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Chapter Text

At the very darkest corner of the jungle, where catgators lurk within the curling roots of mangrove trees, there is a ramshackle little bungalow. It’s roof is concave and its walls are soaked with centuries of rain and floodwater. And plenty of rain there is, it constantly pounds upon that unsteady roof like the beats of a shime-daiko drum. And when the storm gales gust, clack-clack-clackity-clack go the bird bones on the porch. It smells like mango and moss and a bit like decaying leaves at the entrance of the shack especially when rainwater dampens the wood. When this happens the shack is engulfed in this aroma. It is enough to wave the lost and weary towards more friendly dwellings. 

“Yes.” They nod solemnly. “It is better to sleep beneath the mangrove or in some chilly cave. Anything but the smelly, crumbling cottage.” 

“The roof is probably leaky anyways.” They say. “No sense in going in there if we will get rained on anyhow.”

And it is probably for the best because the bungalow is occupied anyways. So they, smart folks, make haste through the fog. And, believe me, it is always foggy in this part of the jungle. Mist is like grass, a second and puffier lawn for the witch who dwells within that weathered shack.  The witch who watches them shamble through the rising waters, pale as the fog itself. 

Every now and then when the moon is full and high, she creeps out of her dwelling to snatch roots and harvest vines. She plucks beetles and fireflies from logs and mosses and steals lichens from branches. Her basket teems with flowers; orchids, passion flowers, firelilies, the buds of tiger-monkey brush, and--on the odd occasion--a cocoa pods. 

Her wrinkled fingers are always brown with mud or green with grass stain. Sometimes they are sticky with sap or insect guts. 

From the ground she steals rocks both shiny and drab. She takes feather and old bone. 

And when her foraging is most fruitful she scrambles back into her lopsided, odorous shack. 

.oOo.

Azula isn’t one for reminiscing, it is pointless. She has no time for memories when the future is so muddled, abysmal, and as far as it can be from the life she had shaped and anticipated for herself. 

She isn’t one for stories either. Folklore, silly fiction--it is the superstitious nonsense of the peasant folk. There is no need for it, no room, in an intellectual space like the palace library. 

She is not in the palace library; she hasn’t been, not for a year or so now. She is about as far from the palace as she can be without having left Fire Nation territory. Azula huffs as she hacks away at another tangle of vines. Her palms are growing unbecomingly calloused and blistered. She gives it another heave and the tangle drops to the floor with a wet slosh, spraying her pants with sludge. 

She inhales sharply through her nose. She is half inclined to ignite the entirety of this accursed place. 

She wipes her brow with the back of her hand, cursing her own carelessness. Now her forehead shares the same grime as her hand. She is dirty, absolutely filthy. She is so disgusting that it makes her skin twitch and crawl and she smells like the jungle. Like mud and musk. 

Her clothes are warm and damp and wholly uncomfortable. Everything she owns has been soaked through and through, much of it ruined. Food has long since become scarce and any of today’s yields are solid and soggy--inedible. But water, she never gets enough water. It tastes of mineral and mud but it is her only option. She tries not to think of the worms and roaches that probably swim in it. The leeches that are likely trying to gorge on the exposed parts of her feet. 

She, not for the first time, wonders just how the hell she got here. How had everything in her life gone so perfectly wrong that she is now picking through mushrooms and lapping murky rainwater? How has she let herself slip so far that she is disheveled and dirtier than anyone living in Caldera City’s alleyways. 

Even if she knew her way back, she doesn’t think that she’d want to go. Not in such a pitiful, beastly state. 

How humiliating her homecoming will be when she musters up the will to go back. 

.oOo.

Aged fingers curl around the trunk of a tree. They tap on the trunk like miniature branches. She makes a few clicks with her tongue and the girl in the clearing looks in her direction. The woman hums to herself, she can already tell that this one has at least some brains in that head. 

She slips out from behind the tree, quick as a blur and silent as death in broad daylight. The girl might have caught a shifting of shadows, maybe--somehow--detected the flap of clothing. Her eyes are fixed on the where the old woman had been.

She is sharp, this one.

The old woman smiles. 

She studies her from a new vantage point. The chirp of crickets in synchrony with the chitter of flutterbats, a steady beat of tree frogs, and a cacophony of night rising avians mask the crack of a branch beneath her feet as she stalks closer still. 

From this proximity, she can sense hunger on the girl, can see it in her pretty eyes and her slight frame. She isn’t significantly gaunt yet, but the angles of her face are notably defined. 

She watches the girl stoop down, cup her hands, and bring water to her lips. Handful after handful, the girl has her fill of water and then some. The woman has seen this before; the hungry, so desperate that they fill themselves with water for the illusion of a full belly. It only takes the pangs away for so long before they come back in a different form. 

She has seen many wanderers stumbling about, confused and nauseous before toppling over and vomiting.  It is rather unsightly. She thinks of approaching the girl, of tapping her on the shoulder and telling her to search for her senses.

She has a feeling that the girl has already learned her lesson; just when the old woman thinks that she is going to overdo it, the girl rises and surveys the jungle around her. She rubs her hands over her face and when she pulls them away she looks twice as exhausted as before. 

Shivering and so terribly hungary, the poor thing plunges deeper into the jungle.

.oOo.

Azula slaps at her face; where the leeches hadn’t bothered, the mosquitos are making good work of her. Her arms and her neck are a collection of itchy bumps and scrapes. She is beginning to fear infection. She swallows and her lower lip quivers. She isn’t sure how much longer she can do this for. 

The wind and rain are picking up and she can taste lightning on her tongue. She is sure that the first flashes aren’t too far off.  She wraps her arms around her cramping middle. She isn’t sure if it is the usual hunger pangs or if the water was more dirty than usual. Either which way, she is achy and delicate. A state she can’t afford to be in with jaguar-leopards and feral mongoose-lizards on the prowl. She imagines that they are just as famished as she. 

She hears the snap of a branch and another chill verberates up and down her spine. It is a sensation like rotting and cool aloe juice but without the soothing properties. 

She knows that she is being tailed. The presence has been there for a few days now.

Her more primitive nature--a side of her that has been, to her dismay, steadily resurfacing--tells her to quicken her pace. To flee as far as she can. Just because she is prey, doesn’t mean that she has to act like it. She still has her fire, though weakened by hunger and a drenched body.

As surely as she had felt it, the presence retracts. 

She is more anxious than ever. 

She bats another curtain of ivy aside and stops for a breath. 

The moon is nearly full and as it breeches the canopy. A fine fog is rolling its way in with the stormclouds. Under the silvery  moonglow, she sees the outline of a small shack nestled just at the very edge of a particularly dense grove of palms and ferns. The rain is growing increasingly heavier and lightning cracks across the sky. Azula should really like to be under cover when the gales grow tempestuous.

Her hair is a tangled mess and her clothes are wet and muddy. There is no longer an inch of her that isn’t caked in mud and grime. And with her newfound likeness to them, suddenly she isn’t so above those peasant absurdities and her mother’s lowborn tales.

She carefully makes her way towards the bungalow. The storm shakes the thatched roof. 

Clack-clack-clackity-clack…

She could make her way through the fog, perhaps find lodgings somewhere that doesn’t smell so thickly musky. She could take shelter where there isn’t such a portent and inauspicious chill. She could but Azula would rather lie to herself instead. In her defense, there is more logic in fearing a storm than some intangible presence. 

It is more comforting to believe that the storm and the gnashing teeth of jaguar-leopards are the worst that the jungle has for her. Perhaps she wouldn’t have set foot on the porch had she caught sight of the figure standing between the trees and gone just sure as the lightning flash that had revealed it. Perhaps she wouldn’t have put her hand on the door if she caught a flicker of ghastly white hair. 

Before she can look into the shack, her bones snap and body locks.

Clack, clack, clack...

Chapter Text

Azula grits her teeth. It is the only thing she can do. The only thing aside from drawing in several panicked breaths as all of those low-class superstitions come flooding back in. But not a single one of them had made mention of being frozen in place by anything other than fear. Her fingers flex, but not on any command of her own.

“Hello.” Greets a raspy voice from behind. 

Azula itches to throw a look over her shoulder, but her head remains fixed in place, slightly tilted towards the sky. Raindrops splatter upon it without mercy and she shudders in discomfort. She blinks but it is useless in keeping the cool stormwater out of her eyes. It follows the natural slopes and lines of her face and leaks into her mouth. 

She supposes that she has been wanting to drink fresher water. 

“I didn’t lock your jaw. You can return my greeting.”

Azula snarls. “I’d like to return this greeting with a little more than words.” 

The woman chuckles. “I’m not the one doing the encroaching.” 

“This is a ratty, dilapidated dwelling. I had no reason to think that anyone still lived here.” She scoffs. “At any rate it is my right to take any lodging I’d like. Surely you know who I am.” But then, she doesn’t exactly suspect that news and politics extend this far out. Where vines thicken and bog waters rise, manners thin and modernity falls. 

Another chuckle. “Surely you know who I am.”

“I am Princess Azula.” It is more of a warning than a statement. 

She can hear the shake of the woman’s head by a clacking of beads and naturally polished stones. “Not here. There’s no authority here except the trees and…” The thunder rolls and the woman laughs. “No authority but the trees and the storms! The elements at their rawest. They should rule everywhere, don’t you think?” 

“I think that it would be wise to let me go.” She can always count on peasant ignorance, “father will see your little shack in flames…”

“Father won’t find you. Not out here.” The woman clicks her tongue. “Many folks get lost out here; weary soldiers, stray children, travelers gone astray. Doesn’t matter if their pockets are lined with diamonds or dirt, the jungle takes them all. Buries their bones for me to find. I like the ones that the moss and fungus find first.”

Azula shudders a second time, lightning casts a glow on the treetrunks. She thinks that she has spotted a snake. A different one than the one that stands behind her. The one that is no close enough for her to feel breath on her shoulder. 

She hears an abrupt clacking of bracelets and she is on her knees feeling the spongey, mite-eaten wood. “You’re shaking.” The woman comments. 

“I am cold.”

“Cold or chilled?”

She doesn’t give answer and that is answer enough. 

“What are you doing here, nosing around my home?”

“I was trying to get out of the rain.” Just like every other unsuspecting imbecile in mother’s tales. She inhales sharply—catching a whiff of stale bog water—there is no witch. No curious, wicked partial-woman with bone knives and magic herbs.  There is only a woman so far removed from society that its graces and standards are lost on her. 

A woman who, somehow has her body completely paralyzed. Azula can’t come up with anything, aside from a vicious spell, that could accomplish such a feat. “If you could unleash me, I would be on my way.” 

“What if I am interested? What if I’d like some company?”

“Find it with someone of your own status.”

The old woman comes to stand in front of her and looks her up and down. “I think that I have.” She howls with laughter at Azula’s clearly taken offense. The old woman lowers her hand and Azula crumples over. Her body goes limp as feeling slams back into it, faint tingles of control work their way back in and she flexes her fingers–this time of her own volition. “Come inside.”

“After you…! Why would I do that?” She is already soaked through and through, the purpose of seeking shelter has been as well and defeated as she. 

“Because you are hungry.” The woman shrugs. “And tired.”

Azula swallows. She is indeed starving and exhausted and tired of being feasted upon by insects. She gets to her feet. Her legs feel shakier and weaker than they had even earlier. She curses the old woman and her…whatever it is that she had done. 

Curses her but, against her better judgment, follows her into the rotting bungalow. She hadn’t realized how maddening and judgment clouding hunger could be. She has completely undermined the grip of desperation.

The wind whistles through cracks in the wall, it rattles the bungalow’s precarious foundations. Reassurance mingles in equal parts with a knowingness that the structure must have weathered decades worth of storms. Perhaps this one will be the one to finally collapse it. To bring the thatched roof down on her head along with battered shelves and rusty pots and pans. 

A steady drip drop pings off of a bucket resting upon the table. It is a fine thought if were it not for it begins just askew enough for the raindrops to soak in and moisten the table’s already damp wood regardless. 

Azula supposes that it is of very little consequence considering that she herself is drenched to the bone and perhaps deeper yet. Her clothing hangs heavy on her slight frame and her hair clings to the bare skin of her arms. She shivers and wanders deeper into the house, leaving in her wake a series of puddles and a creaking. Her feet seem to only find the loosest floorboards–they come up in a series of knocks and settle back into place. Or maybe it is that they are all loose.

A notably voluminous peel of thunder sends the pots and pans a-rattling. She thinks that if another of that volume should rumble over the shack that at least one of those pots will shake free from its hook and clatter to the floor. 

“Welcome, Princess Azula.” The woman mock bows. Azula cringes, momentarily forgetting that she had so brazenly offered her name. Her face reds, a fool she is. “Have a seat.”

“There are no chairs.”

“Anywhere is a chair if you sit upon it.” 

Azula sighs and the thunder roars. The wind screams. If she didn’t know better, she would say that it was the agonized and desperately lost wails of a traveler led astray. 

“You’re a firebender, get one going.” The old woman gestures to the most pathetic fireplace Azula has ever seen. “Can’t cook without a fire. And you can’t eat if I can’t cook.”

Azula scoffs. “What have you been doing to cook before I got here?”

The woman gives a toothy smile. “I light the fire myself!” She replies proudly. “But why would I do it know when you can just snap your fingers and make a spark.”

“It’s not that simple!” Azula finds herself absolutely startled and disgruntled by the woman’s lack of tact. “Firebending is an art. It isn’t for petty cooking…”

Azula is growing to hate that woman’s wheezing, yet somehow loud, cackle. “You firebenders and your uppity, pompous beliefs. You’re deep in a jungle now. No use for that here.”

Azula furrows her brows. “If you’re not a firebender then…”

“I’m a bloodbender.” She clears her throat. “Comes with waterbending. But I can only use it on a full moon.” She gestures to the window. Any and all moonlight is blotted out by a thick coverage of tempestuous clouds. Not a strand of silver breaks through, but Azula gets the point well enough.

“I’ve never heard of such an ability.” She can’t help herself. It is no matter; it is plenty clear that manners are forgone here anyhow. “The peasant lore is true then. You’re a witch.”

“And how many people have heard of blue fire?” She gestures to the now blazing hearth. “Is that witch fire?”

Azula bristles. “It isn’t…”

“Since being dragged off to this wretched country, I’ve heard plenty of stories about blue lights leading tradesmen off path.” The woman ducks under some of the lower hanging herbs that dangle from her ceiling and finds a dented pot. 

“The color of my fire is the product of hard work.” 

“And my bloodbending is a product of strife and survival.” She shoots Azula a dangerous glare. “I do what I need to do to survive. Am I going to have to survive you? Are you going to cause me strife like the rest of your people?”

So that is it; it is no witch that haunts the peasant-folk. It is a vengeful woman with an uncanny skill set and a distaste for firebenders. “How many Fire Nationals have you killed?”

“How many Fire Nationals have come to kill me?” She shrugs. “Sit down.” She hands her a bowl, steaming with…well, Azula doesn’t know what. “Sit down, eat, and don’t become one of them.”

Chapter Text

Her belly is full and her clothes are dry, she has a roof over head for the first time in months but Azula doesn’t sleep. Rather, the former princess finds herself staring at the ceiling, counting the raindrops that work their way in through the cracks. The constant ping of them against the tin bucket on the table is loathsome to her ears. 

She grows tired of counting raindrops and instead begins trying to name each different herb that hangs from the ceiling. She could name rosemary, jasmine, firelily, and lavender. But other than that, in spite of her extensive time in the jungle, she is woefully out of touch with the outdoors. 

Maybe she could have the old flutter-bat teach her a thing or two about identifying the plants. She’d rather not have another run in with the berries that had left her stomach cramping several days ago. 

The wind shakes the entirety of the bungalow. Each time, Azula tenses, wondering which gust will be the one to bring the wood down. The rumbles of the thunder are growing distant now. But not distant enough to stave off the rain. And not distant enough to not be a disturbance.

But none of this is the reason for her lost sleep. No, what keeps her eyes open is quite different. 

She can still feel it; the stiffness in her bones, the rigidity of her muscles and that tingling that had hummed through her blood. 

She peers over at the old woman on her cot. The water wench ought to hand that cot over to her for locking her bones up the way she had. Decidedly Azula won’t state this demand until the full moon fades. 

Really, she ought to sleep but her trust doesn’t extend that far. Bloodbending isn’t the only way to snuff a life. It would only take a well crafted blade or the right plant mixture, nevermind that the woman is snoring heavily.

Azula folds her arms over her chest and scowls. 

No matter how many times she works it over in her head, she can’t figure out what the woman’s intentions are. Why she hasn’t lashed out yet. Why a woman who had dealt her share of vengeance, hasn’t taken it in its most ultimate form. 

.oOo.

Hama hums to herself as she tidies the place.

Tidy, of course, is relative. 

She mops the last of the puddles away and puts the pots back in place. She supposes that a little dusting couldn’t hurt now that she has a guest. A high-born and overcritical one at that. 

Hama has known her for only a few hours and she has already deduced several things; most notably the girl is quite a stickler, stubborn, and fierce. She has that air about her. Equally as notably, she is–in a manner–quite clueless. Clever, yes, but haplessly clueless about the jungle she has been eloping in. 

Firebender through and through, she only begins to stir when the first morning rays fall upon her face. Hama thinks to jab her with her broomstick until she awakens. But princess Azula rises on her own. She rubs her eyes and absently tidies her little nest of blankets.

And then she grimaces. She holds her hands to her back and stretches. “This is horrible.” The disgruntled girl grumbles. 

Hama frowns. Spoiled, pampered thing she is. And after Hama had been so thoughtful to have provided those blankets and pillows so that she wouldn’t have to sleep directly on the ground. 

“You should have spared your cot. Any other soul in the Fire Nation would have recognized their princess and…”

“Not my princess.” Hama points out. “I am not Fire Nation.” 

Azula makes off as if to speak but promptly ceases to utter another word. 

“Help me make breakfast. I’ve got berries and flour for pancakes. Found a few eggs the other day too.” 

“I can’t cook.” Azula mumbles. 

Hama flashes her a toothy smile and Azula glups.

.oOo.

Azula frowns at her hands. Hama had sent her off to a nearby stream to clean them only to have them dirtied again by flour and berry juice. “I don’t like this.” 

“If you are going to survive out here, you’re going to have to learn to cook.” Hama replies without a scrap of sympathy. “Unless of course you’d like to try to fill yourself on dirty puddle water again.”

Azula tenses. “You saw that?”

“This is my part of the jungle, I see everything that happens in my part of the jungle.”

“I doubt that you see everything.” Azula prods at the dough in front of her. She tries to make her glances subtle as she mimics the old woman’s kneading. “You happen upon important things only by chance.”

“And you miss important things when you are staring right at them. Like this.” Without warning the woman curls her wrinkly fingers over Azula’s hands and takes her through the motions of kneading dough. 

“I thought that you said we were making pancakes.”

“I changed my mind. We’re making bread.”

“Isn’t that much more complicated than making pancakes.”

The old woman nods. “Significantly. Which is why we’re doing this first. If you can bake bread, then you can cook a pancake.” She declares. “Besides, I find bread to be more filling and you’re going to need to have a better meal for today.”

“Why’s that?” Azula asks, not entirely sure that she wants to know.

“We’re going to go foraging.” The woman answers. “We’ll be gathering herbs and mushrooms, maybe a few berries and acorns.” She cranes her neck to observe Azula’s work. “Very good, that should suffice.” 

“I don’t even know your name and you expect me to make some expedition out into the jungle to help you gather herbs?”

“My name is Hama.” She replies quickly. “Now we can forage together.” 

Azula sighs. That isn’t exactly what she was getting at. And yet, she doesn’t find herself wholly off put by the idea. It isn’t as though she wasn’t going to have to do some foraging on her own. At least with Hama she will have help and someone who knows where to find a wealth of food.

.oOo.

Hama watches the girl wipe sweat from her brow. There is a decent fog of gnats and other buzzing critters that have taken a shine to her. A wealth of dragonflies and tadpoles skim the surface of the nearby creek. 

Hama must admit that is pleasantly surprised to see the girl’s basket already teeming with mosses, mushrooms, and berries. What she lacks in cooking, she makes up for in foraging. She seems to have good eyes where Hama’s are beginning to fail. She watches the girl tug at a cashew tree, trying to pry the fruit from its branch. The fruit snaps free with such an abruptness that the former princess finds herself on the ground. 

Hama clicks her tongue, any thoughts of tormenting the poor thing are receding. Truth be told she had intended on giving the girl a wealth of petty annoyances before sending her on her way. And she might still, if the girl proves to be unpleasant company.

The girl stands back up and begins scanning the ground for other useful plants. 

One look at her and Hama can only feel pangs of sympathy. She is young. Young and quite far from home. Young and not yet hopelessly corrupted and corroded by Fire Nation propaganda and warmongering. 

There’s still a spark of innocence in those eyes. A certain curiosity that she hasn’t seen on a firebender in ages. “That’s a geode.” Hama mentions.

“I know what a geode is.” The girl mutters. 

“But do you know what kind of crystals those are?”

Azula turns the stone between her fingers. The right angles cause a glimmering glint. “Emerald.”

Hama shakes her head. “Just because it’s green, doesn’t make it an emerald. They’re jasper. A rare find. Hand it over.”

Azula tucks it protectively against her chest. “I found it!” 

The woman chuckles. She supposes that she will let the girl keep her little treasure, for the time being, it is the only one she has. 

Chapter Text

“Let me see it.”

Azula shakes her head.

“Let me see it!” Hama repeats. 

Azula shakes her head again, making a point of shielding her left arm. The old woman groans. “I just want to see it that’s all, I even poke at it.” Azula doesn’t believe her in the slightest. And she certainly doesn’t trust on old swamp biddy to treat her wounds. 

“Just one little peak.” Hama insists. “What do you think’ll hurt more?” She questions as she rummages through a few creaky wooden drawers. Azula hears clicks and clacks before the woman draws out a mortar and pestle. “Me or an infection? Let me see it.” 

Reluctantly, Azula offers her arm. She’d much prefer the royal physicians. The woman inhales and clicks her tongue. “Lucky girl.” She murmurs. “It’s only a little infected. If you’ll allow me to mash up an ointment for you and a special herbal tea remedy we can probably treat this before it gets worse.” 

Azula frowns but grumbles a soft, “fine.” 

“Wonderful, I’ve already got garlic and basil. We’ll need to go find some tyme and echinacea. A few other berries and herbs as well. But you’ll find the tyme and echinacea.”

“Echinacea?”

Hama nods. “You’ve probably heard it called the coneflower. Very easy to spot. It’s got bright pink-purple petals and has a seedpod that looks like a cone.”

“You’re going to make me find them? I am ”

“You are pampered and…”

Azula scoffs, she quite had it with the woman saying that. “I am not lazy. I’ve done more than most have for the war…” at this Hama seems to bristle. “I’ve survived this jungle for months, I’m perfectly capable.” What she would like is a break. 

Hama slaps a slip of parchment into your hand. “Well it’s good that you’re capable, because you’ll be finding everything on your own.” 

Azula blinks at it. “You said that you would…”

“You’re perfectly capable.” She folds her wrinkled arms across her chest. “You had no trouble yesterday.”

“Fine.” Azula replies through gritted teeth. And when she shuts the door behind her she thinks that she ought not come back. The old woman is aggravating and she shouldn’t be fraternizing with water peasants anyhow. But she doesn’t know how to make the ointment…

She looks at the list; nothing but names. No descriptors and no hints at all. Aside from the coneflower, she has no idea what sort of plants to bring home. She sighs, it is no trouble, she will just pluck and yank and bring a variety home. At least one or two things that she picks ought to be correct, she’ll let that loathsome woman sort that out. 

If she will…

Azula sneers, she isn’t sure what Hama is so pressed over. She swats her way through a cloud of gnats and picks herself a handful of echinacea and a small bouquet of various other flowers. Leaves and vines as well, she decides. She imagines that not everything on the list would be flowers. 

By afternoon she has a good collection but it had been more painstaking than she had anticipated. Painstaking, insect enduring, sunburing, and generally aggravating. And she isn’t even sure that she has gotten the right plants. She should drag the woman back to the capital and have her imprisoned…

.oOo.

Sundown is just beginning when the girl finally returns. Hama hates to admit that she had started to get worried. It isn’t as though the girl knows what the war had put her through. She hears the door open but she doesn’t look up from her project. She strings another bead upon the twain. She hears the shuffle of feet and a basket set down on the counter in front of her. Hama picks up another bead. 

And then another. The girl drums her fingers on the table. They are a soft shade of pink. Hama steals a quick peek at her face; the former princess looks frustrated–perhaps nearly to tears. She looks at her hands again, inspects them more closely. And yes indeed, they are bumpy and reddening. The very picture of ivy rash. She nearly asks, “just what have you gotten into, girl.” But she will let her speak for herself. 

Hama isn’t surprised that she doesn’t. Her lips don’t even move a twitch. And she is sure that, all cloaked up in her fire noble pride,  Azula is going to let the infection fester. It would sever her right, that warmongering beast…

.oOo.

Azula grits her teeth, her entire hand is swollen and tingly. Itchy and covered in a whole cluster of tiny blisters. She scratches rather furiously at them. It is quite an annoyance. But it is no matter, she is sure that it will fade by the morning like the rest of the bug bites she has acquired since entering this jungle.

It is well past dark and Hama still hasn’t spoken to her. 

She cooks her own meal and finds her place on that nest of blankets and pillows. 

And when she wakes the next morning, it is to a hefty amount of distress; the itching is unbearable now. It roused her very rudely from sleep well before daybreak and the tingles haven’t let up even slightly since. Now that sunlight finally filters in she can see the blisters on the fingers of her left hand too. She could swear that they have crept further down her arms. 

She bites the inside of her cheek. 

She wonders just how far it will spread. 

She has made too many eggs today. She knows that the blisters will spread far and fast when Hama refuses the meal that she so generously offers. 

She scowls at the woman, “fine, I didn’t want to cook for you anyhow.”

The third day is worse still. 

On that third day she finds that her face is now itchy. And with distress and regret, she recalls that she had rested that cheek on her blistered hand sometime during her sleep. 

She makes her way over to the fireplace. Hama looks up from her own meal and shakes her head. She is doing that annoying tongue clicking thing again. Azula turns her head up and prepares her meal. 

Any and all sense of dignity is stripped away when the infection calls her attention back to it. Her stomach is queasy all over again; she had been fretting so furiously over the rash that she had forgotten about the infection. 

That spot on her left arm is swollen now. Swollen and filled with a yellow-green. She grits her teeth. It is beginning to sting and burn. She will have to lance it somehow. She wonders if Hama has a needle. 

She doesn’t ask for permission, why should she? She scrambles through the woman’s belongings in search of one.

Curiously, Hama doesn’t stop her. Rather, she lets Azula snoop through her sewing kit and find what she is looking for. Her stomach drops when she realizes that, even if she did lance the wound, if she did it wrong then the infection would only spread to the open welts of the rash. Or perhaps her rashed fingers would spread that poison into the infection. 

Her lower lip trembles, her hands aren’t clean enough for her to be able to do this cleanly and safely. 

By nightfall the little stings feel like stabs and the itching has become a burning sensation. The blankets are like sandpaper on her skin. She can’t sleep at all. 

Azula whimpers to herself.

She still doesn’t ask for help.

Chapter Text

“Sit down.” Hama points to a little stool. Azula cringes. Lately the former princess has been looking like a kicked rabaroo. “Go on, girl! Sit!” She wags her bony finger. For a change, the girl doesn’t protest. Hama shuffles over to her. “I must admit, your stubbornness is impressive.” She tugs on a pair of gloves. “Let me see…all of that.” 

This time there is no hesitation, the girl practically thrusts her leaky, blistered arms at her. Hama cringes, it is much worse up close. Both of her arms are entirely red and raw. There is less space of un-blistered skin than there are afflicted portions.

And the infection, the catalyst for her strife, is nearly double the size it had been. It is so swollen that Hama is surprised that the girl isn’t weeping as openly as the welts. Not that her eyes aren’t teary. 

For the first time in ages, Hama’s tummy tickles with sympathy and perhaps a touch of regret. Perhaps it was over the top to leave the infection to fester for days. Perhaps it was a rather cruel lesson to let the ivy spread to her face. 

Granted she thinks that the girl will never forget to avoid scratching at ivy rashes. And she imagines that the girl won’t be so careless about which plants she touches. 

But the infection…

Hama sighs as she mashes the herbs and berries into a fine paste. 

Decidedly, she has been harsh in letting that get so bad. Harsh enough that she has decided that she won’t make the girl mash the herbs herself. It isn’t as though she can anyhow with her hands the way they are. 

“I’m going to need to gather more herbs. There are different ones required to treat poison ivy.” Hama speaks to her the first time since their squabble. “There’s also a lot more area that needs to be treated.”

Azula only nods. She mostly just bites her cheek, likely trying to keep from crying out or losing her composure completely. Hama finds herself sighing again; those firebenders and their need to repress ‘weakness’. She doesn’t understand it.

“Don’t worry I’ll gather them. If you’d like to come along, I can show you…”

Azula shakes her head. “I want to stay here.” She says quietly. 

Hama can’t say that she blames her. She probably wouldn’t retain any information anyhow, not when she is preoccupied with her arms. “I’ll lance the infection, cleanse the area, bandage it up, and then head out.” Hama informs. “When you are better we will take some time to learn about plants, and I’ll show you exactly which one is responsible for that.” 

.oOo.

Hama dabs a cloth at the infection and the areas around it. She winces when the cloth finds the infected area. Before finding the needle, Azula watches the old woman barricade portions of her rash closest to the infection.

“This should keep the infection out of the blisters.” She mentions. 

‘Should’ isn’t a mighty reassuring word but it is the best she has. 

“Now, I don’t have anything to numb this with so it’s going to…”

“It already hurts plenty.” Azula swallows. She grimaces at the sight of the needle as it comes closer. 

“You don’t have to watch.”

But her eyes are fixed on the angry, throbbing infection. And she has to make sure that the woman is doing what she is supposed to. The needle pierces her skin and she grits her teeth. And then Hama begins to squeeze. 

Her stomach flops and a nausea overtakes her. She thinks that she may very well throw up. She really ought to turn away. And yet her eyes are fixed on the mess that is her arm. Hama wipes it away and then resumes once more. 

