Happy New Year, dear readers! This is not an author's note, because I didn't have time to write one! This chapter has not been beta-read, because I didn't give my beta reader time! (Sorry, friend!) I didn't even put up a Christmas tree this year, because (you guessed it) no time!

This was originally intended as a double update, as the summary indicates. Old foes will cross paths and (more) secrets will be revealed next chapter. I may eventually move some material from this chapter to the next, but I wanted to come to (what I hope will be) a satisfying end-point this chapter and not leave you on a cliffhanger. Ya'll have waited long enough!

An actual author's note that answers questions raised in reviews (and maybe a "previously on") will be my goal for either the remainder of my time off or the next chapter update. Thank you so very, very much to those of you who reviewed. I loved reading every one of them! (And I would be very grateful for any feedback you would like to give on this chapter :-)

Special thanks to my multiple/repeat reviewers and to Druddigonite, whose input on psychological abuse inspired … something you may recognize this chapter. (In truth, many of ya'll's reviews and input have provided inspiration and ideas; thank you!)

Congratulations to my friend and beta reader Meneldur, who married this past August! And congratulations to my friend and beta reader WiseAbsol, who earned her Masters this year too! This story wouldn't be the same without you; love you guys!

This is running long for what I still insist is not a true author's note, so I'll leave you to it! I hope you enjoy, and please do leave a review (or multiple)! Let's make this next author's note a long one, lol!

Azula woke alone on the floor of her padded cell, to the low murmur of voices in the antechamber. She thought one of the voices was Ty Lee's. Her ears were sharper than her eyes anymore. Sometimes spots filled her vision.

She wondered if Ty Lee was real. The doctor wouldn't be talking to her if she weren't. Unless Azula imagined the doctor too. Azula tried to reason. It was hard. Her hunger was sharper than her mind anymore. Even her hunger had started to fade. Sometimes that scared her.

None of it was as real as her dreams, her memories. She lived in them, and died again with every waking. She wondered how many more times she would wake. That was hers to decide. Hers, and no one else's. One thing they couldn't take from her…

But it was hard. It was so hard. It hurt so badly, pangs that left her breathless and dizzy, between a ceaseless aching. Even those had started to fade.

Sometimes that scared her.

Her father said it would hurt the first time, but it didn't only hurt the first time. Her mind was divided, but he taught her, he taught her how to make it whole. He taught her singleness of purpose. To succeed was to survive. To fail was to die.

If she succeeded, she might die. Wasn't that what happened to mistakes?

It was too late for these doubts, she told herself. She told herself. Possibly out loud. The time for doubt, if it had ever been, was gone. Father would want her to succeed at any cost. That was why he chose her. That was why he lov— he chose her. She would seize back any measure of control, even if it — even if —

She would prove that he was right to choose her.

Sometimes she thought of her father. Was he cold without his bending, like she was? Was he still so proud? Did he ever — did he —

Mother descended from her corner to lay hold of Azula's shoulder. "Azula, please, my love, listen to me." She spoke to Azula like she had done to Zuko on the night she left. She never said goodbye to Azula. She never opened the door…

"Hey, Azula. Azula, listen!" Ty Lee's voice emerged from her mother's mouth, her hand shook Azula's shoulder, and Azula blinked her round face into focus. "You can firebend again! Zuko said!" Ty Lee held up a scroll with a black ribbon affixed to it in illustration, where she knelt beside Azula.

Azula looked blankly up at her. "You're lying," she rasped, without any heat. It wasn't even a good lie, but this was Ty Lee. (Or Zuzu.) "Why would — he want — that?"

Ty Lee looked stung. "He doesn't want you to d—" She stopped herself with visible effort to speak in a small voice, "He just wants you to get better."

"Why?" Azula whispered distantly, and Ty Lee let go of her as if burned. She clapped a hand to her mouth too late and choked on a sob. She dropped the letter and looked around them with wide, tearful eyes. Imploring.

Azula thought there might be other people in the room with them, her guards maybe. But they were indistinct. Her ears were sharper than her eyes anymore. Sometimes spots filled her vision.

Lies were supposed to be plausible, she considered, while the doctor who might not even be real bent to speak low into Ty Lee's ear. Ty Lee shuddered at whatever he said, like someone (Azula) had dropped a slug down the back of her shirt.

Azula's mind worked slowly, like the last lurches of machine winding down. Maybe it wasn't a lie, but a ploy? (Was there any functional difference between a lie and a ploy? Was her dumdum brother any more likely to successfully execute either one?)

Maybe the artlessness was the point, Azula considered. It was what she would do, if she wanted to break him. Give him just enough rope to hang himself. You are banished from the Fire Nation, until such time as you find and capture the Avatar…

"Azula." A gentle hand stroked the peach fuzz on her head. They had shaved it a few — they had shaved it before — before the Avatar visited. "Azula, look," Ty Lee urged her. She pushed the letter into Azula's hands. Azula held it close enough to make out the characters, to humor her. Like her brother's word was worth any more on paper than from his fool mouth.

"Why would — he bother?" Azula sighed, not even lifting her head. Zuko hadn't come back, since he failed to extract any intelligence about their mother.

Azula was doing him a favor. He was too much of a coward to kill her himself, to put his writ to paper, even to say the words. Maybe he wanted to speed her along? (Maybe he wanted an excuse.) He would though. Zuko's typical response to any favor was "more" or "faster," when it wasn't simply "fuck you." (It was usually a simple "fuck you.")

"No, look…" Ty Lee turned the scroll over in her hands to show the watermark. "It's from Ashfall!"

The prison outside the caldera. "Father?" Azula whispered, and Ty Lee nodded confirmation.

"He talked to Zuko!" she insisted, voice shaking. "He wants you to firebend again!"

Her heart constricted painfully in her chest. "Father — wants?" Azula echoed, crumpling the letter in shaking hands before relaxing her grip in remorse. Her eyes drew tight. She wanted to cry, but no tears came. "He th-thought of me — in prison?" her voice cracked.

Ty Lee nodded almost frantically, eyes moist. "He wants you to be health— uh, in top form again," she invented, so obviously, obviously lying. But Azula wanted so badly to believe. "He said it was very important!"

Something caught in Azula's mind at these words, gears grinding to a halt. She stood again on the airship platform on the eve of Sozin's comet. Her father showed his back to her, his hair free of its customary half-topknot, his crown discarded. He never wore his hair loose except when, when he…

He had left his crown behind. Soon, he would leave her behind. Worthless. Empty. Used. You can't treat me like this! she broke. You can't treat me like Zuko!

He had to snap at Azula before she remembered herself, and then terror seized her. Would Father burn her? Would he banish her? Would he — would —

I need you here to watch over the homeland. But his words were gentle, where their people could hear. He never touched her, where their people could see. That didn't spare Zuko, but it still spared her. Her jaw throbbed, throat ached lungs burned with remembered pain. His lesson written on her skin…

It's a very important job that I can only entrust to you.

"A very important job," she echoed haltingly. "I-I'm the only one — he can trust —" She stared at the letter and saw nothing but the ceiling of the throne room, so high it was lost in darkness… "He's the only one — I can —" Trust. But trust is for fools… "The only one — the on—"

Her mind circled, the last lurches of a machine winding down. Azula thought she might have blacked out for a — for — She might have blacked out. Azula lay on her back now.

Ty Lee's hands were braced behind her head, her eyes round with panic. "Hey," she spoke tremulously, seeing Azula wake. She laid Azula's head back down but her hands lingered.

"Sorry," Azula whispered compulsively, almost inaudible. She didn't know what she was sorry for. Maybe that look on Ty Lee's face. Her eyes drifted shut again before the acrobat shook her gently, almost apologetic.

"Don't do that. You have to stay strong," Ty Lee urged her. "F-for him." Her voice, usually so loud and exuberant, barely broke a whisper. She looked like she wanted to be sick, or to weep. "He's counting on you."

Azula should have known then she was lying. Ty Lee never liked lying. She was never good at it, like Azula. Ty Lee was — she was good.

But Azula thought her father — must — he must have some leverage over Zuko. Why else would he agree to let her bend? That Father spent that leverage on her could only mean he — he needed her. He needed her.

A second chance.

He chose her, after everything. She failed him once. She would not fail again. She would prove that he was right to choose her. She would start right now.

"I'll do it," Azula spoke hoarsely. The tension eased from Ty Lee's face, when she repeated louder, "I'll do it."

Azula bent a blue flame above her open palm where she sat wrapped in her sleeping bag at the mouth of another cave, keeping watch against the dark and the cold and the silent fall of snow. Gods, what she would give for an enemy she could fight…

Azula remembered how quickly the acrobat's relief had turned to apprehension, when she insisted on resuming her training immediately. Ty Lee and Doctor Kwan had both urged her to eat first, to rehydrate, but Azula was deaf to sense —

Until she attempted to bend for the first time in months and could not produce even a spark. Until she realized she couldn't feel her chi.

Then panic set in, so blinding that she cursed the Avatar for taking her bending and her brother for taking her freedom and even innocent Ty Lee, who had helped her to the courtyard, for a liar and a traitor.

She cursed everyone but the one person who had done this to her, everything but the broken mind that had finally, inevitably betrayed her…

She was more rational when she woke, lucid for the first time in what must have been months. She had stopped sensing the sun rise or set before the Avatar's visit, she realized, which accounted for the slippage of time. She had been cut off from her chi at least that long. This was not his doing, but hers.

