Chapter Text
Lieutenant Lehing is not a coward by a long stretch, but that doesn't mean he's going to willingly let himself be killed by a pair of teen Fire Nation girls with disturbingly efficient methods of disposal; no.
He makes a strategic exit and boards the other ship.
It requires no more of his covert abilities than masquerading as a prisonkeeper, and so he makes his way down to the hold of the Fire Nation ship without much undue stress; he meets a guard on the way near the stairway, but after disposing of that with his usual cleanly precision, Lehing continues down to the hold.
Pausing to remove a lit torch from one of the brackets lining the walls, he approaches the door barring the entrance to the hold and surveys it.
His assessing gaze picks out several things of note; the scratched metal around the keyhole, the worn areas around the hinges, and the fact that he can see firelight through the gap under the door.
Taking a measured step back, he brings the fingers of his left hand up in a fist and strikes it forward, connecting with the metal just to the right of the top hinge with a dull thud.
The door shudders, but remains stubbornly attached to its frame.
Lehing frowns in annoyance. The expression is not unlike his usual quiet confidence; to anyone watching he would appear to be experiencing the distracted frustration of one who has mislaid an unimportant but nevertheless useful item, or inadvertently been impolite to an older relative.
The door shudders under another strike, this one aimed neatly at the area just to the right of the lower hinges.
With one last creaking groan, the door collapses backwards, clanging on the floor of the hold.
Lehing casts a glance behind him to ensure his unexpected detour has not been observed (which would be tiresome, given that he's already fulfilled his murder quota for the day, and he does dislike exceeding that). Satisfied, he steps carefully over the fallen door and into the hold.
There he stops, just over the threshold, assessing.
Six pairs of eyes stare back.
When Mai was seven, Azula took one of her knives. She never asked why, never demanded an explanation, but every so often she would see the glint of metal beneath the fabric of Azula’s sleeve.
It was like the glint of danger in her eyes, which so often reminded Mai of the blade of a knife. Azula was a weapon to be wielded by her father; that much had been proven by this mission, by the training his daughter had received.
Now she’s alone.
Mai has never claimed to be loyal to the Fire Nation; her loyalty has always been reserved for one person.
Azula was her friend, Ty Lee is - something else, and Zuko is - Zuko is different.
She’s missed him, over the years. She knows Azula has, too, although Azula would never admit it.
There are men on the Earth Kingdom prison ship; Fire Nation men. Mai watches their removal with sharp eyes, keeps her face turned to the deck as they’re passed from one ship to the other, keeps her wits sharp.
Ty Lee comes up beside her.
‘Do you think he was lying?’ she asks.
Mai keeps her eyes on the men.
‘Does it matter?’ she says.
Ty Lee’s face tightens in her peripheral vision.
‘It will,’ she says. Her voice is quiet; subdued. It makes something stir uncomfortably in Mai’s chest.
‘That’s not the point, is it,’ Mai tells her. ‘The point is I had no choice.’
‘We always have a choice , Mai,’ Ty Lee says, and she sounds - angry. Displeased. Disappointed.
It makes the thing in Mai’s chest writhe, pained and stabbing.
‘Not in any way that matters ,’ she disagrees.
Ty Lee turns to the railing, leans her arms against the rough wood. She’s a disapproving presence in Mai’s side vision, exuding some kind of moral purity that only she has ever had the guts to force on Mai and Azula.
Azula would laugh, here. Snap something biting and sarcastic, something about honour and duty and the spaces between what is a choice and what is a calling.
Mai isn’t Azula.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, because she is, for so many things, over so many years.
The thundercloud that is Ty Lee softens, eases, unfolds like a flower towards the sun.
‘I know,’ she says. She reaches out, places her hand on Mai’s arm, just above where her sleeve has slipped up past her wrist.
Mai stares.
There’s a sliver of her skin showing, between her sleeve and the gloves she wears. If Ty Lee’s hand slips, slides, moves a fraction of a centimetre down, she’d be touching it.
