she has heard, not even to Zuko (especially not to Zuko, Ursa thinks). She attempts to reassure Azula by explaining that she has a plan to take her and her brother away with her when she goes, but Azula does not seem much affected by this in either a good or a bad way. Ursa sends the girl off to bed then, praying that Azula’s good sense will keep the upper hand until she can get her children away from this cursed place.

The following day she acquires the poison: a quantity of dried edible tickseeds, known to be useful for skin problems and for purging the bowels, but also highly toxic in large doses. She has made something of a study of common plant poisons as the mother of two active toddlers, and this is the worst one she knows. She cracks the shells off the seeds and throws the seeds away, for it is the shells she is after. She puts on thin gloves and ties a piece of silk over her mouth before she begins grinding the shells with a mortar and pestle. She puts the powder that results into a paper envelope and conceals it up one of her long sleeves.

It is a simple matter to pay a visit to the kitchens right before dinner, and, while praising the cooks and pretending to sample the food, to open the envelope and slip the odorless and nearly tasteless powder into the Fire Lord’s main dish. Azulon uses a food taster, but the small amount of poison he will eat in a few spoonfuls won’t do more than confine him to the water closet for a day or so. The effects of the full dose will be quite different.

It is all so terribly easy.

And late that night, when Azulon takes to his bed with piercing stomach pains which the physicians are unable to alleviate, it is his younger son and his son’s wife who tend to him all the way until the end. Ozai sends away the servants and physicians, that he and his wife might be alone with his father in his dying moments. Azulon cannot speak as the last pangs of dying wrack his body, but he manages a vicious glare at Ozai that makes it perfectly clear he understands what has happened to him. Ursa has to turn away from that look of helpless murderous rage. Her husband only smiles, his eyes not fiery at all but as cold as the depths of a winter night at the poles.

Then they emerge together, in feigned sorrow, when it is all over, to announce that on his deathbed, Azulon named his faithful and devoted son Ozai as his successor to the Throne of Flames over his grief-crippled older son Iroh. Hand in hand they return to their quarters.

And there Ursa’s dream, already a nightmare, becomes something more horrifying than that. For there are six guards of the elite Blazing Sword regiment there, and it is clear they are waiting for her.

Ozai watches her face as she sees the soldiers and whirls to face him. “What is this?” she demands.

“No more than we agreed upon,” her husband says smoothly. “These soldiers will escort you out of Crater City.”

“I will travel more quickly and with less notice if I travel on my own,” Ursa says, thinking – the children. I must get to the children.

“I think it will be safer all around if you have an escort. You might be attacked. I wouldn’t want you to come to any harm as you begin your spiritual retreat.” His voice is silky and hateful. She wonders if she will live to see the dawn.

“Do you doubt my word, my husband?” Ursa says, drawing herself up regally. “Have I ever broken it?” He is dead, the old man is dead, and you have your throne. What more do you want of me, you monster?

“No indeed.” He leans close, to speak so that the soldiers cannot hear. “And I would not want you to start now. Azula came to tell me about your plan to spirit her and her brother away with you. That was not part of our agreement, Ursa.”

Ursa closes her eyes briefly in pain. She is only eight. She cannot know the harm she has done. “I do not recall agreeing to leave the children behind,” she counters, knowing it is a feeble defense at best.

“Surely you did not think to take them out into the world with no protection? They are the children of the Fire Lord now. Easy targets for assassins.” Again, the word games. Off in some distant, desolate location, there was only one set of assassins that might find them. He will kill them both rather than let me take them.

“Give me Zuko at least,” she says, hating herself. “You said you don’t intend for him to follow you. Let me have him. You will never see either of us again, I promise.”

“Am I to trust the word of a treasonous murderer? I think not. I will not have the boy growing to adulthood and returning at some inconvenient moment to threaten Azula, as unlikely as that is. He will stay here, and she will defeat him in an Agni Kai, and when that is done he may go where he pleases, if he survives. I promised you they would live, Ursa. I said nothing about where, or with who.”

All during this speech, Ursa has been coiling herself, preparing. As Ozai finishes, she lashes out at him, her hands bristling with daggers of blinding white fire. By reflex, he spins back and away, blocking her attack with his own firebending and losing his grip on her arm. She flings another double handful at the shocked soldiers, who dive to the floor or duck behind furniture to avoid the burning spikes. Then she dashes out the door, kicking off her tight ceremonial shoes as she does so, and flees down the corridor. She hears shouts behind her, but does not look back.

Ursa runs only a short distance before taking a sharp right turn into a small servants’ cloak room. She finds a long, good-quality cloak and pulls it on over her rumpled ceremonial dress, stained with the leavings of Azulon’s final hour. The heavy hood covers her hair and much of her face.

She hears armored footsteps charging after her, but they do not stop to check the cloakroom. She lets them past, then steps out of the closet and walks with authority to another unused room near her quarters. In here she has placed a set of traveling clothes along with a sack of personal items and small necessities. She changes, hiding her soiled gown behind a stack of crated vegetables, and slips back out the door.

She makes her way carefully toward Zuko’s room. She pauses at the corner, hearing voices.

“…to kill the boy if she tries to take him,” says a man whose voice she does not know. “Kill the boy, but bring her back alive to Ozai.”

“You think we’re gonna survive if we actually kill Ozai’s kid?” says a woman’s voice, probably that of the man’s partner.

“I know those are our orders,” said the man. “And if we don’t follow ‘em, we definitely won’t survive.”

“Doesn’t sit too well with me, going after a boy like this.”

“Me neither, but I never claimed to understand royals. I’m just following my orders.” Ursa hears the man’s armor clank as he shrugs.

Ursa peers around the corner and sees two Blazing Swords guarding Zuko’s door. Her heart sinks as she considers their words. Ozai has picked exactly the right set of orders. If she tries to escape with Zuko, and they are spotted, her son will die in front of her. But Ozai wants her alive. On her own, then, she might be able to escape, and return later to rescue her children.

The thought tears her heart into little tiny pieces, but the logic is irrefutable. Ozai has promised not to harm the children. She has kept her end of the bargain, and must hope and pray that he will hold to his. He clearly will not if she tries to take them.

She will not go without saying farewell to her son, however.

Ursa steps around the corner. The guards instantly go on the alert, but she is Lady Ursa, daughter of Kuzon the Flame-Cloaked, granddaughter of Avatar Roku. She is not at all fond of violence. But she is very, very good at it when necessary. Within seconds the guards are on the floor, moaning, and Ursa has slipped through the door to her son’s room.

Somehow he has slept through the noise, deep in the peaceful dreams of childhood. She sits carefully on the bed beside him, not wishing to wake him, but not wanting to leave him without a word, either. Zuko solves the problem for her by waking up on his own. He says “Mom?” sleepily, rubbing at his eyes with the back of a hand.

The goodbye is far too short, and he is much too young to understand what is happening, or why. She does not know what to tell him. She cannot even promise to return for him, although she has every intention of finding a way to do so. In the end all she can do is try to reassure him that she is protecting him, and to tell him what her own father had told her in difficult times – “Never forget who you are.” Never forget you are my son as well as your father’s. Never forget I would give up my life for you, gladly, or that I would take a life to save yours.

Never forget how much I love you. How much I always have. How much I always will.

Never forget.

And with that, she slips back out the door with grief heavy in her heart, leaving her child scared, alone, and confused in his bed.

Her next stop will be Azula’s room, but she has another errand to tend to first. Azula’s rooms are in another wing, for safety in case of runaway fire or an enemy attack, and between Zuko’s room and hers is a messenger hawk aerie. All is quiet within. There is one hawk-master on duty, but he is snoring quietly in a corner, the birds all hooded and jessed on their perches around him. She finds scroll paper and a pen in a desk drawer, and rapidly scribbles a letter. Finishing quickly, she blots the ink with sand, then rolls the scroll up, slides it into a case, and labels the case. Selecting a large, healthy bird, she attaches the scroll case, takes off its hood, tells it, “Ba Sing Se,” and sends it flying from her wrist out the skylight. She does not care if this message gets intercepted.

The sound of flapping wings awakens the hawk-master, but all he sees is the flash of a cloak and the door to the aerie swinging on its hinges.

Ursa moves purposefully down the hall to Azula’s room. There are no guards at the door, which arouses her suspicions. She puts an ear to the polished wood, but hears nothing. Having no other choice, she puts her hand on the lock and pushes the door open.

Ozai is there. With two Blazing Swords. And Azula.

Ozai and Azula are playing Pai Sho on her bed. Azula looks up as the door opens. “Father – Mother’s here,” she says cheerfully. When her father turns his attention to his wife, Azula sneaks a tile off the board and pockets it.

Ursa ignores Ozai. “Azula. My dear. Do you understand what’s happening here?”

“Sure. You want to take me and Zuko away, but Father doesn’t want us to go.” She looks up at her mother, her golden eyes bright and mocking. “You told me to always do what father says, but you didn’t do that. You disobeyed.”

“And what did I tell you happens to people who disobey the Fire Lord?” Ozai says.

“They get sent away until they learn better manners,” she said, looking to him for approval.

He smiles proudly at her. “Very good, Azula. Yes, indeed. Sadly, your mother needs to learn better manners, so you won’t be seeing her for a while. How do you feel about that?”

For a moment Azula’s air of superiority fades, and Ursa sees her eight-year-old daughter, frantically trying to make her way through a harsh world whose rules she can’t possibly comprehend. She feels a surge of sorrow for the girl, wondering what will become of her under Ozai’s tutelage. She finds that she fears for Zuko’s life…and for Azula’s soul.

“I don’t care,” Azula tells her father. Her face is perfectly open and innocent. Azula has always been a talented liar.

“I’m glad to hear that.” Ozai nods to the soldiers. “Take her away.”

“Azula,” Ursa says as the soldiers seize her arms to usher her out. “Remember, I love you. I will always love you. And remember who you are!”

Ozai smiles indulgently down at Azula. “I think Azula already knows exactly who she is, Ursa. Azula is my daughter. Aren’t you?”

The last thing Ursa sees before she is dragged away is her daughter looking up at Ozai, face shining. “Yes, Father. I’m your daughter.”

To Be Continued

Fic: Exile: Chapter 4: The Heirloom

Chapter 4: The Heirloom

“She’s over this way,” Lu Ten said, motioning toward the hidden shelter. “I want to warn you, though, Zu – she’s ill, and we don’t know why. Mikka hasn’t been able to find the source.”

Hearing that, Mikka grimaced. “I have to check on her!” He dashed for the shelter and dove inside.

“She’ll be fine,” said Zuko, the tone of his voice indicating that if she wasn’t, the universe had better have a very good explanation for it. “We’ve got some of the best physicians in the world at the Fire Palace, and we have Katara, another healing waterbender. They’ll be able to help. She’ll be just fine.”

“That’s good to hear.” Lu Ten held the branches at the opening back for Zuko to enter. He hesitated for just a moment, then took a deep breath and ducked inside. Aang followed him closely.

Ursa lay on a pile of blankets, dappled by sunlight filtering through the shelter’s brush roof. Mikka knelt next to her, his glowing hands held over her heart. She was much too pale. A flash of terror crossed Zuko’s face, until he saw her chest slowly rise and fall with a shallow breath.

Ursa had aged a little from the stately, glowing woman he remembered from his childhood. There was a strand or two of gray in her raven hair, a few worry lines around her mouth. Her skin was roughened from daily exposure to sun, rain, and wind.

She was still the most beautiful woman Zuko had ever seen.

He knelt down by her head and brushed a stray lock of hair away from her face. She shifted slightly and murmured something too low to hear, but, to his disappointment, she did not awaken.

“How long … “ Zuko’s voice cracked, and he had to stop to swallow hard. “How long has she been like this? What happened?”

“About two weeks, and we don’t really know,” Lu Ten answered. He was crouched at the door of the shelter, as there was barely enough room in it for Ursa, Zuko, Mikka and Aang. “She had been behaving strangely all day at the time of the comet’s arrival. She was preoccupied, and sometimes seemed to be watching or listening to someone we couldn’t see. About mid-day she fell into some kind of trance and started muttering to herself, something about a coronation and being confused. Then she said, ‘No. I love you,’ quite clearly, and fainted. A few hours later she awoke partially, but was still delirious. Then she screamed and clutched at her heart like it was failing her, and fell truly unconscious.” Lu Ten shook his head sadly. “And she’s been like this since then. Mikka’s been able to get water and some food into her – broth, mostly – but can’t find anything wrong. It’s definitely not her heart, he says. There’s no damage for him to fix. We don’t know if it was something brought on by the comet, or just a coincidence.”

Zuko’s hand went to his chest, where Aang knew he now carried a star-shaped scar directly over his heart. “I don’t think it was a coincidence,” he whispered.

Mikka looked at him. “You know what did this? Tell me!”

“I don’t know for sure…but it sounds like she had her attack right around the time I almost died. My sister threw lightning at a friend of mine. I got in the way, but couldn’t get into the right stance to redirect it properly.” Zuko winced at the memory. “It almost stopped my heart. Would have, if Katara hadn’t been there to help.”

Lu Ten stared at him. “Wait – Azula threw lightning? At a friend of yours? Why? And what do you mean you tried to ‘redirect’ it?”

Zuko sighed. “Azula isn’t the cute kid you remember, Lu, any more than I am. She’s…well, you had better see for yourself. Anyway, she’s tried to kill me a couple of times now. Uncle taught me to redirect lightning, and it’s saved my life twice so far. Once from Ozai, once from Azula.”

Lu Ten was still staring at him in something like horror. “I knew Uncle Ozai was insane but…he tried to kill you? And little Azula did too? Great spirits, what did he do to her?”

The question startled Zuko. “Uh…did to her? Aside from being a terrible role model? I…never really thought about it…”

“He must have done something. I can’t see little Azula trying to fry her big brother. She used to follow you around everywhere like a feisty little puppykit. Drove you up the wall, as I recall. Literally, in a few cases – isn’t that why you first started climbing all over everything? To get to places she couldn’t reach?”

Aang found this image so bizarre and yet so in-character for Zuko that he had to smother a totally inappropriate burst of laughter. Privately, he vowed to pin Lu Ten down later and pump him for stories of ‘Runt’ and ‘Runt Two’. It promised to be very entertaining – although also more than a little sad, given what had happened between the siblings since that time.

Zuko sounded very weary. “Yeah, well, things have changed a lot, Lu. Like I said, you’ll have to see for yourself. For now, let’s just worry about getting Mother back home and taking care of her.”

“Good idea. Let me in there and I’ll carry her out. Er – did you bring some other transport with you, or is the flying furball our ride out?”

“His name’s Appa, and yes, he’ll be taking us home,” Zuko said. “But I’ll carry her, Lu.” With exquisite care, he got his arms under Ursa and lifted her, still wrapped in blankets, and brought her out into the sunlight. Aang and Mikka trailed behind.

Lu Ten looked up at Appa, still floating serenely above the cabin. “Er. Are you sure it – he – can carry all of us? And how do we get up to him?”

“Sure, Appa’s plenty strong,” Aang assured him. “He gets tired if he has to carry eight or so people for too long, but he can take the five of us no problem. Do you guys have any stuff you want to bring along? Oh, and don’t worry about getting up, I’ll take care of that.”

Lu Ten nodded. “Yes, we have a few things to bring along, but not much. I’ll go pack it up. Mikka, you stay with Aunt Ursa.”

Mikka nodded. “She seems a little stronger to me, Lu Ten. Maybe it’s the sunlight. You know how she loves being in the sunshine.”

“That’s good to hear. Get her settled, okay? I’ll be right back.” He disappeared into the cabin.

Aang struck a solid broad stance, and pulled on the earth. A column of rock shot up from the ground toward Appa, who eyed it suspiciously. Aang swept a hand down and around, and the column sprouted spiral steps from the base to the top. Mikka looked very impressed, and scrambled rapidly up the column. Aang followed, and Zuko brought up the rear, carrying his mother with great care into Appa’s saddle and setting her gently down in the center. He then busied himself making sure her blankets were completely free of wrinkles.

Mikka stopped at the edge of the column, hesitating before stepping into the saddle. He turned to Aang, looking a little worried. “What about Shanyang and our chickens?”

“Who’s Shanyang?”

“Our nannycow. We can’t just leave them here, they’ll starve!”