Fire needed fuel to burn. The fire within was no exception. In her desperate reaching for control, she had choked that flame to a mere ember. But blazes had been built from less. She resolved to do better.

It almost made no difference, her resolve. Her rehabilitation was long and fraught with peril. Her body had gone so long without food or water that just feeding and hydrating her nearly killed her. Azula was frailer than she'd ever been, first laid low by disease then struggling to build back up musculature and dexterity for even the most basic of tasks.

But Ty Lee stayed. Even for the parts that weren't pretty or sweet-smelling or fun — which was most of the parts — she stayed. Azula would have died without her, a debt she could never repay. Azula might still die.

She hadn't thought about that since — well, she was actively trying not to think about it. So much time lost. All that time, her father languished in prison. He had been a prisoner longer now than she was. And he had no Ty Lee…

He didn't need a Ty Lee, she reminded herself. He needed an Azula. The Azula she had been, before — Before.

Nights seemed longer in the mountains, even for this time of year. It was probably the cold or the incline blocking sunlight that gave that impression. Still she found herself wondering some nights, in the darkest part of the night, if she had ever been that person. Could anyone?

You're not a person, she remembered Mai's voice speak from the void, and Zuko echo, You're a monster. Was that why — why she —

Ursa called her to dinner just then, called her away from her thoughts. A small mercy. They didn't speak much while they ate. The letters were safer than talking, anyway. Mountain climbing afforded them few other pastimes.

The mountains had proved rough terrain even with a Komodo rhino for their mount. Azula wanted to avoid the trade routes, and the travelers they were likelier to encounter on the trails. That was half the problem.

The other half was her. Whether it was the cold, the snows, or — she couldn't say. Only that she had not flagged so sharply or felt so lethargic since the beginning of her pregnancy. She didn't just feel heavier every day, she was convinced she grew heavier every day.

Now it was Azula's turn to be the useless lump and Ursa's to keep camp. Their progress was frustratingly slow, but her mother uttered not a word of reproach. Of course she wouldn't.

Tonight was no different. Until Azula could take her forbearance no longer, and sat shivering after dinner, staring into their cookfire, she denigrated herself, "What kind of f-firebender can't control her own b-body temperature?"

Similarly wrapped in her sleeping bag, the pale oval of her face flushed in firelight and haloed by the darkness of the cave, Ursa pursed her lips. "That sounds like your father," she said at last, carefully. Her mother had been very careful, since their last argument.

Azula was silent in surprise. Surprise that Ursa would bring it up, surprise that she was right. Azula could recall him chiding Zuko for that basic lapse, more than once. He had never needed to chide Azula. She learned quickly. And before she learned to self-regulate, well … she learned not to complain.

Rightly taking her silence for confirmation, Ursa sniffed in disapproval. "Spoken like a man who's never been pregnant," she muttered bitterly, and Azula actually snorted.

Ursa startled, and Azula shook her head at the absurdity of it. "I'm just, laughing at that m-mental image," she explained, imagining Ozai with a big belly like her uncle, crying and eating ice cream by the quart. Azula bit her lip against a fond smile.

"He'd burn down the whole p-palace with his mood swings…" But her mouth twisted at a sudden stab of memory, before she could smooth the traitorous expression from her face. If Ursa noticed, she made no comment.

Her mother's gaze softened, lingering on the bump hidden beneath the bulk of Azula's sleeping bag. "You shouldn't expect so much of yourself," she started, but Azula cut her off with, "Well, someone has to."

Now Ursa looked wounded, her brows pinched, defensive. "That wasn't what I meant at all."

Azula sighed, and drew a deep breath against the muscle memory, the adrenaline. She was years past the point when it would do her any good. The baby kicked, and she rubbed circles over her stomach, an automatic response. "Forget I said an-anything. I'm too tired to argue r-right now."

"Of course." Her mother shucked off her sleeping bag and climbed to her feet to drape it over Azula's shoulders, taking the empty bowl from her hands. "Why don't you turn in early?" she suggested gently, like Azula hadn't been doing that every night since they started this miserable climb. "I'll check the traps," her mother offered, donning the heavy coat lined in fur that Poppy Beifong had given Azula.

Another surprise: Apparently Ursa knew how to set traps for small animals, rabbitcoons and owl cats and the like. They had never stayed in one place long enough for her to put that skill to use before. But hemmed in by harsh terrain and forced to double back more than once, it proved useful now.

Apparently Ursa had always brought her catch to a local butcher, for she claimed she didn't know how to clean them. (Azula suspected she was just too squeamish, or soft-hearted. They probably all looked like turtle ducks to her…)

Azula didn't know either, at first. But she was hungry enough, and villages scarce enough off the trade routes, that she figured it out with a little trial and error, and putting their heads together. It was a far cry from the lessons in etiquette and flower-arranging and such that Ursa used to attempt with her. And more practical, if not more enjoyable. It certainly provoked fewer arguments.

Azula cocooned herself in both the sleeping bags and pulled her scorched pillow toward her to lie down beside the fire, while Ursa ducked out into the dusk and the snow. There was a new letter waiting for her under the pillow.

That, too, had become routine. Azula had accumulated a small stack that she bound with twine and stored in her pillow case for easy retrieval. The letters were always there when she checked (she didn't just imagine that) and Azula felt the need to check less often now. She propped herself back upright to read this one.

She thought this was probably behind Ursa's complacency with their slow progress through the mountains: It let her make progress with the letters. Azula thought she knew what Ursa was trying to do, even if she never would have guessed that — well, that her mother would even try. Ursa strictly avoided any mention of Zuko or other touchy subjects, concentrating instead on topics of interest to Azula, things she would actually enjoy writing about.

Azula knew her mother well enough to know that Ursa had no interest in blue or any other sort of firebending, in Azula's achievements during the war or progress in school, in Ty Lee's history and whereabouts… Yet her mother kept writing her back, asking follow-up questions. She kept the correspondence going.

Do you still love dragons? this one asked. What more have you learned about them? Would you like to know the story of Roku's dragon? her letter offered. I could tell you.

And at the end, another offer: You know, you can ask me questions, too.

Azula blinked at that, her hand shaking a little before she laid it and the letter in her shrinking lap. She knew what she wanted to ask. Why didn't you say goodbye?

But that wasn't how this game was played. And anyway, she didn't know that she could take the answer. Because of your father, her mother would tell her. Because of you, she would mean.

Where did you go when you left — left the palace? Azula decided to ask. Safer, that. What did you do? How did you survive?

She extricated herself from the sleeping bags, and climbed to her knees then her feet, her free hand braced under her belly. She shuffled over toward the saddle bags, to look for lead and paper and write a reply before sleep claimed her.

In dreams, he stood arrested again by the sight of Mai wrapped in a glossy black fur, and nothing else. She perched on the near side of their borrowed bed like a stalking cat. "Will you really make me ask?" she reproached him, and his heart ached at what they had become.

She did not so much ask as demand when she discarded the fur and stood, her nakedness a confrontation. He would have made love to her without a moment's hesitation once, would not have needed asking. But these last few months, their growing distance, his betrayal, all had made him doubt — himself, her, all they had…

This felt wrong, coming from her, now, on the eve of her departure. It wasn't like before. (Zuko tried desperately hard not to wonder if it ever would be.) He didn't want to hurt her any more…

"I need this. I need this," she urged, her teeth at his throat, her voice low and rough when she slid the parka from his shoulders. Not I need you, not I love —

"Is it just that I'm not her?" she spoke the words that damned him. Zuko closed his eyes against it. His hand flashed over his mouth and the grimace that twisted it.

"I could be, you know." He heard her circle behind him and lifted his head, shivering. Her sharp nails raked lightly across his shoulders. "I could be anything —"

"— you wanted," spoke his sister's voice, and it was Azula who stepped in front of him. She was naked as Mai had been, and Zuko choked at the sight of her. He tore his eyes away (oh gods, he shouldn't know exactly what that looked like) to look for Mai, but she had vanished along with their chambers in the Northern Water Tribe's palace.

Moonlight filtered blue through panes of ice, the warm glow of whale oil lamps, gave way to the sickly green of translucent crystals that thrust up from the cave floor alongside stalagmites. He could hear water running somewhere out of sight, as hidden and vital as the blood in their veins.

The water soaked Azula through, he saw now. It plastered her hair to her skull. She stood shivering, arms clasped around herself. Her eyes were bruised, lips a livid blue. She looked half-drowned.

He stripped his shirt off and bundled Azula in it clumsily, at a loss how else to face her. It didn't help even when she held it closed. (How did she look even better in his clothes?)

"It's not too late," Azula falsely reassured him, just like the first time she sought him in the catacombs beneath Ba Sing Se. She sought him where she sent him to, here among the dead.

Water streamed from her mouth when she opened it to speak. It ran over her chin, but her voice was silken as ever. "You can still redeem yourself."

He looked on her in torment, and whispered, "I'm trying."

She looked on him with fond contempt, and reached for his hands. Hers burned as if with fever. He didn't know how cold he was, until she touched him.

He remembered his uncle warn him, The kind of redemption she offers is not for you. He remembered how this ended the last time, but thought, No one else is offering.

No one else can.

"Why did you do it?" he asked her hopelessly. (You're going to have to be more specific, he remembered Azula tease him.) He needed to know, wanted to hear her say it. "Why did you bring me home?"

"I need you, Zuko," she breathed the words that sealed his fate the first time. She sealed them with a kiss, pressed her lips to the palm of his hand and sank to her knees before him.