She feels as though her arm is searing. She clutches the edge of her chair. This time there is blood in the mix.

Her head spins and her stomach lurches a second time. 

And her skin itches. 

She feels faint and woozy. 

“The worst of it is done.” Hama mentions as she cleans the area more fully. 

Azula nods. 

“Awfully quiet today, are we?”

Azula answers with more silence. 

Hama fixes a bandage in place to cover the ugly circle of newly drained infection. She presses her lips together. She really ought to stop staring at it. All around it, her skin twitches and tingles. It induces a desire to get up and pace. Somehow it feels better to pace, it helps her fend off the urges to scratch at her arms. 

“I will be back with the herbs as soon as I can be.”

.oOo.

The girl twiddles with her gemstone as Hama applies the paste. As soon as it touches her skin, cool and lumpy, her nose crinkles. She is still completely untalkative and Hama isn’t sure if it is a symptom of stress and pain or resentment. 

She seems to be wholly invested in the glimmer and glint of that geode. Hama paints the paste over her arms. “This should soothe the itching as well as help clear the rash.” 

“Okay.” It is the first thing that she has said since the morning. She closes her fist around the gemstone and eyes her arms.

“Tilt your head up so I can apply it to your cheek.”

The former princess holds her head high but without a hint of haughty. Hama switches out her gloves before cupping Azula’s chin and smearing the herbal mixture across her cheek. She releases the girl’s face and for the longest time the firebender sits there staring at the swollen hands she has clasped in her lap. 

“Next time when someone tries to help you, you take that help with gratitude and you help them help you. I didn’t have to do any of this.” She gestures to the mortar and pestle and to the bandages on her arms. “I could have left you to whatever infection had in store for you.” 

Azula shifts in her chair with a perfect grimace pinching her facial features. 

“You’re not a kind girl but the jungle is less so. I’m an embittered old woman but the jungle has a fury older than these bones. You ought to respect it.”

Azula’s fingers bunch around the fabric of her pants. “I haven’t…”

“Maybe not purposely.” Hama, although she doesn’t exactly believe it, grants leeway. “You’re careless with the jungle and believe me, it doesn’t care about you.”

Azula shrugs, “not many things do.” And Hama can no longer find that innocence in her eyes. It has been driven out by something more haunted. Something hollow. 

It is a familiar sort of vacancy. A guarded sort of emptiness. 

And there is another thing there. A thing that is the very opposite of innocence; a thing that, in some sense, ages her to Hama’s own years. 

A thing that can only be created by the war. 

Chapter Text

“Let’s get you to bed.” Hama mutters. She wishes that she hadn’t seen that thing. That somber knowingness in the girl’s eyes. It is dangerous business to get attached to and sympathize with a Fire National. Let alone one of status. 

Let alone one that had worn a crown. 

Hama scolds herself as she leads the girl to the bed. 

“Where are you going to sleep?” Azula asks. 

Hama gestures to a new pile of blankets. “It isn’t good for my bones but I’ll survive the night. I had to get rid of your old blankets so the ivy won’t spread.” She sighs to herself. She doesn’t make a habit of making her way back to the nearest village, she likes to think herself self-sufficient. But taking in this girl is more than a challenge. She will need new bedding faster than she can sew it. Spirits, did she hate throwing out those pillows and blankets. She supposes that she could take them to the river for a wash but they are ratty old things anyhow. Ratty and not worth the effort of toiling over. 

She watches the girl flop onto the bed. She nuzzles her unafflicted cheek against the pillow.  She is asleep almost as soon as she meets the mattress. The poor thing hasn’t had good sleep since she arrived, Hama wagers. She pulls the blankets over Azula’s shoulders and makes her way over to her makeshift mattress.

The girl best not wake up and declare that no one has ever cared for her. 

.oOo.

She isn’t awake at the break of morning as she usually is and for a moment Hama is alarmed. She does look rather still…

But then the girl stirs and Hama gives a little sigh. She supposes she shouldn’t be too worried, the girl hasn’t even got a fever. A lucky thing too considering how long that infection had sat.

She shuffles over to one of several potted succulents and digs into the dirt until she sees a little gold glint. She plucks several coins from their hiding places. She presses her lips firmly together. Four coins isn’t nearly enough to get new bedding, let alone a second cot. 

There is, of course, one other option. She spares Azula a glance. The former princess isn’t going to like it. Not one bit. But where safety and necessity are concerned, desire is a luxury to be sacrificed. 

The girl may have to part ways with her geode after all. 

She just hopes that Azula won’t make a mighty fuss over it. With her limbs so heavily afflicted and her sleep so diminished, Hama can’t imagine that she will have much fuss in her. 

Hama should have never underestimated the raw and unyielding passion of the firebenders. She doesn’t know how she had forgotten about it. 

.oOo.

Azula only just barely stops herself from rubbing her eyes. Instead she stretches her arms. They are mercifully not itchy this morning and much of the burning has subsided. At the very least, the worst of it is gone. She brushes her fingers over the rash. 

“Stop that!” Hama scolds from across the room. “Leave that rash alone. We have to apply more paste anyhow.” She grumbles.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Azula mutters to herself. But the old biddy goes rigid. Apparently her aged ears are still quite sharp.

“I’ll tell you what to do and you’ll listen, girl!” She snaps. “You’ll listen because if you don’t you’ll have yourself another infection and this time I won’t help you fix it.” Just when Azula thinks that she is finished with her rant, she carries on with it. “You Fire Nationals think that everything bends to you the way your fire bends. You all think that you’re smarter than us ‘uncultured’, ‘uncivilized’ tribespeople. Well then tell me about this jungle? Tell me about each and every plan. Tell me…”

Azula groans and flops back onto the cot. At least when uncle is monologueing it is boringly calm. Hama is energetic and animated in the most exhausting way.

“Are you listening to me, girl!”

Azula grits her teeth. “Yes, you were asking if I could tell you about each and every plant.”

“Yes! Yes, I was asking you that several sentences ago. No respect! I thought that Fire Nationals value respect and…”

“Where it’s earned we…”

Hama’s eyes narrow and Azula’s tummy tickles. “Earned?” She scoffs. “And how might I earn your respect?” She clasps her boney hands behind her back and a wicked grin lights her face. “Through ruthlessness? Is that what you want? I can withhold your herbal ointment. I don’t have to go out and make you another bowl of it. Fire Nationals only respect brutality.”

“That’s not true.” Azula murmurs. Although she supposes that is the general consensus of a good handful. Father, Zhao, many of the other generals, she supposes. 

“Then what is true? Because I’ve had a very long stay in the Fire Nation prison system and I’ve found that the people at the very top are the most merciless. The most respected guards did the most unspeakable things to myself and my people.”

“We respect intellect.” Azula replies. “Intellect, wit, poise, and composure.” 

“Then you haven’t earned my respect.” 

Azula blinks, mouth slightly agape. “How dare…? You can’t say that to me. I…” 

“Can’t tell the difference between maple leaves and poison ivy.” Hama grumbles. “And your people call mine uncivilized.”

She almost wants to shout that she is indeed uncivilized. That she is some dirty old hag living in a shack. 

Hama speaks up first. “But put a firebender and an earthbender alone in a swamp and see who fares better. Better yet, put a firebender and a waterbender in the wilderness and see what happens. The firebenders slay each other to conserve resources. The waterbenders work together to find some.” She pauses. “The firebenders wander aimlessly and uselessly around the jungle, the waterbenders make themselves a house and learn from the land. Tell me, girl, between you and I…who is more uncivilized?”

.oOo.

“Get up.” Hama grumbles. The girl doesn’t move. “Get up.” She repeats. Azula remains in place. And Hama’s patience is wearing thin. The girl pushes for tough love but falters when she gets it. “Have I earned your respect now?”  Based upon that pitiful look, she would say that a fire general would be proud of her lashing tongue. 

The former princess traces her fingers over her raw skin. Hama could kill her. “You think that this is funny?”

“What are you talking about?” Azula murmurs. Her fingers press deeper into her arm. 

“I tell you to stop touching that and…” and her fingers press deeper yet. “And…” Hama trails off. It isn’t defiance, she realizes. Not defiance, but a nervous gesture. “Get up.” She says again. This time the girl gets to her feet. She swipes her geode from the nightstand and slips it into her pocket. 

She wanders over to the table and Hama watches her massage the ointment onto her arms. 

“I’m going to go out and collect more herbs…”

“I can do it myself.” Azula mumbles. 

“Last time you did it yourself…” 

“Tell me what I’m looking for and I can do it myself.” 

“You’re not fully healed yet. Not even close…”

“Give me the list and a description and I can do it myself!” She insists. 

Hama sighs. “It’s alright…”

.oOo.

Azula grits her teeth. She thinks that she might be rubbing the ointment in a little too hard. She does still have the first list that Hama gave her tucked into her pocket. She thinks that she remembers what at least a few of the herbs Hama brought back look like. She certainly knows what echinacea looks like now.  And she most definitely knows what plant to avoid…she thinks that she does. 

Hama had promised that she would shower her the next time that they went out. 

Azula bites the inside of her cheek. It is a type of ivy. She will just avoid touching any sort of ivy that she comes by. She inhales, she can do this herself. She doesn’t need help. She is perfectly capable…

Azula finishes applying the ointment. She watches Hama stride away from the shack. She has given the old flutterbat too much control over her. She only has the ability to withhold the ointment because she has been giving it to her. She has been relying on the woman too much and there is a price to pay. She thinks that she understands now, exactly what father had meant in telling her to reject favors. To accept them is to invite domination…

She unfolds the list Hama had given her. There aren’t too many things on it. She had watched Hama closely enough to know how each thing needs to be crushed and blended. She supposes that she can make a pestle from any old rock. And she can blast a hole in another to shape a mortar…

She slips off of the stool and hustles to the door, she gives the grounds a quick scan. Hama is well and out of sight. She hustles off of the porch and back into the wilds of the jungle. She can do this herself. She is intelligent, cultured, respectable. She can survive on her own.

Chapter Text

“Alright, girl!” Hama declares upon stepping into her house. “I have the herbs gathered and I’ve thought about a few things. I think that we have a lot to talk…” She drops her basket onto the tabletop. 

The girl is not resting on the bed, neither is she sitting on the stool nor before the fireplace. Hama’s stomach sinks. The firebender isn’t in the garden either. And there is scarcely any daylight left to go off looking for her. 

“Well then let her go off on her own.” Hama says aloud to herself. “Let her go off and try to…” to do exactly what Hama had taunted her over not doing.  Firebenders and their spirit forsaken pride! “It serves her well then.” Hama insists to herself. 

But each time she tries to take comfort or joy in picturing the former princess alone in the jungle, her belly tightens with unease. 

“Serves her well.” Hama repeats. 

She pictures her again. Pictures that rash and that infection. She is still in need of the oral herbal remedy to keep the infection at bay. Hama wonders if Azula even knows it or if the firebender is under the impression that applying the ointment is enough. Has she even made herself another batch of it?

“Serves her right for running off.”

But what if she hasn’t run off at all? What if she had gone off in search of the herbs? What if she had collected them to her satisfaction and was heading back to boast of it only to find that she has lost direction? 

What if she had come by other trouble; what if the infection and rash had been too much for her to endure on her own? It has significantly weakened her. 

Hama rubs her hands over her face. The girl isn’t fit to be off on her own foraging. Let alone trying to survive. “So what?” Hama asks aloud. So what, it was her decision. 

One that she had, undoubtedly, helped her make.

And why should she care anyhow? She should be happy that the girl is gone, that she has her home to herself again. 

So why isn’t she?

.oOo. 

Azula huffs, she is exhausted through and through. Exhausted and dizzy but she still has to find wood for a fire. Wood for a fire and something to cook over it. But her hands are so sore. Sore and bleeding, freshly reopened after hours of pulling at weeds and floras. She blinks a few tears from her eyes. 

She can do this.

She has to do this.

She has survived a lot worse…

She has survived the war so she can survive this. Her hands are aching and throbbing but she collects her firewood. They are tingling but she lights her fire and with a bolt of lightning she has herself–unappetizing as it is–a toad-squirrel to cook.

Her hands cramp and beg for respite but she grinds the herbs and makes herself an ointment. And then she moves to the lake to clean her hands the way Hama had before applying the ointment. The water must be clean, if it wasn’t there wouldn’t be so many mangroves soaking it in. There wouldn’t be any animals taking drinks. 

The bugs are driving her mad, they seem to love her infected blood. And fine, they can take it, they can perish slowly just the way she is. At least the fire seems to keep them at bay as she begins applying the ointment and then cooking her pathetic meal. 

She can do this on her own…

.oOo. 

Hama still looks for the girl upon waking. She’d only been there for a short frame of time and already it is strange to not have her here. To not hear her sleepy murmurs. Hama grits her teeth, she tells herself that this is a great thing. That the girl was a burden and that she should be happy to return to normalcy. And more thankful yet that the world is one Fire Nation royal shorter. 

She has her breakfast and cleans her dishes. And in record time. She grins to herself; she has plenty of time to go bone hunting! She dresses herself in a shift for the occasion and retrieves her basket. And off she ventures towards her favorite spot. 

What she finds there isn’t a fine addition or two to her collection.

No, not even close.

What she finds is a slumbering Fire National.

The girl hadn’t made it far at all. She is still on what Hama has deemed to be her propertyline. Granted, she has taken a generous share of land for herself and Azula is on the very edge of it several miles out. 

She must admit, the girl has made herself a rather formidable camp for the handful of hours that she had put into it. She has a fire and shelter. A flimsy one, one that wouldn’t withstand a stormy, but a shelter no less.  It is crafted from several fair-sized branches propped up against a boulder. A sturdy breeze blows one of them over and the girl jolts awake. She gives a quick survey of her surroundings and her tired eyes fall upon Hama. 

“It’s time to stop playing games and come back…”

“It’s not a game.” Azula scoffs. But the remark is missing its usual bite. Hama can see that much in her eyes. She knows exactly what she is risking right now.

“Follow me back to my home and we’ll finish tending to your arms.”

“I’ve been tending to them. I don’t need help.” Azula mumbles. 

“You do need help.” Hama gestures to her hands. Though her arms are well managed, her hands are a nightmare. They are worse off than they had been. “Look at that.” 

The princess does and Hama doesn’t miss the way that the color drains from her face. 

“I can handle myself.” She insists in spite of it. 

“You’re going to get yourself killed.” 

“Better dead than at someone else’s mercy.” 

Hama flinches. This she can understand quite perfectly. She cringes; is that what she is to the girl. A captor. No better than those brutal fire soldiers who had tormented her. No matter what is in the blood, fire or water, there is a value put into freedom. A desire to die free rather than live chained.

“The only mercy you're at right now is the mercy of this jungle and it has none.” Hama replies. 

“The jungle won’t brag when it kills me.”

Hama chuckles. “Oh but it will. It will break you and then when those pretty gold eyes of yours dim it will eat the flesh off of your bones and burrow between your ribs. It’ll conquer you in life and then thrive on your remains. Because your body will belong to the jungle long after you're dead–a nice little trophy for its collection.” She pauses. “And mine, I enjoy scavenging bones. In fact this is where I tend to find the most bones.” 

The princess seems to go rigid. “Then I won’t die.” 

“You won’t have a choice.”

Azula sneers. “I do have a choice. I’d be dead already if I didn’t.” 

“You do have a choice.” Hama agrees. “Come back with me.” 

Azula shakes her head. “I am self-sufficient. I’ve already figured out which herbs to use…”

“Have you figured out which plant has caused all of this in the first place?” Hama quirks a brow.

“I will eventually.” 

“How so?”

She clears her throat. “Patch testing.”

“Patch testing?”

“I’ll brush my pinky over several plants and see which one brings the rash. When it appears I will cleanse it, apply the ointment, and avoid it in the future.” 

“What about the deadlier plants, how will you test those?” 

“I’ll stick to the plants that I am familiar with.” Azula replies. “I don’t need help.” 

Hama sighs. This girl is a difficult one. Difficult and stubborn. She has a very special type of resilience. A type that Hama is all too familiar with. It is the resilience and stubbornness of self-preservation. Hama should have seen it on her the minute she looked into those eyes. It is deadly when dashed with that Fire Nation pride. 

Hama supposes that she will give another inch. But only because the girl has, wittingly or not, already punished herself enough. She sighs. “I suppose that I was wrong.”

“Wrong?” Azula quirks a brow.

“You’ve got a sharp mind. There are some things you need to learn about this jungle if you want to hold your own in it, but you’ve had enough sense to make it on your own this long.”

Azula sneers. “It’s been several hours, that’s not long.”

“When you’ve got wounds like that, it’s an eternity. Your effort is commendable.” Hama catches the straightening of her posture, the defiant lift of her chin. “Now stop messing around, and get back to the house before the jungle loses its patience.” 

“Are you the jungle?”

“I am Hama. I lost my patience yesterday.”

Chapter Text

The princess is back to being untalkative. Responding mostly with little gestures and head nods as Hama bandages her arms and hands up again. She seems to stare at them for a very long time. And then for the first time in hours she speaks, “how am I supposed to do anything with these?” She holds up hands that are so heavily bandaged she can’t even flex them.

“You aren’t.” Hama grumbles. She holds out a small jar full of pebbles and wood fragments. She gives it a shake. “All of these came out of your hands. They’re also infected now, by the way.” The woman tsks. Azula’s face pales considerably. “What you’re going to do is lay down and rest.”

“But…” she sputters. “You said that you were going to show me the poison ivy. You said that you’d teach me about the plants!”

“You aren’t well enough to…”

“I still have perfectly functioning eyes and ears, that’s all I need.” 

“You also need good health if you’re going to be venturing into the jungle.” Hama replies. Azula opens her mouth but this time she doesn’t let her get a word in. “You’ve done a good number on yourself. You’ve got the look of a fever.”

“Wh-what does that mean?”

Hama opens her mouth but the reply that first comes to mind isn’t the one that she gives. “It means that you’re going to rest.”

“And rely on you to take care of me?” She mutters. 

“No debts attached.” She assures. 

Azula sniffs. “I can pay a debt…”

Hama sighs. “No…remarks about your capabilities attached either.”  This seems to placate the girl. She rubs her lips and leans back onto the flimsy mattress.

.oOo.

Azula shakes.  She is cold and terribly hot all at once. She rolls onto her side and then back onto her stomach and then onto her side again. No matter which angle and position she tries, the ache and discomfort remains. Not a single position alleviates it even slightly. 

And her arms tingle painfully. She supposes that it is slightly less painful to lay on her back but she had never–even at her healthiest–been able to sleep on her back. So once again she is on her stomach. At least here some of the pressure is taken off of her arms. 

But the blankets are nothing like the ones at the palace. They are scratchy and they only irritate her arms more. At any rate, she is sweating profusely so she casts the blanket aside and bunches in on herself, trying to suppress a whimper. 

Hama already thinks her weak as it is. Not that she should care what some old Water Tribe peasant thinks.

Apparently her constant stirring is more than enough. The woman is hovering over her. And then she feels a rough, wrinkled hand pushing back her tangled hair and pressing against her forehead. The shakes her head.

She says nothing at all. 

Azula’s stomach plummets. 

Has the woman just deemed her a lost cause? Has she gotten herself good and killed? Slowly but steadily is she slipping away?

And suddenly she doesn’t want to sleep anyways. She thinks that if she closes them that they might remain that way. 

.oOo.

Hama grits her teeth. It is exactly what she had dreaded. The girl has gone septic. 

She wishes that she didn’t feel at least a small glint of satisfaction for it. She had played one of those petty Fire Nation games and she had found defeat in her victory. They all get so brazen and bold and just when they begin to consider themselves invincible they take their mighty crumbling. 

And really there is nothing more satisfying to watch. 

But this one, in spite of everything, is making it significantly less satisfying. She bunches in on herself, her knees are held so tightly to her chest that Hama can see the strain of her biceps. Her teeth a clenched and her entire face is contorted in discomfort. 

Whatever the folks in her old village say of she and her bloodbending, she hasn’t lost her humanity just yet. She wanders over to the girl’s bedside. “I am going to take a trip to the nearest village…”

Azula shakes her head. “Don’t leave me.” She requests very quietly.

Hama tries to lighten the mood at least somewhat. “See now I know that you’re in bad shape.” The girl doesn’t laugh, she hadn’t expected her to. “This is beyond what my herbal remedies can treat. There is a village a few days out that I go to when I’m in dire need. There are other waterbenders there, one is a healer.”

“Do I have a few days?”

“I’d wager so.”

“But a few days for the average person is a few extra for a creaky old lady. Do I have that kind of time?”

Hama blinks. “I can walk as fast as the best of the younger folks! You have plenty of time!”

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re coherent.” Coherent and as full of insults as ever. 

“In my rucksack I have a pouch of coins…”

“I am good friends with the healer.” She just hopes that, after everything she’s put his village through, that their friendship remains. “I don’t need your coins, girl. I need you to do, for once, what I’m about to tell you to do.” She pulls out her mortar and pestle and begins to mash and grind. “I am making you a good supply of ointment and your oral remedy. You ingest the remedy thrice daily–with each meal if that’ll help you remember. You cleanse the wounds with this…” she riffles through her cabinets and pulls down a large jar of epsom salt infused water. “You apply the ointment. Do this every time you change your bandages. When you notice that the bandages are getting dirty with blood and fluid, change them. You’ll slow the healing process even more if you leave them on for too long.”

She empties the oral mixture into a seperate cup and then begins mixing the ointment. “I’ll switch them out for you once more before I go. Do your best until I get back. Understood.”

Azula nods. 

“I’ll also make you a tea.” She takes a moment to pluck a recipe from the drawer nearest the fireplace. “I’ll leave the herbs you need to make it on the mantle. Familiarize yourself with it. This tea won’t help the infection but it will soothe the fever somewhat.”

Azula nods again. “Peppermint, right? I know how to make it. Uncle used to make it for Zuzu and I when we got sick.”

Hama smiles. “Yes, peppermint.” That saves her at least some trouble. “Make yourself a cup to go with your meals.”

Another nod. 

She is sitting up now. Sitting up and rubbing her eyes. 

And for some reason Hama finds that hatred is flaring up; the girl is rather respectful and agreeable when she wants something. Never when she is in good health. Oh no…never in good health. When she has the strength to be as horrible as she can be, she gives it a good try. And when her power and influence wanes… 

The town is decently far.

Perhaps she shouldn’t trouble herself with this.

She has no desire to make herself a servant of the Fire Nation.

She doesn’t quite catch whatever the girl mumbles. “Speak up.” 

Azula clears her throat. “Thank you.”

Hama clears her throat, “I shouldn’t be doing this, you know.” She takes the firebender’s hand anyhow. It is hot even for that of a Fire National. She carefully unravels the bandages. “Not with the way you talk to me. They way your people treat me.”

Azula seems to think for a moment. “I haven’t said anything at all.”

Hama shakes her head with a sad chuckle. “You don’t even realize…but then I’ve never met a firebender who did.” 

.oOo.

Azula frowns, brows furrowed. She supposes that this is nothing new. She still can’t figure out why Chan had made such a hasty retreat so long ago. And now the old woman is implying that she is a rude person. 

She turns it over in her mind. But her mind is so bogged down by fever and pain, it is hard to think, hard to even remember what she’d said a few days ago. She guesses that she has a few days to figure it out.

“Then why bother? Why go through the trouble? Why not leave me to die? No one would know, they’d think that it was all the jungle’s doing. And technically it is.” Azula gives an absent half shrug. 

“I should.” Hama agrees. 

“But?”

“You’re a child.”

“I am not a child.” Azula scoffs. 

“Well you certainly aren’t grown.” Hama replies. “You proved that when you took your trip into the jungle.” 

Her stomach flutters and her cheeks tingle with embarrassment. “I was trying to…”

“Whatever you were trying to do, what you accomplished was this.” She sets Azula’s freshly bandaged arm down and takes the other. 

But she thinks that she has accomplished what she had set out to achieve as well. The woman has already told her that she is intelligent and capable. Capable until she rendered herself completely incapable. She fends off an urge to pout. 

To think that she used to attend war meetings with the most seasoned generals…

“You argue with me even when I’m trying to help you.”

“You say disagreeable things.”

Hama pinches the bridge of her nose. “You can’t disagree with facts. Is a teenager an adult?”

“Is a teenager a child?”

This time when the woman laughs it doesn’t sound so bitter. “Your arms are set. Remember to change the bandages while I’m gone.” 

“You are coming back, right?” 

“This is my house, of course I am coming back.”

“Before I die, I mean.” Azula grumbles. 

“I’d rather not have to worry about dragging a body out of my house. The smell is awful anyways, especially under a Fire Nation sun in a humid jungle. I’ll be back relatively soon. In the meantime, don’t you do anything to speed up your condition.”

“I’ll be fine.” She is perfectly capable. 

Agni, she hopes that she is perfectly capable.

Chapter Text

She finds herself reluctant to shut the door behind her. She takes once more glance back at the firebender wrapped heavily under layers of blankets. She shouldn’t have antagonized the child knowing how important dignity is to Fire Nationals. Knowing how important pride is to teenagers . 

But then, the girl shouldn’t have been–and shouldn’t continue to be–so petulant and impulsive.

It is too late for should have’s. If she thinks too much on those it will breed more of them. So she closes the door and makes her way towards her old village. Maybe this time around she’ll take a moment to learn its name. 

.oOo.

Azula hadn’t realized that such a small shack could be so lonely. It leaves her with a lot of time to think. Not that she has been doing much of that–nothing of substance anyhow. Fever and pain keeps her thoughts from focus. Mostly her mind is on mortality. 

She always had thought that she’d die young. 

She assumed that the war would do it, but somehow she had never truly considered the possibility. Death was only slightly above just a vague concept. A thing that very well could have happened but she had always thought herself powerful enough to not fear it. Not in the way that other soldiers did. 

And when she did think of death it was always glorious and bold. Heroic and honorable. And it came in a quick flash or a fatal blaze.

It wasn’t foul and malodorous. It wasn’t slow and degrading. 

It wasn’t this. 

It wasn’t supposed to be her hunching over and losing anything that she tried to put in her stomach. It wasn’t supposed to be her on the floor with a pounding head and clammy skin. 

She wasn’t supposed to be trembling and crying to herself. She wasn’t even supposed to have time to think about death, let alone contemplate it for two days, moving into three. 

She only barely remembers to switch her bandages and apply the paste. She only barely remembers to fix herself the tea and take her herbal medication. These things help her for perhaps an hour or two. 

And in those two hours she finds herself contemplating more than just her mortality. In those hours she finds herself going over ever stupid, impulsive, ridiculous thing that led her to this. 

All in all she can only deduce that Hama had been right about her. 

She is a child. 

Only a child would look at an infection like hers and run off to prove a pointless point. And to someone who isn’t even of status to judge her. To someone whose opinion doesn’t matter…

But somehow it does. 

Somehow she finds herself craving the woman’s praise as much as she’d latched onto father’s. 

And her aching mind turns again and she thinks further back. To the exchange that led her to brushing up with poison ivy. What had she said that had made the woman so prickly? Waterbenders and airbenders are all too sensitive. 

She huddles herself in front of the fireplace and inhales. She holds her fingers to the long within.

Her fire is growing weak.

She is growing weak.

By the time her cooking fire is going, her head is spinning and her vision is fuzzy. But, Agni, she is so hungry. This time she doesn’t eat her stew whole. She mashes chunks of poorly chopped potatoes and carrots into something of a mush. The texture is absolutely miserable as it slides down her throat. But at least she keeps it down this time. 

She takes a sip of her tea and then she flops onto the floor. She is too fatigued to inch her way back to the bed. From her place on the creaky wood she tries to nap, to close her eyes for just a moment.

She lays there and stares at the ceiling, at those little herb pouches that dangle from the unstable rafters, swishing in the breeze. It smells as lovely as her arms smell of infection. And it finally comes to her–the thing that she had said.

The old woman had stiffened when she had mentioned that she had been a soldier.

The woman had mentioned something or another about having been captured and imprisoned by soldiers…

Azula bunches herself up and shivers.

There is more to it she thinks, more things that she had said.

Her head hurts so much. She doesn’t want to think anymore.

.oOo.

Ultimately, Hama decides that it is better to not learn the name of the village. It scorns her so heavily that she’d rather not grow attached to it. And most attachments start with a name. That is why she had never bothered to name her inn. 

Everyone had just called it ‘Hama’s Inn’. And that was perfectly fine by her.

It hadn’t had much business in its prime. 

It is fully vacant now. 

Vacant in spite of the posters plastered to it that boast of its availability to buy. And the price is astoundingly affordable. But no one wants to buy a forlorn ‘ghost’ house. No one wants to buy a house that had once belonged to the village terror. Not even for such a generous pricel. A steal for a lower born Fire National…or for a fire princess who doesn’t have many options or coins left to give away. Yes, Hama decides, that is what will be done; if the girl makes it through her fever and infection she will take her to this village and point her towards the for sale poster.

She can cleanse her hands of the girl without condemning her to die at the mercy of the jungle. And from there, what happens to her is no problem of Hama’s. 

The old woman nods to herself, satisfied with her plan.

And with it in mind she scuttles her way down the path and deeper into the village. Kohan’s tavern isn’t too far from her inn. 

She hopes that they have been treating him well in her absence, he doesn’t pass for a Fire National as well has she.

But then he has always been the sort to keep his head down. He had always loved and appreciated what he insisted were ‘the good parts of the Fire Nation’. She had always thought her friend to be a fool. 

She stands outside of the tavern for a good while, watching the wood sign flap in the wind. The painted calligraphy has faded with age and weather. But she knows it by heart; Flamin’ Fish Tavern; The most fiery water tribe cuisine!

She can’t particularly argue with the slogan. It is the most bastardized version of her favorite traditional foods. She tastes more fire than water in its dishes. She shakes her head, if they’d hired her instead of Kohan, they’d know what real Water Tribe food tastes like.

She takes a breath before finally entering the tavern.

Chapter Text

Kohan looks up from the bar counter that he is wiping down. His eyes narrow into a squint. “Hama, is that you.”

She holds a finger to her lips. “Don’t make a scene of it.” She hushes. “They don’t like me the way they like you.”

“I didn’t whisk people away, never to be seen and heard from again.”