Aang smiled, finding he liked this unusual boy. “Well, they probably wouldn’t like riding on Appa, but we’ll be back in the capital in a few hours and Zuko can send a boat for them. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

“He’d do that?”

“Sure. He likes animals. Right, Zuko?”

“Huh?” Zuko looked up, not having followed any of the conversation.

“I said you’d be glad to make sure Mikka’s animals got off the island safely.”

“Oh. Sure, of course. You can even bring them to the palace if you want to have them with you there.”

Mikka’s eyes widened. “I get to go to the Fire Palace? To live?”

“If you want to. You’ve definitely earned it, taking care of my mother the way you have. Do you think you’d like to live there? Lu Ten and my mother will be.” He smiled reassuringly at the overawed boy. “Or if you have family I’ll see you get back to them. You should at least meet Katara, though – she’s another waterbender, she can help you work on that, if you want. She’s a good teacher – she taught Aang.”

“I…don’t have any family. I think. I never knew who my father was. And my mother…” His eyes dropped. “I think she’s dead. She tried to fight the soldiers when they came to take me. I saw blood. They wouldn’t let me go to her, to help her.”

Zuko gritted his teeth against the sudden surge of anger. He had heard so many stories like this, or worse, from the days of Ozai’s reign. His father had so very much to answer for. “Who was your mother, Mikka? Where did she live?”

“Her name was Ossa. We lived on Yougan Island. She did washing for the rich ladies in town. She could do a few things with water that made it easier.” He paused, looking sad. “She couldn’t heal though. So I think she probably died. It was a long time ago. I don’t remember much.” His expression said he remembered more than he really wanted to.

“We’ll find out what happened to her, I promise. Was she from the Water Tribes, do you know?”

“No. But her father was. I don’t know his name. He died long before I was born.”

“South or North?”

Mikka frowned, trying to recall dim details. “I think South. Mother said something about him being captured in a raid. He was sold into slavery in the Fire Nation.”

Zuko grimaced. Yet one more thing to set right. “You should definitely meet Katara and Sokka then. They’re from the Southern Water Tribe. They may know some distant relatives of yours who’d like to meet you, if you want to know more about that part of your heritage.”

Mikka looked intrigued. “Yeah…maybe.” His face fell. “But I remember Mom saying they wouldn’t want either of us because we’re part Fire Nation. And I’m mostly Fire Nation. I mean…I hate the way they brought me here, but it was better for me here with Lu Ten and Aunt Ursa than it ever was on Yougan Island.”

“You won’t have to worry about that any more. Like I said, you can stay at the Fire Palace as long as you want, and no one will bother you. And Chief Hakoda of the Southern Tribe is a good man – he’ll help you if you want to go to the Southern Water tribe.” Zuko smiled. “But it’s pretty cold there, I should warn you. It’s a lot warmer at the Fire Palace. Food’s better too. Unless you like seal blubber.” Zuko clearly wanted the boy to stay in Crater City, thought Aang – no doubt because of the undeniable bonds he had formed with Lu Ten and Ursa.

Mikka made a face at the mention of seal blubber. Aang thought perhaps the Fire Lord shouldn’t be allowed to stack the tiles against the Southern Water Tribe in advance. “Things are a lot better there now that they’ve reconnected with the Northern Water Tribe,” he put in. “And they have a lot of really good fish dishes to eat, if you like fish. You don’t have to eat seal blubber if you don’t want to.”

Zuko gave him a mildly dirty look for spoiling his pitch. “How would you know? You only eat plants.”

“Not a lot of plants at the poles, except seaweed – which is pretty good, don’t get me wrong, but you can’t live on nothing but seaweed. So I ate fish. And shellfish, too. Not seals or walrus, though, or sea birds. Air Nomad food rules are just moral guidelines, not laws, you know – they’re not meant to make us starve ourselves!”

“Hmph,” Zuko snorted. “I still say you’d better eat more good meat protein. You’re already scrawny – once you start shooting up you’re going to be a walking skeleton.”

Aang stuck his tongue out. “I’ll manage, Nanny Fire Lord.”

“Hey, I’m your teacher – I’m supposed to make sure you stay healthy. Firebending takes more out of you than any other element. I don’t want you passing out during lessons.”

“I know, I know, I know. This is about the fiftieth time you’ve lectured me on my eating habits.”

“I don’t plan to stop, either, so you can forget about keeping count.”

Aang sighed and rolled his eyes.

Mikka was staring at the two of them. Aang noticed, and asked, “Is something wrong, Mikka?”

“Uh. Noooo….I just…um.”

“Um what?” Aang pressed.

“Um. Aunt Ursa taught me some history, and you two – are you really the Avatar and the Fire Lord? Or was that a joke? No, wait, you could bend more than one element…I don’t get it. You sound like a kid just like me. Well, maybe not just like me, but like, just a kid. Most of the time.”

“I am just a kid most of the time. And Zuko’s just a teenager. The titles don’t matter, except for what we do with them. They don’t make us different people than we are.”

“I dunno, I guess I would have expected something more…um…impressive?”

Zuko waved his hands frantically. “No no no. Do NOT ask Aang to be impressive. Unless you like uncontrollable hurricanes with fiery rocks and waterfalls everywhere.”

“Hey! It’s not like that any more, and you know it!”

“That doesn’t make it any less overwhelming, and you know that.”

Aang sighed. “Ignore him, Mikka. He’s just jealous.”

Zuko made a derisive noise, then went back to looking after Ursa. Right about then Lu Ten emerged from the cabin carrying a wooden crate with three or four full bags stuffed into it, a hand-woven basket over one arm, and a large water skin slung over the opposite shoulder. He stopped briefly at the spring to fill the water skin, then climbed the column of stairs without any evidence the load was slowing him down at all. Aang and Mikka reached up to help him with the baggage as he stepped into the saddle. “I was wondering what we’re going to do about our farm animals,” he said as the luggage was stowed away in the corners of the saddle.

“The Fire Lord said he’d take care of them,” Mikka piped up.

“My name’s Zuko,” the Fire Lord corrected him, gently. “You can use it, you know.”

“Um. Okay….Zuko.” Mikka looked like he was halfway expecting to get blasted by fire for his impertinence, but Zuko just smiled at him again, nodding his approval. Mikka smiled back, tentatively.

“Mikka, I brought HanPan along.”

He handed the basket over to Mikka, who looked relieved. “Oh, thank you! I can’t believe I almost forgot about him.”

Aang snuck a look into the basket. Large liquid eyes, a little pink nose, white whiskers, gray fur, and a very large set of ears looked back at him. “Hey, this is a wind mouse! Where’d you find him?”

“He fell out of the sky after a storm,” Mikka said. “He was hurt pretty badly. I healed him up, though, and he’s fine now.” The boy stuck out a hand and made a clicking noise. HanPan scrambled out of the basket and sat up in Mikka’s palm, looking around. Mikka scrounged in a pocket and produced a few grains of corn, which HanPan accepted with regal grace. The wind mouse then began to nibble on his feast, seemingly not at all concerned with the strange faces peering at him.

“I can’t wait to introduce him to Momo,” Aang said. “That’s my flying lemur – I left him at home because a friend wanted to borrow him for the day and I didn’t know how long we’d be gone.”

Zuko looked at him. “Sokka again?” Aang nodded. “Do I want to know exactly what Sokka is doing with Momo every time he borrows him?”

Aang shrugged. “I have no idea either, but whatever it is, Momo doesn’t seem to mind.”

Lu Ten finished getting their belongings stashed against the wall of the saddle, and stood there, at a loss. “Okay. Ready to go. How do we, uh, get him started?”

“First, you sit down,” Zuko advised. “And grab hold of something.” He himself had shifted around until he held his mother’s head pillowed in his lap.

Lu Ten took a seat, looking a bit doubtful. Aang took the reins and called out, “Yip yip!”, and Appa roared in response and zoomed up and away. Mikka yelled in surprised excitement, and Lu Ten grabbed at the side of the saddle and muttered an oath under his breath. “Sorry!” Aang called. “He accelerates kind of fast!”

“Well, any way out of prison is a good way out,” Lu Ten said. “I admit that never in my wildest dreams did I think we’d be getting out like this, though.”

“We could always put you back,” Zuko suggested.

“Quiet, runt. I didn’t ask for your input.” Lu Ten grabbed a small sack and chucked it at Zuko’s back. It bounced off with a hollow clank. Zuko twisted around and caught it, looking daggers at his cousin. “Toss your own stuff around, Lu.” He set the bag carefully down at his side. Another muted clank sounded. Zuko took a quick look into the bag, then closed it again, apparently satisfied.

“What have you got in there?” Aang asked.

“Nothing important,” Zuko said, much too quickly. “Just something I brought to show mother, if I found her. It’s not interesting to anyone else.” He pointedly avoided meeting Aang’s eyes while he said this.

Aang scowled at him. “Toph keeps telling you what a terrible liar you are, so why do you keep trying?” Moving like the wind, Aang snatched up Zuko’s rucksack and ducked backward, out of the older boy’s reach.

“HEY!” Zuko yelped. He jerked like he wanted to chase after Aang, but realized that would disturb his mother, and settled back down instead, satisfying himself with a fiery glare in Aang’s direction. “That’s private.”

Aang was holding the bag in both hands, looking puzzled. One had had found something cylindrical and hard, probably metallic, within the sack. Aang frowned, not seeming even to hear Zuko’s complaints. “What’s this?” he murmured. “Feels…familiar?”

Zuko bit his lower lip. This was not at all how he’d wanted this scene to play out.

Aang untied the mouth of the rucksack and looked in. The puzzled expression grew deeper. He darted a hand in and drew out a Fire Nation hairpiece, taller and more ornate than most. It was clearly old, but had been lovingly cleaned and burnished to a fine mellow shine. Aang stared at it. Zuko watched him uneasily. Lu Ten and Mikka, sensing that something important might be happening here, wisely stayed out of the way and kept quiet.

“This is…mine…” Aang said, in a dreamy voice. “Or…it was, once.” He shook his head and seemed to snap out of the trancelike state he had been about to drop into. “This…where did you get this? It’s been missing for over a hundred years. I thought it was destroyed.”

Zuko shifted uncomfortably. “No. It was my mother’s. When she left, she gave it to Uncle for safekeeping. And he gave it to me. I wanted to show it to her, to…explain some things.”

Aang looked at him, aware that once again Zuko was holding back on him. “Why did your mother have Roku’s headpiece? This is the one Sozin gave me – him – back when they were friends, I can tell.”

Zuko shook his head. “This isn’t a good time to talk about this, Aang.”

Lu Ten frowned. “There’s no big mystery here, Zu.” He turned to Aang. “She inherited it from her father, who got it from his. It’s one of her family keepsakes.” He gave Aang a puzzled look “I’d have thought you’d have known all about it.”

Aang was lost. “Why would I?”

“You remember your past lives, don’t you? This crown was Roku’s. Yours. It got passed down through his line. Ursa was Roku’s granddaughter, though he died long before she was born.”

Aang blinked. Thought about that. Blinked again. Turned to look at Zuko, who was avoiding his gaze. “How long have you had this?” the Avatar demanded. “How long have you known?”

“Er…known what?” Zuko tried, somewhat desperately.

“That Roku had kids. That your mother was his descendant. That you’re his – my -- great grandkid!”

“Oh. That.”

“Yeah, that! Why didn’t you say something? How long have you had this?”

Zuko sighed. “Uncle gave it to me while father had him locked up, when he told me about Sozin and Roku and how the war started. When he told me I had to be the one to fix it. He gave it to me then, to remind me I had a choice – that I could be my mother’s son and not my father’s.”

“So – before even the eclipse!”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you say something at the Western Air Temple? I’d never have let the others chase you off if you’d shown me this.”

“That’s why I didn’t show it to you,” Zuko said. “It was unfair pressure.”

“It was important, you stupid – we almost chased you off for good and then I’d have lost to Ozai! Why did you take that risk?”

Zuko hunched his shoulders. “Because I wanted to be accepted for myself, because you believed me, not because of some weird kind-of-family connection!”

“But – you dummy – you’re Roku’s great grandkid! That makes a difference!”

Zuko’s response was quiet. “Not that much of a difference. Azula is too, after all.”

That set Aang back. “Oh. Ah. Okay, that’s a point.”

Zuko seized the opening. “See, that’s why I wanted you accepting me on my own merits. What if I told you and it made you act differently toward Azula? She’d have happily taken advantage of it to try and kill you again.”

“Azula…” Ursa’s voice was weak but clear. Zuko’s head whipped back to his mother. Mikka scooted over on his hands and knees to check on her. Ursa’s eyes were half-open, but not seeing anything. “Azula…” she whispered again. “Where…are you…?”

Aang didn’t miss the faint expression of hurt that crossed Zuko’s face and was quickly wiped away again. “Mother?” he said. “Azula’s not here. But we’re going to where she is. Can you hear me? It’s Zuko. We rescued you.”

Ursa didn’t seem to hear. Her eyelids drooped again. An idea suddenly crossed Aang’s mind, and he held Roku’s crown out to Zuko. “Here. Give this to her.”

Zuko frowned. “I don’t know what good that’s going to do, but…I can’t see any harm in it.” He took the crown, a bit reluctantly, and held onto it for a long moment. Despite all his protests, Aang could see that the crown meant a great deal to Zuko. Roku, why didn’t you tell me about this? he wondered. Roku hadn’t even mentioned that he and Ta Min had children, let alone grandchildren and great grandchildren. Obviously when he had a chance, he’d have to interrogate – well, himself – on that particular question.

Zuko gently picked up one of his mother’s limp hands and closed it carefully around the base of the crown. Then he rested it on her chest and brought her second hand up to join the first.

Nothing happened for a few long moments. Then Ursa took a deep breath. Then a second. Zuko held his own breath.

Her beautiful amber eyes opened. This time they were clear. She blinked, looking up at Zuko’s face bent over hers. “Zuko. My dear,” she said in a tone of wondering love. “Oh, my darling, my heart. Why are you here?”

Zuko closed his eyes, swallowing hard, shoulders shaking. Then, voice hoarse, he answered.

“I came for you. I found you. And you’re safe now.” He wrapped his hands around hers where they held the crown. “You’re safe now,” he repeated, as tears ran in silent silver streams down his face.

[To be continued]

Fic: Exile: Chapter 3: The Living

Chapter 3: The Living

When Appa brought them to the tiny crater island with the neat little cabin in the center, Zuko had gone almost frantic. Aang had to practically sit on him to keep him from jumping off of Appa at a dangerous height. As Aang was looking for enough room to let Appa set down safely, Zuko got a rope tied to Appa’s saddle, vaulted off the air bison, and made a dash for the cabin. Aang sighed, glad that the older boy had at least stopped long enough to bother with a rope.

He opened his glider and made his own more leisurely descent to the ground. A quick scan with his earthsense showed him that the only person in the cabin was Zuko. But the denizens of the island were nearby – two hidden in a small dug-in shelter by the crater wall, and the third much closer, huddled behind a brush blind. He sensed no one else on the entire island.

Just as Aang was about to call out a greeting, the man behind the blind exploded from his hiding place and charged him at a dead run. Aang was ready with an earth wall, but the man’s face flashed in front of him and for a moment he froze.

“Zuk—ooof!” The man hit him square in the chest and slammed him to the ground, driving all the air out of his lungs. For a long moment all Aang could do was stare at his attacker and try to breathe.

Coal black hair in wild disarray. Frenzied gold eyes, full of do-or-die determination. Sharp cheekbones, long straight nose, pointed chin covered with a neat short beard.

The beard snapped Aang out of his stunned immobility. That, and the realization that this man’s face was unmarked by fire. He got a hand up barely in time to deflect a flaming fist heading straight for his head. The close call spurred him to a more active defense, and he called wind to slam the strange, and strangely familiar, man backward and away from him. The man hit the ground awkwardly but managed to roll out of the fall and to his feet with a speed and grace that again was eerily familiar to Aang.

Familiar or not, though, the man was clearly hostile. Aang readied an earth wall to meet the man’s next charge, but just then Zuko shot out of the cabin door and leveled a ferocious blast of fire at the stranger. The flame jet roared toward the man, then at the last moment split into two and went around him, meeting up again on the far side to make a complete ring of fire, the flames licking up a good ten feet or more toward the sky. The man snarled something Aang couldn’t hear above the roaring blaze, then struck a firebending stance and made a chopping motion with one hand. The wall of flame parted like a curtain, and the man dove out of the circle, coming back upright instantly, in what Aang recognized as the most aggressive firebending pose possible, one that left absolutely no room for defense. The man was apparently willing to sacrifice any chance of saving himself in order to break through Aang’s protections and take him down.