"I need you." She kissed his other hand, and a shudder rippled through him. How many times had he imagined her like this, at his feet? It was impossible. It still felt impossible…

"I need you, too." His voice shook to admit it. His hands were wet. The water was warm as her skin. He wondered where it came from. He wondered if it would run out, could it run out any more than her words could?

She pressed a lingering kiss to the starburst scar beneath his heart, where her lightning had entered his body. And he lost every word but one, "Azula…"

Her fingers hooked in the waist of his pants, and his tangled in her wet hair. This did not seem to deter her. (He wondered if he meant it to.) Her mouth trailed lower while she murmured, "The only way we win, is together."

He looked up futilely from the heat that pooled in his core, trying, trying…

He looked up and jolted with the realization they were not alone.

Dozens of eyes glinted like jewels from the ceiling of the cave, so high it was lost in darkness. The Dai Li slid down from stalactites to surround them, soundless with their stone gloves, stone shoes, stone faces —

Azula grabbed his wrists, and Zuko looked back from the bloodied agent June tortured (you tortured) to find her in no better state. It was never water, he realized too late, but blood. Her blood on his hands, his clothes, his skin…

It dripped from her hair and streaked down her neck to soak the fabric of his shirt. Her eyes flared and mouth opened in — warning? Plea? Reproach?

He never got to find out, when Zuko jerked awake so violently he fell out of his narrow bed and onto the hard, unyielding deck. He cried out in pain at what broke his fall, voice cracking. Then slammed his fist against the metal floor of his cabin with a snarl of frustration because gods damn it, it had to hurt less than that…

"Fire Lord?" The door of his cabin creaked open to admit a brighter light than the dim red that illuminated the interior, along with one of Jee's men. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Zuko lied through his teeth, snatching the blanket to cover himself.

"Would you like me to get —"

"I said, I'm fine!" he snapped breathlessly, and the dusky guard studied him wordlessly a moment before he acquiesced, "As you say," and shut the door to leave Zuko crouched in semi-darkness.

So much for getting back to sleep, Zuko seethed. He climbed stiffly to his feet and hobbled to the washroom to clean himself, then decided to train on the weather deck until sunrise.

Doctor Kwan wouldn't be awake this early, being a nonbender. And Zuko didn't care to run another fucked up nightmare by him when it was still so fresh. He wasn't likely to forget in the meantime. They weren't likely run out of things to talk about any time soon…

His uncle stood reading a scroll up on deck, a messenger hawk perched on his shoulder. Both their heads were bent, his over the missive and the bird's to preen. Iroh bent a small flame from his free hand to see by.

"From the homeland?" Zuko demanded, catching sight of a black ribbon trailing when he approached. His uncle looked up in surprise, and the bird squawked and took flight. "Is it Lu Ten? Is he alright?"

"No news of him since our last sighting," his uncle sighed. The rebels would trot him out for public appearances sometimes, Zuko knew, always briefly and without warning, to lend the appearance of legitimacy to their treason. "This is from naval headquarters."

Zuko's brow furrowed in consternation, and Iroh explained, "A Rear Admiral Fu has been detained awaiting court martial. He is charged with assaulting Azula and —"

"WHAT?!" Zuko exploded and snatched the scroll from his uncle, who sighed. It was, of course, written in some damnable code.

"— and attempting to imprison her and … your mother, under orders from the rebels," Iroh finished flatly. "He was unsuccessful." Zuko arched a brow in silent request for more information, and his uncle added, "Azula burned him and enlisted his own men in arresting him."

"Of course she did," he chuckled low, and only realized he was smiling a hard smile when Iroh stared at him. He sobered and asked a little resentfully, "Can't they stop with all the codes?" He glared at the missive. "I'd like to be able to read these sometime…"

"Don't you trust me?" his uncle asked lightly. Zuko guessed he was joking, but it fell flat. His scowl relaxed regardless, in regret, and Iroh let die the flame in his palm.

"Nephew, the contents of these letters are nothing you want an eavesdropper to read," his uncle warned gravely, his old eyes dark and guarded.

"Some of them, yeah, but this?" he argued, brandishing the letter. "Court martials are a matter of public record, unless…" Zuko stopped, suspicion creeping in. "Unless there's more you aren't telling me?"

His uncle looked perturbed. He seemed to consider his words more than usual. "This Fu has been attempting — to spread calumnies against your sister's name."

Zuko broke out in a sweat; fear prickled down his back. "What — what kind of —"

"Calumnies, I said," Iroh spoke harshly and grabbed the scroll back from his limp fingers. "I put no stock by them," his uncle muttered darkly, looking out to the faint tinge of dawn on the horizon.

Zuko felt like he couldn't breathe. He had to say something. He was just pressing Iroh for information; to stop now would arouse suspicion that he knew, and he would have to explain how he knew and why he kept it a secret. But neither could he hide his reaction if it turned out — if Uncle told him —

Shit.

"You th—" His voice came out too high. He tried again. "You think better of her?" he asked in disbelief.

But Iroh shook his head reflexively. "I know her better." He looked at Zuko then, frowning worriedly. "Nephew —"

"I couldn't sleep," Zuko admitted, heading off what was bound to be a much more awkward conversation.

And the lines of his uncle's square face softened. "I have a tea for that," he started. He had a tea for everything.

"No." Zuko shook his head hard. "No more sedative teas. I know I can trust you, and Jee and his men," he reassured. "I just — I don't want to become dependent."

Now it was Zuko's own guilt reflected on Uncle's face. "I understand…"

Zuko laid a hand on his shoulder. "I thought to train through sunrise," he offered instead, and Iroh brightened visibly.

"Now that, I can help you with." His uncle set the scroll afire and laid it on the rail of the ship to wither and curl. Zuko let himself be steered away, forced himself not to look back and watch it burn.

Azula was meditating in the light of the rising sun, up earlier than was her wont and bundled in her winter coat, when Ursa discovered the letter. Evidently her daughter had not outgrown a talent for mischief but only redirected it, as Ursa found these replies squirreled away amongst different belongings and corners of their camp and crannies of their saddlebags every time she packed up.

Ursa smiled to read her reply. You write very well, she had tried to tell Azula yesterday. Her daughter had just stared at her, and Ursa blushed, realizing the meagerness of her praise. I don't — just mean your calligraphy, she clarified, but the words you choose, the way you express yourself. It's like I can hear the words in your voice.

Azula had thanked her then, hesitantly, still seeming more confused than gratified. And Ursa wondered if she was such a stranger to compliments from her mother? (To compliments on anything besides her bending?) That's not a talent everyone has, Ursa had pressed, but Azula just changed the subject.

Ozai used to praise her to the skies, Ursa thought, running her fingers lightly down the paper. Did he? she wondered for the first time, frowning. Or did he only compare her to Zuko? The distinction might escape her children, but with the benefit of time and distance, Ursa knew that was no compliment, only another cruelty.

She resolved to do better.

Ursa thought on her long, strange journey since leaving the palace, how she would answer her daughter's questions (that her daughter was asking her questions) while she packed up the rest of their belongings. It brought fresh tears to her eyes, that against all expectations Azula was actually cooperating.

There was another letter folded beneath the satchel when Ursa retrieved it, and she blinked the wetness from her eyes to look closer. She unfolded the paper, her brows drawn with concern when she recognized her own handwriting, the disordered list that sparked their last disastrous argument. An argument her daughter fled from…

You're taking notes on me? she remembered Azula demand, tearful and furious. Characters had been crossed out and more notes added in her daughter's hand, Ursa realized in amazement. Corrections and additions to — to things she had remembered wrongly.

Ursa left the cave where they made camp to seek Azula, too flummoxed to avoid intruding on her meditation. "What is this?" she asked a little breathlessly of the straight back turned to her, where her daughter sat tailor style in a small clearing between the pines. "I thought…" She didn't know what she thought, but fell awkwardly silent.

Azula did not immediately reply, just turned her head to regard Ursa in the gold glow of morning. She sat on a carpet of pine needles, the snow melted from them by the heat of her body. Her hands lay palm-up on her knees. Her loose hair was tucked into the hood of her coat, wool dyed a rich hunter green that flattered her coloring. "If you are going to take notes," Azula spoke slowly at last, "they should at least be accurate."

Ursa looked on her daughter in something approaching despair. "You really do remember everything, don't you?" she whispered, and Azula turned to face her, sitting on her hip. Her growing belly, barely contained by the coat, broke through the clasps at the motion.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," she grumbled, laying a hand on the fabric of her tunic as if to hold it in, and Ursa smiled sadly, blinking back tears again.

"No! No…" she reassured, crouching opposite her daughter in the snow, as gingerly as she would approach a wounded animal. "I just …" Her throat constricted. "Sometimes I look at you, at everything you can do and the person that you are, and I just — I wonder, 'Where did that come from?'"

Azula regarded her warily, arching a single brow while she fixed up the clasps of her coat again. Ursa thought she wouldn't be able to wear it much longer, the way she was rounding out. "It certainly didn't come from me," Ursa continued. She extended her hand to rest it experimentally between them, her fingers brushing snow. "Or even from your father.

"There are parts of you that are uniquely yours," she spoke warmly, taking in her daughter, the lovely young woman she had become. "I don't know about other mothers, but — it never stops surprising me," she admitted. "But you'll see what I mean, soon enough."