“Yes, you let them…” She holds her tongue. “I am not here to discuss rights and wrongs. I am here because I need healing that is beyond what I can do with my herbs.”

“Why should I do that, Hama?” Kohan asks. “After what you did to my family.”

“Family?” She makes a sound, something like a snort, in the back of her throat. “I was your family, myself and the rest of our tribe. Those people…”

“Gave me a job and a home.” He replies.

“After they put you in a prison cell.”

“ They didn’t put me in a cell. They were just a couple of impoverished folks who came by just enough money to…”

Hama holds up a silencing hand. “You should help me because the help isn’t for me. There’s a girl, a Fire Nation girl–if that makes a difference to you. She’s dying, perhaps. At best she might lose a hand by the time we get back.” 

“You’re helping a firebender?” He furrows his bald brows.

Hama nods.

“I didn’t expect that.” His voice softens. She thinks that she can hear a smile.

“Don’t get the wrong idea. I didn’t expect it either.” She pauses. “As soon as she’s better she’s leaving. I’ll bring her here, she’ll buy my old inn, and maybe she can work here depending on how many hands she has left.” 

“How bad is the infection?”

“It was septic when I left three days ago.” 

Kohan grimaces. 

“Your…family,” she hisses the word, “wouldn’t happen to have a carriage or a mongoose-lizard available by chance, would they?

.oOo.

Azula bites her lower lip, tears burning in her eyes.

It isn’t supposed to look like that…

Hands aren’t supposed to look like that. 

They aren’t supposed to be that puffy. They aren’t supposed to be that color. Fingers aren’t supposed to be black.

And breathing is supposed to be easy. 

Her abdomen shouldn’t be cramping as though she is having a second monthly cycle but infinitely more painful. 

Her ankles are swollen too. She thinks that her whole body is swelling. She can’t tell–her head is so foggy. She also can’t tell if her chest is tight with fear or illness. She brings one hand to her breast but her fingers won’t close. They are useless. 

Azula swallows, the woman isn’t going to be back in time. Likely she has abandoned her for her foolishness and off-handed remarks. She finds herself short of breath, though she hasn’t done anything laborious. 

She hasn’t even gotten up to go to the bathroom. Come to think of it, she hasn’t had the urge…

Agni, she is dying. 

She is going to die.

And she is going to die without dignity. 

She is going to die alone–she anticipated that though. 

.oOo.

They rode through the night, it is hard on Hama, terribly so. And old biddy like her ought not to stay up so dreadfully late. But, with the help of the mongoose-lizard it had shaved a day off of their travel time. 

One critical day. 

The princess’ breathing is shallow when they find her. And she doesn’t utter a single word. Not even when Kohan makes his unfortunate declaration. 

“Are you certain?” Hama asks. 

And he nods again. He picks up Azula’s right hand and soaks it in a bowl of water. A spreads a healthy film of it over both of her arms. “This is going to take a while.” He mentions. “I’ll do as much as I can. Help her drink.” 

Hama helps prop her up better, she is damn near deadweight and doesn’t do anything to help hold herself up right. Her dazed eyes don’t see anything in particular but Hama can tell that she is at least partially awake, for the girl winces when Hama brushes her arm the wrong way. 

She bringing the gallon to her parched lips. It seems as though the girl hasn’t touched her food in a while, Hama mutters as much to Kohan. He rolls the water off of her arms and carefully sets them down. 

“Help me lay her down.” He requests. And Hama helps her lower her once more. When she is on her back, head limp, face slack he crouches down next to her. “Can you hear me?” He asks. Her small, exhausted mumble could have meant either yes or no. “You’re going to have to speak more clearly, if you can.” 

Hama thinks that she had said ‘okay’. 

“Tell me if this hurts.” Kohan instructs, placing his hands on her lower abdomen. Hama could swear that it too is swollen slightly. He hesitates only for a moment before gently pressing down. Her expression tightens and she gives a pained hum. He lifts his hands. “Kidneys.” He remarks.

“Kidneys?” Hama frowns. 

He nods and gestures to Azula’s ankles and tummy. “See that? That’s what happens the kidneys can’t process fluids. The body retains them, causes swelling.” 

Hama brings a hand to the girl’s belly, she can certainly feel the fluid building beneath. 

“It isn’t going to be pretty at all but you’re going to have to help drain that fluid since she isn’t doing it on her own.”

Hama crinkles her nose, an unpleasant job indeed. 

“In the meantime I’ll work on healing her heart, the kidney themselves and the other organs this has impacted.” Kohan says. 

“I suppose that she’s lucky that her people captured a doctor.” Hama folds her arms across her chest. 

“Not luck. Deliberacy. They found me useful so they kept me around. Why do you think I am treated so well?” He inquires as he shifts the water within the girl’s body. “Septic shock, if you’d like a term. The infection caused kidney failure among other things.”

Hama clicks her tongue. “You did yourself a good one.” She grumbles to Azula. Not that she hadn’t played a part. She doesn’t think that the girl is awake anymore. A good thing to considering what is about to happen to her. 

It takes a tedious fifteen or so minutes per afflicted organ to stabilize her. “You’re going to need a lot more herbs and some more sufficient meals to get her through this.” Kohan vocalizes what she had already known.

“I said that I’d be taking her to my old inn.”

“You can’t leave her alone…”

“Clearly.”

Kohan sighs. “A little compassion, please, Hama.” He shakes his head. 

“I’ve given her compassion and she’s given me stress enough to drop me dead.”

“Your compassion has always been…hard to read, Hama” Kohan replies.

“Bah!” 

When he shakes his head, it takes Hama a moment to realize that he is not shaking it at her but at the state of Azula. Her right arm, save for some faint scarring, looks significantly better. Her hand is still notably puffier but it is no longer covered in welts and rashes. 

Her other arm…

Hama sucks a breath in between her teeth. “You can’t do anything else for that hand?”

“I can do one thing for it.” He replies grimly. “Don’t look so surprised I told you that, the minute I saw it. She’s lucky that I was able to salvage the other one.” He pauses. “Have you figured out how to bloodbend without the full moon or shall I fetch a tourniquet?”

“I’ll get the tourniquet.”

Chapter Text

“What’s wrong?” Kohan asks. “Everything went well, it looks like she is going to recover relatively quickly and smoothly.” 

Hama shakes her head. “She’s a tricky one. I don’t know how she will react to this.” She eyes the bandages tightly circled around the end of the princess’ left  arm. She doesn’t know how the girl will react, she only knows that it won’t be a pleasant ordeal. 

For now she rests. Her right cheek sinks into the pillow, her remaining hand rests above the blankets and atop her stomach. Every now and then Hama finds herself glancing over just to check for a steady rise and fall. 

She finds that it isn’t particularly steady all the time. Steady enough, but also just slow enough, on occasions, for Hama to beckon Kohan over. 

“She’ll be fine, Hama.” He assures her. “Believe it or not, I’ve treated worse.” He pauses. “Ever see an infected burn? The firebenders are brutal with their Agni Kais.” He seems to shudder. 

Hama can’t say that she has ever witnessed one. No, she has take care to stay well away from such spectacles. She looks up at him again and she notices that he is smiling. She folds her arms across her chest. “Just what do you have to smile about?”

“Your concern is comforting.”

“Comforting?!” She sputters. 

“I thought that you’d be a vengeful old hag who’d take delight in watching a firebender suffer.”

“Who's to say I’m not?” She scoffs. She knows rather well that it is she herself who says as much. Says it without saying it. “Make no mistake, I believe that this girl has earned what she got.” Earned what she got and then something several degrees excessive–although Kohan doesn’t need to know that she thinks as much. And the girl doesn’t either. 

“Earned or not, I know that you don’t want her to die.”

“But I want her out of here and away from me. Take her off of my hands, Kohan. She’s troublesome and I’d like to live at peace again.” 

Kohan sighs. “Give her some time to recover and then send for me. I’ll see what I can do.”

.oOo.

Azula stares blankly at the bandages. There is a humming in her head that accompanies a protective film of numbness. She brushes her fingers carefully over the bandages. She looks up, peering through a curtain of scraggly bangs. “What happened to it?”

“Your kidneys, or one of them, failed and your heart was failing. Your blood wasn’t circulating right and that hand died.” Hama says bluntly. “I think that, that’s what happened. Kohan could have explained it better.”

She doesn’t want to. She doesn’t think that she wants to know anymore. Her heart, the apparently useless thing, aches for her hand. “So what, you just cut it off?”

“We didn’t just cut it off. We washed our hands, put on some gloves, washed the saw, fashioned you a tourniquet, and then we cut it off.” 

“How thoughtful.” Azula grumbles, falling back onto the pillow. Her head is absolutely spinning. She looks at the bandaged stump again; Agni, she thinks that she is going to pass out. Her head is getting all fuzzy again. 

“Hama, get the girl something to eat and drink, she’s pale.” Hama mutters to herself, “that’s what Kohan would be telling me right now, you know?”

Admittedly, Azula hasn’t been paying attention. At least not to Hama, her gaze still lingers on that empty space where her hand should be. The dizziness intensifies. “It was so small.” She murmurs to herself. 

“What was that?” Hama asks.” 

“It was just a rash…it could have been…I could have been okay. I would still have my hand if…” She swallows. Agni, it wasn’t supposed to have gotten this bad. She’d only run off for one night. It was a small cut…

Azula covers her eyes with her hands…

With her hand.

She only has one. 

She only has one. She only has…

All because she had to prove a point. 

And she hadn’t even done that. 

She’d done herself just the opposite.

She can’t survive on her own. The jungle would claim her with such ease. It very nearly had. “It was only a little cut.” She chokes out again. “I need my hand.”

.oOo.

Hama grits her teeth; there it is. The very thing she has been dreading. “Technically that isn’t true, I’ve known…”

“I need my hand. How am I supposed to firebend?”

“With the other one.” Hama replies.

“How am I supposed to gather herbs and…”

“With the other spirit damned hand!” Hama throws her own hands up. How she wishes that Kohan were still here. He is a significantly more comforting fellow than she. Although, Hama supposes that she hasn’t really put in the effort yet. Frankly she takes comfort in that the girl has one less appendage to shoot fire from.

And yet, the girl, so far, has only used her bending to start small cooking fires. 

The princess falls back on the cot, her eyes–now curiously blank–are fixed on the ceiling, leaving Hama with the impression that she has made things worse. 

She sighs and lowers her voice. “You won’t have to worry about gathering herbs. Once you recover I will be sending for Kohan…”

Azula laughs but there is no cheer in it. “It’s because you think that I can’t do it, isn’t it? I guess that I can’t blame you for thinking so.” 

“That’s not it.” Hama replies.

“You’re still angry because I said that I’ve done a lot for the war. That’s what it was wasn’t it? Why you told me to gather my own herbs, in the first place?”

“We aren’t going to have this conversation right now.” Hama grumbles. “You’ve got other things to worry about.”

“In other words, we won’t be having the discussion at all.” Azula replies. “That’s fine, I already know why you don’t want me here.”

Hama wishes that those words, that tone didn’t make her heart ache. 

.oOo.

It is for the same reasons that father wouldn’t let her accompany him as he lead his airfleet to take the Earth Kingdom. It is plain and simple; she was a set back. Her crumbling, fragile psyche was a burden. 

And she is a setback now, a thing that keeps the woman from her day to day venture. Should she keep her around and let her take along on foraging and hunting expeditions she would only hinder the woman’s progress with her inexperience and her newly lost hand.

Azula rolls onto her good side, thankful that it happens to be the direction facing away from Hama. 

Who cares? Really…who cares? The woman is a waterbender, why should she care what a waterbender thinks. What some jungle dwelling, uncultured, abomination with anomalous abilities thinks of her. But then Azula thinks that she herself is a jungle dwelling, well-cultured, abomination with anomalous abilities of her own. 

She wonders if she will even be able to bend blue fire anymore. Her missing hand tingles with the urge to try. 

.oOo.

Now the girl won’t respond to her at all.

No matter what she tries, what foods she tries to entice her with or stories she tries to get her invested in. She blocks out scolding and receives praise with skepticism. Hama wishes that Kohan were here, he’d know what to say to her.  

He’d know how to get her to leave the cot. 

He’d know how to get her to change her own bandages. 

He’d be able to make foods that she’d like to eat. 

All she can do is murmur, “how are you going to recover if you don’t take care of yourself?” She is beginning to think that the girl doesn’t want to. Azula only stares at the bowl in front of her. This time she takes a few spoonfuls before laying back down. 

Hama draws in a deep breath. She doesn’t know why she is wasting her time cooking for a petulant child who barely touches it. “Give me your arm.” She demands rather harshly. Azula’s obedience is more or less a habitual, absent gesture. 

She never watches when Hama removes the bandages. 

She takes the scarcely touched meal and finishes just enough of it to have made it worth cooking before retiring to her miserable place on the floor. She ought to take her cot back if the girl is so adamant about letting herself waste away. 

She could at least have the decency to wander off into the jungle and do it. Even animals have that scrap of dignity. 

Hama folds her arms and glares at the girl. Those firebenders speak of honor and dignity until it really counts. The former princess sits up and she meets Hama’s gaze. The old woman give a, “hmmph.” 

“I’m thirsty.” 

“What do you want me to do about it?”

Azula climbs out of bed for the first time in ages and wanders over to the cabinet. Hama watches her fingers curl around a cup. She sits it on the counter and finds one of several gallons of purified jungle water. For a notable few minutes she struggles to untwist the cap, gritting her teeth in frustration. Finally it comes off and she lifts the gallon to pour. 

Hama knows exactly what is going to happen, she is certain that Azula does too. But, props where they are due, it doesn’t stop the girl. It doesn’t deter her but it doesn’t change the outcome; the gallon is too full to pour without a hand to steady it.

The firebender’s entire body tenses and she eyes the spill on the floor for a very long time. She doesn’t move, she doesn’t speak, for a moment it doesn’t seem like she breathes. She looks  at Hama expectantly. Hama can’t be sure exactly what she is awaiting–help or a berating. Hama offers her neither. 

She returns the cup and the gallon to where she had found them and then she returns to bed. But she doesn’t sleep. Mostly she stares at her bandaged arm, sometimes she glances at the puddle. 

And it finally clicks that the girl isn’t being difficult. She is lost and afraid. 

Her determination is dwindling. 

.oOo.

She must have fallen asleep at some point. She supposes that there is only so much that her body can take before it shuts itself down.

“Are you still thirsty?” Hama greets. 

Azula shrugs. Mostly she is hungry but she can’t hold a spoon and hold the bowl in place at the same time. She’d already ruined the woman’s other blankets. Hama hasn’t made breakfast today anyhow and she doesn’t want to try it for herself. Not when pouring herself a cup of water had failed so miserably. 

It is no wonder the Hama is so ready to send her off to Kohan–to pass the burden to someone else. She casts a glance out the window, stares out into the jungle. Hama had said that it would consume her if it got the opportunity. 

She thinks that she will give it one. 

She will wait until the old woman leaves and then show herself out. Salvage the small fragments of her dignity. It is better than becoming deadweight. 

Azula jolts at a small clatter on the counter. Hama gestures to another bowl. “Eat. I’ve taken the time to prepare breakfast, eat it.” 

Azula wanders over to the table. She is hungry but she has no appetite at all…

“How are you supposed to help me collect bones if you don’t eat?”

“How am I supposed to help you collect bones when I can’t even pour myself a cup of water?” She grumbles. 

“You can pour yourself a cup of water just fine.”

“I don’t know what passes for a fine job in the tribes but…” 

Hama sets an empty cup and a full gallon in front of her. “Go on.” Azula frowns and Hama taps her fingers on the counter. 

“Just how much water do you want to waste?”

“None.” She scoffs, “so don’t spill it.” 

Azula swallows, her tummy tickles, and if it weren’t already, her throat would have dried. It has been quite some time since someone has given her a task that they knew was beyond her abilities. Sometime since someone has give her a task just to watch how spectacularly she’d fail. 

“I think that you would get along with my father.” She mutters as she takes the gallon in her hand. 

Frankly it doesn’t matter how she angles the gallon or positions her hand, the result will be the same. Gravity will make quick work of the water. It is a hopeless task. 

.oOo.

The girl could have reached across the table and struck her and it would have been less painful. “How so?” She hisses. 

The princess doesn’t reply.

“How. So?” Hama repeats. 

Azula shrugs. “Father liked to tell me to do impossible things. And when I couldn’t do them…” she trails off, her stare is rather distant. “Sometimes I was able to do them. I conquered Ba Sing Se, I…” She cuts herself abruptly short. “Nevermind.”

Hama sighs and rubs her face. At least the girl seems to pick up on things quickly. Somehow that puts a tingle in her belly; the last time she had seen that sort of awareness it had been in a cell. Her companions had learned quickly how to keep the guards’ tempers at bay. Had learned what would set them off and what would please them…

Hama waves her hand dismissively, “did I say that I wanted you to fail?”

“You don’t have to. I know that you enjoyed seeing me come back from the jungle worse off than before. I could see the satisfaction in your eyes.” She hesitates, perhaps mulling over if she should continue or not. “That was very Fire Nation of you.” 

Hama wishes that she wouldn’t have. Her grip tightens on the edge of the counter. “Don’t you dare!” She takes a breath, rubs her temples and continues more softly. “I didn’t think that it was going to get as bad as it did.”

“When will Kohan be here?”

“I’m nothing like those people.” Hama spits almost desperately. “I’m not like them.” She needs the girl to agree. 

“When will Kohan be here?” She repeats monotonously. 

She needs to hear that she isn’t like them in the slightest but even she can see it now. The girl is shutting down just the same as Uha had some decades ago. She wouldn’t want to leave if Hama wasn’t re-opening old wounds. She wouldn’t be so defensive. 

And maybe Hama herself wouldn’t be so angry if the princess wasn’t also scratching at scars.

At least Hama can say that she hadn’t meant to do it. While the firebender’s words are so deliberately cutting.

Hama inhales deeply. She is an aged woman and the girl in front of her is just that–a girl. Perhaps a scared, lost girl. “Kohan won’t be here for another week or so.” She replies. “I didn’t ask you to pour yourself a cup to watch you fail. If you can conquer kingdoms then you can figure out how to pour yourself a cup of water.” 

Azula stares at the gallon in her hand and frowns as though the very container itself is a foe of some sort. 

“You told me that you are clever, I’m taking your word for it.”

“I know what you’re trying to do.” Azula mutters.”

Hama inhales deeply. “What am I trying to do?”

“You’re just telling me what I want to hear so that I will do what you want me to do.” 

“I’m trying to get you to pour yourself a glass of water.” The girl’s suspicions are almost laughable. She would be laughing if she didn’t have a small fragment of awareness regarding their origin. “A glass of water that you asked for last night.”

Azula sets the gallon down and surveys the shack. One by one she carries four large decorative rocks to the counter and arranges them around the cup. She gives the cup a good nudge. Secure to her satisfaction, she picks the gallon up once more and props her arm up on the closest rock. Although she has somewhat overfilled the cup, it remains upright.

“Now that we’ve proven that you’re still perfectly capable of figuring things out on your own, would you like some help?”

“Yes.” She mumbles. 

Hama passes her a bowl of oatmeal. “Go on then.”  

This time it seems as though she will finish her meal .

Chapter Text

The girl doesn’t like to sit idle, that is for certain. She doesn’t like to stay in bed and rest and Hama can’t figure out how to get her to do so. She looks up from her dust pile and at Azula.“First we will get you adjusted to doing day to day activities with one hand. And then we can work on things like foraging, hunting, and bending.” Hama declares as she sweeps her broom across the floor. The girl can’t say she never tidies the place. “I don’t anticipate it taking very long. You pick up on things very quickly.”

“But I don’t pick things up quickly anymore.” She grumbles.

“Bah!” Hama exclaims. “You picked those rocks up just fine the other day.”

“Not quickly, I didn’t.”

“You’re still fighting off the rest of an infection. You’re still recovering from various organ failures and near failures. The more you push the more you’ll weaken yourself.” Hama passes her the broom. “It isn’t fun work but we’ll get you used to doing everyday tasks single-handedly.”

“Sweeping is a peasant's work.” 

“Or work for someone who likes to complain that her lodgings are too dirty.”

The girl makes a face but Hama hears bristle on tile. She’ll let her figure out how hold the broom effectively on her own. When she finally does find a comfortable position and a working method, she gets through the task rather quickly. 

Quickly and with an unsurprising degree of care. The girl is a lot of things; haughty, overly proud, stubborn, and a touch disrespectful and ignorant. But laziness is no vice of hers, Hama is beginning to understand why implying that she was had been such an affront to her. 

She puts a hand on Azula’s shoulder, “I must admit that this is the cleanest that this floor has been in ages. You do passionate work for someone who resents the task.”

“If I’m not going to do it right, why should I bother at all?” She grips the broomstick tighter. “Perhaps we can patch the roof, I’m getting tired of rain water and that incessant wind whistle.”

“I’m used to it.” Hama replies.

“I don’t want to get used to it.”

“Well you’re not going on the roof yet…” Hama catches the slightest change in her expression. “But if you can get yourself up there, have at it.”

Her expression changes again but not for the better. “I can’t climb anymore.”

“Yet. You can’t climb yet .” Hama shrugs. 

“I don’t have a hand.”

“I can see that.” Hama agrees. “But you have something better, yes?” She gives the side of the girl’s head a light tap. “You keep mentioning that.” She takes the broom from her hand and rests it back against the wall. “Now let me change those bandages for you and we can figure out how you’re going to cook. You’ll do it as much as possible so…”

“It’s like bending. If I repeat it more, it will get accomplished quicker eventually. It’s simple…”

She doesn’t need to be told as much. This time Hama allows herself a chuckle. “Do you want to remove the bandages yourself this time?”

. oOo .

Azula bites her lower lip. “No.” It isn’t so much about capabilities so much as it an aversion to seeing what lies beneath. And, Agni, it is so stupid; she knows what is there…rather what isn’t. She knows what she will see, she has seen it on plenty of soldiers. And yet…

“You’re going to have to look at it eventually.” Hama catches on. The old woman unravels the bandage layer by layer. She doesn’t say a word. Azula wonders if the silence feels tense to her. 

“Why do you keep me around?”

Hama’s pauses with her hand mid unraveling and looks up. “What do you mean?”

“I know that you don’t want me here. You could be finding new bones for your collection instead you have to take care of me. Anyone with some sense would leave me to fend for myself. If someone is too weak to survive then they won’t. They shouldn’t.”

Hama puts her newly unbandaged arm down. Azula takes care not to look at it. The old woman makes a low, almost growling noise in her throat. “This is exactly the sort of brutality that I don’t understand. Why shouldn’t the survive?”

“Because they’ve proven that they can’t handle being alive.” Azula shrugs. “If we made room for weakness in the Fire Nation then we’d end up like the airbenders, especially now that we’ve lost the war.”

“So it’s fear then.” Hama replies. “Fear does funny things to people. A good weapon, really.” 

Azula nods. “It is one of my favorites.”

“Intimidation.” Hama replies. “I think that you are well aware that it doesn’t work on me.” 

“And I don’t fear your bloodbending.” Azula replies curtly. 

“Do you  think that you are weak?”

She doesn’t look at it but she lifts her left arm. “Yes.” 

“Do you think that I should leave you to face it alone?”

She thinks for a moment, running her fingers through her hair. “Yes.”

“And why do you think that?”

“Because it isn’t your problem.” Azula shrugs. “I know that you don’t like me, you’ve wanted me gone since before you met me.”

“No, it isn’t my problem.” She agrees. “But what kind of person would I be if I let a chi– a teenager wander around one-handed and still recovering?”

“A smart person.” Azula replies instantly. “If an enemy is suffering you either take advantage or leave them to it.”

“Perhaps I don’t see you as an enemy.”

.oOo.

“I am a Fire Nation soldier. I am the princess.” Even now the girl still declares as much with a degree of pride. “Every time I mention either of those things you get tense. Don’t try to tell me that I am not your enemy.” She pauses. “Are you going to finish bandaging that?”

Hama can’t help it, she gives a decently loud cackle. “You declare yourself an enemy and ask me to finish helping you in the same breath?” And yet there is something so deeply depressing about that. She wonders just how the girl has been taught to talk to people.

“I didn’t ask you to continue, I asked if you are going to continue.”

“I am not.”

She flinches but Hama has to give her props for holding her head high and sticking to her dreadful opinions. “So you’ve come to your senses then?”

“I’ve come to observe that you don’t need bandages anymore. Kohan did a remarkable job.” She pauses. “Perhaps you are my enemy, but I don’t want you to be. You’re a smart girl. Spirited, opinionated. Hardworking and driven. You are the kind of company a bitter old woman like me would like to keep.” She pauses. “But you’ve got a closed mind, prejudice, and a careless tongue to go with it, among other things.”

“I choose my words very carefully, actually.”

“And you pick the ones that you know will hurt.”

“Perhaps I would choose less cutting words if you didn’t…”

Hama waves her hand. “I get enough of this ‘you started it’ from Kohan. I don’t want to do that with you.” And after a hearty pause she adds, “although I would wager that you had made the first comment.”

“I did–”

Hama raises a hand, “I think that sometimes you aren’t even aware of when you make upsetting comments.”

“Like the soldier thing.” Azula mumbles, tucking her left arm under the excess fabric of her shirt. Her eyes never leave Hama’s.

“Among other things, yes.”

“Why did that bother you?”

‘I told you that I had a history with fire nation soldiers, do you think that it is comfortable having one…and one of high status…in my house?”

Azula shifts in her chair. “Perhaps a little bit like how it feels to have your body frozen in place and at the mercy of a waterbender?”

Hama almost misses the soft, ‘again’. She exhales. “I suppose that we’ve got a few things in common then, don’t we?”

Chapter Text

Fear. 

Fear is what they have in common. 

A fear of being controlled. A fear of what might happen if there is a lapse in control. 

Agni, no wonder they hate each other so much. And yet the old woman is looking at her quite differently now. Her gaze is gentle, significantly less resentful. “You’ve got a history with waterbenders?” She asks. 

“One waterbender.” Azula shrugs, she tucks her arm back under her shirt. She doesn’t particularly care to elaborate on that. 

“I’m wanting to say that you have a history with firebenders too.”

“A good history, yes.” Azula nods.

Hama shakes her head. “You’ve mentioned your father in a rather unsavory light.”

“I’m hungry. Show me how to make breakfast.” 

Hama sighs. “Well first things first, you uncover that arm and take a good look at it.”

Azula’s tummy squirms. Reluctantly she lifts her left arm from beneath the fabric and rests the stump on her thigh. Hama takes her remaining hand and cups it over the stump. She feels absolutely nauseous. It is so smooth and unnatural. “Hama…” She tries to move her hand away but the woman holds it in place.

She shakes her head. “How do you expect to overcome the problem when you don’t even want to accept and face it? You keep staring at that arm. You stare at it until you get uncomfortable and then you keep staring. And you stare until you are comfortable.”

“How much time do you have on your hands?” Azula grumbles. “Because I’d like to eat today.”

“Despite what these wrinkles might tell you,  I’ve got plenty of time.”

Azula only barely manages to stifle a snicker.

“You have big goals. You want to get right back to where you were before this infection mess. And if you want to do that, acceptance isn’t going to cut it. You’re going to have to embrace this.” She holds Azula’s arm up. “And learn to see it as a tool to learn to use.”

“I don’t like working with broken tools. They don’t get the job done.”

“In skilled hands…in a skilled hand there is no such thing as a broken tool.”

.oOo.

“Why are we making dough again?” Azula asks.

“For the biscuits.” Hama replies. “We are having eggs and biscuits today. I taught you how to knead dough, do you remember–”

“Of course I remember, it isn’t that hard.” 

“Then you should have it done in no time.” Hama cracks an egg. The princess watches her pry the egg shells apart with a longing pout. “You want to crack the next one?”

Azula shakes her head, “I’ll make a mess.”

“There’s already a mess.” Hama replies. “If there’s flour then there’s a mess. If there’s dough, there’s a sticky mess.” She sets two of the three remaining eggs into her palm. “Kohan did some cooking for the tavern he works at. He got rather good at it; used to crack eggs with one hand.” She pauses. “It’s all about positioning.” She takes one of the eggs from Azula’s hand and sets it aside before positioning the other so that its small end is held by her thumb and pointer. “Make sure that you press the large end against your middle and third finger.”

Azula gives her a skeptical glance but does as instructed. 

“Now crack the egg like you normally would.”

“I wouldn’t normally crack an egg.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you’ve never cracked an egg before?”

“Yes.”

“Well then this should be easy, you don’t have any habits to work around.” She watches Azula give the egg a light tap against the counter. “Eggs are fragile, but not that fragile.” She taps it with more force. “Good, now hold it above your mixing bowl. Hold the bottom half of the egg to your palm and pull at the top half with your thumb, index, and middle fingers. Don’t apply too much…” 

She hears a distinct crack. She wipes a bead of yolk from her face. “That’s fine we have more eggs.” Azula dries her hand as Hama fetches one. It is a matter of trial and error but a few eggs later, the former princess has two successfully cracked eggs.

“We’ve got the butter, flour, salt, eggs, and…” she empties a small jug of milk into the bowl. “You go on and mix that, I’ll scramble the eggs.” 

Azula stares at the mixture reluctantly before wandering off to find something to clamp the bowl in place. The girl is crafty enough, she finds a thing or two eventually. The rest of the process goes smoothly enough, she mixes the dough and scoops it onto the counter. 

“Flour.” Hama looks up from her dented frying pan. “Spread some flour on the counter or the dough will stick.”

“Should I be getting my hand…my whatever this is…” she grumbles, “dirty so soon?”

“I suppose it is still a little raw. I’ll finish making the dough. Do you think that you can finish cooking the eggs? Scrambled is fine if you can’t flip the egg.” 

Azula nods. “I can do it.”

“I’m sure that you’d be able to knead the dough if you had to.”

“It’s a simple task.” Azula agrees. 

Hama hands her the frying pan. As she kneads the dough she observes the princess puzzling over the best way to approach her new task. She supposes she should let her work this one out on her own. Eventually the firebender resigns to putting a pair of socks on and holding the pan handle between her feet while she makes her first attempt to flip the first egg.