Aang took no chances this time. He reached into the earth and brought up a stone wall around his attacker, then swiftly closed off the top too, to forestall any efforts to climb out. The resulting earth dome was small enough that any attempt to blast the walls open with firebending would run a good chance of frying the person inside, and at a minimum would eat up all the air, causing the man to pass out. Aang added another layer to the walls just in case the man was crazed enough to blast through anyway, but apparently there were limits to the man’s derangement, because he went silent inside the stone bubble.

That seemed to be a signal for someone else. A small figure dashed out from the makeshift shelter Aang has sensed, shouting, “Don’t hurt him! Please!” A brown-haired boy of about Aang’s age flung himself between the Avatar and the stone prison, spreading his arms wide as if to catch any incoming attack on it. From inside the bubble they heard the man swearing, then he shouted, “Mikka, get out of here! Run and hide!” The sound was muffled but the message came through anyway.

“I won’t leave you!” The boy lifted trembling hands. Water shimmered brightly in his palms. He tried to settle into a some sort of feeble waterbending stance, and flung the water in a gleaming arc at Zuko and Aang. They both flinched instinctively, but nothing worse than a brief shower happened to either of them.

The boy gritted his teeth and shifted position, apparently trying to do something he’d only ever read about, or perhaps heard described. Aang could see about fifty different things wrong with his stance without even trying. He reached out with his own bending and snatched the water from the boy. “Okay, that’s enough,” he said, trying for a commanding tone of voice even though his had just barely begun to change. “No one’s going to hurt you if you just settle down. We only want to talk, okay? Just talk.”

The boy’s chin quivered. “But you attacked Lu Ten.”

“If that’s the guy inside the dome, I didn’t attack him, he attacked me!” Aang protested. Then he noticed that Zuko had gone very, very still. Attuned to the other boy’s fragile emotional state at the moment, Aang eyed his friend with concern. “Zuko? What’s wrong?”

Zuko shook his head. “Nothing. Just a …weird coincidence. Threw me for a second.” He shook his head again, apparently trying to rid himself of some disturbing thought or image. “Hey, uh – Mikka, is that your name? Are you and this guy the only people here?”

The boy’s eyes – Water Tribe blue, Aang saw with curiosity – gleamed with unshed tears, but he didn’t cry. “No. It’s just the two of us,” he lied.

Aang and Zuko exchanged a look. “We aren’t going to harm anyone here,” Zuko said, as gently as he could. “We’ll help you, if you need help. Or we can just go away again and leave you here if this is your home and that’s what you want, all right? We just – we’re looking for someone. We want to know if she’s here.” He paused. “She is here, isn’t she? I can…feel it. Please, Mikka.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I think she’s my mother. I just want to see her. Talk to her. That’s all. Please.”

Mikka’s blue eyes had gone very wide. “Ohhh – but you could be tricking me. To get to her.”

“I’m not.”

Mikka stared at him, obviously torn. He glanced at the earth bubble. “Let Lu Ten out first.”

Zuko started again. Aang wondered what was going on with him. He stopped for a moment, thinking. Where had he heard that name before?

“This…Lu Ten,” Zuko said, his voice shaking slightly. “Is he – one of your guards here?”

“No! The guards all left. We haven’t seen any of them in weeks, but we can’t get past the big rocks in the tunnel. Lu Ten was here first, before even the lady was brought here.”

Zuko swallowed hard. “Aang. Let him out. But get back first. I think he’s …confused.”

“That makes two of us!” Aang said. “What’s going on?”

“Probably nothing. But I need to see him anyway.”

Aang scowled. “Sooner or later I’m going to find a way to make you tell me stuff, you know.”

“Sorry. I just – I have to know for sure first. I’ll tell you after I know, I promise.”

Aang sighed. “Okay, fine. Be that way.” He turned to the stone prison. “Hey you in there! If I let you out are you going to keep trying to kill me?”

There was a long silence. Then: “Will you give me your word not to harm my friends? You can do what you want with me.”

“We’re not planning to harm anyone. Why would we do that?”

Another pause. “You’re the Avatar.”

“Yes. But I don’t kill people. And I don’t hurt anyone unless they force me to. Why do you think I’d want to hurt you or your friends?”

“Because of who we are. Because I assume the absence of our guards since the day of the comet means you’ve brought down Ozai.”

“That’s true. He’s locked up in Crater City. Why, are you a friend of his?” Aang wondered if he were dealing with some sort of war criminal here. He sincerely hoped not. The war crime trials hadn’t even started yet and they were already a source of great anxiety for him.

“Friend?” Shockingly, the man began to laugh. “Not hardly. You can choose your friends. You just can’t choose your relatives.”

Zuko made a sound. Not quite a word, just a sound, like someone in pain. Then: “Let him out, Aang.”

Aang looked at Zuko warily. “He hasn’t promised to behave yet.”

“Let him out. Now.” It was more a plea than a demand. Aang looked at his friend, saw someone on the edge of cracking completely, and let the earth dome fall.

The man stood up slowly, face riveted on Aang. Mikka ran to him and the man gave him a quick hug, then deliberately put the boy behind him, keeping himself between Aang and Mikka. Aang rolled his eyes in exasperation.

Zuko was staring, face white as a sheet except for the livid brand of his scar. With both of them there, Aang saw that the resemblance was even more striking than he had thought at first glance. Lu Ten was older by some years, a bit taller, a little more broadly built and heavily muscled, and he had that beard – but beyond that, the stamp of Fire Nation royalty had clearly marked both him and Zuko as being of the same blood. Aang’s eyebrows went up.

“Lu Ten?” Zuko said. A plea, not a question. Hope too painful to fully acknowledge.

The man shot a quick sideways glance at Zuko, then his gaze returned to Aang. But after a moment he looked again at Zuko, and this time his eyes lingered. “You…you’re…?”

“Zuko.” He let the name fall from his mouth.

Lu Ten picked it up. “Zuko.” A very long pause. Then, softly, “You’ve grown a bit, short stuff. And what did you do to your face?”

Zuko didn’t answer. He approached Lu Ten as if he were a wild animal, possibly friendly, possibly vicious, circling in slowly. Aang looked at Mikka, asking a question with his eyes. Mikka looked back, confusion scrawled on his face, and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. He had no idea what was going on either.

Lu Ten was still watching Zuko. “What, no hug for your big cousin? After seven years?”

Aang and Mikka exchanged an equally astonished look.

Zuko swallowed hard again. “I don’t understand how you can be here. How you can be…alive.”

For the first time a hint of a smile touched Lu Ten’s face. It transformed him. “Mostly by not being dead, runt.”

Aang blinked. Runt?! “So, eh…heh…you two know each other, I take it.”

Lu Ten answered without taking his eyes off Zuko. “I am Lu Ten, son of General Iroh and Lady Renai. Nephew of Fire Lord Ozai. And cousin to Zuko and Azula, also known as Runt and Runt Two.”

Thinking of someone calling Zuko “runt” was hard enough; the idea of Azula being called “Runt Two” nearly made Aang’s eyes cross.

Zuko still hadn’t replied to Lu Ten, still hadn’t crossed the distance between them. “How do I know this isn’t…some kind of trick?”

Lu Ten frowned and looked at him. “Hey, I know it may be hard to believe, but it really is me.” He looked more closely, expression thoughtful. “Looks like you’ve had kind of a rough time of it since I disappeared, Zu.”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“Aren’t you at least going to tell me how Father is? Please tell me he’s still alive, at least.”

“Oh! Ashes, I’m sorry. Uncle’s fine. He’s back in Crater City keeping an eye on things for me.”

“For you?” Lu Ten said, surprised.

“Oh. Uh. Yeah. I’m sort of…Fire Lord now. Not by my choice!” Zuko rushed to add. “I told Uncle to take it but he refused. I swear.”

“Hah. Dad never wanted that job. He preferred the field to the palace. Said he’d go crazy stuck in formal robes all day long arguing with bureaucrats. Same thing for me, too, by the way. So he ducked out and stuck you with the job, huh? That was kind of low of him.”

“No, it wasn’t like – well, it’s all really complicated.”

“I bet. I can’t wait to hear the explanation for why you’re running around with the Avatar. I always figured when your father went down there’d be a purge of the entire royal family. We’ve made such a botch of things for over a hundred years now, I thought no one would want to take a chance on any of us ever again. I don’t think I’d want to, in their position. Sorry to be so blunt about it, runt, but Ozai was, ah, not too –“

“He was crazy,” Zuko said flatly. “Also cruel, murderous, and generally evil. I’m not ten years old anymore, Lu Ten. I know what kind of person my father is.”

Lu Ten looked a bit embarrassed. “Well…yes. Dad warned me not to discuss it in front of you and little Azula.”

“I sort of wish you had. I had to learn the hard way. More than once, because I’m slow sometimes."

“I hope you’re not expecting me to challenge that statement, runt.” Lu Ten broke the uncomfortable space between the two of them, stepping out of the remains of the earth dome and seizing Zuko in a bear hug. Zuko froze for a moment, then his arms came up. They stayed that way a moment, then broke apart, though Lu Ten kept his hands on Zuko’s shoulders. “So, if you’re convinced I’m me now, come with me. There’s someone else here you really need to see.”

Zuko nodded. “Take me to her, Lu. Please. I’ve been waiting a long time.”

Fic: Exile: Chapter 2: The Searcher

Chapter 2: The Searcher

Aang was just finishing his dawn meditations when a sound – or rather, the lack of a sound – caught his attention. The noise of Appa’s crunching his way through his breakfast pile of hay and vegetables had suddenly ceased. Momo, too, cocked a large ear toward the air bison’s lavish stable, which adjoined Aang’s own spacious quarters.

“Appa? Buddy? You okay in there?”

“He’s fine, Aang,” came an unexpected voice. Aang stuck his head through the opening into the stable to see the newly crowned Fire Lord with a brush in his hands, going over the fur near Appa’s horns with a light touch. Appa was lounging with his eyes half-closed, enjoying the attention.

“Zuko! Hi! What’s up? Did you climb in through the skylight again? I thought I wasn’t due down at the Fire Palace for an hour or so yet.” Aang spotted Zuko’s clothes and his eyebrows went up. The Fire Lord was wearing his traveling gear -- loose pants, sturdy boots, and his red and gold tunic. “You’re not dressed for court.” There was a stuffed rucksack resting near Zuko’s feet. “Uh oh. Where are you going?”

Zuko avoided Aang’s gaze. “There’s something I have to find. I was hoping you’d let me borrow Appa – it’ll make things go a lot quicker.”

“No way. No bison for you until you tell me exactly what’s going on. Weren’t we going to work on the prisoner-of-war repatriation agreements today?”

“I’m not really needed for that, just my signature. Uncle and Mai and Chief Hakoda can handle the details better than I can, anyway. I gave Uncle the legal right to sign for me until I return. Which I hope won’t be long.”

“You hope?” Aang swung his staff. A gust of wind smacked into the Fire Lord from the left, lifted him up an inch or two, spun him around, then let him fall to the ground. He landed, catlike, on his feet again, but facing Aang. His hair had gone as wild as a bristle-thistle, Aang noted with satisfaction. Zuko’s expression was a mix of irritation and embarrassment. “Talk to me, Zuko. Unless you want to walk to wherever it is you think you’re going. All by yourself. With assassination threats all over and you pretty easy to identify. Idiot.”

Zuko grimaced. “What, have you been taking scolding lessons from Katara?” Another gust of wind hit him, flinging hay around and making him sneeze. Aang thought the bits of grass now stuck in his hair were a nice touch. “Okay, okay, okay! Turn off the hurricane. I didn’t really want to talk about this –“

“So what else is new?” said Aang.

“You want to let me tell this or not? Anyway…I’m going to find my mother.”

“You…wait…didn’t you tell Katara you mother was …uh…”

“Yeah, I did, in Ba Sing Se. Back then I thought she was dead. Turned out she…may not be. I don’t know. My father lies about so many things that I can’t…I have to find out. You understand, right?”

“Of course! Have you got a good lead? I can get the others together in a couple of hours and we can all go. It’ll be great!” The five of them hadn’t been together on Appa since before Ozai’s fall, about two weeks ago now. “We can finally have a group trip without the war hanging over our heads!”

Zuko looked pained. “It’s not that I don’t want – look, Aang, this may come to nothing. I could come back empty handed…or worse. I don’t see any need to drag everyone through that with me. They all have important things to do, anyway. I just thought I’d, you know, duck out quickly and just…find out. And come back.”

“And be all alone when you can’t find her, or when you find out she’s dead? So you can just bottle up all your feelings and sit on them?”

Aang had gotten unnervingly perceptive since his experiences on the day of the comet, Zuko thought.

“Did you tell Mai, at least?” Aang continued. “Never mind, I can see by your face you didn’t.”

“She would have insisted on coming along and I –“

Aang made a threatening movement with his staff and Zuko cut off what he was about to say. The Avatar sighed. “Fine. You want to keep your pain private. I get it. But you don’t get to stew over it completely alone. If you want my bison, you have to take me along. That’s the deal.” He added, “I’m getting a little tired of all the constant adulation around here anyway. Not to mention these heavy robes. Why does Fire Nation formal clothing have so many layers, anyway? It’s not like you have a real winter here.” Aang zipped back to his room, adding over his shoulder, “You saddle up Appa while I change and pack my bag. Hey, you did at least tell Iroh about this, right?”

“I left him a note…”

“ARRRGH! Didn’t Mai break you of that habit? Go and tell him in person. Right now!”

“Okay, okay, I get it!” Zuko stepped onto a hay bale and vaulted to the edge of Appa’s skylight, pulled himself up, and vanished over the rooftops.

Since the coronation the public streets had become both annoying and not entirely safe for Zuko to travel, so more and more the young Fire Lord was taking the city’s “high road” when he needed to get somewhere in a hurry. Of his various counselors, only Mai, Suki, Ty Lee, and Aang himself were really equipped to follow the fleet-footed firebender on his jaunts, so he usually managed to avoid getting pinned down by both would-be assassins and, worse, bureaucrats. Aang recalled one time when Mai had caught Zuko and quite literally pinned him down to drag him off to a budget meeting he had been frantically avoiding. As a rule, Zuko took his Fire Lord duties seriously and didn’t try to ditch the more onerous ones, but long columns of numbers tended to make him panic.

An unexpected side benefit of Zuko’s climbing habit was the rumor spreading around town that the new Fire Lord could mysteriously appear and disappear out of the Fire Palace at will. The whole gang had been amused the first time they’d caught that rumor, though Sokka said he wanted to put up flyers saying, “It’s not magic, Zuko’s just a sneak!” Toph had threatened him with dire consequences if he did any such thing – she had a fine instinct for showmanship and thought the “mystery” should be played up as much as possible.

It took Aang almost no time to switch to traveling clothes and toss a few items in a bag. He made sure Appa finished his breakfast, then brushed and saddled him. He was just getting the reins properly arranged when Zuko dropped back in through the skylight, landing right in the saddle.

“Okay, it’s all set,” he said. From his expression, Aang guessed that Iroh had not been exactly thrilled, but had given his blessing to the trip anyway. If Iroh had truly put his foot down, Zuko would not have gone against his wishes, which meant that Iroh thought this trip was worth the risk and was willing to cover for his nephew.

Aang tossed Zuko’s bag up to him. “Don’t forget this.” Something in it clanked. Zuko grabbed it hurriedly and stashed it away, an odd expression on his face. Aang decided he’d pressured Zuko enough about his secrets for the time being and let it go. He’d find out later if he really needed to know.

Aang called out a “Yip yip!” and Appa rose up out of his stable, sending bits of his bedding drifting everywhere. From down on the streets came cries of awe and children shrieking in delight – Appa was a big favorite in Crater City. Zuko ducked low in the saddle, wanting to keep his absence from the city quiet for as long as possible, while Aang happily shouted back and waved to the early-morning denizens of the capital.

“Which way are we headed?” Aang asked as soon as they had cleared the crater walls and were over open sea.

“Almost due east, and a little bit south. There’s an archipelago there, full of tiny islands, some with equally tiny villages on them, but mostly deserted. Not enough land to farm. My fath — Ozai said mother was held captive on one of them.”