Azula looked away at that reminder, still reticent on the subject of her pregnancy, and climbed to her feet instead. Ursa stood too and reached out to steady her when she stumbled. Her daughter did not reject the gesture.

"It's fine," Azula spoke abruptly, her voice empty of emotion, and gestured to the notes that Ursa held by way of explanation. "I want you to have them."

Ursa forced herself to let go, not wanting to overstep her bounds. "I'm so glad we're doing this," she blurted the next moment. She couldn't help herself; she felt like she would burst if she didn't say something. "Our writing, your asking me questions. You know that you can ask me anything."

"Okay," Azula said simply, after a pause just long enough to indicate that she did not believe that. Ursa had to hope that one day, she would.

The silence stretched. Azula fidgeted, so reminiscent of the precocious little girl she had been that Ursa's heart ached. "You've been meditating often lately," she ventured, less a question and more an invitation to speak.

"I'm trying to quiet my mind," her daughter admitted, hesitant. She couldn't seem to look directly at Ursa. "It won't — it won't be — quietened." Azula winced visibly then and chanced a glance up at her mother.

And Ursa felt another conversation slipping away from her. "Why don't you practice your bending?" she tried. "It always helped you…"

"The ground's too uneven," Azula dismissed her, impatient. "I'd twist my ankle agai—" She stopped herself (why did she keep doing that?) and corrected too late, "I'd twist my ankle."

"You twisted your ankle?" Ursa worried, reaching vainly for her recalcitrant daughter. "Does it still pain you?"

Azula stepped out of her reach and brushed her off, "Months ago; it's nothing."

"If it healed poorly —" Ursa tried to explain, but Azula snapped at her without warning, "I'm not weak!" Her fingers clenched.

Ursa withdrew in surprise and placated her, "I never said you were."

"I'm not!" she insisted, voice shaking. Tears started to her eyes, and she turned away to hide them. Too late.

"Pack our things; we need to leave," Azula reasserted control. "I need to —" She started to turn back, reversed herself. "We need to leave."

And she retreated into the darkness of the cave, leaving Ursa feeling more lost than before. When every conversation was a mine-field, Ursa always seemed to take a step too far. Maybe you should just stick to the letters, she thought a little ruefully and remembered Azula scream at her, When could I ever talk to you?

Ursa sighed, gripping the sleeves of her tunic against the chill air and following Azula's footprints back to the cave. She resolved to do better.

Mai stood in the doorway of the dusty room, studying the disarray. The door blown off its hinges in a burnt and splintered heap. Crumpled letters strewn across the floor, yellowed by time and exposure to the elements. A wardrobe charred black and crumbling, empty of any contents but warped hangers and ashes. A broken window, admitting beams of sunlight where dust motes danced. Broken glass beside the decaying canopy bed, faded silk sheets and coverlet mussed, torn, and singed upon it in various places…

It looked more like a bomb had gone off in here than two people fucking. Given the explosive tempers of the fuckers in question, it wasn't a bad comparison.

"Watch your step," Mai said drily, not even turning to look at the sound of footfalls on the floorboards down the hall. None too soon, apparently, as she heard June curse at the sight of the hole in the floor just outside the doorway, and skirt the obstacle to stand at her shoulder looking in. They were of a similar height.

"Whose room is this?" June asked her grudgingly, after a moment of silent study.

Zuko and Azula stopped visiting Ember Island when they were kids, Mai recalled. And what was left of the furnishings was too feminine for then-Prince Ozai, and his inferiority complex, she derided. "I would guess Princess Ursa."

"The missing mom?" June asked disinterestedly, and Mai recalled how Zuko had contracted her (unsuccessfully) to track down the banished princess in the first year of his reign.

"Looks like she had her daughter's flair for interior decorating," June remarked when Mai said nothing, then smirked at the sour look Mai directed her way.

Mai retaliated with, "A letter came for you this morning." She had barely removed it from her sleeve before June snatched it up and scanned it quickly. Mai leaned casually against the doorframe with arms crossed to watch.

The bounty hunter relaxed marginally upon reading the contents, but still directed a deadly glare at Mai, half-hidden by the curtain of her hair. "Any particular reason you have to read these first?" She held up a seal that was broken on receipt.

Mai looked at her with dead eyes and a practiced lack of expression. "I permit you communication with your father; I never said it would be private."

"Your people in Omashu already read them before they're sealed," June reminded her bitterly.

"I'm better than my people." Mai shrugged one shoulder. "And I don't believe in taking chances."

"You have to trust someone sometime, Princess," June needled her, but Mai just corrected her calmly again, "Fire Lady." She had waited and bided her time against sorer provocations.

"And I'll remind you the last time Zuko trusted you and your father, he wound up handcuffed naked to a bed for waitstaff to find," Mai pointed out flatly. "I'd sooner avoid that."

"You sure?" June teased, eyes glinting darkly when she leaned in the doorframe opposite Mai and inclined her head toward the disaster area inside. "You might like it."

"I know what I like," Mai contradicted coldly, and June stepped inside with hands raised and fingers spread in mock-reassurance.

"I'm sure you do," she pacified. "And you know how to get it, right? So that brings us back to business," June sighed insincerely, and Mai tired of her teasing.

"The beaches are too crowded in daylight. We'll move at nightfall," she reiterated what she told the bounty hunter when they rowed up to the dilapidated pier at the foot of the path early this morning, and hid the dingy beneath it. "'Til then, we won't be disturbed here."

And Mai walked back down the hall with back straight and shoulders rigid. Like the image of that room (and the ghost of them together) wasn't burned into the backs of her eyelids.

Azula gave in to her mother's nagging and her own fatigue when they reached the foot of the mountains. She consented to stop at a dusty, old mining town on the trade route to resupply. This was apparently large enough to support a festival of some sort that was in full swing by the time they arrived, walking in after sunset with what they could carry and the Komodo Rhino tethered to a tree outside of town.

It couldn't be New Year's. Azula refused to believe it was New Year's. Besides, there were no fireworks. Even Earth Kingdom peasants must know fireworks were required viewing for a prosperous New Year, right?

And how prosperous was your last year? Azula doubted that logic, adjusting the strap of her pack before reminding herself, Well, you didn't watch fireworks, did you?

Gods, she was a mess. Her mother was speaking to her, and Azula had to ask her to repeat herself. Ursa beamed at her under the warm light of green and gold lanterns, and Azula recalled that she had always loved festivals. (That might be the only thing she shared in common with Ty Lee. That, and an affinity for small, fuzzy animals.)

"There's an acting troupe putting on Secret Tunnel!" her mother exclaimed, seizing Azula's arm to her irritation and pointing with her free hand over the heads of a gathering crowd to what Azula presumed was a stage. She resented the height difference all over again. "Will you watch it with me?"

"Certainly not." Azula sniffed with disdain and pried her arm loose of Ursa's grip. "We are here to resupply, not mingle with peasants."

"Azul—" Her mother started, before Azula snapped, "Don't call me that!"

Ursa startled, and glanced around worriedly. She finished, "The shops will be closed on a festival day —"

"What?!" Azula demanded, and now it was her mother's turn to shush her pointlessly. Few people even noticed her outburst over the din of the festival goers and some band playing hideous music.

"It's fine," Ursa reassured her pointlessly. "We can come back in the morning…"

"I don't want to camp another night in these mountains!" Azula complained bitterly, gesturing the way they came in illustration. They would have to cross the desert by night, but they couldn't do that without supplies. "I don't want to spend a day longer than I have to on this mission, okay?"

Now Ursa looked hurt. Great. Azula really doubted she was up to managing her feelings and her mother's right now…

"The play doesn't start for some time," Ursa recovered herself and steered them away from the stage and down a dirt road between a clapboard saloon, the town jail, a shuttered tea shop and a post office, a brothel, a (closed) general store… "We should find some food. You'll feel better once you've eaten."

"I'm not hungry; I'm angry!" Azula protested, only for her stomach to choose that moment to growl audibly. "Quiet, you!" she snapped at it, and Ursa smiled privately.

Before Azula could get more wound up, the mouth-watering scents of fried festival food reached her nose, and her feet propelled her toward the stands selling it without a second's thought. Even the baby turned over as if sharing her excitement.

Ursa appeared at her elbow with the money pouch, paying off bemused vendors as quickly as Azula could snatch up a spring roll and dumplings, citrus fruit and basted meat on skewers, a sweet, sticky rice cake and peanut brittle, a steamed bun stuffed with paste and fried dough twist, boxed noodles and stir-fried sunflower seeds…

Her mother bought a brittle and nibbled on it while Azula practically inhaled the spring roll and made short work of one of the skewers. They found an empty, weathered old bench near what looked to be the town square, and Azula stopped chewing long enough to let out a little "Mmmmh" of gustatory pleasure.

"Money well spent?" her mother teased, but Azula was too happily engaged shoveling noodles into her mouth with her chopsticks to even take offense.

"This is the best food I've tasted in literal years," she effused once she'd chewed, and then polished off the steamed bun and downed one of the dumplings.

"Don't eat so fast!" Ursa put down her brittle to look on Azula in equal parts amusement and concern. "You'll make yourself sick."

Her stomach churned at the words, and she felt heavy and ill remembering her father's note, her nightmares. What he would think to see her now…

Azula set down what was left of the food between them, tears starting to her eyes. "Az- Honey, what's wrong?" her mother soothed ineffectually. "I was only teasing…"

"Father —" she tried to explain, and Ursa's scowl was immediate. She didn't understand. She didn't remember. "Father didn't like me to eat festival food."