It isn’t a dreadful attempt, in fact she almost has it but the yolk slips off of the spatula at the last second. She frowns and gives a second go. And then a third…

“Alright egg…” Hama hears her murmur, “prepare to face your doom.” The old woman isn’t sure if she had splattered the egg by accident or on purpose. Regardless, she doesn’t bother with the second egg. She scrambles both of them and waits until the clear yolk becomes white and then the white becomes a crispy yellow-brown. She bends the flame away and holds the pan out to Hama. “Very well. I already have our plates set out.” 

For herself, Hama finishes kneading the dough. “If you’d like you can help me finish up here. Just make a few balls of dough and put them on this tray.”

.oOo.

Azula supposes that the biscuits aren’t so bad for her first time making them. Hama seems pleased enough, for once. 

“What did they do to you?” She asks. 

“Hmm?” Hama frowns. 

“The Fire Nation soldiers. What did they do to you?” She thinks the Boiling Rock, of the wardan practically torturing that prisoner and for nothing at all in the end.

“They did a lot to us.” Hama replies. “Most of the time they had me bound and chained…”

“Bound and chained.” Azula takes a shuddering breath. 

“We weren’t fed often and when we were it was stale scraps. Sometimes when the guards got bored they’d make a game of throwing sparks and hot ash at us just to watch us flinch and the ones that didn’t were bullied just as well. Raava forbid that they actually spoke up for us–usually when that happened it’d be the last time we saw that particular guard.” 

Azula takes a bite of her biscuit. 

“Do you understand why I am not fond of you flaunting your title around so carelessly? The soldiers were cruel. Cruel enough to spread their cruelty like a disease.”

“Or an infection…hot and burning. Devastating…”

“Life altering.” Hama adds. “I was an angry woman. Do you know why I live alone?”

“Because you terrify everyone you meet?” Azula quirks a brow. 

“Precisely.” Hama replies. “It’s a bit more than that. I hated you firebenders. Every single one of you. Every full moon I would spirit one of your people away and lock them in a cave just like your people did to me.” She pauses. “They were scared enough of me to start calling me a jungle witch.” 

“What made you change your mind about firebenders?”

“Nothing. I still don’t trust the lot of you. You like blunt truths, so I’ll give you one; I don’t like you.” 

Azula swallows. Granted, she isn’t fond of the old woman either. At least she is fairly certain that she doesn’t like her. As soon as she is recovered she will be on her way and she thinks that she probably won’t look back or think of her in any way but resentfully. 

And yet it stings to hear. 

“I don’t want to like you anyways.” Hama continues. “But I find you, respectable. I think that maybe you can…”

“Can what?”

“Understand why I hurt so many people. Kohan doesn’t. He went through the same things that I did but he loves your people. And they’re starting to like him. I think that they don’t deserve him.” She pauses. “But you…I’ve just told you that I trapped people in a cave and you’re still eating eggs and biscuits with me.”

Azula shrugs. “Some people need to be locked in caves.” 

Hama chuckles. “Exactly. And not everyone understands that.” Their laughter is short, a brief flicker that dies away. “I see it on you. You’re alone for the same reason that I am. You have abilities, powerful abilities. Abilities that terrify people and a personality to match.” 

Azula swallows.

“Waterbenders and firebenders…we’re so different. But I have more in common with you than I do with Kohan and that other girl.”

“That other girl?”

Hama waves her hand. “Some girl I met a while back. I tried to teach her to do what I do! To bloodbend! I told her that we could make the Fire Nation pay! But she was soft. She used my lessons against me.” She pauses. “If you were a waterbender…we’d have been a ruthless team. I think that you would enjoy bloodbending.”

“Perhaps if it isn’t being used on me.” Azula replies. 

“My point is that I have more common ground with you than any of the other waterbenders I’ve talked to and you have those golden eyes.” She pauses. “Do you hate me because I am a waterbender?”

“I hate you because the first thing you did to me was bloodbend me.” Azula frowns to herself. “I don’t mind earthbenders. I’ve worked with earthbenders; the Dai Li had some remarkable skills…”

“And waterbenders.”

“I’ve never worked alongside them.” She pauses. “Of course earthbenders and waterbenders aren’t as…” She trails off and takes one more biscuit, if only to help herself remain quiet. She swallows. “I don’t mind other benders so long as they don’t infringe. I’d have worked with you if you had pledged your allegiance to the Fire Nation. We could have used skills like that.” 

Mostly, Azula likes to think that she can read people. But for the life of her, she doesn’t know what to make of the look that Hama is giving her. And maybe that is because Hama doesn’t know what to make of her words. 

“Very interesting.” Is all that she says for quite a while. She collects the plates and begins washing them, leaving Azula to her own uneasy thoughts. And then she finds a seat again. “Believe it or not, I want to like you. I don’t want to want to like you…”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“I want to like you but I don’t like that I want to like you.”

“That still doesn’t make sense.” 

“I think that a lot of feelings don’t.” The old woman replies. “I’ve hated firebenders for so long. But look where it’s gotten me. My own people are horrified by me. Sometimes I’m scared of what I’ll do. I haven’t had someone to talk to in years. I slip up once; say one scary thing, do one scary thing and then my company runs away. They run straight into the jungle because it’s less terrifying than the witch. Earth, water, and firebenders alike.” She shakes her head. “I find that the waterbenders run away the quickest. And then there’s you…a firebender.” She pauses. “You’re still here.”

“Most of me is, anyways.”

Hama chuckles and gives her knee a pat.

Chapter Text

It is nice to feel sunlight on her face after so many days of being cooped up in Hama’s little shack. To feel a breeze in her hair, especially knowing that she almost wouldn’t have felt it ever again. She wanders her way through the tall grass, feeling it brush against her bare calves and between her toes. 

She inhales, taking in a fresh and earthy perfume of clover and dewy grass. Beads of water are still sparkling upon them. 

“This way.” Hama beckons. 

“Can I put my shoes on?”

Hama shakes her head. “I want you to get a feeling for the jungle, learn to walk around it without shoes so that you can do it if you ever have to live without them later.”

“That sounds…ridiculous.” She mutters. 

“You’ll find that it is actually quite invigorating.” She pauses. “It could be good for you.”

She supposes that, with the security of knowledgeable company, there is something soothing about the feeling of earth beneath her feet. Something about the jungle air that takes the tension from her shoulders and the stress from her mind. 

She trails her fingers along the surface of trees, brushing them against the mosses until Hama’s fingers come to claps around her wrist. She jerks it away from the tree with a startling abruptness. 

“Lesson number one; pay attention. Just because you aren’t on a battlefield doesn’t mean that you should let your guard down.”

“My guard is plenty up, I assure you.” Azula grumbles.

“Perhaps with me it is. But with the jungle–even after everything–you trust it too much.” she clears her throat and begins again. “Lesson one, pay attention to your surroundings. Snakes and spiders like the trees. They slink across the ground.” She pauses. “Poison ivy likes the trees as well.” She gestures to a tangle of leaves that thinly cloaks the tree. A tangle of leaves that is just shy of Azula’s fingertips.

Azula retracts her hand abruptly and cringes. 

"You see." Hama says smugly. “That is why you have to pay attention to where you let your fingers wander.

Azula’s cheeks flush. “Right, of course.” She stiffens. They have only been walking for some thirty minutes and she is already displaying her ignorance and incompetence. She can’t fathom why Hama is bringing her along for this. She is only keeping her from what could be a relaxing hobby. 

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Do what?” 

“Get all stiff like that. The jungle is a calming place, just keep in mind that you can’t get careless.” 

“Right.”

“I suppose that it will take some getting used to. Eventually you’ll relax.” 

She can’t imagine that Hama will put up with her long enough for that to happen. 

“You’re an intuitive girl–I’m sure that the jungle won’t be a problem for you after you let me teach you about it.” She pauses, bringing their walk to a full halt. “You do know that, right?”

Azula furrows her brows. She has always thought herself to a person of sensibility and clever but lately she has been feeling anything but. Lately she has been questioning intellect. Only a fool could manage the feat she has accomplished; taking an inconsequential infection and turning it into a life-altering tragedy. 

“You can’t expect yourself to know what’s what if you’ve never been taught. I don’t know what is said in the Fire Nation but I do believe that ignorance and idiocy aren’t the same.”

“Yes.” She agrees. “You can make something of ignorance.”

Hama flashes her a grin.  

“Only an idiot would run off into the jungle when there are other options–and with an oozing infection no less.” Only someone like Zuzu. Only someone like her, apparently. 

“Anger isn’t exactly rational.” 

But she has never let anger take her like that before. “It was foolishness, plain and simple.”

“Sit.” Hama points to a stump. “Or stand if you’d like, I’m going to sit.”

Azula furrows her brows. “We’re not going to get to find any bones if you keep stalling.” Azula finds herself a spot on the stump regardless.

“Before we collect bones we need to have a discussion.”

“Another?” Azula stares down at her feet, they are cringe inducingly muddy and she finds herself suppressing a shudder. She feels gross and dirty. A far cry from the civilized, well mannered princess she had been. It is no wonder she is losing her grip and her composure. Her intellect. 

“We are going to be having lots of discussions.”

Lots of uncomfortable lectures that make her stomach lurch. 

“We need to talk about how you talk.”

Azula furrows her brows.

“The things that you say about yourself.”

“I don’t say much about myself.” 

Hama arches a skeptical brow but plays along. “Which is why it’s so astounding that I’ve heard so many degrading remarks.” She sighs. “You throw your titles around but do they even mean anything to you? Or do you only drop them when you can think of any skills to mention.”

Azula’s tummy flutters. 

“I don’t think that you would have been so quick to run off if you didn’t feel the need to prove something.”

She clenches her teeth.

.oOo.

“I don’t suppose that I helped any.” Hama confesses. “I made you feel incapable.” 

“You were ri–”

Hama holds a hand up. “I wasn’t right. You have what it takes. I can tell. You’ve got plenty of natural skill. The mistakes you made were mostly common, beginner mistakes. Things that many Caldera City dwellers make. Unfortunately little mistakes in places like these can end terribly. And a series of them…” She gestures to Azula’s arm. “I shouldn’t have let you just go out there. You lasted the night, figured out how to set up a shelter and start a fire despite the rash and the infection.” 

“And it didn’t matter. In the end it never does. I can work hard, I can do everything…almost everything right and…” She trails off. “Nevermind.” 

“If you’re going to get through this, you’re going to have to be gentle with yourself.” She draws a sizable sphere of water from the ground. “Leave room for error, flexible and fluid.” She gives the water an easy and lazy flick. “You’re a rigid person.”

“I’m adaptable.” Azula insists. “I haven’t broken yet.” But there is a hitch in her voice. The faintest little hitch that she only recognizes from decades of hearing it around her and inducing it. 

“You’ve got a lot to adapt to.” She reaches for Azula’s left arm but the firebender jerks it away. “And you’re going to have to give yourself room for error while you do.”

Azula bites her lower lip. “If I give myself room for error then that leaves room for complete failure.” Her fingers close around the end of her left arm. 

“You also leave room for growth.” Hama insists. And Raava, she hopes that the girl will. She can see it, her mind is just open enough to open the old woman’s own mind. She slaps her knees and gets to her feet. “Well…that wasn’t the best talk–”

“We’ve certainly had better.” The girl mumbles. 

“But I think that it’s time to scavenge some bones and pick some flowers. I’ve got a lot to show you; different herbs and what they are good for. I’d like to teach you to identify bones–just something that I find fascinating.” 

Azula nods. “I would like to learn about bones.”

Hama gets the impression that she simply likes to learn in general. She has an inquisitive nature, a curious one. The kind of nature that tends to put old beliefs and new beliefs at odds. So she will take the girl out to the farther bone field, she will take her to forage and pick herbs, and with any luck old prejudices will fall away on their own. Her lust for learning will drive them out. With any luck, security and confidence will take root with each root she plucks. And perhaps it will all fall into place. 

Perhaps Hama will let go of her own grievances.

Chapter Text

Azula hunches down and nudges a few fallen branches aside. She takes pause to push a simple over the shoulder satchel back in place. She frowns at the incessantness of the mild inconvenience. But she needs her right hand free to pick up whatever invaluable treasures that she may find.

"What's this?" She begins to wiggle it free. A fine dusting of dirt sprinkles upon her palm and embeds under her fingernails. It comes free with a soft spray of dirt. Azula runs her thumb over the surface. It is mostly smooth with a small bump or two.  She drops it into Hama’s hand.

The woman holds it up, twisting and turning it to inspect it. “I do believe that this is a spine fragment.” She flips it over again. “Possibly from a baby tiger-monkey. A lovely find, you have a good eye.”

Azula nods and tucks it into the stachel. 

“Are there any more over there?” Hama asks. “Usually where there’s one spinal bone, there’s a dozen more.”

Azula surveys the ground and nods again. “Quite a lot of them.” 

Hama grins. “Usually I only find bird and toad-squirrel bones!” This is the most enthusiastic and lively that Azula has ever seen the old woman. It is also the fastest–she scuttles over to the heap of bones with a youthful vigor and begins shoveling them into her basket. 

Azula manages to snag a few before wandering off to find a new pile but mostly what she comes upon are off-white rocks and a few egg shells. She slips a few of those into her stachel, if only to make herself feel productive. Though she supposes that scavenging bones isn’t particularly productive in any meaningful way. More or less it is a hobby. She supposes that she could use a few of those. Especially now that firebending is…

Her tummy turns. It is something that she has to re-teach herself. She isn’t particularly thrilled about it. It is rather nerve wrack in a way. So much so as to be deterring. 

She inhales through her nose and kicks a few more branches aside before wandering her way over to a cluster of mangroves, to the space where root meets shallow water. She crouches down again and sifts her hand through the murk. She comes up with a fistful of sand and mud and a sensation that sends chill down her spine. She lets the sand and mud sift out until she is left with a few more pebbles and a shell or two. She pockets the shells and takes another scoop. 

“Oh, good idea!” Hama calls. “Brillant! There are bound to be fishbones in there somewhere. Try looking in the…”

Azula wanders over to the roots themselves. 

Hama smiles again. “Yes, exactly. Sometimes the fish will get tangled and trapped. You can find bones there. Watch out for the snakes.”

Azula frowns, it is mighty hard to watch for them when the water is so murky. She takes a rock or two and chucks it in the direction of the roots. She cringes when a den of the creatures wriggle on out. 

“Hmm, that won’t do.” Hama mumbles, she gestures for Azula to back up. She watches Hama part the water. The old woman flashes another grin. “Go get that.” She nods her head towards the root. 

Azula makes her way down the newly created path, her bare feet squelching in the mud and sand. It is unpleasantly cool and squishes between her toes in the most shudder inducing manner. At times the sea-silt seems to suction her entire foot within it. With a slight snarl and a grunt, she retches it free and carries on forward. 

She comes to find what Hama has been marveling at; a, from the looks of it, newly shed snake skin. It is a strange thing, both smooth and rough, cool and moist. She isn’t sure if she finds the feeling to be fascinating or outright disgusting. 

Along with the molt, she comes back with a few fishbones.

“I think that, that is good enough for today.” Hama declares. 

.oOo.

Their haul is rather impressive. Snake molt and tiger-monkey spine disks are the best treasures but there are other noteworthy finds. While Hama herself had focused mostly on the bones alone–she has come away with several fishbones and some toad-squirrel and iguana-parrot bones–Azula has a quirky little assortment of things. Among them are a sea pearl, chips of sea glass, a few beads, an iguana-parrot feather, several types of egg shells, and a few unidentifiable claw tips. 

Hama watches her arrange them by her geode. And the old woman recalls that she had been so distracted by the girl’s infection that she still hasn’t gotten new blankets. Perhaps that will be the next task. Though she still can’t imagine that the girl will want to part with that geode. 

She supposes that she can ask Kohan if he can bring her some…

Azula takes the geode in her hand and holds it protectively to her chest and Hama realizes that she has been quite openly eyeing the stone. 

“I’m not going to take it.” Hama gives a dismissive wave. “I have my bones.” 

Azula relaxes some. 

“But I do need to pay for new blankets of Kohan won’t…”

“We’ll sew new ones.” Azula replies defiantly.

“We or I?” Hama asks. “I can’t imagine that you know how to sew.”

Azula cheeks color ever so slightly. “Tell me how to do it. The geode is mine.” 

“Stubborn girl.” Hama comments. She has to admire it at least to some degree. “It’s going to be more difficult with…”

“Everything is more difficult with only one hand.” Azula scoffs. “I am perfectly capable, I…”

“I never said that you weren’t.” Hama replies. “Yesterday I took you out to teach you about plants. I brought you out to collect bones with me today. Do you think that I would have if I didn’t think that you could handle it?”

Azula drops herself heavily down onto the cot.

“Sometimes I think that you don’t think that you’re capable.”

She opens her mouth to speak. 

“You wouldn’t keep assuming that I think that you’re incapable if you did.” She pauses. “And it wouldn’t matter what I think if you think differently.” 

Azula folds her arms across her chest. “I do think that I am capable.”

“You could have fooled me.” Hama shrugs. “I’ll teach you to sew tomorrow. Perhaps the next day, my bones are sore from collecting bones that aren’t mine.” She mosies her way over to the fireplace. “Do you want vegetable stew or banana bread and a fruit salad?” 

“Stew is fine. Although I would like some meat.”

“Then you’re going to have to choose between learning to sew or learning to hunt.”

“I have plenty of time, I can do both.”

“You also mentioned wanting to pick up firebeding again–do that on your own time away from me, mind you–and that you wanted to learn more about herbs and bones. You’ve got many things to learn, don’t overload yourself.” 

Azula ponders it for a moment. “I want to learn to sew.”

Hama quirks a brow, evidently she hadn’t expected that answer.

“It is more practical–for now we have fruits, nuts, vegetables, and your crow-roosters…”

“Those are for eggs not eating.”

“I know that!” Azula frowns. “My point is that we have plenty of food. I’d like to learn to make and mend clothing and…”

Hama sighs. “You have a very extensive list of goals. Let’s do one thing at a time; right now we need more blankets, I am going to teach you to make one. Luckily for us, I still have some wool from a recent trip into town.” 

“Well let’s get to it.”

“Let’s have dinner and relax for the rest of the night. You firebenders are all work and no leisure. No wonder the lot of you are uptight and angry.”

Azula blinks at her, “how dare–”

Hama chuckles. “Perhaps we should make learning to relax the priority.” She pats the ground next to her. “Come sit. I’ll tell you some Water Tribe folk tales. I haven’t had anyone to share them with in ages.” 

.oOo.

The girl continues to be a quick learner. She is asleep in minutes, no blankets nor pillows required–just a hot meal and a few stories. She wonders if the girl has ever been told a bedtime story. She seemed to have enjoyed them well enough even if some of the cultural jokes had gone over her head. 

It was terribly nice to tell them again, and to someone who seemed to have at least some degree of fascination with them. The girl had mentioned that she isn’t fond of folktales but she had certainly gotten invested in them. 

It is doubly satisfying to have been able to recant her tales to someone who hasn’t heard them several dozen times already. 

Had she the ability, she would lift the girl up and carry her to her cot. But her bones are too creaky and brittle for that and her muscles aren’t what they used to be. Instead she carries the blankets and pillows over to the slumbering firebender and relishes in that she gets the cot tonight. 

Perhaps she will share stories more often.

Chapter Text

Azula slumps against the wall and stares at her missing hand. She brushes her fingers absently over it, sending trills of loss and grief tingling from her wrist to her brain. She gives a shaky sigh but she doesn’t cover it back up this time. 

Sometimes she doesn’t think about her hand at all. 

Sometimes it is the only thing that she can seem to focus on. 

And sometimes when she can’t seem to take her mind off of it, it feels like it is still there. Like she can still flex her fingers and call flames to it. Like she can still lift things with both hands and tie knots the way that she used to. 

But then she goes to bind her waistband and finds no fingers to clutch her sash with. And then her heart plummets and she feels broken and useless again. 

Azula inhales deeply and closes her eyes; she has managed just fine without her hand so far. But then again, she hasn’t tried bending yet. She holds her left arm to her chest, fingers curled around her wrist.  She ought to just get up already and start getting on that, no more excuses, no more stalling. 

She gets to her feet and takes another deep breath. She only manages to place a hand on the doorknob before Hama’s head snaps in her direction, “where are you going?”

“Out…” Azula mumbles. 

“Out where?”

Azula furrows her brows. She hasn’t had this sort of treatment since mother left. “The front yard–if you can call it a yard–I guess.”

“For what?” Hama asks. 

“I assumed that you wouldn’t like me practicing my firebending inside. I mean I can…”

“Absolutely not! Get outside!” The woman becomes rapidly agreeable. “And don’t set anything on fire that isn’t supposed to be on fire.”

“I’m not Zuzu, I don’t just throw my fire recklessly around. Firebending takes poise and control. There are rigid forms and techniques and…” She can’t imagine that Hama cares all that much. “I know what I’m doing.” Vaguely, anyhow. She isn’t entirely certain of what one handed firebending will look like. Probably something quite sloppy if she had to guess. 

She tugs the door open and slips outside before she can convince herself otherwise. Her feet slosh through the shallow puddles that never seem to leave the jungle floor. She supposes that she should have gathered as much considering that the bungalow teethers on rickety stilts. 

It is going to be twice as difficult to practice on such wet ground. Although it might do her well to learn to fight in the water. She should be able to fight anywhere at all. She closes her eyes for just a moment as she finds her first stance. 

And for one startling moment she can feel kinship with the water more vibrantly than she does with her own fire. For one startling moment, she could swear that her chi has gone cold with disuse. 

And then the flame bursts onto her outstretched palm. She can feel it again, the flame licking within her belly, the fire kissing her hand. Its heat washes friendly and familiar over her face. For a time she ignores her left arm more or less completely–using it only for the sake of balancing herself now and then. She runs through her usual katas, her kicks and her punches. It is second nature to throw her left arm forward in succession with her right. It produces no fire, no heat at all. 

She still has her touch, at least most of it. Her few weeks of recovery have stolen a portion of her stamina. She finds herself the driest patch of grass and slumps against a tree trunk, watching the palm fronts rustle above her. 

She watches them until her breathing levels out. Watches the sun beam between the leaves, leaving spots in her vision. She closes her eyes against its intensity and listens to her own breathing–how close she had come to never drawing breath again.

She stands up again and resumes her practice. This time she puts her focus on her left arm. When she closes her eyes she can feel the threads of her chi shimmering down her arm. But the sparks that crawl along those threads seem to smolder as soon as the reach the end of the stump. 

She purses her lips, brows furrowing in concentration. She inhales through her nose and exhales through her mouth. She can feel the heat rippling off of the end of her arm, it is there. There and itching to burst free.

And it does. Finally, her fire unleashes itself. It explodes from her left arm and throws her too the floor. She winces as her elbows splash into the water. Hama throws the door open as the fire slams into one of the palms. 

“I told you to be careful!” The old woman chides. She scuttles off of her porch, dragging murky water with her. “I thought that you said you had control.”

Had . Had is exactly the word. 

Her lower lip trembles and she grits her teeth. 

She swallows her discouragement and when she feels that she can do so with composure she mumbles, “it’s different without using my hand.” 

What was once a delicate tossing of a ball now feels like a canon blast. She can’t flex her fingers to lessen the force of her fireball. She gets, she presumes, however much energy she exerts into willing the fire forward and free. 

She sighs deeply, rubbing her face with her palm. At least she has a place to start, a theory to work with and build off of. 

With the fire clear, Hama’s tone isn’t quite as harsh. “Perhaps we should find you a clearing to practice in. Some place less flammable.” 

“Yes. Perhaps.”

Hama’s expression softens. “You’ll adjust.”

Maybe she will. But Agni, is she tired of having to. 

The smoke rolls off of the end of her arm.

She is already so, so tired. 

.oOo.

The firebender takes failure more horribly than Hama had anticipated. When it finally settles in, the former princess takes to knocking the heel of her remaining hand against her forehead. Hama can see the clench of her jaw, the strain of her eyelids while she squeezes them shut. 

She is mumbling something to herself. Perhaps something about how she should be better or how this isn’t supposed to be happening to her. 

Evidently, Hama can’t understand why the girl would write today off as a failure–that she had been able to bend with that arm at all was quite the feat.

Hama stoops down next to her, “come join me on the porch, I’d like to show you the rest of my bone collection.”

Azula holds herself rigid and Hama retreats to find her small crate of bones. “You’re not going to make an old woman hoist a big box all the way over here for nothing, are you.” 

She stands up and sulks her way out and onto the porch. She sits herself down at the very edge of it, lazily kicking her feet at the air. Her eyes seem quite distant. Hama hold the box out to her. “Pick a bone and I’ll tell you what it is and the story behind it.”

Her brows pinch again. “You know which ones you found when?”

Hama nods. “I have it written down too, just in case my memory decides to fail me.” 

Azula rummages delicately through the box until she come upon a heavily yellowed and notably chipped bone. “What’s this one. It’s rather large.” 

Hama flashes her a toothy grin. “That is a human rib!”

“Do you have any more of them?”

Hama nods, “several.”

“Fascinating. All from the same person?”

“Some, yes.” Hama replies, running her finger over the bone. “This one is Fire Nation. Fire Nationals tend to have smaller bones.”

“Fire Nationals tend to be shorter people.” Azula nods. “So the largest, toughest, bones belong to earthbenders.”

“Typically, yes.” Hama says. 

“Because they have to withstand a heavier element.” Azula guesses. 

“Exactly.” 

“Airbenders probably have dainty bones.”

Hama shrugs. “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never come by those.”

Azula nods as she picks up another bone. “What about this one?”

“That is a mongoose-lizard skull!”

Azula runs her pointer over its jagged little teeth. She positions it in her hand so that she can work its jaw and holds it at eye level. Occasionally she gives its jaws a light snap.

“I named her Unpak.”

“Unpak.” Azula murmurs. 

Hama nods as Azula rests Unpak on her lap and reaches into the box again. “Would you like to sleep with Unpak by your bedside?”

Azula nods. “She can hold my geode.” She points at a space where several teeth have fallen out. 

Hama chuckles. “She can, indeed.” And she chuckles again at the strangeness of it all. Of finally having someone who doesn’t cringe at the contents of the box–someone who appreciates it as much as she. The oddness of connecting so well with someone that she should hate. Someone who has a knack for getting under her skin on a bad day. 

“This is a toad-squirrel skull?”

“Correct.” 

Azula gently places it back in the box. “Which one is your favorite?”

Hama hums to herself. “Don’t have one.” She watches the girl find another. “Each are special in their own ways.”

And that is how they spend their night, discussing bones until the former princess, at least for a time, forgets about her firebending performance.

Chapter Text

The girl has a skill for threading needles. It probably helps that her eyes are still sharp and keen. Her fingers are nimble and careful and Hama can tell that she is going to make fine work with that needle and thread, once she gets past the awkwardness of learning to do it with one hand. She pushes the needle more securely into the pincushion before beginning her knot. It takes her a moment or two but she pushes the thread through the loop that she has created. 

She stares at it for another moment before taking one end of the thread between her lips and the other between her pointer and thumb. She pulls the thread tight. She is a crafty girl indeed. “How is this?”

“It looks like a solid knot. Now watch me.” Hama Pushes the needle into the fabric a healthy distance away from the edge. “You’re going to want to make another knot here.” At this the former princess frowns. “Sewing requires a lot of knots…”

“I know that.” She grumbles. 

“But you don’t like it?” Hama quirks a brow.

Azula nods.

“Well it will give you good practice in tying knots for other things.”

 “For which occasions.”

“Crafting shelters, binding up your travel bags should you take them, lacing your clothing…”

“Right. Practicality.” Azula replies as she watches Hama’s handwork.

“Do you require an explanation or is just watching good enough?”

“I suppose that we will find out.” Azula picks up her own needle and pokes it into the cloth. To the best of her ability she mimics Hama’s motions. Where Hama’s hands were quick hers is slow and somewhat clumsy. Every now and then the fabric shifts and she huffs. The shifting of the fabric is leaving her stitchwork uneven until she, from what Hama can discern, becomes entirely dissatisfied. She clears her throat. “I would like to start over.”

“Your work is good enough…”

She shakes her head. “Not for me. It is lopsided and unsuitable for wearing. I would like to start over.” 

Decidedly, Hama thinks that she would wear the girl’s work. It is functional enough even if it isn’t all that pretty. “Alright.” She hands her a new, slightly less pointy instrument. “A seam ripper.” She mentions. “You want to start over, you do the unstitching.”

Azula blinks and Hama pats her shoulder. “I don’t know how it works in the palace, but here in the jungle, if you want something done, you do it yourself.”

“How else will I guarantee that things will be done to my satisfaction?”

Hama chuckles. Whatever makes her feel better about doing a ‘peasant's’ work is fine by Hama so long as the girl is doing her own work. 

“When do I get to work on the blanket? You said that we would be sewing that.”

“I did indeed.” Hama agrees. “I just never said that, that would be the first thing you sewed. When you finish learning the basics–that is after you finish learning to patch up a pair of pants or sew ripped seams back together. Then we can try making blankets from scratch.” 

Azula, having finally finished pulling the seams, holds the fabric in place with her foot and begins anew. Hama finds herself cringing at the girl’s awkward posture but she Azula herself seems to pay it no mind for the time being.

.oOo.

Azula holds up her handiwork for Hama to inspect.She had only plucked at the stitches thrice more, but she thinks that she finally has something that looks relatively presentable. 

“It was fine two attempts ago.” Hama shrugs. 

“Then it is better than fine now?”

Hama pats her shoulder and Azula flinches. The old woman mutters an apology. “Sometimes I forget that you don’t like being touched. 

“Well remember.” Azula turns her head up.

“I’ll do my best.” Hama replies. “Can I request something of you?”

“You can request but…”

“I would like you to remember that I don’t like being talked down to. I am an old woman, in the Tribes we believe that there is an inherent respect reserved for elders. Now I’m not sure if I agree with that, but I do believe that, in these circumstances, we are more or less equals, yes?”

Azula furrows her brows. “No matter where I am at, I am still a princess.” Nevermind that Zuzu had gone and stripped her of the title formally, the self-righteous ass he is. 

“Perhaps.” Hama nods. “But I’ve been mentoring you for some time now. I imagine that you had someone to teach you to firebend.”

Azula nods. “Lo and Li. Although they weren’t firebenders themselves.”