“Did you take Toph along to check his answers when you asked?”

“No.”

Aang put his face in the palm of his hand, but didn’t say anything. Zuko had improved beyond all measure since joining up with Aang, but he still tended to fall back into his loner habits under pressure. Some days Aang wondered if he’d ever fully open up to anyone but his Uncle and Mai. Aang vowed to keep working on the older boy . Under no circumstances would Zuko be allowed to fall into the same pit of mental and emotional isolation that had claimed the sanity and the humanity of his Fire Lord forefathers since Sozin -- the same pit that had swallowed Azula whole and was showing no signs of releasing her.

It took about half a day of flight before the first of the tiny islets came into view. By that time Aang had given the reins over to Zuko and was napping in the saddle. He came awake when Appa let out a displeased grunt. Looking to the front, Aang saw that Zuko’s hands had gone tight on the reins, his knuckles white, and Appa wasn’t pleased by this.

“Um, Zuko, want to let me take over so you can concentrate on watching the islands?” Without waiting for an answer Aang slid forward and captured the reins. Zuko moved to the back without protest. “Do you know anything more about which one it’s supposed to be?”

“It’s supposed to be on the southeast side, and shaped like a barbed hook.” Zuko was looking paler than usual; his scar stood out vividly in the noon sun.

Trying to get Zuko’s mind off the upcoming confrontation with long-awaited answers, some of which might be devastating, Aang asked, “So what exactly happened with your mother, anyway?”

Zuko’s expression tightened further, going white around the lips with tension. Then he made a visible conscious effort to loosen up, taking a few deep breaths and burying his hands in Appa’s thick, soft fur. It seemed to help, because when he looked up some of the strain had gone out of his expression. He sighed. “I’ll tell you what I know, but it isn’t very much. I was younger than you are now and I’ve never found out the whole story. Uncle wasn’t there, and I can’t trust anything Azula told me. I only got Ozai to speak of it when I confronted him during the eclipse.”

Aang remembered Zuko saying that he’d only ever had to redirect lightning at his father. “Is that when you turned the lightning back at him?”

Zuko nodded. “I went to talk to him during the eclipse because I thought it would be safest. I didn’t realize you and your friends were still coming or I’d have tried to go to you instead – which probably wouldn’t have gone over well, but who knows. I thought you knew that Kuei had told Azula about the invasion plans and I was sure you wouldn’t walk into the trap.”

“Kuei didn’t bother to tell us he’d spilled our plans to Azula. Knowing Kuei, it simply didn’t cross his mind that it was important.” Aang sighed. “I hope he gets his act together now that he’s back in Ba Sing Se. We never did find Long Feng or those Dai Lee that Azula sent away on the day of the comet.”

“Yeah, I worry about them too. Anyway, I went to tell father – Ozai – that I was going to try to join you and make an alliance to stop him. He didn’t take it very well. I stupidly let him bait me into staying too long because he started talking about Mother, and then the eclipse was over, and he tried to fry me.” Zuko said the last in a quick flat voice, trying not to let on how badly the experience had shaken him. “I never thought he’d actually go that far. I should have, after hearing his plans for the Earth Kingdom. I just – I didn’t think he’d do it. Couldn’t make myself believe it.” He sighed. “I know better now. Him and Azula both.” Zuko’s hand wandered toward where Aang knew the star-shaped scar resided, right over his heart. “Now what I can’t believe is that I thought either of them could ever love me again. That’s why I sided with Azula in Ba Sing Se, you know. Stupid, Zuko, right?”

“Not really. Well, okay, not listening to your Uncle, that probably counts as stupid. But wanting your sister to love you isn’t stupid. We didn’t exactly have siblings among the Air Nomads since we were all raised together, you know? We were all brothers. No sisters though – the girls were raised at a different temple. But I’ve seen what Katara and Sokka have, and while they bicker all the time, they really do love each other. It would be hard for them to throw that away for people they don’t even know.” Aang shot a look at the older boy. “Hey, I never expected you to help us. I kind of knew you weren’t going to.”

“How did you know that? I wasn’t even sure myself.”

Aang frowned. The memories of just before Azula had brought him down were a bit fuzzy. “I’m not sure. It’s just – sometimes I can tell stuff about people when I look at them. I remember looking at you and thinking something about two dragons fighting – looked like Ran and Shao in my mind now that I think about it, but it didn’t feel like them if that means anything. And the bad dragon was winning.”

Zuko gave him a startled look. “That – I had a fever dream about that. The two dragons. That, and –“ He shut his mouth with a snap and looked away. “And other weird things, when I was sick in Ba Sing Se.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

Zuko remembered looking into a mirror and seeing the Airbender arrow on his own shaven head. He was definitely not telling Aang about that. “Just things. Most of it didn’t make sense.” He frowned. “But…in them I was Fire Lord. Huh. Strange.” He shook his head. “Never mind that. So how did you know I was on the level at the Western Air Temple? No one else wanted to give me a chance. Except Thumper, of course.” That brought a half-smile to Zuko’s face.

“’Thumper’?” Aang said, incredulous.

“Oh, yeah. You know. Toph,” said Zuko. Aang started laughing. “Hey! She calls me ‘Sparky’! I had to fight back somehow! …Anyway, she doesn’t seem to mind.”

“She wouldn’t. Thumper. That’s perfect. Boom, boom, boom, that’s Toph. Anyway, I don’t know how I knew to trust you at the Western Air Temple. Things just…just…well, it felt like all the pieces were finally in place, you know? Like it was right. I knew when I let the others talk me out of giving you a chance I was making a mistake, but I was scared to firebend.” He shrugged. “I guess it’s what Sokka would call ‘weird Avatar stuff’. It just happens sometimes. I know things.”

“Like I knew –“ Zuko muttered, and stopped short again.

Aang sighed. “You know, if you’re going to censor yourself, you ought to do it before you open your mouth, you know? Like you knew what?”

“Well…this is probably going to sound stupid.”

“If I were Sokka, you’d be sorry you gave me that straight line.”

“You’re right, I would. I was going to say – Like I knew when I finally found you.”

Aang looked intrigued. “You did?”

“Yeah. I did. Uncle thought it was just another wild goosehawk chase, but I saw that light – I guess it was right when you first broke out of the iceberg -- and I just – I knew. I swear it felt like that light called to me. I thought it was my destiny calling, dumb as that sounds.”

“What makes you think it wasn’t?”

“Er…uh…okay, good point. But the thing is, I knew it was real. That light could have been a lot of different things, but I knew it was the Avatar.”

“Well, the first time I saw you I knew something was really wrong,” Aang added. “Because it felt like we were supposed to be friends. But you hated me. It was just…all wrong. Really wrong.”

“Is that why you saved me from Zhao?”

“Why did you save me from Zhao?”

“Because I didn’t want him getting credit for capturing you. You were my prize, not his. Don’t give me any credit I don’t deserve, Aang.”

“But he wasn’t going to kill me. He was going to hurt me – a lot, and in ways I don’t like to think about – but not kill me. You could have waited until I was too weak and hurt to do anything and then taken me from him. I wouldn’t have been able to fight you at all.” Aang stared at Zuko. “You knew what he was planning to do to me, didn’t you. That’s why you came when you did. You didn’t want to let him torture and cripple me.”

Zuko ran a hand through his already-mussed hair, making it stand up wildly in the wind. “I… I don’t know. I thought I was just doing it to protect my own interests. But…yeah. I knew what Zhao would do to you. He was never exactly the subtle type.”

“Well. For whatever reason, I was glad you came when you did. So I wanted to return the favor, because I think Zhao would have done really bad things to you too.”

“Yeah, he would have. And Father wouldn’t have punished him. Ozai liked him a lot more than he ever liked me.” Zuko sighed. The he suddenly sat up. “There!”

Aang looked down. They had crossed over the thickest part of the archipelago, and the islets were starting to thin out. Just off to Appa’s left was a medium-sized one, and with a little imagination you might be able to see it as a double-barbed fishhook. Aang looked back at Zuko. Zuko’s eyes were a little wild, and he was biting at his lower lip, but otherwise he looked okay. Aang clucked to Appa, and the bison dove down toward the wrinkled sea below and the bait on Ozai’s hook.

A quick flyover showed nothing promising. The island was a still-active small volcano, the long part of the hook a result of its lava stream trailing off into the ocean. Aang brought Appa down on the coolest place he could find.

Zuko stepped down out of the saddle and looked around, frowning. “This isn’t right. Nothing lives here and never has. The volcano’s too hot, too active.” His shoulders slumped. “She’s not here. He lied.”

“Hey, don’t give up. So Ozai lied. Next time go back and take Toph with you.” Like you should have the first time, he thought, but did not say. “She’ll get the truth out of him.”

“No, he’ll probably just clam up if I let him know I have a way to tell when he’s lying.” Zuko sighed and hunched down, tracing patterns in the black volcanic sand with a finger. “This was stupid. I’m sorry I dragged you and Appa off for this.”

“Zuko,” Aang said.

Zuko looked up. Aang was pointing at the sand scribbles. “Look what you wrote.”

“Huh? I didn’t write anything. I was just doodling.” He glanced down. “What…?”

The lines weren’t perfect, but they were readable. Without thinking, Zuko had drawn the character for “Mother”, and an arrow. Pointing due north.

“That…that has to be a coincidence. Or just unconscious wishful thinking.” Zuko shook his head hard. “No, we should go back. I have work to do.”

“It won’t take us that long to check out the islands north of here,” Aang said. “But it doesn’t matter what you think, because I want to check it out, and I’m the one with the bison. So, are you coming, or am I leaving you here on this steaming rock?”

Zuko flung up his hands. “Okay, fine, whatever. You want to chase this goosehawk, we’ll chase.” He leaped lightly back up into the saddle. “Yip yip, Appa!”

***************************************************

The man looked up from the spring where he was filling pails of cooling water for Ursa. There was a tiny dot in the sky. It was not moving like an aukbatross or other sea bird. A war balloon? And if so, did it come to rescue them, or dispose of them? Over the last few months they had seen the floating death machines more and more often, right up until the day Sozin’s Comet had flared in the sky. Since then – nothing. No twice-weekly guard visits. The date when their supplies were supposed to arrive had come and gone, and there had been nothing – no balloon dropping packages, no bundles ported through the tunnel by wary soldiers – nothing. Something huge had happened on the day of the Comet, they could tell, but what? Did the Fire Nation still exist? Did anyone know, or care, about them, or were they trapped here until they ran out of grain and they and the animals slowly starved?

Was anyone else still alive out there at all?

Now, if his tired eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, the dot in the sky said that yes, there were still people out there. But friend, foe, or neither? Help, or destruction?

He decided he could take no chances with Ursa in her weakened state. There was very little space in their island prison, but he had managed to dig out a temporary shelter and cover it with vines and leaves. It might let them hide long enough for dangerous visitors to depart, if they didn’t know to what to look for.

He entered the cabin, where Mikka worked tirelessly over Ursa’s still form. “Mikka, there may be someone coming. I saw something in the sky. I want to move Aunt Ursa to the emergency shelter, just in case.”

Mikka looked up, worry in his blue eyes. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. She’s awfully weak, and I still can’t find what’s wrong. And she’s been delirious again.”

“You’ll go with her, of course. We’ll wrap her well and I’ll carry her there, all right?”

“Well…okay. If you think we have to.”

They bundled the ailing woman up as well as they could, and the man carried her to the little scraped-out shelter, roofed with brush and branches, and the two of them tried to make her comfortable. She kept mumbling, “Don’t fear…love you…love you, always…” over and over, as she had been, on and off again since this unknown illness had fallen on her on the day of the comet. Mikka kept soothing her with his healing hands, which helped, but had so far not been able to cure whatever was wrong.

The man took up a watching position nearby, in a blind he had built of woven branches for just this purpose. The little dot grew steadily larger, and it wasn’t long before the man realized it was definitely not a war balloon. He had no idea what the flying thing actually was, but it definitely wasn’t a balloon. Nor a bird. It looked like a furry flying hill, of all things. He rubbed again at he eyes, but the thing kept right on looking like a furry flying hill.

It continued to look like that as it homed in on their little crater island and then hovered above it. From this distance, the man could see that the hill had legs and…horns? Yes, definitely horns. And six bushy legs.

And a saddle. With riders, it seemed. He couldn’t see them, but he could hear snippets of conversation floating down from above. Who or whatever these strangers were, he was grateful that at least they weren’t Ozai’s Imperial Guard, come to clean up a few last lingering loose ends from his long and vicious climb to power.

The riders appeared to be having a small argument about landing the furry hill. There really wasn’t room for it in their tiny encampment – all the area that wasn’t covered by their cabin and the shed for the chickens and the nannycow was covered in trees.

After a moment the argument seemed to be resolved, and a rope was flung over the side of the flying creature. A red-and-gold clad figure did a neat acrobatic flip off the saddle, caught the rope, and slid rapidly to the ground. A moment later a second form appeared, this one – wait, was it flying? It looked like a young boy holding onto a narrow-winged contraption. By rights he should have fallen like a stone, but instead an oddly cooperative wind lifted the glider, and after a few quick downward spirals, the boy settled ever-so-lightly to the ground, the wings of his gliding device snapping down until he held a very ordinary-looking staff.

The man studied the newcomers carefully as they peered around, clearly looking for something. He couldn’t see much of the Fire Nation boy since he made a beeline for their cabin and disappeared inside, but the other boy – the other boy was looking toward the emergency shelter, a listening look on his face.

The boy was bald.

There were blue arrows on his head and hands.

He wore the saffron robes of an Air Nomad.

He had been flying.

And he had a flying creature.

The things the man had been hearing as rumors for months now clicked into place. The creature was a flying bison. And the boy…

This boy was the Avatar.

The Avatar was the enemy of the Fire Nation.

Lu Ten cursed silently, and readied himself for a fight. He would protect Ursa and Mikka with his life if necessary. Thanks to Ozai’s treachery and cunning, the rest of the world thought him dead anyway. If he had to offer up his life to save the lives of the Lady Ursa and the boy he had come to think of as a little brother, a replacement for the younger cousin he was unlikely to ever see again, he would consider it a bargain. He would try to rush the boy-god, and hope to catch him unawares. And if that didn’t work, with his last breath he would beg for mercy for the Lady, and for Mikka.

[To be continued]

Fic: Exile: Chapter 1: The Prison
[Author’s Note: This is the first story in a series I hope will grow into my own version of Avatar Season Four. My plan is create stories that can be read separately, but that also have a continuing narrative that will stretch over the series. There will also probably be some one shots that fit within the framework while not being part of the main storyline. I’m calling these stories The Restoration Cycle, and this is the start of the first story in the first arc: Arc I: Allies. Yeah, I’m thinking big. Help keep me going by reading and commenting, if you would be so kind.

The focus will be on plot and character, with shipping kept to an absolute minimum, at least among the canon characters. I am proceeding as much as possible from show canon and building off of loose ends left in the series, although I will be inserting some ideas of my own that I hope will expand, rather than overwrite, what had come before.

To paraphrase Tom Smith:

“Thanks to all of those who read my writing with delight,
“And those who don’t – keep reading, ‘cause some day I’ll get it right.” ]

Exile

[Special author’s note for this chapter: No, Mikka is not the product of Zutara, as will become obvious later, so you can relax.]

Chapter 1: The Prison

Three of them lived in the tiny crater: the woman, the man, and the boy. The man had come first, the woman next, and finally the boy.

The man had been keeping track of his days of imprisonment by marking a tree. The woman came about a year after his arrival, the boy another year after that. No one else had joined them since. For this, the man was grateful.

The only way in or out of the crater was a tunnel dug through one of the impassable cliff walls that ringed the island. Only an earthbender could have gotten up those cliffs, and none of them possessed that talent. It was blocked by two huge boulders, one at each end of the tunnel. It took all six guards with levers to move them when they brought in the monthly delivery of necessities. Escape was not possible. The man had tried once, and had been beaten and burned badly enough for his trouble that they had brought in the boy to heal him.

The boy was a mystery, with skin and hair that said “Fire Nation”, but the luminous blue eyes and the waterbending talent of the Water Tribe. He had been no more than six or so when the guards first brought him through, and had given his name as “Mikka”. He had said almost nothing else for months. Now he was perhaps nine, ten, possibly a small eleven. He didn’t know. His mother’s name had been Ossa; his father was unknown.