Mai swallows. Ignores the pulse of something in her chest, between her ribs, ignores the knifepoint of want in her blood.
‘We should get going,’ she says.
Ty Lee’s face does something, something that looks like loss. Mai keeps her eyes away.
‘Yeah,’ Ty Lee says. ‘We should.’
Azula watches the port come into view from her cabin, sees the points of the towers and sloped red outlines of the roofs, the whitewashed walls.
‘It’s just a supply stop,’ Siku says, coming up behind her.
Azula tenses, stops, makes herself untense.
‘Good morning,’ she says. Her voice is tight.
‘Morning,’ Siku says, indulgent. He’s always so fucking kind to her. It makes Azula want to break things, makes her want to curl up in a ball and sob.
‘The Chief wants to have a chat,’ he tells her. It is, Azula thinks, very ill-mannered to induce a heart attack in someone this early in the morning.
She makes her way to the Chief’s cabin, which is starting to feature largely in her nightmares, involving tea and emotional conversations.
‘Ahem,’ she says, when she comes into the doorway, because she’s still unsure of how exactly to behave around the Chief. Is she formal? Informal? Casual ? Azula has no idea.
‘Morning,’ Hakoda says, cheerfully, which does something to relieve the knee-jerk expectation that she’s about to get tossed overboard.
‘You...wanted to see me?’ she prompts, taking a seat.
‘Yes,’ he says, smiling. People on this ship are always fucking smiling . It’s disturbing. ‘I wanted you to know I’ve decided to stop writing to the Fire Nation - your parents.’
Ah , Azula thinks.
‘Ah,’ she says.
‘I...see,’ she says, even though she very much does not see.
Hakoda smiles. (What is it with the smiling?)
‘You see, Ursula, I’ve been doing some thinking,’ he says, which is vaguely panic-inducing.
‘I want you to stay with us,’ Hakoda says, and Azula’s heart stops.
Full-on stops, like a bird caught in a net and dashed on the ground, dazed.
Then it thrashes back to life, like a fish slapped on a pier.
‘You don’t have to answer right away,’ Hakoda says, smiling. His eyes crinkle at the edges when he smiles. Azula hates how comforted it makes her feel. ‘You just have to think about what you want, and you can tell me when you feel ready. Take as long as you like.’
She swallows.
He smiles.
‘We’ll still be here, when you decide,’ he says.
Will I?
She tells - and this surprises even her - Nanouk, of all people.
‘The Chief wants me to stay,’ she blurts out, halfway through polishing the railing. Nanouk’s been doing this, coming up beside her and just working with her, like it’s natural, like they’re a team , ever since the - incident. Azula doesn’t know if she likes it yet.
Now he goes still, cloth pausing on the wooden rail.
‘Huh,’ he says. ‘Thought for sure it’d be a couple days before that happened.’
Azula splutters.
‘You knew ?’ she says, voice climbing towards the top end of its vocal range.
Nanouk shrugs.
‘Not, like, for certain ,’ he says. ‘I mean, it’s obvious, right?’
Azula stares.
‘ No , it is not ,’ she says.
Nanouk looks at her.
'You know, for a firebender, you can be incredibly fucking dense,' he tells her.
Azula bristles.
'Why, exactly, 'for a firebende r',' she asks.
'Well,' Nanouk says. ‘You know. Fire's all, sort of, fiery and stuff.'
'This is not a joke,' she seethes.
His eyebrows make a brave bid to reach his hairline.
'It kind of is, princess,' he says. 'I mean, not to be, like, prying or anything, but your parents have to seriously suck for the Chief to offer you a place with us.' He swipes his cloth along the rail, seemingly unaware of the fact that he's just shattered Azula's worldview.
'Is that. Could it be,' she starts, hesitant, before she reminds herself that she is, in fact, a princess . 'Is that the reason?'
'Is what the reason?' Nanouk is polishing the rail.