“And you still respected them?”

“They have valuable skills and knowledge. The Royal Fire Academy For Girls emphasized the importance of a good teacher.”

“Am I not a good teacher?”

Azula hums softly as she ponders the question. “You let me get poison ivy.”

“Your own stubbornness got you there.” Hama holds firm to that. “I’d like the same respect that you offered to your firebending masters. I’ve been as accommodating as I can be to you. I expect some accommodation in return.” 

Azula sighs. “Fine.” She supposes that it is unflatteringly impolite to continuously disrespect someone in their own home. 

“Good.” Hama nods. “Now lets put this mess away and begin working on dinner. You’ve done fine work today.”

“I always do.” Mostly. She supposes that there have been several things since coming here that haven’t been her best work. But she supposes that it is reassuring to hear confirmation of her successes. She follows Hama over to the fireplace and lights it ablaze. 

“Would you like to hear another story as we cook?”

“I would.” Perhaps one day, if the old woman fancies it, she might share one of mother’s silly Hira’a folktales.

Chapter Text

The girl isn’t half bad for only just beginning to re-learn, if Hama were to judge. But the former princess herself seems to think herself unskilled and clumsy–useless and incompetent, in her own words. “We just talked about this. You are very hard on yourself. You ought to give yourself some–”

“I know how to do this!” She snaps. “I should be able to.” Her voice cracks at least somewhat. She rubs her hand over her face. “It should be simple. It’s all about gathering enough chi and pushing it forward…”

“But?”

“The amount of chi I need to create a burst of fire causes too much kick. And if I don’t put enough chi forward then there’s nothing at all. It’s either nothing or too much. I need my hand, it helped harness and control the bursts.” 

“Have you tried…”

“Taking a more sturdy stance?” Azula leans herself against a tree. “I’ve tried every stance that I can think of. I almost need more armor to weigh me down–but then I would lose significant agility–which is just as, if not, more important.”

Hama hums to herself. She plucks another weed and casts it aside before moving to inspect the carrots–they seem to be coming along nicely. 

“You’re not listening to me.” Azula grumbles.

Hama rises and dusts her knees off. “You want to wear more armor but that’s also the last thing that you want to do.” She makes her way over to her collection of allo plants. “Let me teach you a few waterbending techniques.” 

Azula furrows her brows. “Shouldn’t I re-learn how to firebend before I try incorporating something completely new?”

Hama shrugs. “Technically you’re already doing something completely new. A new situation requires new solutions. Fire is an intense element, yes?”

“Absolutely. It is an element of power and passion.”

“Which is fantastic for mighty bursts of chi. But you’re looking for…”

“Something less bombastic. Something with more grace and subtlety.” She pauses. “Like water.”

“Yes, exactly.” Hama claps. “So would you like me to teach you a thing or two?” 

Azula rubs her lips together before ultimately nodding. “I suppose that it couldn’t hurt.” 

“First things first. Fluidity and adaptability.” Hama says. “Sometimes you need to work with what you have and when you have nothing…” She raises her arms and pulls the moisture from the grass, watching it brown and curl. “You make something yourself.”

“That is faintly horrifying.” Azula mutters. “Do it again.”

.oOo.

The old woman’s eyes light up. Azula would wager that whatever pupil or pupils she had last probably hadn’t appreciated her more gritty methods. They hadn’t come to the conclusion that sometimes survival takes precedence over morality. 

“Indeed, I will!” Hama demonstrates for a second time. “You’ve lost something and now you have to make something of its absence.” Hama holds Azula’s left arm up.

“This is a little different than drawing water from an unconventional source.” 

“How about drawing chi from an unconventional source?” Hama asks. “Firebending comes from the stomach chakra. Though you will still be working with fire, try drawing the chi from your water chakra. You know where that is, yes?”

“I’ve studied chi and chakra with TyLee before, I know where each is located.” 

“Then drawing your chi from your water chakra shouldn’t be all too hard.” 

It shouldn’t be, but it is. The water chakra emits quite a different energy than her fire chakra does. It feels wrong to not feel a gentle searing in her belly as she bends. While the sensation is there pulsing in the background, it is more of a lukewarm. And the water chakra, it is a strange sensation. Too new for her comfort. 

She extracts chi from it no less and pushes it towards her left arm. 

She feels the energy building…building…building…

And then the fire comes. And it comes as something that is little more than a flame on a candle wick. It’s hue a deeper blue, almost purple. 

“That was pathetic.” She grumbles. 

“Hmm…” Hama taps her finger to her wrinkled lips. “It is a start, that’s what it is.”

“Perhaps I should try drawing from my fire and water chakras simultaneously?” Azula flops to the ground. She is so very tired of disappointing herself. 

“Perhaps we should take a break. It’s nearly nightfall.” 

But she doesn’t want to take a break, she wants to succeed. She wants to reclaim her prowess, reclaim her feelings of adequacy. She wants to feel whole and unbroken again. “I want to firebend right, Hama.” 

“And you can’t do that if you burn yourself out. Come with me, there’s something that I’d like you to see.”

.oOo.

Hama leads her deeper into the jungle; this is the deepest she has ventured yet. And here the darkness is deeper as well. It is more alive, brimming with croaking scampering, chittering things. The night has its own organic, grand orchestra; toad-squirrels that make a good ruckus when they dive back into puddles, mosquitoes that buzz past her ears, and crickets at a volume she hasn’t heard before. 

The night music is all around her, ground to rustling canopy. The occasional snap and pop of her own fire adds a voice to the choir. 

“Where are we going?” Azula finally asks. 

“It’s a surprise.” Hama declares. 

“I don’t like those.” 

She brings her walking to a stop at a spot where the trees begin to thin and open up to a fair-sized pond that teems with swishing cattails and waving tall grasses. The waters are crystalline and dotted with lilypads, upon which several dragonfly-frogs lash their tongues and fan out their large wings. 

Azula squints, the entirety of the surface of the water is aglow like the night sky above, and for a moment she thinks that it is just a glimmering mirror image of what lies above. But no, the stars are there too, small pinpricks among points of teal and…yellow?

She edges closer. “It’s glowing?”

Hama nods, “types of planktons.” She explains. “I like to come her in the late summer, that’s when certain part-spirit fish shed their scales.”

“Do their scales glow?”

“That’s part of what this is?” Hama nods. She lowers a small jar and captures a decent helping of the bioluminescent sea scatter. The jar swirls like its own bottled galaxy. Azula reaches a hand out but pauses just above the glowing layer. “It’s alright, you can touch those.” 

And she does, she scoops a hefty handful and watches the light slide across her palm and sift through her fingers. 

“What are the yellow ones?”

Hama points behind her and upwards. Azula rises from her crouch and gives a small gasp. The tree behind her is glittering like some ten-thousand festival candles taking to the sky. She has never seen so many fireflies… “They’re all over.” 

“It’s mating season.” Hama mentions simply. “A lot happens around this time and every now and again, for just a few days, it all happens at once. And you get this.” She gestures about the clearing. 

She has never believed in magic nor enchantments, she supposes that the war never left any room for childish fairy tales. But she thinks that maybe there might be just a little touch of it here. She wanders slowly under the tree, through a cloud of fireflies. They land upon her shoulders and in her locks and she is part of the glow. 

Hama finds herself a perch on a fallen tree and observes her with a pleased smile. “Later on in the season, the flutterbats will show up.”

Azula nods. She remembers when she was a girl. She remembers sitting on father’s shoulders, reaching for fireflies as fireworks popped overhead. She remembers Zuzu tottering behind mother, his mouth sticky with crumbs and caramel. 

She remembers a sense of normalcy. 

She swallows, she doesn’t know why tears are prickling behind her eyes. 

She holds her hand out but the insects ignore it entirely, opting instead to land upon the end of her left arm. They flock to the space where her hand should be and for the first time that night she considers that she will probably wake up on Hama’s cot with only a vague recollection of what she has seen–the remaining lingerance of a kind dream.

But she doesn’t awaken because it is real. 

“A firefly’s kiss is said to be a lucky thing. They can sense longing and things that could use some fortune.” Hama pauses. “Or it might be your soap–they are fond of citrus as well.” 

Azula wanders over towards Hama’s fallen tree and finds herself a comfortable spot. A cloud of fireflies hangs around. 

“Do you like this surprise?”

“It’s nice.” 

More than nice–it makes her feel like, perhaps, things will be alright. They are alright now, at least for one refreshing moment.

Chapter Text

It still feels like a dream when she wakes. But the fireflies are still there. They linger on the window sill, crawling along the frame. A good many of them have begun to retreat as the flapping of cat-owl wings exchange for iguana-parrot squawks. The morning sky is still a deep navy, almost black. 

Azula rolls onto her back and begins counting fireflies. She can still feel them moving up and down her arm, kissing her imperfections. 

And for a time, her mind wanders. She wonders what everyone would think if she just went home right now, short a hand and dressed in clothes borrowed from an old woman. She wonders if they’d pity her or if they’d still view her the same way that they had before she left. 

She sits up and wanders towards the door. She can’t get any sleep so she may as well begin another attempt to firebend. She spares a quick glance at Hama’s sleeping form. Decidedly it is better to just let the old woman sleep. She’ll only be out front anyhow. She quietly slips out, a balmy breeze greets her when she sets foot on the porch.

She climbs down the steps and, as per usual, hesitates before stepping into the waters below. She isn’t sure that she will ever get used to having to wade around in–at least–ankle deep waters daily. It is no wonder Hama usually chooses to forgo shoes and socks. 

Azula finds herself her usual patch of elevated dry land and begins her warm up stretches. Perhaps that is what she has been missing, having decided to skip them the past few times. As she runs through them, she tries to recall what Hama has taught her about waterbending and drawing her chi from that chakra.  

She had managed a little flame before, she should be able to do it again. Perhaps putting a little more chi forth will do the trick…

.oOo.

It is almost instinct to feel a sense of dread when she wakes to find the firebender’s cot without a said firebender there to occupy it. Kohan will be here any day now and if he shows up to find her living alone again she won’t hear the end of it. 

She has found that she herself doesn’t want to be alone anymore. Not now that she has learned that the girl is unbothered by her bones and bloodbending. In fact, the girls seems to rather enjoy them in spite of her insistence that fire is the superior element. 

Hama wanders out onto the porch and catches sight of Azula. She supposes that she should get used to waking up and finding the girl’s bed empty. She is as early of a riser as any firebener and she is always asleep well before Hama.

For the longest while she only observes the girl from a distance as she goes through her routine. She does indeed have the foundations of a good waterbending kata already interlaced with her firebending stances. She is a sleek and nimble little thing. Graceful and careful as any waterbender. Admittedly, until the former princess, Hama has only ever seen bold and explosive firebending gestures. Fire and earth require power and water and air require fluidity. 

And yet, even before Hama had begun teaching her, Azula seemed rather fond of the more subtle, less showy movements.

She wonders if the girl is aware. 

.oOo.

“Once more.” Hama coaxes.

Azula takes a breath and tries once more to imitate the sway of Hama’s hips, the twist of her side as she guides a sizable wave along. 

“It isn’t about actually bending, it’s about feeling your chi flow; bigger, full body movements will make the sensations more obvious.”

And it does–Azula finds that she can more accurately discern where each individual strand of chi is being pulled from. She closes her eyes and tries to picture each thread shimmering down her arm, gently but with an impact. She can almost clearly see it building up as a small sphere in her left arm 

“Go on.” Hama encourages.

And she lets the chi unleash. It roars to life where her hand would be. Roars to life and takes the shape of her hand but with wispy, smoky fingers that change length and shape with the breeze.

Hama grins. “See there, that’s wonderful. Powerful. A combination of fire and water.” 

Azula closes the fingers of her fire hand before letting it dissipate. “Hopefully I can do it again.” She mutters.

“You will. And it will be easier when you let go of your…biases.”

“That’s a gentle way of putting it.” Azula grumbles. “Have you put away yours?”

“A while ago.” Hama replies. “You’re a hassle but you are one of two people who can stand to be around me. I can’t exactly be picky about who I keep company with.”

Azula furrows her brows and clears her throat. “I stand for everything that you can’t stand.”

Hama quirks a brow. “Do you? Or do you say that you hate waterbenders because that’s what you were told to do? You’re a smart girl, perhaps it’s time for you to take a break from firebending and start assessing your opinions–where they came from and if you really believe them.” 

“My opinions are my own.”

Hama hums skeptical. 

“Well where do you think that they came from.”

“I’m not going to do this for you.” Hama shrugs. “You sit down and you figure that out. And you come back to me and tell me when you have.”

.oOo.

She doesn’t like being alone with her thoughts. Especially when her own thoughts lead her to realize that some of her own thoughts probably haven’t entirely been her own.  She doesn't like being alone with her thoughts when her thoughts lead back to father.

Father who was good to her, who gave her praise and made her feel special and important. 

Father who was dreadful to her and made her feel used and worthless. 

Father who carried her on his shoulders and pointed at the fireworks. 

Father who carried her to war.

She doesn’t like being alone with her thoughts when her thoughts make her question things that she has always believed. What she had learned at the Royal Fire Academy For Girls, what she has learned by sitting in at war meetings or listening to them by the door. What she had learned from listening to commoners speak when she went into town and what the guards spoke of during shift changes.

She doesn’t like to be alone with her thoughts when they begin to make it clear that she has been thinking exactly what everyone has been telling her to think. That seeds have been planted in her mind and that she has done her part to help them not only blossom but thrive. 

She doesn’t like to be alone with her thoughts when realization drives ignorance out.

When it make her feels stupid, naive, and easy to mold. 

She doesn’t like being alone with her thoughts when they lead her to question if she still believes what she has believed and fought for all her life. And what it would mean if she doesn’t. Who she will be if she let go of those beliefs. 

She supposes that it does take a clever mind to pick through a good near decade of thoughts and behaviors and assess their roots and consequences. It takes a clever mind to wonder if such deep introspection is actually healthy at all. And suddenly she understands what mother had meant when she had, one night, mentioned to Iroh that his niece was too smart for her own well-being.

She doesn’t like to be alone with her thoughts.

She doesn’t like to be alone at all. 

She hates the old woman for, again, leaving her to her own… self destruction? 

Her own recovery?

Chapter Text

That depleted, drained look in Azula’s eyes tells Hama all that she needs to know. She finds a seat on the cot next to her. “It isn’t an easy thing.” She says. She rests her hand on the firebener’s shoulder. “Believe me, it isn’t. I think that that’s why I distanced myself from Kohan…” The girl doesn’t reply. “He made me think. He made me question what I thought.”

Azula’s lips press into a thin line. 

“And so I ran away. Ran out into the jungle–partially because the village no longer welcomed me. Mostly because I was scared that they would forgive me and then I’d have to see firebenders differently.” 

Her brows furrow. 

“And then the universe hands me a firebender. And I started thinking about those things that Kohan wanted me to consider.” She pauses. “It was uncomfortable.”

“So you’ve decided to return the favor.”

Hama chuckles. “Fair is fair, yes?”

“You are the second worst person I’ve ever met and I have a mild disdain for you.”

“In other words, you agree with me?”

She manages a small smile. A very soft, sad thing. But a smile no less. Mostly, the girl still looks quite distant. “Perhaps it’s time to stop thinking for a moment.”

She furrows her brows. “I can’t just stop. I have had some…fascinating realizations.” She pauses. “I don’t like them but I can’t just…I need to draw conclusions or thinking about it at all would have been pointless.”

Hama pats Azula’s knee and for a change, the girl doesn’t swat her hand away. “Sometimes it’s good to take a break from such serious thoughts. They will still be there when you are able to get back to them. Sometimes the conclusions will find you. It’s better that way.”

“Did they find you?”

Hama nods. “I do believe that they have.” She scrambles off of her chair and towards the door. “Come on now, Kohan should be here soon and I’d like to have the garden looking nice and trimmed.”

“Shouldn’t you worry about getting the interior organized first? There’s clutter everywhere.”

“Good point.” Hama nods. “I’ll take care of the garden, you tidy up in here.”

“That’s not my…I wasn’t…” Azula sighs. “Fine, I guess that I’ll do it, I’ll make sure that it’s done the right way.”

“Just make sure that I can find everything. And don’t touch anything in the herb or curio cabinets! Also don’t move the potted plants.” Hama hums. “How about this? You go outside and tend to the garden and I’ll tidy up in here?” 

“It sounds better.” 

Hama nods. “The gardening tools are in the little cellar at the back of the house. Just prune away the weeds and anything that looks out of place.” She thumbs her way through a few files and draws out a few. “These pages have picture of common weeds I’ve come by around here.”

Azula nods, takes the parchment, looks the sheets over, and pockets them. “They smell like rosemary.” She notes. 

Hama smiles. “See you’re already learning to identify herbs by scent. Gardening shouldn’t be a problem for you.” She puts her hands on her hips. “I like to put spices in my draws, by the way, it keeps things smelling fresh.” 

“It’s working.” Azula confirms. 

Hama teeters over to her water pump and grumbles to herself. “I ought to get this thing working too. It’s been clogged for months, I’m getting tired of having to manually fill gallons of water.”

.oOo.

There truly is an endless supply of tasks to get done around the shack and the garden. Azula supposes that she was already well aware that Hama’s property line is expansive but its excessive length is becoming increasingly more obvious with each time she looks up from her weed plucking. The work seems almost endless and for a moment she wonders if that’s how the palace gardners felt or if they took enjoyment out of preening the garden. Azula herself is rather torn; there is something relaxing about working with the plants. Something comforting about feeling the leaves between her fingers. 

And maybe it is that there is some part of her that is happy to be nurturing something, taking care of it. It makes her feel important. Gives her a mundane sense of purpose, a feeling of accomplishment.

She finds that it is easier to think when she can breathe in fresh air. She finds that her mind wanders. Much of it isn’t all that profound; she still has to finish learning to sew, perhaps she can find some fruits to use in some sort of recipe (she’ll fill in the blanks later), she wonders what bird made that particular squawk–she has grown fond of that particular liting chirp.

She spies one of Hama’s fire lilies. This one isn’t planted quite as securely as the rest of them. She plunges a hand shovel into an unoccupied patch of dirt and fills in the cracks around the fire lily, pacing it more securely. 

It is a few weeds over that her thoughts begin to wander back to where they had been the night before. Azula puts the shovel back into her pocket. The next weed is easy to spot, a glaring and obvious imperfection among a cluster of healthy carrots.

She finds herself thinking about the war again, about how the Fire Nation is so grand that its ideals should be spread far and wide.

She wanders over to it. According to the parchment it is pokeweed. Hama has scribbled in that spreads rapidly. Underlined thrice over, she notes that it can affect the growth of surrounding plants.  And bolded and underlined is a note that the berries upon it are poisonous. 

Azula gives the pokeweed a good tug, but it seems to be rooted rather deeply. She reaches for the shovel. 

The Fire Nation is very grand indeed, she muses to herself. And yet, it seems to birth the most unhappy citizens. She is hard pressed to come by a more carefree firebender–even TyLee had been haunted in her own way.

Soil aside she begins tugging again. And then she spots another pokeweed. She’ll have to take care of that one too, before it can spread further.

Sozin had sought to spread the Fire Nation’s glory. And she has read of that glory time and time again–read of a rich culture, wealth, and lively people. And yet the culture that he wished to spread…where had it gone? Dance and music have been banned for quite some time. Art, in many forms, has been restricted. 

So what then have they been trying to spread?

What had she been an instrument trying to spread?

She swallows. Hama has told her not to dwell upon it anymore. But the thoughts are there, she can’t seem to banish them. But she has banished this first pokeweed. She moves onto the next.

It strikes her that the whole nation had, somewhere down the lines, somewhere between generations and crown passings forgotten that they were trying to give the rest of the world a taste of Fire Nation glory. Somewhere along the lines it became selfish…

She plunges her shovel into the dirt. 

And she had been selfish. Selfish and selfless all at once. She had wanted what was best for her nation, her people, her father…herself too, perhaps. And what was best for them was a cost to the world. 

She grits her teeth.

The pokeweeds have been taken care of. For the next few feet, the garden is clear. But her head is not. There are unsightly things all around in her mind. Too many of them and she isn’t sure how to purge or prune them.

So she kneels down and picks her way through the parchments instead. But this one isn’t depicted anywhere. Perhaps it is not a weed? But no, it is mingling with the strawberries and she is sure that it is out of place.

Azula kneels and examines the plant more closely. 

And she is thinking, once again, about the ugly things in her mind. About what father, her teachers, the guards, and generals have told her of the Earth Kingdom and of the Water Tribe. There are things that have held true; that Water Tribesfolk tend to value folktale and community over grandiose innovation and individualism. And there are things that aren’t true; that either nation’s values are inherently better, that there can be now balance between them. 

She finds herself thinking of bending again; of how well it had gone to draw from her fire chakra and her water chakra. 

She runs her fingers through the vine strands. The cool feeling of dew on her fingers is quite pleasant. The way the garden air fills her lungs is placating.

Though it is every bit as frustrating. These viney weeds don’t want to come loose, they have plunged their roots so deeply into the ground that it is a hassle to wretch them out.

Hama has been good to her; the woman is innovative and clever. She is adaptable and creative. For all of the chaos her shack suggests, it is actually quite well maintained. And Kohan…she looks at her left arm; at the clean work he has made of it. At a healing job done so remarkably that she still has the rest of her arm…

But for the entirety of her life she has heard her father, and Zhao, and even Iroh at one point or another, call the Water Tribespeople unruly, unintelligent savages and the Earth Kingdomers unruly, dirty brutes. 

The roots run so, aggravatingly deep. 

She wonders if she’ll actually be able to rid the garden of this infestation.

“That’s field bindweed.” Azula jumps at the sound of Hama’s voice. She hadn’t heard the woman approach. “Very hard to get rid of.” She rubs her lips together. “The roots are very deep and it’s a very persistent weed.”

“So what do we do about it?”

Hama chuckles. “We get started of course! You managed to catch this one early! They’re easier to get rid of before they start to spread.”

Azula furrows her brows and purses her lips. “Are you going to help?”

Hama nods. “I suppose that unclogging the water pump can wait a little longer, this has to be taken care of.” She rubs her boney hands together. “Alright, we’re going to have to do a lot of digging.” 

“Do you have any rope?” 

“Rope?”

Azula nods. 

“I do, why?”

“Bring it to me and you’ll see.”

.oOo.

Clever girl, that one is…

Hama watches her dig around the vines. One hand and one shovel tied to her wrist in place of the other. 

Hama can’t say that she would have thought of it. 

“You enjoy it?”

“Hmm?”

“Gardening? Do you like it?”

“It’s calming.” Azula replies. “Father would have never let me do this; it’s a peasant’s work.”

“And yet he’s fine with a child doing a soldier’s work.” She pauses and backtracks at the firebender’s curt look… “a teenager doing a soldier’s work.”

Azula shrugs. “That’s just how it is in the Fire Nation. If you have the spark then you can fight and it’s a glorious thing.” But there is something in her eyes. A little seed of conflict. 

“Is it? Or should Fire Nation children have a chance to just be children?”

Her digging falters. “Yes, I guess that they should have a chance to just be children. You know I’ve read scrolls about what it was like before the war. There was dancing and theater was popular. And firebending used to be used in games and art.” She pauses. “But it’s too late for some Fire Nation children to just be children.”

“Is it?”

Azula nods. “Some of them have already seen too much and know too much. There are expectations…duties…”

“And those things don’t really mean much in the middle of a jungle.” 

“I suppose that there’s no one here to expect anything of anyone.” Azula admits. “But some people have still seen too much.”

“Nonsense!” Hama declares. Or at least she hopes that it is. “I’ve seen and been through quite a lot and I still enjoy childhood delights now and then.” She stabs her own shovel into the soil. “I can teach you a popular Water Tribe game.”

Azula furrows her brows. “Shouldn’t we be working on this garden, before the bindweed spreads.”

“Ah…” Hama flashes a toothy grin. “That’s the beauty of childhood, children don’t have to worry about responsibilities.” And for once, Hama would like to be a child again. Would like a moment of carefreeness. A moment where things can be as they were before she had lost everything to the war. 

“What’s the game and how is it played? What are the rules?”

“Well, typically this game is played with snow. But there is no snow so dirt will have to do.” She scoops up a handful of it. “Now this game is relatively simple.” She chucks the handful at Azula. It thumps between her shoulder blades and the firebender stiffens. “Try not to get hit.”

Her lip curls and she tosses a handful back, “you’re a natural.”

Chapter Text

Hama supposes that she should have assumed that the girl would be competitive. And by Raava, did she take their little game seriously. And that is how Kohan finds them; panting and covered in dirt. 

The former princess rises, clears her throat, dusts off her pants, and shakes out her hair. “Kohan.” She greets with as much poise as she can muster. Admittedly, she is able to make herself look impressively put together in spite of the mess. “Hama and I were just gardening.”

“I taught her how to engage in a snowball fight.” Hama says. “I had to improvise. Remember when we used to have snowball fights, Kohan?”

Kohan’s face softens, “I do miss the snow.”

She misses it too, has missed it for ages. Misses the sound of snow crunching and shifting beneath her feet. Misses the way it feels to have her feet sink into it. Misses the merciless coldness on her skin. The way that the air had always so sharply pierced her lungs. She sighs, “let’s go inside.”

“Your garden looks incredible today.” Kohan comments.

Hama jabs her thumb back at Azula. 

“You did this?” 

Azula nods. “I just pulled out a few weeds. I may have trimmed a few things here and there. It’s the little details that no one thinks to pay attention to.”

“What did you trim?!” Hama abruptly brings her walking to a halt. 

Azula shrugs, “if you didn’t want something trimmed then you would have already noticed that it was gone.”

Hama inhales, reminding herself that the girl is, by all means, just trying to help. Likely trying to overachieve where expectations are very much meant to be lax. “Ask me before you trim things.”

“You’ve been complaining about always running into that one low hanging branch for a while now. I figured that you’d want it gone. Among others.” 

“Which one?”

“The one that you would have just ran into were it still there.”

Hama glances behind her and upwards at the leafy canopy of her small mango tree. “Ah yes, that one. I suppose that, that one had to go.” 

Kohan chuckles behind them. 

“I’m going to clean myself up, this is starting to feel uncomfortable.” Azula declares, picking at the dried mud caked on her left elbow. “Is the soap bar still in the same spot?”

“For now.” Hama replies. She watches the girl hasten her pace towards the house, arms held away from her sides as though doing so will do anything to lessen the discomforts of knowing that she is dirty. 

She makes it to the porch well before they do and makes her way back down the steps just as they reach them. She wonders if the girl still feels uncomfortable having her baths in the river.

“Have a seat.” Hama gestures to a small wooden rocking chair. She props herself up against the wall. “The inside is still clutter–you have to make a mess to clean one.”

“Speaking of; she seems to be doing well, all things considered.”

Hama looks in Azula’s general direction, watching her grow smaller and smaller until she is well out of sight. “Most of the time, yes. She has her moments, mostly when she thinks that I can’t hear her.” Hama pauses. “She’s adjusting.”

“Are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You told me that you wanted her gone. Do you still want me to take her off of your hands?” 

She shakes her head vigorously. “Not yet, I’m still trying to decide!”

“Hama, I think that you’ve already made up your mind.”  He leans back against the chair and stares off into the jungle. 

“What makes you say so?”

“You left her unsupervised in your garden. You won’t even let me touch it without your oversight.” He pauses and pats his own knee. “You’ve got a soft spot for her don’t you?” 

“I do not!” Hama insists. “She’s a firebender and…” And one of the most brilliant and hardworking people that Hama has ever come by. And, perhaps, is one of the only people who knows what it means to fear and be feared all at once.

“She reminds me of you, Hama.”

“And that’s exactly the problem.” The problem and the allure. 

“You would miss her if I did bring her back with me.”

“At any rate, she’s still not well…”

“I’ll see what she says about that.” Kohan shrugs. “She looks rather lively to me; no swelling, no lingering fever nor infection, I assume that her appetite has been steady? She’s not in any pain?”

“No pain that she has mentioned.” Hama replies. 

“Well then, if you do want me to take her to the inn…”

“No!” Hama replies much too abruptly. “Not yet, I still need help around the garden and…”

“You are enjoying her company.” He reiterates. “I think that having her around is good for you. She gives you things to consider. You seem happier.”

.oOo.

The man lifts her arm and inspects his handiwork. “It’s healed remarkably.” He comments before putting her arm back on her thigh. “How has your appetite been? Has your bathroom use been regular?”

“Normal, I suppose–as normal as it can be for not being at home.” Azula clears her throat. “And that’s none of your business.”

Kohan sighs. “After kidney failure it’s something that needs to be checked up on.” 

“Well I’m fine.” She replies curtly. 

“I can tell.” 

Hama sniffs. “Oh, believe me, Kohan, she speaks with daggers even in the throes of suffering. It’s part of her charm.” 

“And there’s no more pain?”

“Does Hama count?”

Another sniff and a light chuckle. 

“Not in this case.” He replies. “Do you think that you’ll be able to make the journey back to Honoki?”

From her corner of the room Hama stiffens. Azula’s stomach sinks. Although, she supposes that she should have expected this but for a moment she had thought…

After the fireflies and the bone box…

“You still want me to leave?” She thinks that she has managed to keep the faint pangs of hurt out of her voice.

She eyes the old woman. She and Kohan both. 

Azula supposes that Kohan is nice enough. If nothing else, he can certainly help her if she finds herself with another affliction. She supposes that she does miss the convenience of a village and nearby food sources, ones that she doesn’t have to track down…

But she has grown fond of the noises that the jungle makes at night. 

She…she might miss the old woman?

Hama finally shakes her head. “I don’t want you to leave.”

Azula furrows her brows. “You don’t?”

“We still have bindweed to get under control, a pump to unclog, a house to tidy, a roof to tatch.” She pauses for a breath. “We have to finish teaching you to sew and scavenge and firebend again.” Another pause. “You can leave after all of that.” 

Kohan rolls his eyes. “Just tell the girl that you enjoy having her around.”

Hama waves her hand dismissively. “We should start tidying up the counter for dinner.”

“What do you want to do?” He asks and Hama stiffens a second time. 