The man and the woman had cosseted the boy, not only because they felt responsible for his unwarranted imprisonment with them and grateful for his priceless talents with water, but because he was a refuge from the intolerable boredom that came with their situation. They spent a great deal of time coaxing him to talk, then teaching him to read and do sums, using a stick in the sand since paper was much too scarce to be used for lessons. Once he had had time to get over his fear and put some meat on his half-starved bones, the boy had proved a quick and able student. The woman had also spent time teaching him the history of the four countries, though her versions of those tales varied from the official ones in several places.

Their little household would perhaps have been considered a comfortable peasant steading if they had been free. They had chickens for eggs (and the rare chicken dinner), a nannycow for milk, and a small vegetable garden. Grain and other necessary food staples were delivered regularly. There was a gushing cold spring with a little pond for water. They had cotton futons, bedding, a small stove, a few other simple items of wooden furniture. Cold was not a problem in this part of the Fire Nation; the soaking, sweltering heat of the monsoon season was far more uncomfortable than the dry cool season.

Once, the woman had tried building the stove fire up with green tree branches and leaves to make as much smoke as possible, in the hope that some ship passing by might see the plume and consider pulling in to the island to offer them escape. The guards had been amused by this, pointing out that the fumaroles on the uninhabitable part of the island (which was most of it) regularly put out smoke and steam, as well as noxious fumes they had trouble escaping when the wind was wrong. They added the fact that the only ships likely to see them here were Fire Nation navy vessels, which would certainly not be offering the prisoners any help.

The woman had taken her defeat with dignity, as she took everything. Well, almost everything: three years into her confinement, she had woken from one of her deep uneasy dreams screaming and clutching at her face as if an animal were trying to tear into her. The man and the boy had stayed up with her the rest of the night as she sat, wrapped in a thin blanket, shivering, her eyes blank. Then, with the next supply delivery, the guards had brought news that had driven her into a frightening cold fury that lasted several weeks. The man and the boy had been torn between watching her carefully to make sure she didn’t attack the guards – or worse, try to hurt herself – and trying to stay out of her way for fear of accidentally becoming the focus of her helpless rage. She was hurtfully cold and distant to little Mikka during this time, which he found bewildering and frightening; the man reassured him that the woman would return to her normal self in time.

Eventually that time had passed, although the fit left her looking older, sadder, and somehow harder. She had gone back to being gentle and warm with Mikka, however, so the boy was happy again.

Their little household settled back into its normal patterns, although the man noticed the woman had picked up a tendency to sometimes touch her left eye as if it hurt her. For several years nothing else had happened to disturb the placid rhythms of their lives. Then, one day at the start of the rainy season, the man had a brief conversation with one of the guards, a friendly young man named Enzo.

“Strange rumors running around this spring,” Enzo said quietly. Ever since the woman’s frightful fury, the guards had been under orders not to speak to the prisoners unless specifically instructed, but that had been nearly three years ago, and the rules had begun to slip. Still, it wouldn’t be a good thing for Enzo’s career to get a reputation for being too chatty, so he kept his voice down.

The man nodded for Enzo to continue.

“It’s the weirdest thing – some people are saying the Avatar is back.”

“What?! That’s impossible. It’s been over a hundred years.”

“Hey, I know, I know! That’s what I said. Still, I’ve heard it from more than one source.”

“Avatar Roku has reappeared? He’d be over two hundred!”

“They say Avatars sometimes live that long, but no, it’s not Roku. It’s an Airbender.”

The man snorted. “There aren’t any more Airbenders. Sozin saw to that.”

“Hey, maybe he missed one. Those Air Nomads did get around, you know.”

“So he – or she?”

“He.”

“So he’s, what, been in hiding for a century?”

“No one knows anything about that. Some people say he’s a tiny old bald monk, so maybe he was, who knows. Anyway, rumor has it he single handedly crushed the Northern Fleet in a battle at the North Pole. Admiral Zhao was killed.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer psycho,” the man muttered.

“Hey, he’s a big national war hero now for his sacrifice, so keep your voice down, eh?”

“Right, right, sorry. Go on.”

“Anyway, the whole Fleet was practically wiped out. They say the Fire Lord has been spitting flame out every orifice, he’s so pissed off about it. He’s sending the little Princess out to deal with the problem, whatever it turns out to really be.”

“Little Azula? She can’t be more than fifteen by now.”

“Fourteen, actually, and one scary kid, I gotta tell you. Poor Captain Lau got the job of escorting her. People are taking bets on how long he’ll last. I’d let you in on the pool if you had any money.”

“Hah. Thanks anyway.”

“Oh yeah, and this too – the Prince and the General have been declared criminals. They’re wanted for treason, and are said to be on the run in the Earth Kingdom. The Fire Lord wants their heads.”

The man swore horribly and dropped the load of wood he’d been carrying straight on top of Enzo’s foot. He continued swearing and cursing the name of Fire Lord Ozai as Enzo hopped around doing some swearing of his own. The commotion caught the attention of the other guards, as well as Mikka and the woman. Mikka, seeing that someone was hurt, dashed over with a ball of glowing water in his hands to tend to the injury. The woman came over, apprehension clear on her face. “Is something wrong?” she asked, deceptively mild.

The man couldn’t help himself – he spat out the vile news Enzo had shared with him. Enzo cringed at the looks appearing on faces around him. The woman’s eyes were burning, and her hands flickered with a searing hot white flame. She looked ready to reduce them all to ashes. Enzo, truly a decent sort at heart, shoved Mikka out of the way of any possible attack before he struck his own firebending defensive stance – not that he thought it would help him much.

The look on his own captain’s face wasn’t much more reassuring. He seemed more than ready to let the woman turn Enzo to ash. The man, seeing the woman’s fury, got hold of himself with some difficulty, and gripped her shoulder. “Don’t,” he hissed. “It’s not their fault. And you still have Azula to think of. Please. Don’t.”

She paused, the flames licking over her hands and casting devil shadows on her beautiful face. Then, very low, she growled, “Get. Out.”

The guard captain, no fool, ordered his troops to drop their supply bundles and make for the tunnels, which they did with no delay. The woman watched them go, then her face crumpled and she sank to the ground, sobs wracking her slim body. Mikka threw himself at her, wrapping his arms around her neck. The man bent low over her, placing a hand on her shoulder. He heard her whisper, “He promised. He promised.”

“He lied. Again. May rotworms eat out his entrails slowly while he still lives, that unspeakable bastard.” He tried to help her up, but she stayed huddled low to the ground.

“I’m going to have to kill him,” she murmured. “Spirits of fire help me, I’m going to have to kill my own husband.”

The man bowed his head, understanding her pain, and her determination. “Only if I don’t get to him first, Aunt Ursa.”

[To Be Continued, Obviously]

Fic: Tian Mi Shi Lui : Chapter Ten: Sweet Sixteen ***STORY COMPLETE***
By: Sugeatarc
Disclaimer: I still don't own Avatar. I'll let you know if that changes.
Genre: A little romance, a little humor, a little action
Characters/Pairing: Toph/Teo; lots of other familiar faces popping up
Rating: G/PG

Teaser:

“My, my, you’re always such a feisty one. I don’t intend to duel you. No challenge in it.”

“What?! I hope you’re ready to prove that!”

“Tsk. Don’t be foolish, girlie. I’ve got more than seven years for each of one of yours. Youth and skill will always be beaten by old age and treachery. Remember that. Now come along. Don’t make me have my guards drag you.”

-----------------------------------------------

Toph popped to her feet and glared at the old king. “What did you call me?” she said.

“Doesn’t matter, does it? Got your attention, it did. Now, explain to me what you and your hooligan friends are doing playing games in my catacombs and risking my city!”

“WHAT? You put me down there!”

“That’s beside the point. Poor excuse. Hrmph. You come with me right now, young lady. I want an explanation.” Toph could envision his fluffy white brows beetling as he shoved his face in close to hers, close enough for her to smell his breath. He’d had something with a lot of garlic in it for dinner. The thought of food made her stomach grumble.

“You don’t want an explanation, you old loon. You want a rumble. Well, I’m ready any time you are!” She rooted herself and took hold of the earth, ready for whatever Bumi might have in mind. She hoped.

“My, my, you’re always such a feisty one. I don’t intend to duel you. No challenge in it.”

“What?! I hope you’re ready to prove that!”

“Tsk. Don’t be foolish, girlie. I’ve got more than seven years for each of one of yours. Youth and skill will always be beaten by old age and treachery. Remember that. Now come along. Don’t make me have my guards drag you.”

“Hah! Like they could. And last time I went with you, you dropped me into a hole full of cold water, old man. Why should I come with you again?”

“Because I never repeat a trick, as you know very well, little toughie. Can’t you hear the birds singing? The sun will be up in a few minutes, and I want to be in my palace when dawn breaks. It has a lovely view.”

“Like I care about the view.” Toph sighed. “But whatever, I’m tired of arguing. C’mon, Teo, let’s humor him. I’m hungry and sleepy.”

“Me too,” Teo said, as he fell in step beside her.

Bumi led them to one of the mail carts and motioned them to get in.

“Don’t these things go down the mountain, not up?” Teo asked.

“They’re made of rock. They go where I tell them to go,” Bumi replied, leaping into the cart in a way that showed no trace of his hundred-plus years. Teo muttered, “Is this a good idea?” in his undervoice.

Toph responded without bothering to whisper. “Let’s just go and get this over with. Besides, if he tries anything, well, the cart is made of stone, and I won’t make it easy for him.”

“Get in, get in, you dawdlers! The sun’s almost at the horizon.” Bumi caught Toph around the waist and boosted her straight into the cart, ignoring her yelp of protest.

Grumbling, she settled down as Teo climbed in to join her. “Old man, what’s this obsession you have with the dawn, anyway?”

“Hm? You know that. It means your Tian Mi Shi Liu is officially over.”

“…and? So what?”

Bumi snorted. “It didn’t used to be called Sweet Sixteen, you know. Back in my day, it was the Tiǎo Zhàn Shí Liù.”

“The Frivolous Pomegranate of War?” Toph guessed.

“Ah! Today’s youth are nearly illiterate. Silly girl. No. It means the Challenge of Sixteen.”

“Yeah, so?”

Now Bumi sounded exasperated. “Don’t be dense, Toffee.” He waved a hand and the cart with the three of them in it started to scoot up the mountain at very respectable speed. “The Tiǎo Zhàn Shí Liù wasn’t a party. Well, there was sometimes a party afterward, but never mind that. It was a rite of passage for young Earth Kingdom citizens. The young person’s family, friends, and teachers would get together and decide the best way to test the teenager to see if she was ready to assume the responsibilities of full adulthood. If she didn’t pass, she didn’t get a birthday. She stayed sixteen – and legally a child -- until she did pass. It wasn’t just for girls either. The boys had to pass the test too.”

“Huh. Well, I like the sound of that better than I liked the my party, but I’m probably in the minority on that. Why did the custom change?”

“The war, mostly.” His voice softened unexpectedly. “When our young people began having to take up arms against the Fire Nation at younger and younger ages. Like you did, at twelve. It was patently foolish to deny the unfortunate youngsters who had to fight, and often die, the status of adult.”

“Oh.” Toph recalled that Teo had been badly injured as a very young child, thanks to the war. She reached out and took his hand. He squeezed it, but said nothing. “So are you saying I’ve been an adult since I hooked up with Aang? Hah. I’ve been trying to tell people that for years – especially my folks – but they always ignore me.”

“I would say you declared your adulthood when you agreed to teach the Avatar, yes. But your parents aren’t Omashan citizens – their province is part of that young idiot Kuei’s kingdom. And Kuei’s a bureaucrat at heart. Wants legal proof of everything. I think he plans to be buried with his scrolls when he dies, he loves them so much.” Bumi snorted. “Legally, by the old laws, you weren’t an adult at twelve, even though you were nearly killed several times over in the struggle against Ozai’s madness.”

“Yeah, I know. I had this explained to me several times over by Sparky – er, I mean Fire Lord Zuko.”

“I know who you meant, dearie. Speaking of young fools…well, he’s less foolish than many his age, I’ll say that for him. He had to back up Kuei’s decision – he could hardly start this New Era of his by breaking Earth Kingdom law to suit his own wishes, now could he?”

“I guess not.”

The cart ground to a stop in front of a pair of very large ornate doors inlaid with gold and jade. “Ah, home at last. Will you and your young man join me for breakfast?”

“You’re not planning to slip anything strange into the food, are you?”

Bumi chuckled. “Try it and find out. Or go hungry!” He waved a hand, and the stone doors flung themselves wide open for their monarch. Bumi’s palace was very comfortable and nicely appointed in an elegant, minimalist style. Compared to Kuei’s palace complex in Ba Sing Se it was small and plain, but Bumi seemed to like it. And Omashu, while comfortably wealthy by the standards of most Earth Kingdom cities, did not have a chance at competing with Ba Sing Se in terms of opulence.

A few servants moved quietly about their tasks. One of them opened a door to what Toph sensed was a spacious room mostly filled with a huge table. She smelled a wide variety of breakfast dishes, and her stomach let out an embarrassingly loud growl. Bumi snickered. “Sounds like you’re going to have to risk my food, girlie.”

“Guess so. Hey Teo, maybe you should wait to see if I keel over or – “ She heard munching sounds from somewhere near her elbow. “Oh. Never mind.” Toph found a plate, filled it with dumplings, lotus seed cakes, and other goodies, and dug in.

“I haven’t had anything nefarious done to the food,” Bumi said. “The games are over now, Toph. For today, at least. No promises about tomorrow!”

Toph looked up, half a lotus cake sticking out of her mouth, at the unexpected seriousness of Bumi’s tone. She regretfully put the delicacy down on her plate and turned to face the old king. “I’m guessing you’re finally going to tell me what all of this is really about. Am I right?”

“You are. Although a part of it, at least, was just to give you something interesting to do today. I’ve noticed you’re not a big one for formal entertainment of the type your mother prefers.”

“You’ve noticed? What, were you spying on me?” Toph said.

“I’ve been watching over you since you were born, dear. I always keep on eye on my family, even the distant ones, such as my little blind great granddaughter.”

Toph was glad she had put down the sweetcake, or she would have choked on it. “I thought you said no more games tonight, Bumi!”

“So I did. Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that. I’m your great great grandfather on your mother’s side, and your great great great grandfather on your father’s side. Where do you think the Bei Fong noble line started, eh? Right here in Omashu, that’s where.”

“But – but – I didn’t even know you had kids!”

“Twelve, to be precise, with three different wives. The last one passed away from me twenty seven years ago, and I haven’t had the heart to take another since I lost her.” Toph heard the old king pick up a teacup and take a sip. “Then there’s the small army of grandchildren, and the larger army great grandchildren, then your generation and the one after that. It’s one advantage of living so long – you get to see a lot of descendants. Of course, you also get to see some of them die before you. That part is not an advantage.”

“But neither of my folks are earthbenders!”

“True. The only kind of earth your father is interested in bending is the kind that can be made into coins. And yet here you are, dear, the second best earthbender the Earth Kingdom has ever seen, teacher of the Avatar, inventor of metalbending and many other notable achievements. All while you were still a child. You never thought that was strange?”

“I…well, I used to wonder, when I was younger, if I was adopted…what do you mean second best?!”

Bumi ignored her outraged exclamation. “No no. You’re the child of your mother and father, girl. Never doubt that. But sometimes the old blood arises anew from streams long thought dry. I have been watching you all your life, Toph. How do you think I knew to send the Avatar to you? For your sake, as much as his.”

Toph sat back on her cushion, hunger forgotten. “So…I…I don’t know what this means.” Sensing her confusion, Teo slipped an arm around her waist. She hugged it to her gratefully.

“Well now, that depends on several things. Tell me….what did you think of your performance during your Tiǎo Zhàn Shí Liù?”

“Uh…I don’t know. I just wanted to finish it. I thought you were just playing games with me. Weren’t you?”

“Yes and no. I seldom do anything for just one reason, Toph. They were games, yes, but they were also, as in the old days, a chance for you to prove yourself to the people who care about you, and more importantly, to prove yourself to yourself.” Bumi chuckled. “Not that I’ve often seen you lacking in self-confidence, my dear. So, did you learn anything?”