"Whyever not?" her mother spoke testily, and began to box and bag up the remaining food, unwilling to waste it. More like a peasant than a princess, the thought came to her unbidden.

Azula didn't want to lay so much as eyes on it anymore. Her gaze strayed toward the barred windows of the town jail, back the way they came. "He said it was peasant food," she explained, hugging herself 'round the (rounding) middle, and her mother scoffed.

"How ridiculous. You're a born princess, and you like it," Ursa argued matter-of-factly. "How could it be peasant food?"

"I think everyone was a peasant to him," she murmured absently, and a beat passed before Ursa burst out in peals of laughter.

Azula jumped visibly, and blushed even more visibly. She felt a smile form on her face, small and uncertain. In eight years at the palace, she had never heard her mother laugh like that.

She didn't think that she had ever made her mother laugh. Now that she had, a small, shameful part of her wanted to do it again. As much as she wanted to do it again, she feared it. Your mind is divided, my dear…

Ursa sobered a little on seeing her wordless reaction, and wiped tears of mirth from her eyes. "I just — I'm sorry," she wheezed and clutched her middle. "That was just — so accurate, oh gods…" Her mother giggled helplessly. "You really have his measure."

"He never liked anyone to laugh at him," Azula fretted, twisting her fingers in her lap. What would Father say?

"He was happy enough to laugh at other people," Ursa muttered darkly, like Azula wouldn't know that. But seeing her daughter withdraw, she relented.

"Look," her mother sighed, "he doesn't have to know, Az-" She stopped herself and scowled, while Azula thought, I'll know. "I'm not about to tell him."

When Azula did not resume eating, she offered instead, "This is a small town. I'll make a quick circuit, see if any of the stores are open."

"You said no stores are open," Azula reminded her listlessly, staring at her own boots. She could practically feel Father's glare burning a hole in the back of her head.

"Well, it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong, would it?" Ursa spoke irritably, standing from their seat. "Just rest here, and finish your food. You're eating for two now, remember." Like Azula could forget.

Her mother left, left her to her thoughts. Her mind was not quietened. It spoke with her father's voice, Seeking your mother's approval? You disappoint me.

It was better to get along with her moth— with Ursa, she argued with herself. Her fingers knotted, hands shaking. If they had to travel together…

She corrupts you with her weakness, his w— her thoughts chased her from the bench. Just like she did your brother.

At least Ozai didn't appear from among the festival goers she pushed through. She did not see his face in their questioning looks, hear his rebuke fall like a lash of fire in their grumblings. At least she wasn't actively hallucinating anymore. (Right?)

My, how your standards have fallen, her fath— her thoughts pursued her, as merciless as truth. You conquered Ba Sing Se once, and now you account this success?

She didn't realize she was pulling her own hair until it brought tears to her eyes. She crossed into the shadow of an alleyway and turned back to see the lights of the festival blur behind her. She didn't belong in the light. She was a —

Your foolish plan failed, he reminded her, and she was trying so hard not to think about it, but how could she not think about it? You failed.

"I could make another plan. I will," she argued with hi— with her intrusive thoughts, pacing in place, realizing too late she had spoken aloud. Gods, she was a mess…

I'll free you. I swear it, she promised, with no one but herself as witness. It wasn't real. He wasn't real. Just — just as soon as I'm rid of her…

That was a lie. She knew. You could leave her at any time, just like she left you. She could. She could, except…

Have you made your choice, my dear? his voice dropped, intimate, switching tacks as expertly as ever he did in life. Did you choose wisely? She cradled the swell of her pregnancy, her head bent when she sucked in a shuddering breath. It helped nothing.

She never wanted you, even when you succeeded, he reminded her. He was the only one to tell her the truth about this family, but her mind, her mind just found new ways to betray her…

What could she believe? Azula thought she knew what Ursa was trying to do, but she didn't — she didn't know why, and how could she trust —

She fears you. She always has. Her father was the first one to tell her the truth. She could never love a monster. She will never know your heart. She will choose Zuko in the end.

I was the only one who wanted you. She could practically feel his breath in her ear, his grip bruise the back of her neck. I was the only one who chose you. He never feared to touch her, not like Mother. Sometimes she wished he did…

And what did it profit me?

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and knew he had no more use for her sorrow than for her failure. She felt like she couldn't breathe, guilt closed like fingers at her throat. "I'm sorry."

Her mind would not be quietened. It answered her, Then prove it.

Ursa's buoyant good mood was diminished when she returned to the town square to find their bench abandoned and a vagrant riffling through Azula's pack. She managed to wrestle the pack from his grubby hands, and bribed him — with the rest of the festival food and a promise not to report him — into pointing her in Azula's direction.

After questioning a few more festival goers, she finally located her daughter in a dark alley beside the town jail, of all places. Azula leaned forward into the wall beneath a barred window, her arms crossed and face hidden in them, her shoulders shaking.

"What are you doing?" Ursa demanded, made harsh by worry. Azula barely reacted when she dragged her out into the light of festival lanterns. Ursa was visited with the irrational urge to shake her. "You just walk off without a word, leave your things where anyone could steal them?"

"I'm sorry," she spoke so faintly Ursa almost didn't hear her, but found her anger crumble in an instant. Azula was pale and clammy, her eyes lightly rimmed with red. She looked almost ill in the green-tinted light.

"Were you sick?" Ursa asked her more gently, brushing aside an errant lock of hair to feel her forehead. She was hot to the touch, but no more than usual for a firebender of her caliber. "I told you not to eat so quickly.

"No matter," she dismissed when Azula said nothing, only looked vaguely pensive. Ursa forced a smile back onto her face; this would do them both good. "You'll never believe what I found."

Her daughter blinked at her distantly. "A sh— a shop?" she asked, and Ursa's smile relaxed to something more genuine when she leaned close to disclose, "Better!" And she decided not to be hurt when Azula cringed away.

Azula let herself be led by the hand back down the busy street, lined with stands draped in bright, patterned canvas and hung with lanterns bobbing merrily, up rickety steps and through the chipped, painted doors of a local inn.

A bell chimed their arrival, and a modestly appointed common room greeted them. Ursa let Azula go to retrieve their money from her own satchel, silently thankful she had had the foresight not to leave it with her daughter.

She greeted the gray old inn-keep behind her counter again. "Our key, please!"

The woman's leathery face creased in a smile when she accepted their payment. She perched the spectacles hung 'round her neck on a long nose, to retrieve the key from one of several labeled hooks in a case behind her.

Ursa only noticed her daughter had withdrawn when she turned to explain, "There was a last-minute cancellation, and I booked us a room! A room with an actual bed," Ursa laughed, incredulous. "Can you believe it?"

Azula stared at her, white-faced and taut as a bowstring. "No," she whispered and then startled, as if someone else had spoken. "No, I won't," her voice emerged stronger, still trembling. She took a step back toward the door.

"Share a bed?" Ursa realized aloud. Her smile curdled. "We've been sharing a tent this whole time," she chided patiently, too conscious of the old inn-keep watching them argue. "You can share a bed with m—"

"I ca— can't," Azula choked out. She clutched her own arms and looked on the verge of tears, her shoulders rounded, posture defensive. "Please don't make me —"

Now it was Ursa's turn to stare, a nameless dread raising the tiny hairs on her arms like the blare of a distant alarm. Why was Azula being so difficult? (It didn't seem like she wanted to be, even.) And in front of a complete stranger?

"You said you didn't want to camp tonight," Ursa lowered her voice to reason with her. She tried to draw nearer, but Azula just retreated until she ran out of floor space. The rejection stung, and heat rose to her cheeks. "I'm trying to do you a favor, stop making a scene."

"Let's — let's just go. Let's go back to camp," Azula seized on that, like she was only half-listening. Her voice was unnaturally high. Her eyes darted to the old inn-keep staring at her, back to Ursa. "We c— we can talk. Back at camp," she stumbled.

"I already paid for the room," Ursa reminded her absurdly, like Azula wasn't just present for that exchange.

"Can't you ask —" And Ursa's fraying patience broke.

"You are embarrassing me," she hissed. Azula jerked like she'd been slapped. Her face shuttered. But she voiced no more objections.

The front doors opened with another chime of the bell when Ursa retrieved their key from the shocked inn-keep. A young man entered, luggage hoisted on his shoulders for the stout, middle-aged couple who followed him into the lobby. And Azula bolted, moving with impressive speed for her condition. Her footfalls sounded heavy up the stairs, and even after she had disappeared from sight.

"Is — is she quite a'right?" the old woman asked hesitantly, her thin face seamed with concern while the new arrivals stared after Azula's hasty exit.

"She's under a great deal of str—" Everyone present winced visibly at the slamming of a door over their heads, while Ursa thought wearily, Foolish girl. "— stress," she spoke correctly.

"What a shame," the old woman demurred, while the late arrivals were led down a gaslit hall off the lobby, "such a beautiful girl." On that, they were agreed. "And with child…" she added doubtfully, adjusting the spectacles on her nose as if the better to observe Ursa's failings as a mother.

And Ursa bit back a sigh. She had thought of this, even if it seemed Azula hadn't. "Her husband traveled ahead of us to set up shop some months ago," Ursa lied. "She didn't know she was expecting when he left. She hasn't been able to tell him since. It worries her."

The woman gave her a look of commiseration, agreeing, "Ever' thing's a drama when you're young and pretty. She'll grow outta that soon enough," she reassured, "with a babe to occupy her."