It would be significantly easier to follow him back to Honoki. Much simpler if she chose to work at his tavern. She could probably even earn herself enough to pave herself a respectable living. But even if she did leave Hama and her rickety little bungalow, she doesn’t think that they would leave her. 

No. The thoughts would still be there circling maddeningly in her mind and with no closure and nothing to show for dwelling upon them. 

“I’ll stay with Hama.” She hadn’t expected the woman to look so relieved. “I would like to go to the village and have a real meal though, something that isn’t stew, fruit, or oatmeal.”

“Bread?” Hama suggests.

“We always have bread.” Azula grumbles. “I’d like something with meat in it.”

“We haven’t had the time to go hunting.” Hama comments.

“The both of you can come to Honoki with me. I think that it would be good for Hama to have some company.”

“I’ve got company.” She wanders to Azula’s side.

“And how much company did you get before she showed up?”

“An unwary traveler every now and then.” 

Azula imagines that she had probably shooed each of them away somehow. At any rate, she realizes that she has rather missed being around people. She hasn’t seen a soul save for Kohan and Hama since she’d fled the capital. She partly misses the hustle and bustle. “We’ll go.” She answers for the both of them. 

“We can head out tomorrow.”

“I didn’t agree to this.” Hama grumbles. 

“But you didn’t object.” Azula shrugs. “And the appropriate time frame for objection has passed.” 

“Nonsense!” Hama folds her arms across her chest. But Azula knows that the woman will be packing her bags the moment she wakes up in the morning.

Chapter Text

Azula hadn’t imagined that it could be so jarring to find herself back in a city. She can barely remember the last time she had spoken to another person, save for Hama and Kohan. And now they are all around her rushing about doing their day to day business–they breeze past her on their way to food stalls, they shout at one another from across the street, children rush by chasing after one one another. 

Honoki is, by no means, a large town but it isn’t all that small. Mongoose-lizards flick their tongues as they shuffle by and komodo-rhinos rattle the roads as they meander along, riders sitting astride. 

She hears the jostling of grain sacks and the wobble of cart wheels, the shouts of the vendors and the clangs of nearby renovation projects. There is the tinkling of chimes and bells upon a miniature shrine and the plucking of zither strings from a street performer. 

It is kiliscope of scents; mostly pepper and heavy spices that leave her with twitches of home sickness. But there are touches of freshly harvested fruits–mango and banana and an occasional spritz of perfume. 

It is a myriad of colors; the vivid reds of silks and the gleaming faux gold of roof tops. The colorful paper lanterns, banners, and paper fans. A flicking and flapping of crimson Fire Nation flags. Stalls boast colorful painted sculptures of iguana-parrots and tiger monkeys.

There is so much going on that it is almost dizzying. Azula is hard pressed to understand how she had kept up with the frenzy back home. And maybe that is just it–maybe she hadn’t. 

Maybe it was too much. 

Maybe the bustle, among other grueling endeavors and happenings, had caused her mind to fray along the edges for a time.

She realizes that she has moved closer to Hama and the old woman makes no move to put distance back between them. It might be that Hama too has closed the space between them. Hama who has been isolated for a lot longer than she.

But all of the sights, sounds, secents, and sensations…they pale in comparison to what she might call a sixth sense–that knowingness that she is being stared at, perhaps even recognized. And now that it is on her mind, she supposes that–aside from her collection of scars and a more disheveled ensamble–she doesn’t look all that different than she had before she left. 

So much time spent in the jungle and well out of the public eye has made her careless. It has given her a reason to be less guarded, less secretive. Azula has spent enough time there to forget one critical component of having lost her hand.

She isn’t used to having to conceal her stump and now she has to deal with those patronizing, pitying looks. 

The ones that remind her of what she has lost. 

The ones that make her feel mournful and distraught all over again.

It is worse still when their eyes shift from her wrist to her face and the pieces come together. 

They pity their princess who has lost her crown, her wealth, and her hand. 

Their princess who has lost everything.

Their princess who is only so in memory. 

She tucks her arm into her pocket and out of sight. 

.oOo.

Hama too is anxious. These people, all of them, they are staring at her. They must be, they recognize her. They resent her. 

“Take that arm back out…”

“But…”

“They aren’t looking at you and if they are, you’re going to have to get used to that.”

The girl looks faintly horrified at the proposition. 

“I suppose that if you linger about long enough they’ll get used to seeing you around and your arm won’t be a curiosity anymore.” Hama shrugs. But the girl doesn’t look any less off put. “They aren’t staring at you. They’re staring at me. They recognize me.”

“You think that they don’t know who I am.” Azula asks through gritted teeth.

“If they don’t then they will–you have a habit of throwing your title around.” The woman shrugs. 

“They do.” She hisses. “They already know, that’s why they’re staring.”

“Or they’re gandering at your arm.”

“They are still looking at me.”

“Or they’re eyeballing me .” Hama declares. “Not everything is about you.”

“Have either of you considered that you are both very recognizable. And perhaps people find it doubly curious to see the two of you together.” Kohan quirks a brow, no doubt having had his fill of their squabbling. 

Hama hums, “a notorious, elderly, bloodbending town terror and a small, firebening princess wearing peasants clothes…”

“Odd, indeed.” Azula mutters. If she has a problem with Hama’s choice of words she gives no indication. But Hama does not think that she is wrong, the girl is wearing–by her standards–peasant clothing. And she is a very small thing. 

“I suppose that they probably have questions.” Kohan shrugs.

“Perhaps we should disappear into the Flamin’ Fish Tavern and avoid those.”

Azula nods vigorously in agreement. Not that the tavern won’t have its own crowd. Not that those outside of it can’t enter regardless. “Do you think that they are still angry with me?” Hama asks.

“They don’t talk about you all that much, Hama.” Kohan replies. “They didn’t anyhow.”

“Nothing more than a memory.” She murmurs. 

“Nothing but a memory and remembered all the same.” Azula muses aloud. Hama finds herself shivering. What chills she won’t bring to the Honoki on sight, the former princess will bring through sound.

Hama wonders if the girl is speaking of her or of herself. Perhaps she has the both of them in mind. Either which way, she seems entirely uneasy about the thought. 

.oOo.

Azula isn’t sure what she had expected of the Flamin’ Fish Tavern. Maybe she hadn’t expected anything at all. She supposes that it is quite a charming little space. It’s bamboo walls are covered by drooping fishnets and dried star and pufferfish. She can almost picture Hama sucking the moisture from them as she had with the fire lilies. And she suppresses a shudder. It is an ability both fascinating and chilling in equal measure.

She spots a pair of oars affixed to the wall and several firepits and stone ovens where a few cooks toil away. 

“Quin-Shaw, I’d like you to meet…”

“Princess Azula, is that you?” The man, Quin-Shaw greets. His bushy brows arc in surprise and he straightens out his apron. 

She has never seen this man prior. She supposes that she can deny it, tell him that he is mistaken and that people draw that comparison a lot but she doesn’t see it. She could also confirm his statement and ask him ‘what of it?’ She remains completely silent. 

“And Hama.” Kohan finishes.

Her window of making that choice has come to a close and she shoots Kohan a look that he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t find noteworthy. 

“What are you doing in Honoki?” He asks of her, as though he has the right to even a sliver of the details of her life. She wonders if news of her ‘condition’ has reached a smaller town like Honoki yet. She hasn’t seen any wanted posters.

And maybe it is that she simply isn’t wanted–not even in custody. Perhaps Zuzu is content to forget about her and move on as though he and his friends haven’t uprooted any lives in their righteous, noble little quest. 

She shrugs and Kohan fills in. “She’s not a talkative person.”

“So I’ve heard.” Quin-Shaw wipes his hands on a towel. Finally his gaze settles upon Hama. “And you’ve brought the witch back.” His attention turns back to Azula. “You ought to keep better company, princess.” 

“That’s why I left the palace.” Azula shrugs. Not that she hadn’t been indetermaitly forced out first. 

“I’ll fix you a good meal. I can’t imagine that you’ve had one in a while.” She wants to ask him what he means by that, but truly she doesn’t actually want to know. She doesn’t need to hear him comment about how sickly, malnourished, or however she may appear to him. 

To everyone who has been staring at her for the last hour or so.

“And Hama?”

“A decent meal.” Quin-Shaw replies.

“A good meal.” Azula counters.

“Is that a command, princess?”

Azula, to the man’s discontent, nods.

“Of course.” Even Zuzu would have been able to detect the reluctance and irritation in his voice. His private judgements that he probably thinks that he has concealed well. 

“Be nice to Hama, Quin.” Kohan sighs. 

“Nice? The woman abducted my wife! She doesn’t sleep through the night anymore.”

Next to Azula, Hama flinches. “You’re a real menace.” Azula grumbles. 

“It was an art.” Her voice is missing at least a fraction of the humor that she had intended to put forth. Not that Azula doesn’t still find humor in the remark. Bitter, resentful humor, but humor all the same.  

She wishes that she didn’t see so much of herself in the old woman.

Chapter Text

For the first time in ages Azula is comfortable. Her clothes are clean to near palace standards and her skin has been scrubbed and rubbed spotless. It has been ages since she has had the luxury of someone else bathing her and massaging the ache from her muscles. It is, by no means, on par with the level of relaxation that the palace massage artists can induce, but after months of going without it certainly feels as though it is. 

Mihori’s delicate hands work wonders. It leaves Azula feeling contentedly lethargic. The heels of her hands press between Azula’s shoulder blades. Mihori works downwards to her lower back. She hadn’t realized that her back was so sore until Mihori kneaded that soreness away. She closes her eyes and rests her cheek upon her arm until Minhori asks her to hold it out. The right one is a simple task. But, according to Mihori, the left is particularly tense. And by the time the woman hands that arm back, Azula feels as though the chi can flow more freely through it. That she might actually be able to pull off some real firebending again. 

And then they come in with bowls of fruit, they let her pick and choose which she’d like as they comb her hair and put makeup back on her face. 

They treat her like a princess because they truly don’t know that she is no longer such. Or maybe it is she who doesn’t know that the title is still hers. Agni, what if she had no reason to flee at all? What if she has put herself through all of this for no reason at all?

Perhaps, either way around, she was simply meant to go through it. Meant to suffer petrifying, world altering thoughts. Perhaps, either way around, she was simply meant to grow close to a waterbender, to Hama. 

Wicked, grumpy Hama. 

Attentive, wise Hama.

Azula pops another grape into her mouth. And for a moment she can forget about everything. Every little thing that has happened to her. The people of Honoki give her comfortable lodgings, meals as elegant as the town can muster, and clothing suitable of her status. But her comfort comes with a price. It comes with questions upon questions about her hand; what happened, who dared do that to our princes, should we make them pay? Sometimes they ask her if it hurts. She supposes that in a way it does. 

If they find the sight of it disturbing or grotesque they make no mention of such. She thinks that she’d rather have that then all of those pitying stares that they give her.

They are almost delicate with her, as though they think that they can break her if they do the wrong thing or if they let her try to achieve certain tasks on her own. She likes to think that they are doing everything for–the cooking, the fetching of her clothes, the opening of doors–because she is their princess and not because they think her incapable. But prior to losing her hand, they had never been so adamant about helping her even after she refused help. 

Ultimately Azula decides to just let it happen; it is kind of nice to be relentlessly pampered again. They rub massage oil into her hand and feet. The manicure her fingers and pedicure her toes–if only she had her palace polishes, she would look dazzling. 

Azula leans back in the chair with a contented sigh. 

Kohan’s tavern had been nice enough, but this spa…she wishes that she had heard of it before. Wishes that she wouldn’t have assumed that news had already reached Honoki. For a moment she can pretend like everything is as it should be. 

For a moment she can pretend that she had lost her hand in some glorious battle and they are now treating her to the luxuries and rewards of a war hero. 

Azula closes her eyes.

.oOo.

“They seem to be taking your company well.” Hama comments bitterly. The tone seems to be completely lost on the princess who is back in her old cushy world. The world the protects her from the hardships she was learning to empathize with

Azula shrugs, “I don’t think that they know yet.”

“What don’t they know?”

And it seems to dawn upon her that she hasn’t yet told Hama just what had led her to her doorstep. Whatever that thing is, Hama finds herself hoping that they do find out about it. In fact, she would like nothing more than to see the pedestal kicked right out from under her. 

She should have known that all it would take to erase months of progress and introspect would be one trip to a firebending town. Of course she would choose her own comfort and her own people over the old hag she met in the jungle. 

“Where are you going?” Azula asks.

“Back by Kohan.” Hama spits. “So he can take me home. We’ve had our real meal…we’ve had several in fact. Now I would like to go home.” 

Azula crinkles her nose. “Why would you want to go back there when you can have all of this.” She gestures around the room. But Hama has heard quite enough and then some.

“ You can have all of that. They barely tolerate me.” She scoffs. She doesn’t wait for the princess to try to justify herself, truly she doesn’t want to hear it. She turns on her heel and sulks back to the tavern.

“How is she adjusting?” Kohan asks. 

Hama gives a begrudging chuckle. “She doesn’t need to adjust, she fits right in. I’ve changed my mind again, she can stay here. She doesn’t even need my inn, they’ll give her everything she needs and then some.” 

“Hama…”

“Two days! It took her two days to disregard two months or so of progress.” It was probably more than two months. “Ungrateful…spoiled…stupid child.” 

“Hama…” He tires again.

“She said that we would only be here for a night or two. She only said that because she thought that they’d reject her like they’re rejecting me.”

“Hama.” He says more firmly. “Don’t be so hard on her. She’s used to living in a palace. She hasn’t seen her people in ages. Have you considered that she might be homesick? Can you look me in the eyes and tell me that you wouldn’t cherish every little moment if you set foot in a Water Tribe settlement?”

Hama pauses her pacing and raving. “I…I suppose I would relish it. But I wouldn’t let my people get away with scoffing at her and treating her the way that she lets her people treat me. I mean, I would know that I know she will. But…”

“Does she know that you’re upset, Hama.”

“She does now. And if she doesn’t then she’s either selfish or a fool…or a selfish fool.” 

“Does she know what’s making you upset?”

“She’s too immersed in herself right now to ask.”

.oOo.

She doesn’t have to walk if she doesn’t want to. People offer her their mongoose-lizards and their komodo-rhinos. It is a generous gesture but today Azula feels like walking. She wants to do at least something on her own.

She finds her way back to the tavern. And when she requests a drink, Quin-Shaw halts what he is doing to take her order. She comes first. Finally , she and her needs come first again. And when she is led to her lodgings and sinks into the plush mattress, puts her head against a well-fluffed pillow, bundles herself up in warm blankets she feels like a princess again.

Truly, like nothing has changed at all.

Like she could walk back into the palace and take back everything she deserves. 

It is so easy to forget.

And she very nearly does.

And then she rolls over. She rolls over and feels a lump against her hip.

She reaches into her pocket and draws out a small geode. For some reason it puts a discomfort in her belly. She closes her fist around it. And suddenly she can’t sleep. Despite how cozily her body sinks into the mattress, despite how kind the pillow is to her head. Despite how quiet and uncreaky the inn is and how gentle the breeze that wafts through the curtains is.

Azula finds herself climbing out of bed and tip toeing into Hama’s room. Hama’s room isn’t nearly as nice as her own. Azula thinks that, perhaps, the room isn’t nice at all; there is a bed but the sheets aren’t in great condition. There are pillows but they are flat and fluffless. There is a window but it faces the alley and the chamber pots.

.oOo.

“What do you want?” Hama snarls.

The princess lingers quietly in the doorway, perhaps it is beneath her to enter such a pitiful dwelling.

She clears her throat. “I thought that I would ask you if you wanted to stay in my room tonight.”

Hama sniffs. “Those rooms aren’t for me.”

“Says who exactly?”

“Shinzuki…the woman who runs this charming little spa and inn.” Hama shrugs. “And half the town. Waterbenders don’t get high class rooms, even if they can pay for them. Most of us can’t of course. But those who can, still aren’t permitted to…”

Azula shrugs. “Overruled.” 

“What?” 

“Where’s Kohan? He can come with us.”

“He has his own house. He’s one of the lucky ones. It’s small, but it’s a  house.” And more power to the man. If anyone has earned it, it is him. 

“What are you waiting for?” Azula taps her foot. “Unless you like this dingey space.” Azula crinkles her nose. Her hand slips into her pocket and closes around something. 

“I told you that I’m not allowed. If Shinzuki finds me in one of the high class rooms…”

“She will realize that I extended the invitation and if she is wise then she will leave it at that.” Azula shrugs again. “Come on, you’ll understand after you know what it's like to sleep in a real bed.”

Hama has never been in such a spacious and cozy room. Azula gestures to the bed. “Go on, try it.” 

Hama wanders over to it, staring at the mattress as though it will suck her in and suffocate her. Perhaps, in a sense, it will. 

“It’s a bed, Hama.” Azula rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to check for snakes or poison ivy here.”

Hesitantly, Hama climbs onto the mattress. 

“One of the servers should be around soon. I’ll have them send for Quin-Shaw. You enjoyed his cooking, yes?” 

More than she would like to admit, she did. “He doesn’t enjoy cooking for me.”

Azula waves her hand. “It doesn’t matter what he enjoys. It matters what I enjoy.” She pauses, her brows furrow. “Why are you looking at me like that.” 

For such a smart girl, she is so completely oblivious. Hama sighs, it is more tiresome than she had expected to have to constantly explain to her the things that she finds obvious. “Your disregard for others is troublesome.”

Her brows only seem to knit further. “I am regarding your comfort?” 

Hama sighs again, the girl, she realizes, is trying. “Yes.” She gives her that inch. “But you are disregarding Quin-Shaws.”

“And he is disregarding yours? It is fair, is it not?”

Hama lets a laugh slip. “I suppose that it is.” Maybe the girl understands more than Hama had thought. Or maybe she only has a partial understanding. Either which way, Hama supposes that she should be grateful that the girl  hadn’t forgotten her completely. Not that she isn’t peeved to have been forgotten for two days.

Azula finds herself a spot on the sofa and lays down. Hama herself lays back; resentfully, she admits that she can understand why the princess is so hesitant to part with this bed.

Chapter Text

“Thank you.”

Azula furrows her brows. “For what.”

“For getting Quin-Shaw to cook for me again.”

“It wasn’t a big deal.”

Hama chuckles sadly. “But that’s just it. It is a big deal; Quin-Shaw has never cooked for me.” She pauses and Azula cocks her head. “He has always refused, most firebenders have.”

“They cook for Kohan.”

“Because times are…they’re changing.” And maybe she should try to keep up. “And they’ve always liked Kohan, he plays by their rules.”

“Changing.” Azula repeats. “Then demand them to cook for you, they are chefs; if you can pay then they can cook. They don’t have to like you.”

“It doesn’t work like that for me.” Hama replies with a shake of her head. “I am not royalty.”

“Neither is anyone else here.” Azula shrugs. “But I can keep ordering your meals for you if it makes you more comfortable.” 

Hama opens her mouth and closes it once more–the girl doesn’t mean anything by it. She can tell; she is learning to gauge when Azula is being deliberately cutting and when she is simply oblivious. “You don’t realize it, do you? How much easier it is for me when you are around.” Another realization comes over her; the girl is just as unaware of how much her words help as she is of how devastating they can be. The girl doesn’t realize just how much she can change things. 

She shrugs again, “well yes, generally speaking it is easier to do things when you have help.”

Hama sighs and shakes her head. “I mean that people treat me better because I have favor with a firebender.” She pauses. “They won’t sell me food without you around because they think that I’m beneath them. They look at me the same way that you used to. The way that you still seem to look at me.”

Azula furrows her brows. “How do you think that I look at you?”

“Like I’m beneath you.”

Azula rolls her eyes. “Don’t take it so personally, everyone is.” 

This time Hama can’t tell if the girl is serious. “Let me ask you something else.” 

Azula quirks a brow. 

“How do you feel about other waterbenders? The ones that you don’t have a personal tie to? What words come to mind when you think of waterbenders?”

.oOo.

Instantaneously she thinks of rugged people. People who thrive on superstition instead of logic. Brutal folks, uncivilized folks. But Hama and Kohan are civilized. Kohan prefers the innovations of the city to whatever hovel the Fire Nation had stolen him from. They had helped him…

But Hama. Hama is civilized, cultured, and clever. And she rejects the Fire Nation and its principals. Her version of civilization looks entirely different, her innovations are perhaps more innovative in a way. There is a special kind of creativity, a different type of intellect…

“I suppose I haven’t really thought about that.” She answers simply. 

“Haven’t thought about that or haven’t reassessed that?”

Her silence is answer enough. 

“So think it over.” Hama grumbles. “I don’t want to be your exception.” 

Azula’s stomach lurches. Hama gives her too much to think about and too little time to process it. Even if she can, she isn’t entirely sure of what to do with what she concludes. She isn’t sure if she can handle the unflattering light that old beliefs paint her in–especially when it is so hard to come by reasons to feel kindly about herself. 

“You aren’t my exception.” Azula says finally. 

“Then what am I?”

Azula furrows her brows, mulling over which answer would satisfy Hama best. To tell her that she is a standard or an example feels condescending. To say that she is just a person like anyone else in the Fire Nation feels lackluster. “A friend?”

“What about the waterbenders who aren’t your friends, what are they?”

It wasn’t the response she had been hoping for. She gives her best nonchalant shrug. “Just people, I guess.” Sometimes she thinks that she would like to be just a person. She looks at her manicured hand, brushes her fingers over the fine silks that she has been dressed in. They give her so much attention, perhaps too much. 

When she looks back up Hama is smiling.  “Just people. Yes.”

But this time she can’t seem to smile back.

“What do you think of when you think about firebenders?” Because right now she only sees brutality and hatred and brutal hatred. Destruction and rigidity. Angry, miserable people with disintegrated values and a disconnect from even their own element. 

Come to think of it, she can’t recall a time when Fire Nation culture had been rich. She has read about it, sure. But the only rich Fire Nation art she has immersed herself in has been the art of war. 

All of the finery they have dressed her in just feels suffocating. Heavy. 

She thinks that she should lay down. 

Indeed, this is what Ursa had meant in telling Iroh that she is too smart for her own safety. She knows too much, she thinks too much and it will be her undoing if she hasn’t been undone already. 

“Repression. People who are hurt and afraid. People who can’t be true to themselves. Guarded people who value pride and kinship.” Hama replies. “They’re just people.”

But this isn’t good enough either. It doesn’t bring the comfort that she had hoped for. Because she isn’t just a person. She isn’t just an ordinary firebender. She is the princess. The fear and the pain. She is the war. She leans heavily upon the bedpost, her forehead pressing into its polished wood. 

.oOo.

Perhaps it is time to give the girl another inch. Hama supposes that she has put in enough thought and work of her own. Enough of it for it to become uncomfortable. The sort of unease necessary for growth. The sort of unease that Kohan’s warmth and Azula’s presence have been evoking within her own mind.

But she thinks, upon seeing the girl lightly knock her head against the bedpost, that introspection has now gone past discomfort and into distress. And distress is no good, it is of no use. It goes from a tool to a cripple. 

Hama finds herself, once again, wishing that Kohan were here. He would know how to console Azula, he could do it better than she. Perhaps she should fetch the man. 

“I’m not just a person.” Azula mumbles. “I’m Fire Nation royalty. What comes to mind when you think of Fire Nation nobility.”

Hama must admit that it isn’t quite cozy to have her own questions tossed back at her. Although, there is a part of her that is glad that the princess isn’t letting her mind go dull.

“I think that they have it the worst.” She replies at last. “All of that repression and fear and pain. At least in the colonies and out here in the countryside you can stray from the shadow of the palace and its expectations. I’ve seen more creativity and…” now that she thinks on it, “open mindedness.” Perhaps they haven’t been cold towards her because she is a waterbender–perhaps they have been avoidant because she has been a grouchy old woman.

Perhaps it is because she has left scars of her own. 

She has do doubt that their biases have a role to play but Kohan has done a wondrous job with cutting through those. Perhaps it would do well to try something other than–in her humble opinion–justified resentment.

The princess is staring her down and she realizes that she had thought over her. “My hearing isn’t what it used to be…”

“Excuses.”

“You’re going to have to repeat yourself.”

“You just weren’t listening.”

And she just doesn’t want to repeat herself. But she does anyways, “what words come to mind when you think of me?”

Hama studies the girl’s face. For once, she can’t detect even a hint of haughtiness. Whatever the reason is for her setting herself apart from the rest of her people, it isn’t coming from a place of superiority. No, mostly it is just a fact; the girl is a princess. Hama supposes that that is a very different world from the one that Quin-Shaw lives in. Just as the life of a Water Tribe chief is apart from a Water Tribe fisherman. 

“Hama, what do you think of?” Perhaps it is only her imagination but the princess sounds almost distraught.

“Change.” Hama replies. “That is the word I think of.”

“Change?” She iguana-parrots softly.

Hama nods. “You’ve changed. And you can garner change. You have the status to do it.”

Azula sniffs indignantly. “That’s Zuzu’s job. He’s reshaping the world to be more…united.”

“From the palace a ruler can only do so much. He can preach and talk but it doesn’t do a lick for those who have a certain way ingrained in here.” She taps the side of her head. “No, that requires, say, keeping company with a firebender.”

“I can’t live with everyone and neither can you.” 

“But there are people who are loyal to you . To what you believe in. They aren’t going to listen to Fire Lord Zuko…”

Azula cringes.

“Those who followed your father resent Zuko’s ideals. They close their ears and their minds. But you…they’re sympathetic to you.”

“You overestimate my influence.” 

“You are royalty. You have their loyalty and trust. You have repute.”

The princess swallows and grits her teeth. “ Was . I was royalty. I didn’t tell you how I came to your jungle.”

Chapter Text

She regrets having mentioned it the moment after the words had left her mouth. Because now the old woman is looking at her expecting elaboration. And Azula supposes that, to some degree, she wants to talk about it. She doesn’t think that it would have slipped so easily if there wasn’t a part of her that wanted Hama to know…that wanted anyone really to understand. 

“They think that I’m crazy.” Sometimes she agrees. Sometimes she is well aware that there is something so deeply, irreparably wrong with her. When Hama doesn’t speak, and part of her wishes that she would, she continues. “So they…he…Zuko took my title and transferred me to some institution.”

“In institution?” 

Azula nods. “A straight jacket wasn’t enough so added some chains around my ankles for good measure.” She gives a bitter sniff. “I’m surprised that they didn’t muzzle me, I’ve heard that they’ve muzzled people who could breathe fire.”

Hama seems to frown.

“I couldn’t move. I couldn’t firebend. Sometimes I was so sedated that I couldn’t think. It was mind numbing and degrading. I was starting to go crazy for real. I had to get out of there.” She rises from the bed and slinks over to the windows. She looks down upon the village below, arms clasped behind her back, her hand cupped around the stump. “Everyone in the capital knows it. They know that my crown is null and that I was in an institution. They know that there’s something wrong with me, they are going to take anything I say with doubt.”  Azula swallows, her stomach once again tying itself in knots. 

Admittedly she has had too much else to focus on–survival, new skills, and waterbenders–to wallow in her misery. To truly let what she lost sink in. “I don’t have the repute or influence that you think I have.” Her fingers curl around the window sill. “Perhaps I have some left in small towns like this, at least until word finally reaches them.”

She supposes that she can very well make something of that–a cluster of small towns can outweigh one large city. It was a tactic that the Fire Nation had used in the past to conquer parts of the Earth Kingdom. But she no longer has the means to reach them before the news can get to them. 

She sighs. “It doesn’t really matter. I can put everything I have, all of my skills and all of my cunning into trying but it won’t matter. It only takes one lapse at the wrong moment and it all falls apart.” She strolls back to the bed and lets herself fall upon the mattress. 

.oOo.

Raava, no wonder those fools had no problem imprisoning and brutalizing her. Apparently they do it to their own as well. Apparently Azula is more intimately familiar with Fire Nation prison facilities–and their sister institutions than Hama had expected. “Why didn’t you mention that any sooner?”

“Would it have mattered?” Azula shrugs. “You’d have thought that it was justice. And besides, I don’t want pity.”

“I would have thought that, yes.” Hama admits. She watches the girl make herself comfortable on the bed. She finds that she doesn’t really know what else to tell her. “Look, I’m not a comforting sort of person.” And the former princess isn’t one to seek it out.

“Clearly…” Azula replies. 

But the girl needs it, she can see it in her eyes; the loss, the conflict, the fatigue. What the girl needs is to step away from politics and her past. There is a certain childlike delight in her eyes when she uncovers a new jungle wonder or hears a new story.There is a sense of ease and comfort when she is given a break from her own mind.

But Hama needs her sharp mind and the influence that she still has. 

“I can get them to respect you.” Azula speaks, eyes fixed upon the ceiling. “But then I’m going to have to leave.”

“Leave?”

“If word gets back to Caldera City…I can’t go back to that institution.” She rubs her hand over her face. “It was careless to come here at all. I should have thought of that. I don’t usually make mistakes like this. I’m not usually…”

“You’ve had a lot to think about, of course some things are going to slip your mind.”

She shakes her head. “No. No, I used to be able to think over and assess many things at once. And then…”

“And then what?”

Azula shakes her head and rolls onto her side. She rests her ear against her hand. “I just can’t go back to that place. I won’t.” 

“Of course you won’t, there’s no reason to send you to a place like that.”

“So? Zuzu and his friends will make one.” 

“Well if you do captured and sent back there, just know that there will always be a full moon eventually. And I always enjoy terrorizing Fire Nation towns.” She flashes a wicked little grin. She thinks that she caught the faintest smile from the princess. 

“I suppose that we can worry about that later if it comes to it. I believe that the best plan of action would be to get at least this town on my side–and maybe a few others if I am lucky…” She trails off into her own musings. “And we can accomplish two feats in one; I can get myself some protection and I can subtly get them used to you and Kohan. If they’re anything like my mother’s people in Hira’a then they will have a soft spot for your Water Tribe legends…”

Hama lets her lay out her plans and goals, she rambles with a degree of enthusiasm. 

“And you’d still like to finish learning to sew and garden, yes?” 

Azula nods. “I’d like to see the fireflies again. They are…nice.” She curls herself up and nuzzles her head against the pillow. “You won’t be disappointed, will you? If I can’t do it?”