'That he asked me to stay,' she says.
He pauses, resting his arms on the rail. 'It might be. I don’t know, princess. He's not exactly inviting me into his leadership decisions, is he, now. ' He heaves a sigh. 'What the chief does is his business. I'm here to fight.'
Azula shifts, uncomfortable with the reminder.
Nanouk rolls his eyes. 'Not you , obviously - don't be a fucking idiot. You can stay. You're alright.'
'How -' she searches for the word ' -flattering.'
Nanouk grunts.
'It is, ' he says. He swipes aggressively at a particularly tenacious bit of dirt. 'You'd better not be like, a fuckin spy or something, princess. I'm not prepared for that for you to, like, take over the ship or somethin’.’
She stares at him, warm.
'I wouldn't,' she says.
He shoots her a glance under his brow.
'I know,' he says, and to Azula's surprise, he sounds like he means it.
They work on. It's oddly and ridiculously comfortable, the silence between them. Azula has never known herself to be able to work alongside another person and not want to rip their head off for incompetence, but this - this is.
Nice.
'Sorry I punched you that time,' she says, suddenly and all at once.
Nanouk stops. Turns to face her.
'The fuck ?' he says. 'Do not fucking apologise for that, mate. It's in the past.’
There’s a brief silence.
'I may have deserved it,' he says, under his breath and in a rush.
Azula smiles.
'Can she come to the port with us?' Siku asks, despite Pamiuq's elbow lodging itself at home in his ribs.
Hakoda looks up from his desk.
'Why do you want her to come with you?' he asks.
Siku falters.
'Uh,' he says. 'Because she's our friend?'
Hakoda looks both defeated and happy.
'How long will you be gone?' he asks.
'Four hours,' Siku replies promptly.
Pamiuq elbows him so hard he sees stars.
'Two hours,' his friend supplies, smiling through gritted teeth.
Siku straightens up, eyes watering.
'Yeah,' he manages, coughing. 'Two hours.'
Hakoda eyes them, lips twitching slightly.
'Make sure you ask her first,' he says, and then returns to his papers.
Siku stares.
'Did he just -' he starts to whisper to Pamiuq, before he's summarily bustled out of the chief's cabin by his friend hissing 'do not fucking push our luck-'
There's a particular kind of wind that speeds them into port, like the elements are conspiring against them, pushing them onward, when all Azula wants to do is stay on this ship in the middle of the wide wide ocean.
If she steps off the ship, it's like everything else in the world will become real again.
Here, in this place, she's been able to forget, for a moment, what her life really is.
She's been able to forget things, things like her mother's smile, her father's pride, her brother's scar, for mere moments, but it's the best she's felt in many years.
If she leaves the ship, she feels like the world will come rushing back in again, and her small respite of what, four weeks, will be over. It feels like if she lets the world back in, it won't ever leave her alone again, and she's welcomed this, for the few moments it's been afforded to her.
This peace.
She's never been able to forget before.
She's never had the option to resist the onslaught of memory that always comes.
Azula is beset by memories, and she's never been able to escape them before.
I want you to stay with us, the Chief had said, but did he mean it the way Azula wants it to mean? Did he mean stay with us for the war, until we can shuttle you back to your family, back to your home?
Azula is under no misapprehension that she can sustain this lie. It's going to come out, at some point, who she really is. She just - wants, selfishly and hopelessly, to be free of it.
To be someone else, to belong here, with these people, with the people she's plotted to kill .
She wants to stay.
She wants to be better, better than what she was, and this - this is her way out.
She feels it like a rush of blood to the head, tingling in her chest, pouding down her veins.
'Do you want to come into the town with us?' Siku asks, hopefully, and Azula feels giddy with it.
'Yes,' she says, happy, for what feels like the first time in years.
Siku smiles.
'Come on, then,' he says, and takes her arm.
She lets him.