Toph thought back to the night’s events. “I learned that…having friends at your side is a strength, but can also be a weakness, because they can be used against you.” Teo gave her an extra squeeze. She patted his hand. “I learned that those who challenge you aren’t necessarily your enemies, and that not every situation that looks like a fight has to be one. I learned that people you thought you knew can surprise you, and that some friends will go out of their way to help you even if you don’t want them to. Of course I already knew a lot of that. Oh, and I learned my boyfriend is a genius. Which I already pretty much knew, too.”

“ ‘ Pretty much’ knew?” Teo said into her ear.

“Can’t have you getting an inflated ego,” she whispered back.

“Hmmm. I like your answers, Toph Bei Fong.” Bumi stood up and went to the far wall of the room, which turned out to be a pair of bamboo shutters hiding a doorway that led out onto a balcony. Beyond, Teo could see the sky turning a delicate blushing pink against pearly blue, streaked with darker rose from a few early-morning clouds. “Come view my city with me, Toph,” said the old king, stepping outside into the morning air.

Toph started to make one of her standard sarcastic comments about being blind, but thought better of it. She stood up, leaving Teo’s embrace with regret, and followed Bumi. The air was crisp and cool, chilly with the departing winter, but warmed by the promise of summer soon to come. Toph could smell the warm scent of the fertile farmlands surrounding the walls of Omashu, the lands that kept the city fed. From the smell, there was a lot of cabbage seed being planted down there.

“What do you think of my city, my dear? Take a good look.”

Toph looked. Not with her eyes, but with her feet; her hands on the balcony’s stone railing; her mind, heart, and soul. Saw the mountain, the whole of it, how the Omashans lived in and on it, always in harmony with the rock, respecting it but not fearing it. The Omashans were one with their home in a way the residents of sprawling Ba Sing Se never could be. They were true citizens of the kingdom of the earth.

“I think it’s beautiful,” she said, all sarcasm set aside.

“Hah. I gave you the opportunity for a blind joke, and you threw it away?...Well done, my girl.”

They stood in silence for a long moment. Bumi finally broke it.

“I’m glad you like my city. I’m going to put you in charge of it one day.”

Toph gave him her patented “I’m talking to a crazy person” look. “What, you want me to run things while you spend your days playing with Flopsie? I don’t think so, old man.”

“No, my dear. I mean you’re going to be Omashu’s Queen when I finally become one with my beloved earth.”

Toph’s mouth fell open. “The…what now? Bumi, are you saying you’re –“ She broke off, unable to complete the thought.

“No no! I don’t plan to die any time soon, so don’t start redecorating my palace just yet. But I’m one hundred and eighteen years old, Toffee-taffy. There’s only so long I can go on – or would want to. We’re at the dawn of a new age here. When I pass, Omashu will need a ruler who can bring her into that new age without losing what makes her special. I think you’re up to the challenge.”

“Why me?”

“Many reasons. First, you’re of my blood. This isn’t required, but I think it will reassure my people. Mind you, I have sixty-one living descendants at the moment, so don’t think it makes you too special. And some of them might, ahem, object strenuously to you taking the throne, so you’ll have to deal with that. You should be particularly wary of Fā Kuáng Quǎn – he’s tried to have me assassinated twice so far. Fortunately he’s as incompetent as he is greedy.

“Second, you have important connections. You’re the teacher of the Avatar, friends with the young Fire Lord with all the newfangled ideas, and one of the heroes of Ozai’s defeat. Those are impressive credentials. They’ll help keep people like Fā in line, give my people a ruler they can be justifiably proud of, and be a warning to any outside source of aggression that Omashu is not an easy target and they should look elsewhere.

“Third, you are the best young earthbender I’ve ever met. Someday you may even surpass me – thought I doubt it. Don’t glare at me like that – show respect for your elders, girl. As you can tell, we Omashans live in harmony with the mountain. Sometimes things have to be nudged to keep the balance. You have the ability to perceive when something is wrong, and the power to fix it, so that no avalanche or cave-in will threaten my people’s lives and homes. At the same time, you can ensure that my people don’t overtax the mountain by digging too deep into its roots, and you can help keep the flatlands that feed us all fertile and productive so that no one starves.

“Even if you weren’t a child of my line, Toph Bei Fong, you would still make a fine Queen for Omashu. And now that you are fully adult in the eyes of the law, you are free to make your choice. So what will it be?”

Toph gulped. “I …have to decide right now? Just like that?”

“Yes. Omashu needs a decisive leader. Oh, you’ll have to find a mate other than that crippled commoner boy who can’t even earthbend, of course.”

“Oh, well, then. That settles that.” Toph turned to walk away. “Teo! We’re leaving!”

Bumi’s bony claw caught at her shoulder. “My, my, I must really have shaken you up for you not to see through my little joke. Even I wouldn’t presume to tell you who to love, my dear. Two of my wives were commoners – it absolutely doesn’t matter. In fact, based on the way he helped you through your Tiǎo Zhàn Shí Liù, I’d say he’s an excellent choice. Smart, versatile, able to watch your back. Good qualities in a royal spouse.”

Toph felt herself blushing, just as Teo poked his head out onto the balcony. “Is everything okay out here, Slugger?” He paused. “What’s with the red face?”

“Uh…nothing. It’s the wind, it’s chapping my cheeks.”

“Yeah, right. Tell me another one, Slugger.”

“Well….Bumi wants me to take Omashu over for him when he dies. Which won’t be for a long time yet!”

“Oh yeah? Sounds like a good idea. I always knew you were a princess.”

Toph dropped her face into her hands. “Ugh, not you too. You really think I should go along with this?”

“Absolutely. You’d be great at it.”

Bumi cackled. “Yep, excellent spouse material, this one!”

Teo looked at him. “Excellent what?”

Toph broke in. “Never mind that! Just – help me out here. Bumi wants an answer now.”

“So tell him yes and come back to breakfast. The shrimp shumai is terrific.”

“I have a couple of suggestions for what you can do with your shrimp shumai! I’ve got a real issue here, Teo.”

“I don’t really think you do, but I’m behind you whatever you choose. You know that, Slugger.”

Bumi cackled again. Teo wondered what the old man found so funny.

Toph turned back to the old king. “So if I say yes – what happens? Will I be stuck here in Omashu? I’ve had enough of being a pampered, powdered doll.”

“I’m sure you have. Such a waste of your talents. Really, your parents should be ashamed. On the other hand, they produced you in the first place, so that’s a point in their favor. But to answer your question, I’ll want you to spend at least a couple of months here every year so you can learn about the city and the city can learn about you. Plus, you’ll need to show up here for regular earthbending lessons – you and I have some serious work to do on that score. You have to teach me to metalbend, for one thing.

“Aside from that, your time is your own. Although I think someone else has some ideas about that.” Teo saw Bumi lean over the railing and wave. A few seconds later a brown and white streak flew by, followed by a bright golden one. Appa roared in welcome as he circled around, Aang and Katara in his saddle. Shai, carrying Zuko and Sokka, tried to roar too, but her voice broke into a squeak at the end. Teo would swear the young dragon looked embarrassed.

The balcony was far too small for either animal to land, but that didn’t stop their passengers. Aang opened his glider and was the first one to land on the balcony. He swept Toph up in a huge hug the moment he touched down. Zuko arrived a second later, having run up Shai’s neck and launched himself off her head, utterly ignoring the deadly fall awaiting him if his leap fell short. Katara flung out a stream of water and froze it in place, then slid her way across the ice bridge. When Sokka complained that he wasn’t as crazy as Zuko and definitely wasn’t going to jump off of Shai’s head, his sister thoughtfully provided him with an ice bridge of his own, complete with ornate handrails. Sokka gave her a remarkably dirty look as he crossed over.

“I thought perhaps you’d like to talk it over with your friends,” Bumi said. “But don’t take too long, my dear. This offer expires when the morning bells sound in the city – which won’t be long now.”

“You all knew about this from the start, didn’t you?” Toph said.

“Of course!” Katara said. “This took a lot of setting up, you know. Planning it out, getting everyone together in the same place at the right time. We all worked very hard on this.”

“Well, not all of us,” Sokka added. “I mostly just sat around and let them do all the heavy work.”

“But we had a lot of fun doing it, so it wasn’t like work at all,” Aang said.

“And I needed a couple days off from the Fire Palace anyway,” Zuko said.

“So you all think I should go along with this?”

“Of course!” said Aang.

“Yes,” said Katara.

“Absolutely,” said Zuko.

“I say no,” Sokka said. “Royalty are all jerks. I mean, look at Zuko – you want to turn into that?”

Quick as a striking snake, Shai’s head shot forward and clamped around Sokka’s midriff. Ignoring his shouts of alarm, the dragon gave him a thorough shaking, then set him back down on the balcony, breathing hard but otherwise unhurt.

Bumi cackled with mad glee. “I like that beastie of yours, fire boy!”

“I like her too,” Zuko said, rubbing Shai’s head. “Good girl, Zǐ Sè Shǎi Lóng.”

“It’s all fun and games until someone loses a rib cage,” Sokka grumped.

“Sokka, were you serious about that no vote?” Toph asked.

“Nope. I just couldn’t resist the opening. I think it’s a great idea, Toph. You’ve always loved bossing people around.”

“You’re looking to get hurt again, Snoozles.”

“All right, all right!” Sokka raised his hands in surrender. “I give up. My answer is yes, Toph. Take Bumi’s offer. I would say something here about you having to put up with Bumi, but I think I’ve pushed things far enough for the moment.”

“A wise choice,” Bumi said. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Hey, I’m wise!”

“Yeah, you’re a real wise guy,” Katara commented, rolling her eyes.

“So it’s unanimous, is it?” Toph said. “I suppose you’ll all hate me if I say no?”

“I certainly will,” Zuko said cheerfully. “I’m tired of being the only one having to deal with Sokka’s royalty jokes.”

“Thanks, Sparky, that’s really motivational.”

“Glad I could help.”

Toph looked at the person whose vote mattered most. “Teo, are you sure about this? I mean, being royalty means being a target. And it means the people close to you become targets. I don’t want to take a chance that you – “

“I can take care of myself, Slugger. And I could never forgive myself if worrying about me kept you from doing what you were clearly born to do. You can stop looking for excuses to say no. You want the job, and you know it. Tell the nice old king yes already.”

Sometimes Toph thought Teo knew her better than she knew herself.

She turned to face Bumi, Teo at her side, her friends standing around her in a loose semicircle. “Yes,” she said simply.

Bumi grinned until Teo thought his head might split, then swept Toph up in a huge bear hug. Aang led the gang in a round of cheers for “Her Royal Majesty Toph Bei Fong!” which Toph thought was overdoing it.

“All right, now that all that’s done with, can we get back to breakfast?” she asked plaintively. “All I’ve had is one dumpling and half a lotus seed cake.”

“Sorry to have to delay your meal even further, Your Highness,” Zuko said, “But there’s one further matter to take care of.” He brandished a scroll case, and drew out a suspiciously heavy and thick scroll.

“Oh pebbles, what now?” Toph groaned.

Zuko unrolled the parchment and began to read. “I, Earth King Kuei, by my authority, hereby confer upon the Lady Toph Bei Fong, having passed the legal age of sixteen, the title of Earth Kingdom Ambassador to the Court of the Fire Lord.” Zuko let the scroll roll back up. “There’s a lot more here but it’s just a bunch of legal chatter. I know you’ve been itching to be a part of the Restoration, Toph. Here’s your opportunity. You wouldn’t be able to live with your parents anymore, though – you’ll be traveling all over the place, because I plan to thoroughly overwork you. What do you say?”

Toph didn’t need any convincing on this one. “I say, ‘When can I start, Sparky?’”

“I think you owe it to your folks to at least give them a few days to get used to the idea of your leaving. Plus you must have a few things at home you’d like to bring to the Fire Palace with you. Say, one week from today?”

“Three days,” Toph countered.

“No. One week. You’ve lasted four years, you can handle one more week. I expect it will be quite a while before you manage to get back home for a visit, so let your folks have a little more time with you. Who knows, they may discover they’ll miss having you around.”

“They’ll get over it,” Toph said. “And they’ll love all the new status this will give them in their social circle. Having me around would just ruin their enjoyment, I bet.”

“Just one week, Toph. Then I’ll personally come by on Shai to get you. I’ll even dress up for the appearance, so your folks’ neighbors can be suitably impressed by the visit. Deal?”

Toph sighed. “One week it is. Deal. Now – breakfast? Please?”

While they had been outside on the balcony, servants had moved in, rearranged some bamboo walls, and transformed the dining room into a banquet hall so that Toph’s true Sweet Sixteen party could begin. She ate, drank, laughed, and shared stories with the friends she had missed so much, and in the future would be seeing much more of, she was sure. It lasted hours, but eventually the previous night’s lack of sleep began to catch up with everyone, and small epidemics of yawns began to break out. Bumi reasserted control and ordered everyone off to their guest rooms to get some rest.

Toph made sure to keep Teo close by her as one by one the others of the gang peeled off to go to bed. Finally, it was just the two of them at the door to Toph’s guest room. They stood close together for a long moment, enjoying each other’s warmth. Then they shared a lingering kiss.

Teo sighed. “Well, here’s where we part. I’ll see you tomorrow, Slugger. Or maybe I’ll just start calling you Princess, what do you think?”

“Don’t you dare,” Toph said in her most threatening voice.

“Okay, okay. You’ll always be Slugger to me, I promise.”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant – don’t you dare leave me alone tonight.”

Teo stood very still for a long moment. “Are you sure?”

“I’m legally an adult now, Teo. Everyone says so. And adults get to make their own decisions.” She took a firm grip on his wrist. “And this is mine.”

She drew him inside, and shut the door.

[The End]

Fic: Tian Mi Shi Lui: Chapter Nine: Discretion

Chapter Nine: Discretion

By: Sugeatarc

Disclaimer: I still don't own Avatar. I'll let you know if that changes.
Genre: A little romance, a little humor, a little action
Characters/Pairing: Toph/Teo; lots of other familiar faces popping up
Rating: G/PG

Teaser:

Toph did a quick sweep of the room. No exits other than the one they’d just come through, and the shaft way overhead. Nothing in the room but bare rock, except…

“Hey Teo,” she whispered. “Can you see what’s over in the corner there? It’s not solid enough for me to get a good image.”

She felt Teo start with surprise. “Uh, yeah! It’s our two-seater glider!”

“What? What’s that torture device doing down here? And what are we supposed to do with it against an airbender, who also, oh yeah, happens to be the Avatar?"

-----------------------------------------------------

Aang grinned his big infectious grin at the two of them and waved. “Hey Toph, Teo. Good to see you two. Have you had a good time?” Momo mimicked the wave and chittered.

Toph considered that for a moment. “Overall, I’d have to say yes. I could have done without the cistern part though. Why not just start with a fight?”

“Oh, I dunno.” Aang’s tone was bright, almost gleeful. “Maybe someone wanted to know what you’d do faced with a challenge you couldn’t beat by fighting. Or maybe someone thought you could use a dunking. That perfume you were wearing was pretty strong.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. Mother insisted I wear it. I nearly choked.” Toph did a quick sweep of the room. No exits other than the one they’d just come through, and the shaft way overhead. Nothing in the room but bare rock, except…

“Hey Teo,” she whispered. “Can you see what’s over in the corner there? It’s not solid enough for me to get a good image.”

She felt Teo start with surprise. “Uh, yeah! It’s our two-seater glider!”

"What? What’s that torture device doing down here? And what are we supposed to do with it against an airbender, who also, oh yeah, happens to be the Avatar? This is nuts.”

“Maybe it’s so we can get out through the vent. But we’ll probably have to, ah, get past Aang somehow. No, scratch that – we’d need Aang to actually help us in order to use that.”

“Maybe it’s a red herringsquid. Maybe we can run back to the wooden room.” Aang hadn’t made a move since his first wave, other than to reach up and scratch Momo under the chin. Momo crooned.

“Maybe we’re supposed to take Momo hostage?” Teo suggested. Momo looked up at him and gave an short screech, hooding his huge eyes. “No, Momo, I don’t believe you understood that.” Aang snickered. Momo made a grumbling sound and went back to enjoying Aang’s attentions.

“Let’s try moving toward Zuko’s room, see what Aang does.” Toph started edging backward. Aang didn’t move. No elements stirred. Toph kept backing up, Teo keeping in step. Still no action from the Avatar. Teo flicked a hand at the latch, shoved the door open, and the two of them darted through. No wall of wind, burst of fire, whip of water, or spike of earth arose to stop them.