"I hope so," Ursa hedged, privately doubtful.

She took her leave and both their satchels, and climbed the steps resigned to another argument. But their room had been left open, bed, nightstand, bureau and washbasin lit only by the glow of lanterns from the street below. Ursa closed the door behind her, more conscious than her daughter of all the ears around them.

Their washroom door was closed against her, and (Ursa discovered when she tried the knob) bolted shut from within. Her key was useless. She could hear movement inside.

"Azula?" She tried, and the movement ceased with an abruptness that was jarring. A shuddering breath was her only answer. "Azula, please open the door."

"Go away!" Azula snapped. Her voice wavered badly. Ursa tried to exercise restraint for both of them.

"This is childish," she tried gently, "and beneath you. How are we supposed to talk like —"

"Fuck your talking!" Azula screamed at her, and Ursa dropped their satchels in shock. "Fuck you! GO AWAY!"

"Young lady," she scolded reflexively, stung by her foul language, "you will not speak —"

"Go away! Go away, go away go awaygoawayGOAWAY!" Azula drowned her out, until the only punctuation to her screams were the objects she started throwing at the door, a few of which shattered on impact. Until her screams gave way to sobs so wracking Ursa could hear her heaving gasps through the door.

Until Ursa stopped in her retreat, eyes wide when she remembered the day Azula ran, how Ursa hovered at the forest's edge while she cried as if her heart would break, and later while she bent fire… Ursa remembered too late her daughter's telling accusation. Are you going to psychoanalyze me now too?

"What's wrong with you?" she whispered fearfully. Her eyes filled with tears. She laid her hand gingerly upon the grain of the door, stained black. "What's wrong with you?"

Azula either didn't hear her or didn't care to. She ran out of things to throw before she ran out of tears. She proved deaf to Ursa's every offer and entreaty, to the inn-keep looking in to warn further disruption would forfeit their stay, to Ursa's promise to replace what was broken and calm her hysterical daughter, crying uncontrollably a room away.

Ursa didn't know that she could keep either of those promises. Ursa didn't know if she had ever felt so helpless.

She finally withdrew to the bed out of fear that Azula might hurt herself (or her baby) if she didn't. Azula didn't threaten as much. She didn't say another word. (Or nothing intelligible.) She didn't have to. The floor was probably covered with broken glass. She was crying so hard she could barely breathe.

And Ursa couldn't make it better. She wondered if she was fooling herself to think she ever could.

Iroh found him in his cabin. Meditation candles burned down to stubs cast a warm gold glow, outlining the pointed edges of the Fire Navy uniform they had altered to replace his Fire Lord regalia. The light cast shifting shadows on the wall where Zuko sat with knees pulled up to his chin and hands braced behind his head, curled up in a corner.

While Iroh watched, he folded still more and rocked back hard into the steel plate, once, twice, three times. As if he were punishing himself.

Iroh thought he did not have to guess why. The meeting with evacuees from the stranded Fire Navy encampment had been an unmitigated disaster. He'd feared it would, but Zuko would not be swayed. These soldiers were his last, best lead on Azula and the woman he believed to be his mother, he insisted. These soldiers would tell him where they were, or were headed. These soldiers had to help him find them…

Zuko did not take it well, when it emerged that not only did these soldiers not know Azula's plans or whereabouts because she refused to divulge them (smart, Iroh acknowledged) but they wouldn't tell Zuko if they knew. Zuko took it less well when it emerged that Azula had been the target of no less than three assassination attempts so far. (Iroh did not like to think of that.)

And Zuko had a meltdown when he realized that these soldiers thought he had sent assassins after his pregnant sister. His words, not theirs. It took every lesson learned in a deadly, decadent court for Iroh not to betray any outward reaction to that. The soldiers they were meeting, green boys all of them, were less circumspect.

Iroh had to physically remove Zuko from the room, before he could bring pressure to bear on their reluctant guests. Even practiced as he was, they united to stonewall him, and he learned nothing new about Azula's time there or the woman she claimed to be her mother.

What he did learn was troubling. It was a bad sign that soldiers this young were openly suspicious of and uncooperative toward Zuko, even if Azula had bought their loyalty by evacuating them ahead of their superiors. Another smart move on her part, Iroh grudgingly admitted, making herself out to be a champion of common soldiers. No one who knew her personally would buy it for a moment, but then, few people did.

Green boys all of them. And after today's spectacle, Iroh would have to make sure they rose no higher. Zuko had enough threats to contend with.

Zuko was gone from the flower shop when Iroh concluded their backroom meeting. His informant, and the White Lotus operative who gathered them here, told him his nephew had returned to the ship.

Headstrong boy, Iroh reflected wearily. At least he took the guards with him. Zuko probably wasn't much safer here in the colonies than he was in the homeland. They would raise anchor at nightfall and find a new port. (And Iroh would send out fresh letters in inquiry of this latest threat to Azula.)

But Iroh couldn't think of that right now, with his boy in such obvious distress. He knelt opposite Zuko though his old joints protested, and laid a callused hand on his elbow to still his rocking.

"I screwed up," Zuko's voice emerged impossibly small from the miserable bundle of limbs, so reminiscent of the earnest little boy he had been that Iroh's heart ached. "Uncle …"

It was too much. Iroh gently intervened, "Where did you hear Azula was with child?"

And Zuko jumped as if scalded, his defensive posture unfolding in evident shock. His face white as the candles, mismatched eyes wide, he choked out, "From — from Mai." Misinterpreting Iroh's expression, he clarified, "She had it — from Ty Lee."

He would have expected Mai to know better, though happy, guileless Ty Lee… Iroh hissed softly in consternation. Was there no low Azula would not sink to, using her so-called friends to spread such an incendiary lie? How long had his nephew suffered it?

"Why did you not say something?" Iroh reproached him gently, and Zuko's face fell.

"I did-didn't know how," Zuko's voice shook, hands shook, fingers buried in his disheveled hair. "Now there's assassins after her, even my friends," he fretted. "And she could d— get-get hurt, she could lose the — the —"

And that was exactly what she would say if confronted, wasn't it? Such an elegant solution to the corner she painted herself into, that only made Zuko look worse and herself look better. It was too much, and Iroh wouldn't listen to this a minute longer.

"Zuko," he spoke slowly, squeezing his elbow, "you cannot seriously think she would have a child."

His nephew stilled and stared at him with a look Iroh couldn't decipher. "Why not?" When Zuko spoke, Iroh realized it wasn't even anger, but hurt. Iroh wondered if he would ever understand them.

"She's a —" His mouth worked faster than his mind for once, but he stopped himself. Too late.

"A what?" Zuko bulled to feet to demand, so forcefully Iroh almost fell over. Definitely anger now. The candles flared with it. "What is she, exactly?"

But Iroh would not be provoked. He struggled upright and tucked hands into his sleeves to remind Zuko exactly who was the elder and the wiser here. He answered gravely, "A liar."

Zuko laughed, actually laughed, when Iroh told him. A more bitter sound he had not heard from his nephew in months. And Iroh felt another conversation slipping away from him.

"Lies are supposed to be plausible," Zuko reminded him harshly, and it occurred to Iroh what a very bad sign it was that his nephew was quoting Azula. The flicker of candlelight drew twisted shadows on his scar.

"You think she'd lie about that," Zuko stated more than asked, and it was Iroh's turn to argue, "I think she'd lie about anything —"

"One that makes her look vulnerable?" Zuko pressed. "Weak?" he practically spat, fingers clenched, and Iroh stopped. His nephew never spoke that word. Zuko heard it enough times growing up. His nephew never spoke that word, and now he did —

He spoke it like Ozai.

"The way he raised her," his voice wavered on the edge of breaking, and Iroh knew he was thinking of his own unhappy childhood. "To admit something like that, let alone pretend it —" Zuko hotly insisted. "She'd die first."

"Zuk—"

"She'd die first!" he shouted, and only in that moment seemed to hear himself. His anger crumbled to despair. His good eye filled with tears, his brow drew tight when he clapped a hand over his mouth.

The candle flames shrank to embers, as if light had left the cabin at his pronouncement. Zuko left it not a moment later, ducking into the washroom and slamming the door shut behind him, too late to hide how his breath hitched with tears.

Iroh let out a long breath. He sent the guard outside Zuko's cabin for his tea service, their dinners, and fresh candles for the simple altar. He would use the wait to get this room in order.

As for their House, well — Iroh had a feeling that would be a longer wait than he had left in him.

Ursa startled awake to the clatter of wagon wheels and voices of passersby outside the window. "'Zula…" she murmured fretfully. Sunlight streamed in through the dusty panes, catching motes fall through the air.

Her daughter cried through much of the night. Ursa wondered if it made her the worst mother in the world, that she had somehow managed to fall asleep while she waited Azula out? (That her child could be so desperately unhappy?)

The clamor of the street outside just made the quiet of their room more apparent. "Azu—" Her eyes fell on the washroom door left ajar, then something nearer at hand. A small stack of letters, neatly folded and bound with twine, left on the nightstand.

"No," Ursa breathed and sat up quickly, snatching them as if to disprove what she already knew. That these were her letters, and Azula had left them (her) behind. "No, no, no no no…"

The washroom was empty. Broken glass littered the tiles. Their bags still lay where Ursa dropped them by the door, and she tossed the contents onto the warped wood floor in growing panic, desperate for any hint to her daughter's whereabouts.