“Kohan couldn’t warm them up to me, if you can’t, it’s no fault of your own. I’ve made quite a name for myself here.” She shakes her head. “I hadn’t even considered trying to make amends with these people until recently and I still think that they owe me an apology–at the very least–for what they did to me.” 

Azula is quiet for a very long time. “Yes, they probably do. The Fire Nation didn’t spread out culture and prosperity, we erased yours.” 

Relief is a warm feeling, a wash of comfortable sunlight on her wrinkled skin. It is gently flowing and all encompassing. It is a weightlessness a loosening of shackles that Hama hadn’t realized she was wearing. But Azula looks hurt and tired, as if vocalizing her speculations had evaporated the last of her energy. “It’s alright.” Hama replies. “You can’t help what you were born into. And you can’t carry all of the blame on your shoulders. It won’t do anyone any good if you try to.” 

Azula nods. “There’s no honor in taking no responsibility…” She trails off, fingers gliding along the stump. “It doesn’t do any good either.” 

“Indeed.” 

“It’s not entirely your fault either.” Azula closes her eyes. “How this town treats you. They shouldn’t have expected all of their prisoners to just lay down and take it.” 

Hama wonders if the girl is also speaking of herself. 

.oOo.

Only a few words and Hama is looking at her differently. Much differently. With respect, approval…something else that she can't quite place.

It is just as much of a comfort as it is a nerve rattler. 

To finally vocalize her thoughts plainly and as they are is liberating in some sense. Hopeful in another.

And yet it still feels so profane, so sacrilegious to be disregarding everything that she has ever believed in. 

In the respect and appreciation she sees in Hama's eyes she can see hatred and disappointment in the golden eyes of her people.

Of her father.

Perhaps in her own eyes. 

And in her liberation she feels it in her bones, a sense of grief.

The mourning of herself and she hasn’t even died.

Chapter Text

They talk. The people of Honoki talk a lot. For all of the pampering they offer her, they offer double in gossip. Of course they don’t do it to her face but she can hear them whispering, speculating. 

They look at her hand, really observe it and they either grow suspicious or they grow protective.

In some variations she is a criminal who got her comeuppance, in others Zuko is a brute no better than their father. And in others still they are both horrid–she had done something to warrant punishment but Zuko is a violent ruler who deals in punishments that don’t fit whatever crime they speculate that she has committed.

She knows, by the whispers, who among the villagers are the smart ones. She can pick them out from the dolts because their contemplations are more mundane; “she was in the jungle for a while, perhaps one of the tiger-monkeys got to her.” And, “I’ve heard that certain insect bites are poisonous enough to take a hand.” 

They aren’t quite on the mark, but at least these comments have some merit and sense. Though she supposes that she can’t truly blame those who think that Zuko had been the one to maime her. 

She can, however blame the dunces who prattle on and on about how they need to rescue her from the crazy old woman; “she abducted us, now she has our princess!” Other times it is something akin to, “the witch wanted a hand for her collection and now she is using her freaky powers to parade our princess around like a prize!”

Undoubtedly, their speculation have reached Hama’s ears, the woman is more bristley than usual. For a moment, Azula considers tucking her arm away once more but the speculation has already begun, there is really no sense. 

She helps Hama up and onto one of the higher bar stools. 

“What can  I get you, Hama?” Kohan asks.

“Prune juice.” She replies quickly and curtly. 

He looks to her. 

“Water is fine.” Azula replies as Quin-Shaw makes his rounds. He wipes the counter down and then sets the rag aside. 

“How has your stay in Honoki been, princess?” 

“Well enough, I suppose.” She lifts her hand and inspects her nails. “It has been nice to get some special treatment again. She won’t say it but Hama has been enjoying the facials as well.”

The man blinks. “They’re catering to the waterb–Hama now.”

Azula shrugs. “They don’t have a choice. They don’t want to upset me, especially since I’ve been through so much.” She rubs her hand over the end of her left arm. “At any rate, they ought to get used to Hama being around. She mostly keeps to herself anyhow.”

“She abducted my wife.” Quin-Shaw replies. 

“To be fair, she was abducted first…”

Hama places a hand on her shoulder. “We all have choices, I made mine. Good reason or not, the people in this village aren’t soldiers, they didn’t do anything to me. Nothing but utter hateful remarks now and then. It isn’t as though we hadn’t called your kind ‘ash trash’ in the Tribes.” 

“Creative. I hate it.” Azula mutters. “I’d like some miso soup, Quin-Shaw. What do you want?”

“People to stop blaming me for cutting off your hand.” 

“I’m talking about the food.” Azula rolls her eyes. “And technically you and Kohan did.” This draws a few looks. Hama gestures for her to keep her voice down as though she hadn’t been willfully voluminous in her declaration.

“I’m not hungry.” She waves her hand. 

“Suit yourself.” Azula gives a considerable pause. “I don’t think that I had the chance to thank Kohan for stopping that infection before it could take the rest of my arm.” She still has an audience but their gaze is less tense.

“No, I don’t believe that you did.” Hama agrees. 

“What did he do with my hand anyways?” She inquires much more quietly. She isn’t sure that she actually wants to know but she finds herself morbidly curious all the same. 

“Oh…” Hama leans in, a wicked little grin on her face. She answers in a near whisper, “I kept that for my bone collection.”

“Hilarious.” Azula rolls her eyes.

“No, really!” The woman declares, she waits until the rest of the tavern looks away once more to continue, “I can show you when we get home.”

Azula blinks twice and clears her throat. “And when were you going to tell me this?” Not that she actually believes that the woman kept her hand.

“The next time we looked at bones together.” Her smile is much too cheerful to match the subject matter. “It has to decompose first. Taxidermy is a fascinating art. You might enjoy it, if you don’t mind getting your hand dirty. I’ve got a few toad-squirrels and mink-seagulls…”

Azula blinks again. The woman may very well actually still have her hand. “Fascinating.  Terrifying, gross. But fascinating.” She mumbles. “I can’t believe that there was some truth to those rumors.” 

Hama chuckles, “all legends come from somewhere.” 

“I am going to pretend like I didn’t hear any of that.” Quin-Shaw remarks as he places a bowl of miso soup before Azula. 

“You want to see it, don’t you, Quin?” Azula quirks a brow. He plucks a set of eating utensils before her. He hadn’t said no…

“Kohan!” Hama calls. “Azula has something she’d like to tell you.”

Once again, the entirety of the tavern is eyeballing them. For having told her to keep her voice down, Hama has been drawing more attention than she could ever–beach parties aside.

“I don’t know how it works in the tribes...” Remarks one of several onlookers. “But in the Fire Nation we treat our nobility with respect. She is Princess Azula.”

“It’s alright.” Azula drums her fingers upon the countertop. “I don’t require formality with friends.” 

.oOo.

Friends.

The girl thinks of her as a friend.

Aside from Kohan, Hama can’t say that she has had a friend before. Much less with someone who shares common interests with her. After the girl has her fill of soup, she pushes the bowl aside. She stands up and stretches her arms. 

Hama wonders if it would now be appropriate to ask the girl to elaborate on how she came to find her way to her home. 

“Hama and I will be taking a trip to the hot springs if you’d like to come along.” Azula offers to Kohan. 

Just as pressingly, Hama wonders how long it will take for the town of Honoki to begin to question why their princess is suddenly getting acquainted with waterbenders. She can see the curiosity burning in their eyes just as fervently as it had been regarding her missing hand. At least the girl had put that slew of rumors to rest. 

“I suppose that I can come with.” Kohan replies. 

“What about you Quin-Shaw?”

The man pauses his rincing of a cup. “Oh, I’m invited now?”

“I don’t want to just be around a bunch of old people.” Azula shrugs. “Hama will let you see the hand if you come with us.”

“You’re the worst.” He grumbles. 

“Wonderful, we’ll meet you there in an hour.” Azula smiles. 

Perhaps it is that she has been living in a swamp for years but Hama has never seen someone interact with another person quite like that. Not that she would be able to do much better. At least Azula can get people to go along with her. That is more than Hama can say of herself. She sighs, she has let herself become a hermit. 

Despite all of the hiccups and in sensitivities on the princess’ part, Hama thinks that she may well be the best thing that has happened to her.

Chapter Text

Hama doesn’t think that she has ever seen the former princess look so comfortable. She leans back against the rocks and lets the steam and water roll over her body. She closes her eyes and gives a little yawn.

Hama wishes that she could be so relaxed but this is all so new to her and she is surrounded by firebenders who keep looking her way and whispering. She isn’t sure if it is because she is the only old biddy in the spring or if it is because she is a woman with a reputation.

She reaches for the bar of soap just as Azula asks for it. “I was just going to use it.” 

Azula sits upright and fixes her with a pretty decent pout. One that Hama makes a point of ignoring as she scrubs herself up and down. The girl is glaring at her, arms folded. “You can have it next.” Hama declares. “I haven’t had a bath like this in ages. You’ve been taking them all week.”

Azula sighs, “fine.” She reaches instead for the shampoo.

Hama hopes that she isn’t taking too long, but it feels very nice to wash the swamp away–not that she doesn’t enjoy the sensation of earth on her skin. But every now and then it is nice to bathe somewhere that isn’t a river. 

In a way it feels like home again. Home, where water ebbs and flows all around. Home, where she can tug and pull at the waves without receiving hateful looks. 

She can’t resist it–she gives the water around her a good swirl and the others in the spring give her a hefty circumference of space. “I think that I’m clean enough.” Remarks one woman to her friend who agrees with a, “yes, I ought to start on dinner.” 

They vacate the pool so quickly as to be impolite in spite of their attempts to veil their discomfort. 

Azula, on the other hand, very brazenly enters the churning water and snatches up the soap while Hama is distracted. She is commendable opportunistic, even still Hama thinks that she ought to waterbend a good wave over the girl’s head. 

She might have if she weren’t worried about a cluster of people stepping up to ‘defend’ their princess.

“Can you do tricks with the water?” Azula asks as she runs the soap over her left arm. “I can, if I so chose, make my fire look like a dragon.” Her face falls, “I’m not sure if I can anymore.”

“You’ll be able in due time.” Hama shrugs. “And yes, I can.” She takes a breath and lifts a few orbs of water from the spring. She wiggles her fingers and molds them, one by one, into a school of fish. “I can make them swim too. See!” It requires an arms raised, full body rotation–a breath taking, bone aching one–but the fish circle in the air around the spring.

There are several gasps around the room and one or two giggles when a fish brushes against an arm. “They’re so cute!” Exclaims one and Hama grins. 

“It has been a while since I got to do that.” She declares. For a second the fish go lopsided before returning with sturdy splashes back into shapeless liquid. 

“That must take a lot of practice.” Azula remarks. “To shape and control all of those orbs at once, the technique is intriguing.”

“Thank you.” Hama replies. But there is still a sadness in the girl’s eyes, perhaps longing or jealousy. “You’ll make your dragon again.”

Azula nods, but there is still a lingering skepticism. One that comes in double after she looks around the room for something to help her with her current task. Finding nothing of use, she hands the bar of soap back to Hama. “Help me clean my other arm.”

It is spoken too much like a demand for Hama’s tastes, but she will let it slide this time.

.oOo.

Hama is surprisingly gentle, she dabs the soap around Azula’s skin with kind hands. The woman is observant, she supposes. “Let me know if I am rubbing too hard.”

“You’re fine.” Azula replies. Better than fine really, her touch has a tenderness that matches that of her servants–the ones that have worked with her skin for years and learned through trail and error how much pressure can be applied before her skin rashes. 

“I wish that I could do it myself.” She mutters, face flushed. There are too many people around, witnessing firsthand how much of a hindrance her missing hand is. She should have thought about that before coming here.

But then, if word reaches Zuzu, he might be inclined to underestimate her. She doesn’t think that, that is such a bad thing really. 

She hears the clearing of a throat as Hama carefully places her arm back at her side and begins helping her soap her back. “Excuse me, princess.” The girl’s voice is soft, her brown eyes wide and innocent. They almost remind her of TyLee’s. “Why are you here in Honoki with a waterbender and not at the capital?”

Azula grits her teeth and the girl shrinks back. At least she knows well that her invasive questions aren’t appreciated. She supposes that she can spin up a tale about what a cruel fire lord Zuzu is, she can at least have one town that rejects his rule. But it is a risky game in the grander scheme of things. No, it is better to let them come to their own conclusions. “Zuko and I had a…disagreement.” She replies. “It isn’t peasant business.”

The girl’s cheeks pinken. 

Hama clicks her tongue. “Shouldn’t talk that way about people.”

“But she is a peasant?”

Hama makes a small wave and rinses the bubbles off of Azula’s back. “There are politer terms.”

“I am not rude.” Azula stiffens and lifts her chin.

“Then don’t act rude.” The woman replies.

The girl, meanwhile, twiddles her thumbs. 

“Is there something else that you want?” Azula quirks a brow. 

She taps her pointers together. “I just didn’t realize that you have waterbender friends. My mother said that I’m not allowed to talk to waterbenders…”

“Yes, my father liked to say the same thing.” Azula frowns. “The war is over. I keep companionship with whomever I choose. I do hope that that’s not a problem for this town.” She glances around the room.

“Not at all.” Speaks a new woman. “I am rather fond of that Kohan man. He fries a good salmon!” 

“He is quite close with Hama. If you like him you should get acquainted with her.”

Behind her, Hama turns her own head up with the smuggest grin she has seen since she had walked into the bungalow covered in poison ivy. The woman rests a hand on Azula’s shoulder. “Speaking of…I wonder how the men are doing.”

Azula shrugs. “I’m sure Quin-Shaw misses us dearly.”

I had a certain image in mind while writing that last part and it is this;

Chapter Text

Azula didn’t think that she would be happy to return to the jungle. It welcomes her with a pungent and sweet aroma, a cocktail of fruits; mango, pineapple, and banana among other things. The swishing palm fronds sing their greetings. Their shade offers respite from a throbbing heat.  And beneath the shifting leaves tiger-monkeys lounge and hippo-cows bath in nearby waterholes. 

She inhales and closes her eyes. The wind flutters her lashes as it spills over her face. She hadn't realized how stuffy the city air was until inhaling the breath of the jungle. She opens her eyes once more to see Hama flashing a little grin.

“You’ve grown fond of the jungle haven’t you, princess?”

Azula shrugs, “perhaps a little.” 

“A little? I think that you like it better out here.”

“It’s quieter.” There are less people to speculate about her and make assumptions. Less people to stare at her hand and fuss over her. "It smells better here."

Hama chuckles. "Well you just let me know when you're ready to admit that you prefer this to your fancy palace."

She follows the woman up those damp and rickety steps. A family clickety-clack beckons them inside where the herb pouches swish in the drafts.

It seems warm now, pleasant. The scents of rosemary, lavender, and clove are soothing in a way that the opulent spa soaps are not. 

Hama wanders over to the window sill and checks up on her luscious collection of succulents. She clicks her tongue in approval before moving to spread new blankets over the cot. "Kohan and Quin-Shaw should be here with a sex nd cot tomorrow."

Azula runs her fingers over the blankets. "You're still going to teach me to sew, yes?"

"Indeed I am. I've got lots of skills I plan on teaching you."

.oOo. 

Azula nudges her shoes to the side and gazes at the vivid orange-pink horizon. The clouds, what she can see of them, hang low.

Hama sits upon her porch, spectating from what she does to be a safe, fire free distance.

With her chi points freshly relaxed and her mind filled with a trip's length worth of Hama explaining her favorite waterbending techniques, the fire seems to spring to her fingertips more readily. There is still some hesitancy, a resistance before a blaze forms at the end of her left wrist. 

When it finally does come, Azula shapes it, at first, into a hand again. It is a test of control–if she can create five distinct fingers of fire them she can mold the fire into something more useful. Not that clamping a firey hand around someone's hand wouldn't be a brutal touch. But she needs something with some range.

She looks back at Hama, perhaps she should have the woman standby should things go unexpectedly. Azula wells more energy towards her left arm and the fire extends. She lengthens it until she has something akin to a whip. She gives it a good crack showering the sku around with smoke and spark.

She musters up a small smile and re-shapes the fire a second time, into a shapeless blaze. And she releases it as a respectable fireball.

A generous sense of confidence washes over her as Hama's wave washes over the lightly singed canopy. "Careful with that fire!" The woman complains.

"I was able to do it, Hama."

"Yes. And I imagine that the whole jungle does too."

Azula rolls her eyes. "It wasn't that uncontrolled."

.oOo.

It is decently dark now, the last of the sun's rays disappear to give the moon space. Hama re-emerges from the house with a fair sized box.

"I have a surprise for you."

"It's my hand isn't it?" She asks as a cloud of fireflies zip past. One or two break off from the rest of the swam and fin themselves places amod the palm fronds.

"Just open it."

"I know that this is my hand, Hama." She opens the box anyways. There is indeed a hand there but it isn't a human hand. Neither is it a dead hand. No, it is a tiny reptilian hand that reaches aimlessly at the air.

Hama chuckles again. "Your hand still has to decompose. I found this critter in the garden while harvesting some strawberries. I thought that you would like it."

Azula lifts the hummingbird-lizard out of the box. 

"You like dragons, yes?"

"This is the smallest dragon I've ever seen."

"Let me know when you find actual dragons." Hama shrugs.

Azula strokes the little creature's head. "I can't say that I've ever had a pet before. What do I feed it?"

Hama pulls out a slip of parchment. "I wrote care instructions down right here." The old woman certainly has plans to keep her busy.

"I have something else. A little treat." She holds out a jar full of deep red jelly.

Azula takes it, with some effort pops the lid, and gives it a sniff. Raspberry and strawberry tickles her nose almost overwhelmingly.

"I just made it today, you ever have jelly made from freshly harvested strawberries?"

Azula shakes her head.

"It tastes lovely on bread and pancakes." She offers her a slice of bread.

For some time they silently snack upon bread and jelly, watching plumes of fireflies blink about, seeming to weave in and out of the stars above. Azula swallows one more bite before inquiring, "do you want to hear some Fire Nation stories?" 

"I would like that." Hama replies. And between bites, Azula tells the old woman her favorite variation of Love Amongst The Dragons.

When she is through, she leans back and looks up at the glimmering sky and drinks in the fresh jungle aromas. They are almost enough to lull her to sleep and they might have if not for the pestering night dwelling beetles flitting about and making their little electrical hums.

She has grown quite fond of the crickets and the toad+squirrels and the touch of magic that they bring to the night.

They don't talk for the rest of the night, they don't really need to. To mutually  relish in the night melodies, she thinks, may well be a bond of its own kind.

She finds herself afraid that it won’t last. The entirety of Honoki knows who she is. It is only a matter of time before the capital learns of her whereabouts and Zuzu comes storming in, hands blazing.

Chapter Text

Watching Hama chase down the toad-squirrels that have been nibbling on her carrots and running off with her berries–Azula has told her time and time again to not leave them unmonitored on the window sill–provides her with her day’s worth of entertainment. 

By one bitter, frustrated howl, Azula knows that the old woman has been defeated again. The critter scampers up the tree making a series of angry chitters. Hama shakes her fist at the thing, yelling something that Azula can’t quite make out from this distance.

She pops a raspberry into her mouth. 

If she eats too many of them for Hama’s liking, she can always blame the toad-squirrels. 

The breeze flutters Hama’s dress as she approaches the house. “Spirits damn those things!” She shakes her head. She holds out her hand and Azula hands her a few berries. “I oughta have you chase them. You’re young and spry.”

“I don’t chase toad-squirrels.”

“There is a first time for everything.” She claps her hands together. “Go roast me a toad-squirrel so I can taxidermize it!” She clicks her tongue. “Those things come back every year and eat at my garden. And sometimes they recruit the rabaroos! I was severely outnumbered. At least until this year.” She glances sidelong towards Azula. 

“It’s just one toad…”

“Lesson number–well I’ve lost count! But another lesson about the jungle is that where there is one fat, garden ravaging toad-squirrel there is a whole family of them.” 

“And you expect me to catch them all for you?” She quirks a brow.

Hama nods. “You’ve mentioned wanting to work with lightning again. You can use them as target practice.” 

“Why don’t you just use some herbs to repel them? The palace gardener used to plant daffodils and hyacinth. The toad-squirrels hated it. Kept the rabaroos away too.” 

Hama hums to herself before flashing another one of her trademark grins. “I guess that you know more about herbs then you let on.” 

Azula nods. “Although I’d still like to…”

“Chase a toad-squirrel?”

“Practice my lightningbending…figure out how to generate it with one hand.”

“Feel free to practice near that tree.” She points at the tree that the toad-squirrel had climbed. 

.oOo.

She isn’t sure why but she had expected Zuko to arrive at the end of some night–likely at the end of a night that followed a particularly joyous day. As a way to salt the wound. She hadn’t expected him to make his appearance in the middle of the day. 

A day that was going so well.

A day where lightningbending came easily and Hama showed her how to plant daffodils. 

A day when she was feeling rather at ease, perhaps even happy. 

Zuzu always had been good about that–turning otherwise perfect day sour. Dampening her mood percicelly she she started feeling optimistic. 

She had told Hama that it might come to this. That they would eventually come for her, Avatar in tow. And really, she has no one but herself to blame for being so careless as to go into the city assuming that they wouldn’t recognize her. Apparently no amount of grime and tangled locks can disguise royal blood.

“Fire Lord Zuko…” Hama drawls. “What brings you to my little ramshackle little shack?”

“You know why I’m here.”

“And you brought that ungrateful brat along with you, I see.” Hama looks over the boy’s shoulder. 

“So this is her.” Zuko too turns to the waterbender. “She’s the one who forced you to bloodbend?”

Katara nods. 

“Freaky stuff.” Sokka shudders. 

“Bah! I can’t force anyone to do anything.”

“You used your bloodbending to make my friends attack me!” Katara declares. 

Hama shrugs. “Let bygones be bygones.”

Azula can’t help but snicker. “You went on this mad quest for vengeance…”

“Whose side are you on?”

Azula gives a shrug of her own. “The side of logic and facts.”

“Well then you should probably acknowledge that you’re outnumbered.” Katara speaks. “And that I beat you last time.”

Azula lets her expression go blank. “That was hardly an honorable match. An Agni Kai is a duel between two firebenders, not two firebenders and a waterbender. You took advantage of a…lapse, nothing more.” She shifts her left arm in her pocket. It is quite likely that she will take advantage of this disability too. Perhaps the element of surprise will work for her.

“Are you going to come quietly, Azula?”

“You’re not sending me back to that place.”

“Maybe we’ll send you to prison instead!” Toph proclaims. 

Zuko nudges her, “we’re not sending her to prison.”

“That place is a glorified prison. It’s worse really. At least at the Boiling Rock I’d be free to use my legs and what’s left of my arms.” 

“Just make this easy for all of us, Azula. Come with us and we’ll sort things out at the palace.” Aang offers gently.

Azula sneers, “you make this easy for all of us, Avatar.” She steps closer. “Let me stay here so I can forget about all of you.” 

“After everything you’ve done, you don’t get to just run away.” Zuko replies firmly.

“And what about you, Zuzu. What punishment did you have before they let you into their merry band of misfits? A few mean words and a slap on the wrist?” She quirks a brow. 

“I didn’t kill the Avatar.”

“Not for lack of trying?” Azula quips. “For lack of skill and wit. If you had your way the Avatar would have met father long before I came into the picture. And do you really think that father would have let him live?”

“I’ve already made up for what I’ve done. You need  to…”

“Suffer? That’s what you want, isn’t it? Who's to say that I haven’t already?” Sometimes when she is stressed, when she thinks about it, she can feel her hand as though it were still attached. She can feel it twitching.

“There’s a difference between suffering and consequences.” 

“Sometimes consequences are suffering.” The phantom limb tingles with more intensity. 

“I’ve had enough of this. You’re a pompous, self-righteous bastard. Arrogant Fire Nation high borns and their silly crowns and their ridiculous pointy shoes.” Hama grumbles. 

Azula clears her throat. “I happen to like my pointy shoes.”

“They are hideous.” Hama stands her ground. “And you all are a hideous blight on my doorstep.”

Azula sees the water churning behind them. 

“Hama…wait…” Azula mutters.

But she doesn’t, the wave snakes around Katara’s leg and throws her satisfyingly to the muddy murk below.

Chapter Text

For just a moment, the world comes to a standstill. And in that moment Azula finds herself mourning her new home already. She is almost certain that they could have talked it out–sarcastically and combatively, of course. But they could have, especially if she casually waved her lack of hand around a bit. 

And maybe that’s why it hurts so much when the rock collides with her middle and the water rushes over her. 

She supposes that if she hadn’t already engaged in so many scuffles such as this, everything may have passed in one confusing blur. Sure everything seems to happen all at once but everything is quite clear. Quite simple. 

Katara gets to her feet and in synchrony the Avatar summons all four elements. Sokka tosses his boomerang at her and she deflects it towards Zuko. Toph makes a move towards Hama who lashes at Katara with her water whips.

Azula ducks and dodges under several attacks. Fire and water, air and earth. She supposes that these things do blend a bit but she can still tell who is chucking what. And she knows that Katara is squaring up with Hama as furiously as Zuko is challenging her. 

It is a small thing. A small, strange thing. But she finally realizes that she and Hama have been talking about the same horrible waterbender this whole time. 

She readies herself to throw another fireball at Zuko when Sokka catches her by her hand. And vine and rock burst through the delicate scaffolds of the floor, taking her feet. They don’t worry about her left arm. 

She would smirk if that wouldn’t be such a dead give away. 

With a burst of barely controlled fire, she lets all of them know that she can still bend like the best of them. Another rock closes around that hand. “We have her, let’s go.” Toph grumbles. 

Leaning in the doorframe, Hama pants softly. “You will not take her from me.” She growls, slouching over and putting herself between Azula and the rest of them. 

Katara’s brows furrow, she looks towards Zuko. 

“You…you care about her this much?” Zuko asks. 

Hama nods.

“She’s a firebender!” Katara declares as though it isn’t entirely obvious. “She stands for everything that you hate. She’s the person that you should have been going after instead of all of those innocent citizens…”

Hama’s lip twitches. “Whose to say I didn’t?”

It is just enough time for her to escape her binds. She does so as Zuko says, “don’t waste your time with the old woman, we’ll worry about her later…” Her fireball strikes his side.

And they are all brawling again. She verses Zuko, Hama verses Katara, and the others leaping in and out of the frenzy. All except for the Avatar who grits his teeth and pleas for them to just stop and listen for a second. 

Stop and listen.

And Azula almost did.

But then it looks as though Katara is getting the upper hand. She has Hama suspended in the air. A separate tendril snaking up her leg. She has the only person who has ever cared about her in some sick, watery choke hold. 

Azula hasn’t had a chance to test her lightningbending yet. She supposes that it doesn’t matter if she had been able to do it during Sozin’s Comet, she could do it now…

.oOo.

They leave as they had come, grim faced and mournful. Dare she say guilty. The Avatar tries to apologize, but what is done is done. 

She refuses help from the likes of him. 

From the likes of his dreadful friends. 

As the hurricanes do, they have left destruction in their wake. There is a gaping hole in her floor, a board droops down, flapping in the breeze. They have knocked over the nightstand by the cot. Her herbs are in disarray, all scattered on the ground waiting for the wind to sweep them away.

And they have destroyed Hama’s garden. An unhealthy portion of it so replenishing her stock won’t be so easy. Her beautiful flowers have been trampled and uprooted. 

 Her box of bones, once neatly sitting on the porch banister is now on the floor. Fragments of her treasures surround it like blood from a gaping, unhealing wound crushed and trampled by hateful feet.  Some of them have been kicked back into the mud from which she had pried them from. She’ll recover some of these, sure. But much of them are lost to the swamp. 

But she has lost something more precious. Azula lays sprawled out on the ground. Her locks fan out around her head, Hama can swear that little sparks are still dancing over her skin. Her mouth is bleeding or maybe the blood comes from within and exits through her mouth, dribbling down the corners. 

Her hand cups over something that had fallen to the floor. Gently Hama turns her hand over to reveal that little geode. She can still see that self-satisfied smile as clearly as the day she had found the gem. 

Hama is a woman who is always learning.

And today she learns for certain that evil comes from every nation.

Chapter Text

The hummingbird-lizzard crawls over Azula’s forehead. On any other day it would be funny. She would cackle and let the princess awaken to the reptile on her face. Today, she lifts it from the girl’s head and shakes her own. “What am I going to do?” She asks the critter. She can’t help but blame herself for making the first strike.

Perhaps things would have gone better if she hadn’t. Azula is a smooth talker. She could have charmed them. 

She could have but now she is motionless, her lips parted slightly and fried in places, sticking up on the ends as though fingers of electricity are still running through it. The burns seem to accentuate and outline the infections scars, she can see them in places where her clothing had burned away. 

And they left the Avatar and his friends, ‘the heroes’ have left. Sometimes Hama thinks that heroes do much more harm than they ever do good. Sometimes Hama thinks that there are no heroes at all. Everyone is a hero and a villain all at once. She is a villain to the people of Honoki and to Katara. But she is…was a hero to the girl and a hero to Kohan.

She swallows hard and takes Azula’s hand. It is still warm. 

Warm like the sparks that have claimed her. 

And she gives that hand a squeeze. 

She touches her cheek, it is also warm. Warm and still flushed with color, a mimicry of life. Hama strokes it with  her thumb before moving her fingers to the girl’s neck and feeling for a pulse. 

And just as before, she finds none at all.

She hoists the former princess into her arms, cradling her head against her breast and squeezes her tightly. It only hurts more to feel the stillness of her chest so plainly. She finds herself wishing that she had either let the infection take the girl or had turned her away the minute she’d found her on the porch. 

She wishes that the girl had been more stubborn, less open-minded. She wishes that she had hated Azula. 

Because then it wouldn’t hurt.

She wouldn’t have anything to mourn an cry over. 

She is an old woman. Old and spent. She has seen her share of heartache and she had been so certain that it was all over with. That she couldn’t possibly experience any more of it. And then she’d so foolishly let herself grow attached to this troubled child. This troubled child with her collection of demons and battles left to be fought. 

“I can help.” The offer is made quietly, sympathetically and from a little bit beyond her damaged porch.

“You’ve already helped plenty.”

“Hama, I know that you’ve always used waterbending to hurt people. But it can be used for healing too. And if you have the skill to bloodbend then you’d be an excellent healer.”