Toph spotted Katara and Zuko immediately, and after a little careful searching, was able to sense Sokka in that annoying suit of his. The glass dome still stood, although with a man-shaped hole melted in the side. Katara was studying it with interest. She looked up. “Hey guys. Did you give up? Want me to take you back out through the cistern?”

“Would that count as winning?”

Sokka laughed. “Of course not. You have to get past you-know-who in there.”

“Ugh! C’mon, Teo and I are supposed to take on Aang? That’s ridiculous.” Toph scowled, then had a sudden thought. “Unless…maybe you guys want to help us out?”

This time it was Zuko who laughed. Toph sighed, realizing she was doomed to being the source of humor here, and not because of her witty remarks. “I take it that’s a no, Sparky?”

“Wish I could, Thumper,” he said, genuinely regretful. “It’s a great idea, but against the rules.”

“I should have known. Well, if you’re not going to help, why are you still here? Were you going to rush through the door as Aang’s reinforcements?”

“Not that either,” Katara said. “We just want to watch the fun. We were trying to figure out how to put a nice thick piece of glass in the door there for easier spectating.”

“Well, don’t expect me to help you with that. Make it out of ice.”

“I thought of that, but Aang’s likely to use fire at some point. Could be dangerous if the window melts and we get blasted by accident.” Her tone became more businesslike. “Oh yeah, that’s the other reason I’m still here – just in case of accidents like that.”

“That’s good to hear, I guess,” Toph grumped. “Hey, did you two Water Tribe peasants cheat to let me win? I know Sparky didn’t, but I wasn’t so sure about you two.”

“Of course not!” Katara sounded offended. “I mean, we were just sparring, not fighting for real, but I assure you I was trying to win.”

“Me too,” said Sokka. “Not that I thought I really had a chance against you two without Suki, but I was doing my best.”

“But you have that suit. And Katara might have, say, bloodbent her heartbeat and breathing so I can’t tell she’s lying, right?”

“What?” Katara said. “Now you’re just getting paranoid. Messing with my own heartbeat and breathing could easily be a fatal experiment, so no, I didn’t do that.” She paused. “Huh. Do you think I’d actually be able to fool you if I did do that? That could be useful.”

“Never mind, forget I even suggested it. Way too dangerous. Much, much too dangerous. Just put the idea right out of your head.”

Katara snickered. “Too late, Toph. Speaking of which, it’s going to be dawn very shortly. Hadn’t you better stop procrastinating and get back to dealing with Aang?"

“Argh! I admit, I’m not exactly eager to go in there and have my head handed to me, even in fun. Seriously, how are Teo and I supposed to fight Aang? Even if the three of you helped I still wouldn’t bet against him. Unless I got really good odds, of course.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Zuko said. He put his hands on her shoulders and started gently shoving her back toward the room of doom.

“Hey, hotman, one side – that’s my job.” Teo elbowed Zuko aside – none too gently, either – and took over. Toph, growling, let herself be herded back to the place of her imminent defeat. Teo gave a wave to the three defeated challengers and got waves in return, then shut and latched the door, and turned to face the Avatar.

Aang hadn’t moved from his spot, though he had taken a seat in the lotus position and was quietly humming a mantra to himself with closed eyes. Toph entertained a brief image of pouncing on him instantly and taking him down by surprise, but before she finished having the thought, she heard the wind pick up and Aang gracefully rose to his feet without any visible effort. “No luck with the rest of the gang, huh?” he asked, still obnoxiously cheerful. As usual.

“Against the rules, apparently.”

“Yeah, I know.” Aang tapped his staff lightly on the ground, and she heard its wings spring open. “Ready get started? You know the deal – only one way out, you have to get past me to use it.”

“Even if we do get past you we can’t use it,” Toph groaned, feeling completely defeated for the first time in this seemingly endless night.

“You’ll think of something,” Aang said, sounding almost exactly like Zuko. Over the past four years of rebuilding, the two of them had started echoing each other’s thoughts in a surprising number of situations. It was a good thing, but still a little disconcerting after their rough start. Toph had to keep reminding herself that air and fire were complementary elements, not opposite.

Teo tugged on her sleeve. “Toph. I’ve got an idea. It might be really stupid, though.”

“Stupid is more than I’ve got right now. Go for it.”

“Okay. If I get blasted, promise you’ll pick up the pieces?”

“After I’m done yelling at them, yes.”

“Good enough.”

Teo gave her shoulder a little squeeze, then walked straight toward Aang. Other than a slight shift of his stance, Aang made no move to attack. He allowed Teo to walk right up to him, although he did have his staff held in defensive position. Teo reached out and rubbed Momo behind the ears. Momo made contented noises at him.

“We thought about holding the little guy hostage,” Teo said, “but we didn’t want to get bitten.”

Aang laughed. “Yeah, that’s an interesting idea, but Sokka tried that with you and learned better.”

“Anyway, I had this thought. And it went like this: you’re the Avatar.”

“…And?”

“And it would be stupid to fight you.”

“I wish you could convince everyone of that,” Aang sighed. “Too many still want to try. And I really don’t like fighting.”

“Yeah, I know. So I thought – maybe it’s not necessary.”

Aang studied him thoughtfully. “Really?”

“Well, I did say maybe. You said we had to get past you to get out of here, but that’s not actually true. What we need is for you to give us a hand getting out of here. And I don’t recall you saying at any time that we had to fight you to get it. So I’m asking – Aang, will you help me and Toph get out of here?”

Toph squawked. “Hey! Teo! That’s not how a rumble works!”

“Quiet over there, Slugger. Who said this was a rumble?” He turned back to Aang. Aang was smothering a laugh behind his hand. “Ah. Does that mean it really is the stupid idea I thought it was?”

Aang flung an arm over Teo’s shoulders. “Nope! I’d be glad to help you two escape. I just thought I was going to have to kick you around for a while before you got the idea. I’m glad it didn’t go that way.”

“WHAT?” Toph yelped. “We’re not going to rumble? We just had to – had to – “

“Had to ask me to help,” Aang finished. “Why wouldn’t I? I never said I was here as your enemy, Toph. Wouldn’t be very fair, would it? And you have to admit, all the challenges so far have been fair – more or less. Bumi’s like that. If he wanted to harass you for the sake of harassment, he didn’t need to go through all the effort to set this up, right?” Aang waved at the glider. “Go check out your glider, make sure nothing came loose when we were getting it down here. Then we’ll be off. It’s almost dawn.”

“So…what would have happened if I had attacked you?” Toph asked.

“We’d have fought, you’d have lost. Then maybe you’d think of the right approach, but I’d say Teo saved you a lot of time. And some bruises.”

“Saved you a few too, Twinkletoes!”

He laughed again. “I’m sure. Just as well things went the way they did, I’d say.”

“Hmph. There was a small chance we could have taken you out, you know.”

“Of course. I have a lot of respect for your fighting ingenuity and always have, Sifu Toph.” She sensed him giving her a formal bow.

“Oh, stop that. I haven’t been able to teach you a thing in over a year now.”

“Not true. I learn from you constantly, as I do all my teachers.”

Toph harrumphed at him again, temporarily at a loss for words.

“Everything looks fine over here,” Teo called from the glider. “So how do we do this?”

Aang beckoned Toph over to the horrible machine, and she reluctantly went. Aang took a stance, and wind billowed up, lifting the glider up off the ground and holding it suspended in midair. “Climb on!” he said. Teo was already settling into his seat and sorting out the safety straps. Toph groaned, but gingerly hoisted herself up off her beloved ground and into the awful, awful air gizmo. It swayed as she climbed aboard, and she had to clutch at Teo to keep from tumbling back out. Teo didn’t seem to mind. After she got her seat, he helped her find and secure her own harness.

“Ready?” Aang called.

“No!” Toph moaned. Teo patted her reassuringly.

“We’re all set,” he announced. “Ready for lift off!”

Aang’s staff shot out, and a huge gust of wind came from behind the glider and threw it up and forward. Toph shrieked and hid her head against Teo’s shoulder while Teo pealed out delighted laughter. “Where are we going?” she shouted over the rush of the air.

“Straight up the vent!” Teo replied.

“Oh nooaaaaaaaaahhhh!” she yelled as the glider tipped almost vertical and began a rapid ascending spiral up the shaft. It took only a few minutes at most, but it seemed like an eternity to Toph before the glider burst into open air and leveled off. Teo reached out and grabbed the control bars. He saw that Aang had followed them up through the vent using his staff glider, and was pointing down to the city below, where a large number of green-fired torches burned in the shape of the Earth Kingdom symbol.

“Set down there!” Aang shouted.

“What do you say, Toph? Play along? I could just steer us away and off the mountain. We could land in the woods and do a little camping, just the two of us….”

“I don’t think Aang would let us get away with that,” Toph said. “Besides, I just want to get down as quickly as we can, flyboy.”

“Gotcha. Down we go.”

Teo put the glider into a dive, earning another small shriek and a grab from Toph. “Hey, you said to get down quickly,” he said cheerfully. “No complaints!” At close to the last second, Teo pulled up hard on the control bar, and the glider meekly settled to ground in the exact center of the torches. Aang touched down lightly next to them.

Toph struggled out of the glider and did her usual welcoming embrace of the solid earth, ignoring the chuckles from Teo and Aang at her antics.

Then she caught the sound of many booted feet approaching. She looked up and got the image of an unmistakably large, knobby body bearing down on them.

“Hey! Miss Tofu! Who said you could run around kissing my city, eh? EH?”

(To be concluded)

Fic: Tian Mi Shi Lui : Chapter Eight: Glass Houses
By: Sugeatarc

Disclaimer: I still don't own Avatar. I'll let you know if that changes.
Genre: A little romance, a little humor, a little action
Characters/Pairing: Toph/Teo; lots of other familiar faces popping up
Rating: G/PG

Teaser:

Toph thought for a moment. “The only brilliant idea I have now is – run. Can we make it back to the cistern door? I’d much rather fight Sparky in a rocky cave with water in it than a room lined with wood.”

“The fire wall’s too hot and high to try that – which I’m sure is the reason he put it up in the first place.”

“Oh. Good idea. Sort of makes me wish Sparky really was as dumb as Sokka always used to insist he was.”
-----------------------------------------------------

“How did you know?” Zuko asked, his tone light and amused.

“Lucky guess,” Toph said. She heard faint sounds as Zuko shifted into a new position – firebending stance, it had to be. A moment later a wash of heat swept over her. From the feel, she guessed Zuko had put up a circle of fire around her and Teo. “I’m also guessing Bumi’s going to be up next.”

“I’m not going to comment on that, and you know it,” Zuko said.

“Now would be a good time for one of your brilliant ideas,” Teo murmured in his undervoice.

“It certainly would,” she muttered back. “Too bad I don’t have one. How about you?”

“Er. Let him burn up all the wood, then take him out?”

“If this were real we’d be dead long before that. Besides, he doesn’t need fuel – it’s just point and fry.”

“Oh right. I forget firebenders cheat like that.”

“Yep. It’s totally not fair.” Toph thought for a moment. “The only brilliant idea I have now is – run. Can we make it back to the cistern door? I’d much rather fight Sparky in a rocky cave with water in it than a room lined with wood.”

“The fire wall’s too hot and high to try that – which I’m sure is the reason he put it up in the first place.”

“Oh. Good idea. Sort of makes me wish Sparky really was as dumb as Sokka always used to insist he was.”

“Sokka said that?”

“That and worse. Katara too. Of course that was back when Sparky was running around half-crazed trying to grab Aang, so he wasn’t exactly thinking well. I think their low opinion was understandable.”

“I’m standing right here, Toph,” Zuko said, sounding just a trifle miffed.

“Well, is that all you’re going to do, Fire Lord Stupid? Just stand there while we chatter away?”

“I’m not here to take you down. I’m just here to prevent you leaving until you give up.” Zuko added, “And since Katara mentioned the deadline, I’ll just say that you’re running out of time. Better think of something quick.”

Then, to Toph’s astonishment, she heard him murmur under his breath, “Sand. Glass.”

What in the name of big boulders did that mean? Was Zuko trying to trick her? Why would he bother? He had them pretty well stuck. Was he trying to help them? Again, why? Katara and Sokka had taken their roles pretty seriously – unless Katara’s slip of the tongue hadn’t been an accident. Or Sokka’s uncharacteristically sloppy sword handling. Wouldn’t she have noticed if they were lying? Sokka had that suit…and Katara had learned to blood bend her own body, so she could have regulated her heartbeat and breathing…

Toph found that the idea that her friends were letting her win to be very irritating. “Sparky. You’re not planning to throw this match, are you? If you do, I swear I’ll turn your palace upside-down and leave it that way.”

“What? Oh. Uh. No, of course not. I’m sure you can figure your way out of this all on your own.”

Toph heaved an utterly exasperated sigh. “Zuko, I keep telling you – you’re such a terrible liar I don’t even need to hear your heartbeat to know what’s up.”

“Ah. Right. Maybe I should just shut up,” said the Fire Lord.

“Yeah, maybe you should.”

Teo muttered, “What makes you think Zuko’s not trying to win?”

“He said something to me in undervoice that I think was a clue to help us get out of this. I’m not sure – it could be a very subtle trick, but subtle tricks really aren’t Sparky’s style. More like tons of drama and then blowing stuff up.”

“I’m standing right here, Toph!” said Zuko. Definitely miffed.

Toph ignored him. “Anyway, I can’t make heads or tails of what he said, but I’m kind of insulted by the idea that he – and maybe Katara and Sokka too – have been holding back and letting me win. And how did Zuko know how to use undervoice anyway?”

“Oh. My fault,” Teo said. “I told him about that fake mind-reading trick we pulled at the Spring Equinox celebration. He was very amused.”

“That explains that, then. But not that ‘clue’ he dropped, if that’s what it was. I can’t decide if I want to try to use it or not.”

“What did he say, exactly?”

“ Just two words: sand, and glass.” Toph did a quick search with the little sensory ability she could muster in here, and came up empty. “But there’s no sand here, let alone enough to make glass with. And what would be the point anyway?”

“Hm.” Teo swept a hand across the wooden floor. “Actually, there is a tiny bit of sand on the floor here. Just a few grains, though.” He looked up at Zuko in time to catch a quick, smile on the Fire Lord’s face. Zuko noticed him looking and attempted to blank his expression. He didn’t succeed very well. Teo decided Toph was right – Zuko really was an open book. He wondered, not for the first time, how Zuko managed to be an effective diplomat while being such a terrible liar. Maybe the rest of the world just found it a nice change of pace.

Clearly, Zuko thought the tiny grains of sand on the floor were important somehow. Teo wiped sweat off his face – it was getting quite warm in here, and he could feel it even through his soaked and chilly clothes. He had been wishing he’d thought to ask Katara to dry them off, but it was turning out to be useful to be damp.

Teo tried to ignore the heat and focus on the problem at hand. Sand on the floor. Why would there be sand on the floor down here? He knelt down, both to give his aching legs a rest and to get a closer look at the flooring. The boards were closely fitted together, but with no sign of pegs or nails holding them down. “Toph,” he murmured. “Stand in front of me so Zuko can’t see.”

“What are you doing?”

“Never mind, just cover me. Move about two short steps to the right.”

Toph did as instructed, though a lot more slowly and uncertainly than usual thanks to being unrooted. Shielded from Zuko’s sight by Toph and the curtain of flame, Teo got out his hunting knife and slipped it between two of the boards. The fit was tight, but he managed to get a tiny bit of leverage and slipped one of the boards up little by little until he was able to pry it completely free. Underneath was a layer of fine white sand, into which the whole wooden floor had been laid to make it firm and level.

“Toph. Take one step backward – carefully.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Just trust me and do it.”

Toph gave him a doubtful look, but slid a foot backward until it found the gap in the floorboards, then gingerly lowered it a few inches into the hole. When she touched the sand, her face lit up with delight. “Sweet!”

With a sharp wrist motion, Toph swept the sand up from under the floorboard and raised a curtain between the two of them and the flames. The floor sagged noticeably as she siphoned out the supportive layer. More sand streamed in to fill the empty area she had created, hiding the stone floor from her, but the sand should be more than enough to do the trick, Toph thought. If not, she could just keep pulling until it all came out, the whole floor collapsed, and she could reach the rock beneath. If Zuko gave them enough time.