She took the money, Ursa realized with a sinking heart, knelt shaking in the mess she made. And … the paper? She looked again in confusion, but she had packed and unpacked these bags enough times to know what was missing. Azula had left the rest. What —

I just walked off into enemy territory without my supplies or my mount? she remembered Azula scoff at her, and her throat seized. The rhino. Maybe she wasn't too late…

Ursa tore down the stairs and past the dining room where other guests broke their fast. She didn't even hear what the inn-keep called after her, just kept running. By the time she reached the tree outside of town where they had leashed the Komodo rhino, she half-hobbled and clutched a stitch in her side. She nearly cried with the pain of it.

She did cry when she sighted the great beast and their saddle bags hung from high branches, cleverly concealed by leaves. Ursa was so relieved, she threw her arms around its curved horn and kissed its ugly head. The rhino just blinked stupidly at her, evidently more receptive to shows of affection than her own daughter. Her daughter…

Azula was nowhere in sight. The longer Ursa waited and the higher the sun climbed, the more anxious she grew. What if she guessed wrongly? She could double back, perhaps intercept Azula on her way out of town.

And if you're wrong? she doubted, pacing in place, hands clasped, shaking. She could out-think you even as a child…

In the end, she retrieved their saddle bags, unleashed the rhino, and moved the whole lot north of the town, deeper into the forest and steeper up the incline. It made her feel like the worst mother in the world to do it, but she couldn't — she couldn't risk Azula running. She wasn't well.

It was after noon by the time Ursa walked back into town, and exhaustion warred with dread for her attention. She felt like she hadn't slept a wink. Where was Azula? She checked all the shops she tried yesterday without success, but only panicked when she saw her daughter's face staring coldly out at her from a wanted poster.

Ursa stifled a gasp, tearing it from a board full of wanted posters tacked up outside the town jail. She had to read it several times before the meaning sank in: Her daughter, her daughter, marked for death by Earth Kingdom brutes.

Ursa sat down hard on the edge of the porch, lightheaded with terror. Did Azula even know? She must, Ursa concluded, remembering Azula's caution in front of the Earth temple acolytes and the festival goers last night, the lengths she went to avoid other travelers. How long did Azula know, and say nothing? Oh gods, of all the times to lose her…

She didn't realize she was hyperventilating until a deputy emerged from the jail to ask if she was alright. A trim little man with a trim little mustache. Ursa quickly stuffed the wanted poster under her tunic. The man did not remark this. Ursa could practically hear Azula mocking his observational skills. Azula…

The deputy was courteous enough, but it took every ounce of Ursa's self-restraint to put on a shaky smile and accept his hand up. She felt so threatened she was sure she would have brandished a knife had she still carried one. There was a death sentence on Azula's head. Every single one of these people was a threat.

She checked the cells of the town jail, all visible from the sheriff's office, by claiming illness and accepting the deputy's offer of water inside. Azula wasn't there. That could mean she was still free. That could mean she was dead. Would they even bother to take her alive? The poster said she was worth more alive than dead, but Azula wouldn't go quietly. Ursa felt sure of that.

She had to find her daughter. And she couldn't do it alone.

Ursa returned to the inn, where the counter off the common room proved abandoned. She rang a bell over and over for service to no result, until the ringing in her ears grew louder. She picked the damned thing up and threw it into the key case to a sound like sweet release.

She ran up the stairs to their room, determining to start there and open every door in this godsforsaken inn until she found the old woman and got some answers from her or her staff. Someone had to see Azula leave…

She threw open the door to find Azula stood facing the corner. Her hands were clasped behind her back with one arm bent over her shoulder and the other under, with one foot tucked tightly behind the other in what looked like nothing so much as torture. Her body trembled visibly with the stress of holding position.

Ursa couldn't help it. She screamed.

Azula broke stance and turned to face her, eyes bruised and hollow with sleeplessness. Ursa crossed the room in a few quick strides, the urge to hug her tight and never let go warring with the impulse to slap her.

She did neither when Azula flinched at her approach, just touched her face and her shoulders and ran hands down her arms, checking her over from head to foot. "My gods, oh my gods," Ursa breathed tearfully, while her daughter struggled free of her grip. "What were you thinking?" Ursa reproached her. "You scared me half to death!"

Azula stopped in her retreat to look at Ursa, uncomprehending. Her eyes were bloodshot. "What?" she whispered.

"There's a price on your head!" Ursa hissed, whipping the wanted poster from beneath her tunic to thrust it on her daughter.

Azula studied it wordlessly. Her lips parted and eyes filled with fresh tears, and Ursa felt a sliver of doubt creep in. "You knew," Ursa accused her. She felt sure of that much. "You knew all this time."

Azula couldn't seem to take her eyes off the poster. Her hands shook ever so slightly. "I have—haven't seen one — up close," she spoke quietly. It was certainly not an answer, and Ursa's ire only grew.

"You knew, and you still came here?" Ursa threw her arm out to indicate the threat. "Still put yourself in harm's way, and for what?"

Her daughter looked stung, waking from whatever fog had gripped her. "To get you to Zuko, remember?" She tried to put the offending paper aside. But Ursa wasn't about to let this go. "I'm not wea— not the one who needs protecting. I've lasted this long…"

"With your face on a wanted poster?" Ursa reiterated, taking it up. "If you were recognized —" But Azula snatched it from her hands without warning.

"How much do I look like this picture?" She held it up beside her face to jab a finger at her likeness, and Ursa quailed. "With my hair loose, no makeup, fucking — pregnant…" her voice broke, face dimmed, paper crumpled in her hand.

And Ursa stared at her in horror. Oh gods, if she didn't — if she didn't even want her — "I thought —" Ursa tried breathlessly, "I thought you — you wanted your baby?"

"I do," Azula affirmed with eyes wide, so immediately Ursa knew it was the truth. She looked stricken at the very suggestion she wouldn't, dropping the wanted poster to lay hands protectively over her bump.

And Ursa realized. "You just don't want to be pregnant, do you?" Of all the absurd…

"Who would?" Azula spoke in evident disbelief, and Ursa had had it.

"Do you want to die, is that it?" She threw her hands up in exasperation. "Do you want your baby to die?"

"Don't be stupid." Azula's voice shook. She turned her back on Ursa to close the door behind her. "No one's going to die."

"And this morning? Where did you go?" Ursa insisted. She seized her arm, and Azula jumped. Her eyes flew wide with panic. "What did you do?"

Azula couldn't seem to look directly at her, squirming in her grip like a child caught at mischief. "Nothing," she murmured, and contradicted herself the next moment, "It doesn't matter."

"And our money?" Ursa pressed when Azula threw off her grip. Her daughter blushed visibly, chastened. "Our supplies? Does that matter?"

"I don't have to account for my time to you!" Azula burst out. "I'm not a child!"

"You're my child!"

"I'm his first!"

What. Azula heard it too, clapping both hands over her mouth too late in a gesture that might have been endearing under any other circumstance. "What?" Ursa gasped, and Azula shrank from her, eyes wide and terrified.

"What — what did you —" Oh gods, she didn't know which possibility was worse, that Azula might think that unprompted or that Ozai might have actually said it to her.

"It prob-probably won't even — even work," Azula soothed ineffectually, tears in her voice and hands raised in a warding gesture. Ursa didn't know if it was meant to soothe her or herself.

"What won't —" Ursa tried, still struggling. "What did you —"

Azula didn't seem to hear her, gaze turned inward and face bleak. "There's no — no reason anyone has to d— get-get hurt…" she whispered brokenly.

Ursa closed the space between them and laid hold of her arms. "What. Did. You. Do?"

"I call— I called in some — some favors," Azula spoke tightly. She sounded like she was strangling. Ursa let her go by way of encouragement, and almost missed her whisper, "All my favors…"

The paper, she remembered. "You wrote letters?" Ursa guessed. "You sent them, from the post office?" This was the first town they stopped in to have one.

The money. "Why not from the encampment?" She wouldn't have had to pay to post from there.

Azula actually cringed with embarrassment. "I did— didn't think of it." When Ursa looked at her in disbelief, she defended. "I was tired, hungry… I used a naval cipher besides. They would have been able to read it."

Ursa felt lost. "Why couldn't you just make your own … 'cipher'?"

"The recipient wouldn't be able to read it," Azula dismissed, like this was the most obvious thing in the world.

"But to what end?" Ursa pursued, confused. "To — to free your father?" Azula said nothing, just looked at her. Ursa thought she had never looked so wretched.

And Ursa had her answer but — "I don't understand," she confessed. "Why would these … 'favors' wait on you to act? What did you give them?"

Azula spoke to the floor, her voice halting, "Classified information that will compromise the prison's security."

"That's treason," Ursa whispered, aghast.

You would know, Azula should have said. Instead the weight of her actions seemed to hit her like a physical blow, and she staggered in place. She looked on the verge of collapse, but Ursa grabbed her shoulders before she could.

"How — how could you — do that?" Damn yourself? "And for him?" Ursa did shake her a little before she remembered herself. Azula hung limply in her grasp.

"I had to," she whispered, eyes pleading. "He chose me. How could I do less for him?"

I'm his first, Ursa remembered, and she felt sick inside. "You don't — You shouldn't have to choose," she insisted, and when her daughter did not react, she seized her face to fix her attention. "Azula, look at me." She shook her head. "You shouldn't have to choose."

"But I do." Her voice sounded a thousand years old. "I always have."

Ursa let her go then, still shaking her head. She had no earthly idea what to say to that. What came out of her mouth was, "Give me the money."