She lets him do a lot, actually, that she's never let anyone else do; tease her, laugh at her, hug her. She wonders why she's never had friends like this before. Even Zuko had friends. Sometimes. Before Father sent them all away, before he became the disappointment of the family, before he was sent away, before the scar.
The port town is crowded, market day.
Axzula falls into step with Pamiuq and Siku, either side of her like two excitable isopuppies as bodyguards.
She smiles.
Siku is waylaid at a stall of trinkets, like a magpie-squirrel at the sight of shiny objects, and Pamiuq gets engrossed in an old logbook, and so Azula wanders a little further off, past the brightly coloured stalls set up all over the town square.
To do herself credit, she only thinks of escaping perhaps three times.
She’s just contemplating whether she can make it to the outer wall of the town before Pamiuq and Siku realise she’s gone when she hears crying.
There's a child near the market.
The child cries.
Azula stares at it.
'Uh,' she says.
The child continues to cry, with a presentation of sheer lung capacity that is quite extraordinary, for its small size.
'Uh, Azula says, but with more feeling.
She pats the child awkwardly on the head, a careful distance away from its grasping hands.
'There, there,' she says, informing it. 'You have nothing to cry about, clearly. You seem perfectly well-provided for, all things considered.'
The child continues to cry.
Really, this is getting embarrassing, Azula thinks.
'Like, seriously, you're probably one of the most comfortable children in this place,' she tells it, because it's never too early to inform a child of their familial state. 'And this whole scene is very bad form, you know.'
The child hiccups.
'Where are your parents?' she asks it.
The child stares up at her with a teary gargle.
Azula sighs.
'Your parents? Your address? Your place of accomodation?' She stares at it. Nothing is forthcoming. The child continues to be coyly skittish about revealing its identity. 'Seriously? Nothing at all? You're really going to do that to me?'
She sighs heavily, and resigns herself to her fate.
'Come on, then, I suppose,' she says, gathering the child up onto her shoulders. 'You are monumentally heavy, by the way,' she tells it. 'Might want to consider cutting down on the candy apples.'
The child gargles. It is, Azula decides, a happy gargle.
'Thank goodness,' she says. 'You have a very good pair of lungs, kid.'
She sets off into the crowd.
The child is remarkably unhelpful as to directions, and so Azula finds herself trekking down side streets for the better part of an hour before she finds something even remotely recognisable to the child, which is, unfortunately, another child.
'Is this your sibling?' she asks, and neither of the two juvenile delinquents appear to be forthcoming about their relationship. 'Are you lost as well?' she asks the other child, who shakes its head solemnly.
'Thank Agni for that,' she says, heaving a breath. Her shoulders are aching terribly from what feels like the ever-increasing colossal weight of the first child.
'This is the most useless thing I have ever done,' she informs them both. They both gargle. Is this some form of torture, Azula thinks.
Siku finds her.
‘What,’ he asks, politely, ‘is that?’
Azula stares at the child.
‘It’s a child,’ she points out.
Siku gives her a look.
‘I can see that,’ he says.
They both stare at the child.
‘How did you come to be in possession of this child?’ he asks, which only goes to show he’s been spending too much time around Azula.
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ she tells him.
The child regards them with a quiet wisdom too mature for its age. It is remarkably disturbing.
‘One question,’ he asks, holding up a hand. ‘How do we give it back?’
Pamiuq finds them an hour after that, sitting on a wall, with the child gargling on what looks like a piece of dirt.
‘What,’ he inquires, ‘is that?’
They share a dejected look.
‘A child,’ they both say, in depressed unison.
‘Ah,’ Pamiuq says.
He finds the child’s parents within five minutes of setting out to look for them, and is so irritatingly proud of this fact that Siku and Azula are forced to ignore him the whole way back to the ship, for his own good.
They’re heading for Chameleon Bay next, Ukiak tells her when she gets back.
Mai takes the Earth Kingdom prison ship.
It’s the perfect disguise to enter Chameleon Bay.