Toph whirled the sand into a ring and brought it crashing down on Zuko’s circle of fire, snuffing it. She grabbed Teo’s arm and helped him run for the cistern door, but he stumbled, and long before they reached the goal, a new, much wider wall of fire had sprung to life in front of it. They had to backpedal hard to keep from running into it face first. Toph called the sand back to her and spun it into a cylindrical protective curtain around her and Teo. It would keep Zuko at bay, as long as he kept to his word about being there to stop them rather than knock them down. She wondered briefly how long it was until dawn – and then wondered why she cared.

“Now what?” Teo asked, panting.

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of being on the defensive here.” Toph stepped into the open space on the floor, rooted herself, and brought up both arms sharply. A tidal wave of sand roared out and raced toward Zuko’s position. He countered with a searing wall of flame that rushed out to meet the incoming attack. When the two waves hit, the sand absorbed the heat and began to glow, and in an instant shining droplets were falling from the air, burning smoking holes in the wooden floor wherever they hit.

“Wha--? Oh. It turned to glass.” Toph frowned. Zuko’s second hint had been “glass”. Now there was glass here. What were they supposed to do with it?

“Think fast, Thumper,” the Fire Lord said, corralling them once again in flame. “Time’s short.”

Toph thought fast. She envisioned enclosing herself and Teo in a glass dome. Then she thought about the amount of heat the molten glass would be giving off, imagined them choking on the heat and falling to the floor, then burning to death when her control over the liquid glass dome gave way. No, that obviously wasn’t right. They needed some way to handle the heat, but she couldn’t think of a thing.

“Teo. I can protect us with a glass dome, but it’s going to get real hot in there. Got any ideas?”

“Hah. No. Do I look like a firebender to you?”

Toph made googly eyes at him. “I don’t know – do you?”

“Absolutely not.”

Hmm. A firebender could withstand the heat – could even draw it off and harden the glass, keeping it from falling in.

Suddenly she got what Zuko had been trying to hint at. For a moment pride rebelled, telling her not to use the solution that had been handed to her, but she stomped on her ego with a large dose of practicality. This was a game, anyway. (Probably, whispered the voice of her imagination, which she ignored.) She wouldn’t hesitate to use an advantage given to her by an enemy in war, and this was, if not war, certainly a fight.

Toph pulled even more sand out from under the floor. The floorboards groaned and buckled, making both Teo and Zuko unsure of their footing for a few moments. During that time, Toph took her sand and flung it outward toward Zuko, aiming for the space above the firebender’s head. Zuko saw it coming and blasted fire toward it. The blast hit, and Toph shaped the rain of sand that resulted into a tight, thick, dome-shaped wall that enclosed Zuko completely.

Zuko let loose a flew blasts that tore holes in the dome, which Toph immediately repaired. In the wake of the blasts, gleaming liquid crystal droplets appeared. Toph grabbed those too and bent them, flattening them out and mixing them with more sand. With surprising speed, shimmering translucent arcs of glass became visible, replacing the shifting white surface of the spinning sand wall.

The heat became intense, and Teo had to step back a few paces. Toph was stuck in place, needing the opening in the floor to root herself properly for the bending. Teo saw that her face was streaming with sweat, but she showed no sign of letting up on her attack. He quickly knelt down and went to work with his knife on some more floorboards, clearing a larger space for her at a more comfortable distance from the molten glass. “Slugger, back up!”

Toph had no idea what Teo had been up to back there – any sounds he made were swallowed in the roar and hiss of the swirling, melting sand. But Teo said to back up, and she trusted Teo, so she took a firm hold on the molten glass to keep it from falling in on Zuko, unrooted one foot and slid it backward. It dropped into Teo’s new hole in the floor, and Toph grinned. “All right!” She quickly got her second foot into the new space, then felt her way as far back as she could, away from the furnace heat of the dome. Teo was still busy tearing at the floorboards, making even more space.

“Hey Teo, how’s Sparky doing?” She remembered what Zuko had said about the heat of enough molten glass being able to overcome even a master firebender. “He’s okay in there, right?”

Teo squinted at the glowing glass, which was both too bright to look at comfortably and somewhat murky in texture. Through one floating pane he had a brief clear view of the Fire Lord.

“Hah. He’s grinning. So I’d say he’s fine.”

“Oh. Well. Wasted worry, then.”

After that it was just a matter of time. Toph kept the sand moving, Zuko obligingly kept up the heat, and within a few minutes the entire dome was complete. Toph knew it was over when she felt the heat suddenly vanish from the glass, leaving it solid and whole. Zuko had apparently had enough of the heat and had bent it out of the dome.

“So, I think I just created a new exotic dish,” Toph commented. “ ‘Steamed Fire Lord Under Glass.’ What do you think, Teo?”

Teo chuckled. “Well, he doesn’t look particularly steamed – in fact I’d say he’s pleased – and that glass dome of yours isn’t going to win any design prizes – but we can definitely get past it to the door. As long as Zuko doesn’t have any other tricks up those long robe sleeves of his, I’d say we’re in the clear.”

“If he does, he probably won’t use them. He basically told me to stuff him into a glass ball, I just didn’t quite get what he was driving at. At least that’s what I think he meant. Remind me to ask him when all this silliness is over.”

“Will do.” Teo brushed wood shavings off his hunting knife, sheathed it, and offered an arm to Toph. “May I see you to the door, my la—OW!” Toph had not allowed him to finish the sentence before whacking him. But she did take his arm. The one that wasn’t aching.

Teo looked into the glass dome as they passed. Zuko smiled and waved at him, little flames dancing on each fingertip and reflecting glittering sparks from all around the curved walls of his prison. Teo gave him a nod and a wink in turn as they reached the far wooden door.

“Well, here we go,” Teo said. “How many more doors do you think we have to get through?”

“I’m guessing this is the last one. I mean, who’s left? It pretty much has to be Bumi behind here.” She smacked a fist into her opposite palm. “And I’m more than ready to rumble with him. So let’s get on with it.”

“Your wish is my command,” Teo said, earning himself another swat and a scowl. He flipped the latch and swung the door in.

Beyond was another large cavern lit with hanging oil lamps. It was made of raw rock all around, and was nearly as large as the cistern. At the very top, a dark shaft rose up into darkness, a strong breeze wafting out of it.

The next – last? – challenger stood in the exact center of the room, leaning on a staff, a flying lemur perched on his right shoulder.

Not Bumi.

Aang.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Toph groaned.

(To Be Continued)

Tian Mi Shi Liu: Chapter Seven: Before Dawn
Chapter Seven: Before Dawn

Note: Sorry for the delay getting this chapter out; real life jumped on me for a while. I should be able to post regularly again this week, and hope to finish the story. The pace on this one is a little slow, because I’m a little rusty after taking two weeks off. Put up with it and next chapter will be better, I promise XD )

Teaser:

“Excuses, excuses,” Sokka said. “Now, what are you going to do about my hostage, huh?”

“Why should I do anything? I know perfectly well you’re not going to harm Teo, Sokka.”

Sokka sighed. “Since when were you such a spoilsport? Play along, okay?”

“If I play along, you’re going to be so mashed up it’ll take Katara weeks to heal you.”

--------------------------------------------

“Sokka, I love games as much as you do, but this one is just stupid. You know I can turn you into paste in about two seconds if I want.” Toph considered the situation for a moment. “I would like to know how you managed to hide your life sounds from me though.” She could hear his heart and breathing now, if she tried, but they were strangely muffled. Toph found that a bit alarming.

“New stealth suit,” Sokka said, smug dripping from his voice. “It’s something the Mechanist came up with by accident while messing with some rubber. The material absorbs sound pretty well. We’ve already used it to soundproof the lab – which is nice, because the neighbors are complaining a lot less. I was wondering how it would do against you. Pretty cool, eh? I told you I was Sokka the Silent! Well, Sokka the Mostly Silent really, but that doesn’t sound half as good.”

“Hmph. Katara was distracting me.” Toph heard Katara start to protest, then the waterbender thought better of it and swallowed whatever she was about to say. Her parole prevented her from helping Sokka, but apparently the rules of the game required her not to help Toph and Teo either. Or maybe she just didn’t want to.

“Excuses, excuses,” Sokka said. “Now, what are you going to do about my hostage, huh?”

“Why should I do anything? I know perfectly well you’re not going to harm Teo, Sokka.”

Sokka sighed. “Since when were you such a spoilsport? Play along, okay?”

“If I play along, you’re going to be so mashed up it’ll take Katara weeks to heal you.”

“Really?” It was odd, but suddenly Sokka sounded more serious. “I mean, I know you could squash me like a fly, but how could you be sure I wouldn’t have just enough time to kill my hostage before you hit me? Would you take that chance?”

Toph frowned and thought it over a little more carefully. She had rarely found herself involved in hostage situations. That stupid mess with her old Earthbending teacher and the Rumble promoter didn’t count – they weren’t out to hurt her. A few years later some bandits had tried to grab her for real thinking to get money out of her father, but that had quickly ended in severe embarrassment for the would-be bandits – embarrassment, and more than a little pain. She’d never been in a situation where someone had taken a hostage specifically against her, though.

Then she caught the sound of Teo calling her name using his undervoice. This was a trick they had discovered only recently, and it had mostly been used by Teo for making her laugh during formal dinners and similar boring events. By pretending to speak without really speaking, Teo could make words that only Toph could hear. And right now, he was saying, “Toph. Let me handle this. Okay?”

She knew he would be watching carefully for her response. Her first impulse was to tell him no. Sokka wanted them to play along, and in a real situation she would not have wanted Teo doing anything risky. On the other hand, Teo had proven many times that while he didn’t mind her fussing over him and helping him out every now and then, he was quite capable of taking care of himself.

Toph decided to trust his judgment. She inclined her head ever so slightly in Teo’s direction, and heard a subvocalized “Thanks!” in return.

Teo said, “Sokka, you want us to make like this is real, right?”

“Yeah, I do,” the Water tribe warrior replied, still sounding halfway serious. Strange, thought Teo. Sokka should be grinning like a maniac right now at having managed to surprise Toph, but he wasn’t.

“Okay then. Just remember that you asked for it.” Right after the brief warning, Teo leaned forward, then bit down savagely on Sokka’s wrist where it stuck out from the sleeve of the stealth suit.

Sokka yelped and reflexively jerked his arm away. Teo pivoted in place, brought his truncheon up, and whacked Sokka on the side of his head, just above the temple. Sokka dropped like a stone for the second time that night. Teo grabbed him to stop him from hitting the ground too hard – despite what Sokka had said about playing along with the scenario, Teo wasn’t taking chances on letting him get truly injured for the sake of the game. Katara grimaced when the truncheon hit home, and quickly came over to check her brother out.

“I’m sure he’s fine, Katara,” Toph said. “Sokka’s got the hardest head of anyone I know.”

“I don’t disagree with that, but there’s only so many times someone can get clubbed in the head without it causing problems.” Sokka, half-conscious, groaned pitifully. Toph could tell he was faking it, though. Well, mostly faking.

Katara could tell too, but she summoned healing water for Sokka anyway. “You deserved that, dummy,” she said as she tended to Sokka’s bruised skull and the oozing bite mark on his wrist. “You were holding your sword too far away from him. You should have had it right up against his neck. Master Piandao wouldn’t be happy with that sloppiness.”

Sokka groaned pitifully again, this time faking it so obviously even Teo could tell. “Master Piandao never taught me how to take hostages! And even a dull sword can cut – I didn’t want to risk any accidents. Me accidentally cutting Teo’s throat would have really upset Master Piandao.” Sokka tried on another groan for size, but got no sympathy. Shrugging, he gave up on the theatrics. “Besides, it was supposed to be me and Suki together, but she had to stay at the Fire Palace when one of her trainees got hurt defending a village from a herd of rampaging boarquepines. Not fair.”

“Excuses, excuses!” Toph said, mimicking Sokka perfectly.

“You should have bowed out, then,” Katara said. “But nooo, you had to try the suit.” She rolled her eyes at her brother, who was now sitting up and looking much less glassy-eyed than he had been a few moments ago. Toph thought it was a shame Suki couldn’t have joined in – Suki knew how to handle hostages. Her presence would have made Sokka’s scenario a lot more plausibly dangerous. Of the pair, Suki was the one with the killer instinct behind her pretty blue eyes. Sokka could fight, and fight well, but at heart he was more an explorer than a warrior. Suki clearly preferred it that way, and Toph did too.

“So, what now? Do we get to take you two hostage against whatever’s coming next?”

Katara eyed her with a thoughtful expression. “If you think that’s the best course of action here, yes.”

Which was a strange answer. “I don’t suppose I’m allowed to torture you to find out what this is really all about, huh?”

Sokka chimed in, that semi-serious tone back in his voice. “If that’s what you think you should do, we’ll play along.” He grinned. “I promise to scream realistically.”

“I don’t get this. I thought you guys were just trying to make my birthday less annoying and more interesting, but in some ways you’re taking this awfully seriously. C’mon, tell me what’s really up. You know I hate being left in the dark. So to speak.”

“You know you don’t really want us to tell you,” Katara said. “You want to find out for yourself.” She pointed toward a wooden door at the end of the passage. “The answer’s that way, and it’s going to be dawn soon. You’d better get going.”

“Oh, now there’s a deadline too?”

Katara voice took on a note of chagrin. “Oops. Er. Well, yes.”

“I wasn’t supposed to know that, was I.”

“Not really. No.” Katara sighed. “Oh well. Can’t unspill milk.”

“You can,” Toph pointed out.

“It’s just an expression!” Katara snapped. Toph was pleased by the annoyance finally showing in Katara’s tone. No sparring match with Katara would be complete without that.

Teo motioned toward the door. “If there’s a deadline, Katara’s right – we should get moving.”

“Hmph. Maybe I should just curl up here and take a nap. That’ll show Bumi I can’t be jerked around.”

“You know you don’t want to do that, Slugger,” Teo said. And was absolutely right, of course. If she didn’t play Bumi’s game, chances were she would never find out exactly what he was up to – which was a risk she didn’t care to take, as her curiosity was already raging. Clearly it had something to do with her Tian Mi Shi Liu, what with the dawn deadline and all, but she couldn’t imagine what. The sixteenth birthday party was an old Earth Kingdom tradition, but these days it was just an excuse to see whose parents could throw them the biggest and most lavish birthday bash, more an excuse for social showing off than anything else.

Nothing to do about the mystery except plunge on ahead. Sooner or later Bumi would have to stop making her jump through hoops and come clean.

She hoped.

She heard Teo unlatch and open the door. “Um,” he said, taken aback. “Slugger, you’re not going to like this.”

“Like what?” she said. She stepped through the door, and without warning was nearly blind again. “Pebbles and shards, the floor’s made of wood!”

“Not just the floor,” Teo said. Toph stretched her senses as well as she could when deprived of direct contact with the earth. Behind her she could clearly sense the corridor leading back into the cistern, and Katara and Sokka and Teo in it. Ahead, there were only the faintest of earth echoes. “The whole room is lined with wood. Floor, ceiling, walls, everything. There’s some paper lanterns for light, but that’s no help to you.”

“Separating me from the earth? Didn’t we already do this in the cistern? Bumi’s starting to repeat himself. We dealt with it before, we’ll deal with it again.” Toph motioned Teo through the door, gave a cheery wave in the direction of the Water Tribe siblings, then pulled it shut behind her. “You’re going to have to lead me to the other door, flyboy. I assume there is another door somewhere?”

“Yep. It’s at the far end. The room’s maybe thirty feet square, ceiling about fifteen feet up or so.” He offered her a guiding elbow, and Toph took it, hating the blindness but enjoying an excuse to link arms with Teo.

They had only taken a few steps when Toph heard the far door latch click, and the door itself swung open. She could tell that someone stepped through, but couldn’t “see” well enough to tell exactly who it was. Teo stopped dead in his tracks. “Oh,” he said. “I get it. The wood’s not there to mess with your senses, Toph. Or at least that’s not the main reason.”

“You’re sharp as a knife, Teo,” said the intruder. Toph face-palmed at the sound, instantly understanding what Teo meant.

“Hi, Sparky,” Toph said, resigned. “We’re in a wooden room because –“

“ – because wood burns,” the young Fire Lord finished. “If you want to go through this door, the only way out is –“

“ -- Past you,” Toph said.

(To be continued)

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