Her daughter surrendered it without protest, and Ursa uttered a little cry of distress at how much lighter the bag weighed in her hand. "There's not enough…" she worried. "Azula, how will we pay for the things you broke, our supplies?"

"I don't know," Azula spoke quietly, voice hollow. She clutched her own arms again, eyes downcast. "I don't know…"

"Sit down, for the gods' sake." Ursa remembered her courtesies. They were fraying at the edges. "You look like you're going to fall over."

She tried to steer Azula toward the bed. (It was the only piece of furniture anyone could sit on.) She gave up when Azula physically fought her. Her daughter retreated to the corner again (Oh gods, what was wrong with her?) and Ursa retreated from the room, closing the door sharply behind her.

She was breathing hard by this time, practically vibrating with pent-up rage. It sang along her every cord and tendon like the lightning that her husband bent. That man, that — that monster… Locked up in prison where he belonged, and still managed to poison this family, to hurt her — her daughter…

Angry tears pricked her eyes, and Ursa seized a decorative pillow from a sofa at the end of the hall. She sat down against the wall and screamed into it until her face ached. Ursa glanced up to find the the inn-keep looking down at her, a broomstick and dustpan in hand and judgment on her wizened face.

"If I'da known you were both screamers, I'da thought twice about lettin' you the room," the old woman reproached her, and Ursa flinched, stung by the memory of how Ozai used to — used —

"I saw a rat," she retaliated instead, a reckless anger seizing her. The inn-keep blanched and sputtered, "You did not!"

"I did," Ursa lied savagely and climbed to her feet, familiar enough with court life to know when she'd struck a nerve. "So did my daughter," she spoke down to the old woman. "She is not used to staying in these conditions."

"If you've any objections to the cleanliness a this 'stablishment, you can leave," the inn-keep rallied. "Though you missed check-out, so you'll owe me another night's board."

"We'll see," Ursa sniffed haughtily, casting the pillow aside and tucking the coin purse into her tunic to hide how empty it was. As empty as your threats, she could practically hear Ozai jibe at her, and Ursa grimaced.

She walked softly back to their room, easing the door open a crack to check on Azula. Her daughter knelt facing the corner now, hand braced against the wall, head and shoulders bent and shaking. She did not even seem to hear the door creak.

Even angry and fearful as she was, Ursa's heart ached for her. She knows she made a mistake. Whip-smart and capable though she may be, in some ways, it seemed Azula was still a child…

And you're the parent, Ursa castigated herself. So fix this. That's your job.

First threats first: penury. Ursa didn't live five years as a peasant just to let pursestrings strangle her now. She drew a deep breath, looking the length of the hall before she eased the door shut.

The sun was setting before Ursa opened it again, the room cast in a twilit gloom. Azula sat on the end of their bed with hands clasped beneath the curve of her belly, staring blankly at the wall. But she scrambled to her feet when the light from Ursa's lamp fell over her.

"Please sit," Ursa urged gently, when Azula moved to retreat to her corner again. Ursa set the lamp down atop the dresser. "We can take turns, if you'd rather not share," she reassured her, when Azula just gazed warily at her and the hand she held behind her back.

"Where will you sit?" Azula demanded, her voice weak. It could not be more obvious she had not slept or taken sustenance all day.

Ursa put on a smile for her. "On the bathtub, if need be. Please." She gestured to the bed, still made from the night before, until her daughter took a grudging seat again. Azula sat nearest the door, clearly making provision to flee.

"I have something for you —" Ursa started, but Azula tensed visibly.

"I don't like surprises."

"Then I won't keep you in suspense." She produced a stack of fresh paper from behind her back and laid it gently in Azula's shrinking lap. Her daughter seemed struck speechless, eyes fixed on the paper.

Ursa bent to retrieve her letters, neatly bound with twine, from the floor where she dropped them in a panic this morning. She laid the bound letters atop the stack, searching out Azula's gaze. "They're yours," Ursa spoke firmly. "I want you to have them."

Her daughter sat with head bent over of the paper, her hands gripping the edges. "I don— I don't — understand," she spoke tightly. Her voice barely broke a whisper. She trembled visibly. "You want — to — to keep — writing?"

Ursa knelt in front of her to make eye contact. "Do you?" she asked softly. Azula nodded mutely, lips pressed tightly together, and Ursa knew that she'd guessed rightly.

"So do I," she affirmed, and her daughter stifled a cry. Azula hugged the paper to her chest, weeping with relief, and Ursa's heart swelled. You don't have to choose, Ursa wanted to tell her, but she knew that she would not be believed, not yet.

You will never have to choose again.

She gave her daughter some privacy to cry it out, standing to gather their things from the floor where Ursa had spilled them this morning, returning them to the satchels. Hearing her breathing calm and tears subside, Ursa looked up to see Azula wiping at her eyes with the edge of her sleeve.

"Are you hungry?" Ursa offered. "Dinner will be served soon. I can bring us each up a plate."

Azula blinked owlishly at her, setting the paper and letters carefully atop a pillow. "How did you — pay for —"

"I sold some supplies we won't need, some of our clothes…" Ursa explained, approaching slowly to sit to her daughter's left, an arm's length away. Azula tensed but didn't flee. Progress.

"I changed the Komodo rhino for an ostrich horse. I hope you weren't growing attached," she teased, and Azula snorted lightly. Ursa did not mention that she traded the rhino to a local butcher; Azula would probably figure it out when Komodo sausages and jerky appeared with their meals.

"I got the most money for your fur-lined coat," she confessed. "We won't need that in the desert, and —" She hesitated. "And in Ba Sing Se, your uncle can buy you a new one," she spoke firmly.

Her daughter lifted a single brow, clearly skeptical of that prospect. She did not like this plan any better than she had before seeing the wanted poster, but Azula's attempt to free her father forced Ursa's hand.

General Iroh, with all his connections, could put a stop to it. He could make this go away. And if he took issue with Azula's treason, if he proved a threat to her, well…

Ursa would do what it took to protect her children. Both her children. Zuko would understand, she told herself. He was her son long before he was the general's pet project.

"Everything's going to be alright," Ursa reassured her daughter, so warmly she almost believed it. "We're together now; that's all that matters."

Azula side-eyed her, clearly doubtful, but Ursa went further. "Azula," she tried, "could we — could I … hold your hand?"

Azula startled visibly. "Why?" she asked, dumbfounded. And Ursa didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"I just want to," she spoke tightly. "That's all.

"You might like it," Ursa offered, and Azula primly replied, "I doubt that very much." Ursa bit her lip against a fond smile.

But with a long (and long-suffering) sigh her daughter proffered the requested hand, and Ursa squeezed it. They sat like that a few quiet moments, with Azula's hand warm in hers and Ursa's thumb rubbing circles on the soft skin between her thumb and forefinger. (Her palm was callused from firebending.)

They sat like that a few quiet moments before Azula asked, "How much longer do we have to sit like this?"

"Until you stop counting the seconds."

"How will you know when I stop?" her daughter put to her slyly, and Ursa rejoined, "I knew you were counting now, didn't I?"

Azula seemed to have no answer to that, and Ursa managed not to laugh. She had a feeling it wouldn't be appreciated.

Maybe prompted by the silence or the unusual proximity, Azula spoke quietly at last, "I'm sorry for — for embarrassing you." Ursa glanced at Azula in surprise, but her daughter was looking determinedly anywhere but at her.

"I didn't — really think you would — would — try anything," she choked out, her head ducked and face red.

What. "What?" Ursa whispered, uncomprehending. Azula's hand jumped in hers, and she let go before her daughter could feel threatened. "What would —"

But Azula spoke over her, voice halting. "I just — you can't — you can't — surprise me like that. You need to clear these things with me first."

"Sleeping arrangements?" Ursa clarified, still lost, and her daughter insisted, "Yes.

"Yes," she repeated softer, seeing Ursa's reaction.

"I don't understand." Ursa searched her. "You used to have sleepovers with your friends…"

"You're not my friend," Azula shot her down, then seemed to regret it when Ursa didn't hide her hurt quickly enough. "I didn't — I didn't mean it like that," she qualified, and held her hand out again in unspoken apology.

Ursa took it, hesitant. "You didn't like it, did you?" she realized. "When I hugged you that night we left the encampment?" Azula side-eyed her like she half-expected the question to be a trap, then shook her head mutely.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I don't know," she tried to lie, a flimsy thing. "I guess I — I couldn't."

Why not? Ursa wanted to press her, but she could already feel Azula tense. She chose de-escalation. "Would you like me to ask first, before I touch you?" she offered instead, and her daughter regarded her doubtingly. "Or wait for you to initiate contact?"

"I guess, maybe — I — I don't know," Azula stammered, and Ursa squeezed her hand to reassure her.

"Just think about it," she urged gently, standing from the bed. "I'm going to see about dinner. You could take a nap while you wait; we're paid up through the night."

Azula nodded tiredly, and Ursa squashed the impulse to kiss her forehead. (Her height really didn't help in that regard.) She left the lamp burning on the dresser and gave her daughter the room.

Ursa hoped she'd done well today, at the last. Considering she started this day unsure if she would even see her daughter again — She supposed she could only improve from there. But she had to do better.

She resolved to do better.

Timeline note: the New Year referred to this chapter is not New Year on the Gregorian calendar (January 1st), but the Avatar-equivalent of Chinese New Year, which evidently takes place somewhere from late January to early February.