“A whole lot of good that does for a corpse.” Her voice cracks and she holds Azula’s fragile little body that much tighter against her own. “I can’t let her die.” But she already has. “She and Kohan are all I have and you took her from me. You and that…Fire Lord.” She spits the words out with what she hopes is more hatred than Katara has ever heard before.

“Let me heal her.”

“She doesn’t like you.”

“She can’t feel any way about me if she’s dead.” 

Hama stares bleakly down at her softly parted lips and her delicate lashes. “She’s already dead.” Hama mumbles.

Katara grimaces. “Are there any spirit pools around here?”

Hama nods. “They’re all over the place.” She mutters the directions to the one where the fireflies like to gather. She wonders if their light will still be glimmering there when Katara reaches the waters. 

“I’ll go get some of that and see if it will help.”

.oOo.

Hama has Azula on the cot when Katara gets back. She barely notices the girl at all, so deeply invested is she in trying to mimic the healing that Kohan has done. But it is all quite for nothing. She could swear that she can feel the healing energy welling up in her chi points, flowing out from her chakras but it does nothing at all.

“Normal water isn’t good enough for this kind of work.” Katara holds out a little vial of spirit pool water. “I don’t know if this will do the trick either because it’s not from…”

“The Spirit Oasis.” Hama fills in, voice hoarse with grief. Katara hands her the vial but she doesn’t take it. “Perhaps waterbending isn’t the answer.” 

Katara furrows her brows. 

And Hama puts one hand over the girl’s unbeating heart and the other upon her head. The moon isn’t quite full yet, but it is just full enough. With more strain than usual, she pulls at the girl’s heart and brain just as she tugs upon arms and legs. She usually imagines strings of chakra wrapping around limbs. Tonight she imagines a blanket of chakra wrapping over a heart and a brain and she coaxes them to beat and throb. She beckons for the girls lungs to fill and release. It is a difficult rhythm to control in synchrony at first, but soon she has a flow. And she keeps it going. 

She keeps it going until she finds the strength to push the blood through her veins until her heart can support itself. 

She keeps it up for hours until sweat forms on her brow. Until her limbs feel weak and her chi points feel as though they will explode. Until her bending finally falters. 

And Azula still doesn’t awaken. 

Her body still won’t function on her own.

“Don’t let me lose her.” Hama mumbles quietly. “Don’t let me lose her…”

Katara opens her mouth and then closes it again before finally saying, “what can I do.” 

“Bloodbend.”

“I…you can’t force me to…”

“It’s different this time.” Hama insists. “You aren’t controlling anyone. You’re healing someone. If firebending doesn’t have to be destructive than neither does bloodbending. Help me save her.”

“Why should I?” Katara asks. “As far as I’m concerned I’d be losing two enemies in one.”

“Then why bother bringing me this?” She gestures to the spirit pool water. 

Katara sighs, “because I care too much for my own good.”

“So you’ll do it?” Hama asks. “You remember how, yes?”

“I can’t forget even if I wanted to.” Katara grumbles. “You know that Zuko and the others aren’t going to be thrilled, right?”

Hama shrugs. “Help her.”

Chapter Text

There is a thrumming and only a thrumming. It is rhythmic and not quite steady. It is all around her. It is her world in its new entirety. It is she herself. She is only a beating and a throbbing.  She is only darkness. She is only in darkness. 

And there is a comfort in the darkness. 

A lack of pain. 

And she had been so full of pain in its most excruciating form only moments before.

She can’t seem to wake up and she isn’t sure that she wants to so she cocoons herself in the darkness and its warmth. Lets herself bask in the beating. She supposes that it make sense that the embrace of death is like the protective wrappings of the womb. 

And in some way she does feel like a babe again; she has no limbs to reach out with, has no mouth to speak with, no eyes to see with. She has a mind though, a mind that is, perhaps, too big for the body that had once held it. 

She can still hear though. Can still feel.

And she feels and hears that beating. That gentle undulation. 

.oOo.

They take turns Hama first  and then Katara when Hama grows stiff and tired. The girl’s blood is pumping but not on its own accord. And she can tell that Katara is losing her investment. She doesn't think that the girl had ever held any investment to begin with. Really, the princess is not her problem–not dead anyways. 

Alive, she is apparently a very large hassle, so why wouldn’t the girl just let her die. It isn’t as though she or any of her friends could be held responsible. No, the lightning was Azula’s own and Hama can still see it crackling over the girl’s skin. It had been almost beautiful the way it danced and accentuated her face, haloing it with a soft teal-blue. 

“Maybe it’s time to let go.” Katara mumbles.

Hama shakes her head. “I can’t. I can’t lose her, she’s all I have.” Now that her bones are lost and fractured, now that her house is in disarray, now that Kohan can only do so much to lift her mood. 

“I can try the spirit pool water.” Katara replies. 

“Yes, try the spirit pool water.” Hama agrees. “And while you waterbend, I will bloodbend. Perhaps a combination of the two would do her well.” She tries not to look Katara in the eye. She can’t bare the skepticism on a girl who is known for hope, known as a symbol of hope. 

Katara nods and spreads a sheet of water over Azula’s body, outlining it in its entirety just the way the lightning had. The densest trails of liquid run along the zig-zagged lines of those burn marks. 

“Okay, on three.” Katara says quietly. “One.”

Hama looks up at the moon.

“Two.”

Hama aches for it to give her the strength she needs to get the girl’s heart to beat on its own. 

“Three.”

There is a soft glow as Katara channels her chi into the water. Hama lifts her boney arms once more, they shake with the effort. Her fingers crack and stiffen but she forces them to flex anyhow. Opening and closing them to match a heartbeat. 

And she can feel it, the girl’s heart is pumping, her lungs are expanding, and her brain is functioning. She just hopes that this will continue after she withdraws her influence. Katara closes her eyes and lets the water trickle into Azula’s pores. The scars fade but only faintly–still, it means that the spirit water has some power. 

“So the two of you have been…living out here? Together?”

Hama nods. “She’s a good girl. Annoying, arrogant, stubborn…but she’s a good girl.”

“She’s…”

“She’s what? Evil? Like me?” Hama scowls.

“Well, I mean, the two of you…”

“Just want to be left alone.” Hama grits her teeth. “We’ve been keeping mostly to ourselves. We would have been perfectly content had you not showed up.”

“The two of you are terrifying, you’ve both hurt so many people.”

“So many people hurt us .” Hama declares. Raava’s tendrils if she doesn’t focus she is going to clench her fist too hard and burst the poor girl’s heart. Not that it would matter, it refuses to function on its own. 

Katara’s expression softens. “Yeah. I guess that hurt can make a person hateful.” She pauses. “You should have seen me when I found the man who killed my mother…” She looks towards the moon. “But I chose to spare him.”

“And I chose to let you go. You turned my bloodbending on me and I didn’t pursue you. I left that village alone after that. And Azula…” her heart skips at the name. “She’s just a child. She needs a family.” She needs love and care and someone to take care of her. “She needs to be a child.” And she needs to grow up. Dammit! She needs to grow as old as Hama one day. 

Katara nods, expression growing downcast. “I guess that we’re all just kids, huh?”

“Not all of us, no.” Hama replies. “Some of us are old, so old and so tired. Some of us just want to live out the rest of our days in peace.” Not in shattered pieces. Not alone and bitter and spiteful. 

“Yeah, a little peace would be nice every now and then.” Katara agrees. “That’s a little hard when you’re dating the Avatar and friends with the Fire Lord.”

Hama snarls at his mention. “He told you to come here.”

“He didn’t think that it would end like this.” 

“He doesn’t strike me as the thinking sort.” Not that she had done much thinking herself and it is Azula who is paying for it. 

“She protected you.” Katara notes. 

“And look where it’s gotten her.”

Katara’s lips press into a grim, thin line. “I just didn’t think that she cared that much about anyone.”

“Maybe people didn’t think to care about her first. She’s not a trusting person but she’s loyal when you earn it.” Hama insists. 

Katara’s brows furrow and she retracts her hands. At first Hama hadn’t felt what she had. But then there it is, a soft pulse. A subtle burst that seems like a rumbling explosion compared to the stillness around it. 

And suddenly the former princess is rejecting her pull. 

“Just a little more.” Hama murmurs. “Just a little…” the last of her strength is ebbing away but she coaxes the girl’s heart to beat and her blood to pump just a few minutes more. 

It only occurs to her that this may be wrong–a dreadful abomination to bending–when the girl sits up and unleashes a blood curdling screech.

Chapter Text

Azula clutches her chest.

She looks aimlessly around the room, breathing heavily. Her head is spinning and her chest burns. Everything burns, the blood coursing through her veins pulses like lava and in the most mercilessly unpleasant way.

There is something in her vision, like a haze or a film of gauzy tissue over her eyes. Something that taints and darkens her world and lifts her panic to a new height. Everything hurts and it does so rather incessantly.

And she can’t quite remember what has happened to her. 

Only that there had been darkness, silence, and warmth. Safety.

And now there is noise, so much noise and so many sensations. It is too bright. She grips the blankets below her and grits her teeth. Her heart is racing, hands are shaking and she can’t get the panic to subside. 

She can’t remember where she is, who she is…what she is…

She feels a hand on her back. “It’s alright.” The voice is both soft and grating all at once. Raspy and contradictingly light. “You’re back, you’re back.” 

Back?

That’s right, she is in Hama’s bungalow.

She had never left. Had she?

But the memory is gone as soon as she has it, leaving only a vague concept; Hama’s bungalow. The name has no meaning. The place has no significance. 

She furrows her brows and finally finds focus on Hama’s wrinkled face. “Wh-what happened.” But her lips are parched and what she manages to utter is only a dry and indistinguishable whisper. Her tongue feels swollen in her mouth. She reaches a trembling hand–her only hand, she realizes, towards the person who must be Hama.

“Get her something to drink.” Hama snaps at the other girl, the younger girl.

“Where…?” She tries asking again. Her throat feels as though it is going to split. 

“You lay back.” Hama helps lower her back onto the pillows below. 

The other girl comes back with a small wooden cup. Hama holds her up right as she curls her fingers around the cup. She brings it to her lips and greedily laps at gulps it down, basking in the way that it at least somewhat alleviates the burning in her throat.

She falls back once more. “Where am I?” She finally manages. 

.oOo.

Hama’s heart sinks as fast as it had mended. The girl is back but she is not Hama’s Azula. She is dazed and confused and she can’t remember a thing. But at least she is alive–or some form of it anyhow. Hama isn’t really sure what the girl is now. She tosses a look over her shoulder.

Katara’s expression hangs somewhere between pity and regret. And Hama begins to think that she should have just let Azula go–let the young woman slip off into some peaceful oblivion where she’d never see pain again. 

Instead she has brought the girl back to a world that doesn’t want her. A world full of hurt and confusion. 

Hama takes her hand and strokes the back of it with her thumb. “You’re home.” She answers finally.

“Home.” Azula repeats sleepily. 

“Do you remember who I am?”

“Hama?”

Hama smiles, perhaps she isn’t so lost after all. She wishes that Katara wouldn’t have asked her, her own name. Because she can’t answer. Not on her own, her brows crease and she looks to Hama for help. Hama who swallows and softly mutters, “your name is Azula.”

And the girl repeats her name in a whisper, twice over. Once to test it and the other with more certainty. 

“You can’t lock her up.” Hama grasps at straws, at faint little prickles of optimism. “She doesn’t even remember what she did, you can’t punish her for it.”

“But we can punish you.” Katara replies coldly. “She doesn’t remember that you’re important to her so she won’t come to help you.”

Hama stiffens. 

“But we won’t. I won’t anyways. I’m not like you, I don’t want to be like you.”

Hama furrows her own brows.

“You hurt me and my friends. But I’m not going to hold a grudge like you did.”

Hama scoffs. “It’s a little too late for that sentiment now isn’t it. You’ve already taken your revenge whether you meant to or not. You took a good portion of my home, you took my bones and my garden and you took my…” Just what is Azula to her. “My daughter.”

Katara flinches. “She’s laying right there, I didn’t take her.” Denial puts an edge in her voice.

“Her body is laying there with bits and fragments of her mind.” Hama watches her roll onto her back, she almost never lays on her back. She has always said that it was uncomfortable–that isn’t her Azula. 

She supposes that beggars can’t be choosers. 

“She just came back. She might need a few days to remember everything.” Katara replies. “Look, I…none of us wanted anyone to…”

“Die.” Hama spits. “You all did it so you might as well say it out loud. She died.” 

Azula bolts upright, “I died?”

Hama nods. 

.oOo.

Azula supposes that that makes sense. It would explain why Hama had so tearfully declared that she is back. If anything could steal away memories, it would be death. Or maybe death hadn’t stolen them at all. Maybe they had been simply left behind in that dark, quiet world. She thinks that, that is a good place for them–they are tucked away somewhere back where they had originated from. 

And somehow knowing  this eases the fear away. She had died. And now she is alive. Reborn. She supposes that she has no use for old memories in a new life. 

But the old woman…Hama. She looks so terribly distraught, so heartbroken. 

She is grieving something that Azula can’t quite understand. Something that she feels faintly upset to have lost. But ignorance steals the brunt of this sense of loss. She can’t mourn something that she can’t remember.

“I’m alright.” She says finally. “I’m not sad.”

But the old woman still cries.

Chapter Text

Azula grows strange. 

Day after day, she becomes odder and odder still. 

She has habits now. She doesn’t sleep and she barely eats. Hama is under the impression that she no longer needs to.

There are some things, some mannerisms and speech patterns that she recognizes. Things that are so innate, so uniquely Azula that even death and rebirth couldn’t wipe them away; the way she tilts her head and furrows her brows when trying to understand something new, the way she quirks a brow and claps her hand and the stump behind her back when she is skeptical or deep in thought. The way that she flicks her bangs when she is disinterested in something or another. 

As familiarity is found, discomfort dissipates. 

But it rises again when she sees the girl standing perfectly rigid at the very center of the room, staring off at nothing in particular. It rises again when Azula’s face bunches when she eats–how truly averted she seems to be towards all food. 

It rises in full when Azula gets hurt. Although Hama isn’t sure that hurt is the right word for what she gets. 

Hurt implies feeling; the girl takes damage, she bleeds like anyone else but she doesn’t wince, she doesn’t flinch. She takes notice of it and assesses it as something of an inconvenience. Regards it in a way that she would regard a Fire Nation military machine. She treats her body like a thing to repair when it breaks and not a thing to cherish and take care of. 

But Hama takes care of her all the same. To the best of her ability anyhow. Azula still hates being touched as much as she ever did, perhaps more so now than she ever had. These days she doesn’t like Hama tending to her cuts at all and this one is rather large. 

This time it was an accident; no angry benders trying to whisk her away nor any spiteful neglect used to teach her a lesson. No, nothing like that. This was simple, mundane, and perfectly ordinary. For the past few days, Azula, Kohan, and a very disgruntled Quin-Shaw have been helping her to fix the damages done to her house. They hadn’t affixed the board right, hadn’t secured it properly nor tested its ability to withstand weight. The girl had fallen through, straight to the water below. 

She wouldn’t have known at all had she not heard the splash. The girl didn’t shout, she didn’t ask for help. She stood back up and climbed her way back up and into the house in spite of the gash on her thigh. 

“Please let one of us heal that.” Kohan begs again. He reaches out and she flinches away from his touch. 

“I’m fine.” She insists. Were the wound not bleeding so profusely, Hama might have believed her. Her expression is as calm as ever, she has no tears, and her voice is so level as to be unsettling. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“Pain or none, you’ll still bleed out.” Quin-Shaw points out. 

Azula looks to her bleeding leg. “Right, yes.” She traces her finger along the border of the gash, it comes away slick with blood. “I should know that.”

.oOo.

“You are still human.” Hama comments after Kohan and Quin-Shaw leave for the night. She reaches out to cup Azula’s chin but this time, she retracts that hand before she can flinch or swat it away. 

And yet people don’t look at her like she is human; she doesn’t feel pain when she should. She doesn’t feel hunger. She doesn’t sleep. She supposes that she could pretend to do all of those things. Those things that should come naturally. Those things that she probably used to do and feel before she had died.

“People feel pain.” Azula replies. Kohan and Quin-Shaw wouldn’t have looked quite so uncomfortable while stitching her leg up if she had let them put her under. Instead she insisted that she remain awake so that she could make sure that they wouldn’t mess up. They wouldn’t have been quite so unsettled if she had started to scream or cry halfway through. But she had nothing to scream for. Nothing as she watched the needle weave in and out of her skin. 

She wishes that she could say that it was a matter of growing accustomed to pain. She has already lost a hand and–according to Hama–blasted herself with the lightning that has left her scarred from the torso to the neck. 

She is all full of scars, and she imagines that, that only makes her that much more inhuman. She is not a pretty girl. She thinks that she probably used to be. When her skin was delicate and smooth, when she had a hand. 

She can’t feel pain when they pierce her with needles or when her leg splits open. But she feels it elsewhere; she feels it when she thinks of her scarred skin. She feels it when Hama looks tearfully at her, trying to prompt her to remember fireflies and bindweed, and a box of bones.

She feels it rather intensely and she feels it as a tickle in her belly, as a tightness in her throat, and a tingle behind her eyes. She wonders if she is dying again, is it normal to feel emotions in place on the body? She feels something else too–she isn’t sure what it is exactly but she feels it when she thinks that she will die again. 

She feels it when the pressure behind her eyes spills over. When she feels the wetness on her cheeks. She brings her fingers to them expecting them to come away spotted with blood. They are wet but the color isn’t red. There is no color at all. Just wetness. 

Her hand is shaking.

And Hama is smiling. 

There is something wrong with her and the old woman is smiling. 

“Maybe you don’t feel pain.” Hama replies. “But you do feel emotions.” 

Azula frowns, furrowing her brows. “Emotions.” She knows the word, she supposes that she can define it as well. But she doesn’t…didn’t have any particular connection to it. Not until now. Now she thinks that she understands–at least partially she does. 

Emotions are what cause her pain where scrapes and slashes don’t. 

This time when Hama reaches out, Azula lets the woman take her hand and dab her cheeks dry. “That’s more important that feeling physical pain.” Hama says with a firmness that doesn’t invite disagreement. “That’s more human. Humans have emotions.” 

“Humans understand them…”

She doesn’t know why Hama is laughing. “I guess some of them do. The lucky ones.” She clicks her tongue. “Most of us are confused and trying to figure it all out. Some of us more than others.” 

“What’s happening to me?” She touches her wet cheeks again. “What’s wrong with me?” 

.oOo.

Goodness, the girl doesn’t even remember what crying is. Hama’s heart is breaking, shattering for her child. “There’s nothing wrong with you.” She replies. “You’re supposed to cry when you’re sad. Humans cry. You. Are. Human.” Raava’s tendrils she wants to believe that so much. But there is something very undeniably inhuman about her now. 

“It seems ridiculous.” She folds her arms across her chest. “That you get fluttery on the inside and then leaky on the outside.” She swats at her eyes with the back of her hand. “It feels stupid.” 

Hama almost laughs, “you thought the same thing before you died–you never liked crying.” She squeezes the girl’s hand. “But you feel better don’t you?”

Azula nods and then she smiles if only slightly. “I can feel things. Just not pain.”

Hama nods, “because you’re still human.” 

Mostly. 

She is definitely mostly human; confused and odd. But human all the same. She just isn’t sure how human Azula is these days. 

Raava does she miss her Azula. Her fully human Azula with her witty quips and her rough, edgy demeanor. The cold, distant nature she offers now is much more indifferent–hollow even. She misses the girl who would challenge and aggravate her. She misses the girl that Katara and her loathsome friends had stolen. 

This Azula is significantly more agreeable. She is gentler and quieter–not that her Azula wasn’t rather quiet to begin with. But this silence is meeker and maybe that is exactly what the Fire Lord had been hoping for. 

She watches her move across the room and pick up the hummingbird-lizard. They still haven’t given it a name yet. “He’s kind of ugly.” Azula remarks casually.

And suddenly she is certain that her Azula is there. She is somewhere distant, somewhere buried. But she is there.

Chapter Text

Hama counts her bones for what is probably the tenth time. She is still missing at least three of them–a beak, a tigerdillo shell fragment, and one of several tiger-monkey claws. Common as those are, she supposes that the claw isn’t big loss. 

Some of the bones are broken, she might be able to glue the fragments together. Perhaps Azula will help her. Azula who has a renewed curiosity about them. It is just one more glimmer, another flicker of a reminder that she still has her Azula. 

“You liked this one the best.” She holds up the mongoose-lizard skull. Poor Unpak, now cracked and missing a few teeth. She passes it to Azula who runs her fingers over it in almost the exact same way she had the first time.“You also took a shine to this one.”

“What is it?”

“A human rib, fire national.”

Azula furrows her brows. “Where did you get it?”

“People die in the swamp all the time. I’m simply a scavenger, an opportunist if you will.” Hama holds her breath and waits for this new Azula to fix her with a look of disgust or terror. Instead she runs her fingers over the bone.

“How can you tell that it’s Fire Nation?”

“Size and density.” Hama answers. “Fascinating, yes?”

Azula nods.

She picks another bone out of her box, “and you found this one.” She plucks it into Azula’s palm. “It’s a spine fragment, tiger-monkey.” 

Azula rests it upon the end of her stump and pushes at it with her pointer before putting it back into the box and rummaging through it for herself. Hama’s heart aches watching this deja vu unfold before her. It is like repeating a night all over again–granted that had been one of the best nights of her life in a while. She finally understands why perfect nights can’t last forever, why one shouldn’t try to go back to them. Oblivious to the melancholy, Azula mumbles about the bones. 

“Do you have anymore?”

“Just one.” Hama replies. “Your hand. I wasn’t sure if you would want to…”

“Show it to me!” She declares. 

Hama chuckles, she has to. She still has her bizarre child.

.oOo.

Hama shows her around the garden as she strokes the top of her hummingbird-lizard’s head. There are lots of pretty plants around here; weeds and floras that Hama insists she had once known the names of. 

Azula stoops down and reaches for one that catches her attention. One with three brilliant green leaves. Hama catches her hand and mummers, “of course you’re trying to touch that one again.”  She laughs her creaky laugh. “I should really just clear all of that out, you have a knack for finding it.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s poison ivy, it’s how you lost that hand.” 

Azula clutches her left arm to her chest and glares at the offending plant. The hummingbird-lizard scuttles up her sleeve and onto her shoulder, tickling her as it goes along. “I’ll stay away from those then.”

“Before your brother and his friends got here, you were going to help me clear out the bindweed. You caught it just in time before it could become a problem.” She sighs. “Unfortunately enough time has passed that it has now spread. It’s going to be much trickier now.” She pauses. “I could use the distraction though and you could use some extra time out here getting re-acquitted with the jungle.”

“Alright, so how do we get rid of it?”

“Well, we have to find the root.” Hama replies. “Trace it back to its origins and fix the problem from there.”

“That’s it?”

“Mostly.” Hama shrugs. “Sometimes it only takes one simple thing to take care of a problem. One little spark, to put it like a firebender. Let’s find the root, shall we?”

.oOo.

Azula likes to wander. Hama has noticed this habit a few days later. She likes to pace around the house and peek in cabinets. And when the house becomes a bore she likes to meander about the garden. Hama imagines that it won’t be long before she takes to traversing the jungle too.

Even in the rain, the girl will linger outside. At first Hama thinks that she is still trying to find the bindweed’s root. But it become apparent that she sometimes walks just to put her legs to use. Hama supposes that it makes sense, the girl simply isn’t the type to laze around and do nothing for long stretches of time. 

Hama will let her explore the garden, let her wade through the floodwaters that are slowly beginning to rise again. With luck they will recede once more before they kill her plants. If they do drown, at least she can say that the death was natural this time. 

As natural as Azula’s life is unnatural. 

She strokes the hummingbird-lizard that has grown fond of its place on her stump. 

Sometimes though, Azula does like to sit. 

She sits and stares. 

Hama has to wonder what she might be thinking about. Perhaps she is imagining what her life had been like, maybe she is building a history for herself. One that she likes. One that she finds compelling. One that fills the massive hole in her mind. 

Today Azula stops to sit on the porch. It is nearly twenty-minutes before she returns inside, all sopping wet. 

“Wait just one minute.” Hama stops her at the door. Azula freezes and Hama takes the chance to waterbend her dry. She steps to the side, “alright, go ahead.” 

It would seem that today is one of her quiet days. Hama isn’t sure that she likes these days. It isn’t that her silence is the cold-shouldering sort, it isn’t the sad sort either. It just is. And it makes Hama realize that she no longer likes silence. There is an absence of joy in silence. 

.oOo.

It is harder when Hama is asleep, when she has nothing to do and no one to talk to. It makes her wish that she could sleep. It isn’t that she hasn’t tried–no she has given it her very best attempt. She has laid down on the cot for several hours, first with her eyes open, closing them only when they naturally blinked. 

The next night it occurred to her that maybe closing her eyes was the key; Hama always sleeps with her eyes closed. And so that is what she had done. She had laid down on her back with her hand and stump clasped over her belly. 

This is how Hama lies to sleep. 

But she finds that it is hard to keep her eyes closed–they never feel heavy as Hama mentions eyes sometimes do when you are tired. Azula realizes that she is not tired. She is never tired. And so she can never sleep. Even with her eyes perfectly shut.

She thought next that maybe she hasn’t gotten the position isn’t right. She tired sleeping on her side and on her belly. Hama mentioned that she used to like sleeping on her belly with her hand tucked under her head.  

Her next thought is that perhaps she doesn’t have a comfortable bed. But this can’t be right because she does find it quite physically cozy, it isn’t dissimilar to that warm, dark cocoon she had been wrapped in before being thrust back into this world. She likes the blankets, likes pulling them around her and over her head until she is bundled up tightly and completely.

But she still doesn’t sleep.

Hama mentions an empty mind, unplagued by restless thoughts and stressors. But her mind is already clear. She doesn’t find life to be particularly stressful. She doesn’t have too much to think about.  Mostly just the bindweed. Mostly just how to get to find the root, the very core of the weed.

Tonight she decides that it is time to give up on her quest for sleep. It is futile. She thinks of making her way out into the jungle. She can’t foresee herself getting lost–with no other memories to take up space she has plenty of room to memorize her path in perfect detail. 

She will be back before Hama can notice that she has left.

She stoops down to pick up her shoes when something catches her eye. Something that glints in the moonlight that streams under the cot.

Azula reaches for it and takes the object in her hand. 

A rock, a small rock. It must have gotten knocked under the cot during the scuffle that had killed her. 

She rises,  furrows her brows, and turns it over in her hand. The rock is split in half, flashing a tiny cave of glittering green gems.

Chapter Text

Hama wakes to see Azula hunched over, eyes fixed on the geode, staring into its depths. Hama places a hand on her shoulder but the girl doesn’t seem to notice, so transfixed she is on her geode. 

After a few moments her brows furrow and her lower lip trembles. She clenches her fist around the gem and turns her head to look back, “Hama?”

“Yes?”

“Hama…” she mutters again.

There is something in her eyes. Something different. Hama’s tummy tickles. That something is familiar. 

And then it is gone, she closes her eyes and topples. Her frame collides with the floor with a sturdy thud. The geode rolls out of her grasp.

“No. No, don’t you do this to me.” The deja vu this time is exceedingly unpleasant as she scoops the girl’s limp form into her arms. She brushes her hair out of her face and breathes a sigh of relief when she sees that the girl’s breaths shift the locks that have fallen over her nose. 

She wishes that she had the strength to lift the girl onto the cot. Instead she drags the both of them over to the wall and leans against it, holding her close. She strokes the girl’s hair. Is it possible? Does she remember?

She better give Hama a good earful when she wakes up. For the time Hama tugs one of the blankets from the cot and wraps it around her. How the girl can stand being swaddled in blankets in this kind of heat is beyond her. All the same, she bundles the girl up and props her head against the crook of her neck if only to feel her soft breaths upon her skin.

So long as she feels those, so long as she sees the steady rise and fall of her chest, she can rest at least somewhat easily. 

.oOo.

Things flick and filter through her mind. 

They are in jumbles and pieces, haphazard and chaotic little fragments that escape her grasp too quickly for her to make anything of them. 

She knows that they are hers. That they are her memories and that, by all means, they should make sense. But, as they are, they are disjointed and and nonsensical in the order that her mind blinks them before her. 

There are pieces from here and pieces from there. Snippets of her childhood splice with images of her tween years and those intermix with her teen years. She can see herself dashing across the garden after an older boy–his name hasn’t come to her yet but ‘brother’ has. And she runs until she grows taller, older and she is running from something different–or maybe she is the pursuer? But the memory has tense tones. 

And then her running comes to a stop and she is sitting at a fire with her brother and two others. They are talking she is, not quite said, but she isn’t happy nor calm either. She is…she doesn’t now what she was at that time and she is almost certain that she hadn’t known then either. 

And in the blaze of the fire she sees another, this one barrels past her, just missing her by a few inches. There is a jump and a skip but she is sure that these two memories happened with in minutes–no more than an hour–between each other. She is chained down, screaming. 

Her scream altars and she is alone in Hama’s shack, on the floor shaking. Dying. 

Her hand is still there. 

And then it isn’t.

It isn’t and she is in a hot spring. And from the hot spring she is at the royal spa. She is all over the place, she is everywhere at once and it makes her head hurt. Aside from lumping her child, tween, and teen years into sections she isn’t entirely sure of which moments have happened first. She supposes that she can also lump things in to pre and post-hand categories. Everything that has transpired in memories where her hand is missing had happened after that night alone in the shack. 

It began with a flash and it ends with a flash.

She knows that after the flash there was that enticing darkness, that pleasant quietness. There was something else. Something else after that, but she can’t remember it. Something between the darkness and her waking up without her memories. 

She is certain that she will never uncover that one. Not until she dies again. 

She wonders if this is what it was like for the Avatar. The green clusters of the geodes and the luminescent ones in the crystal catacombs beneath Lake Logai merge in her mind. And when she strikes the Avatar down she is striking her brother down in the same stroke. And in striking the two of them she is sending electricity convulsing through her own body. These moments become one in the same. 

For a moment she, the Avatar, and her brother are the same person in her mind–she can no longer tell where one of them ends and the next begins. 

And she has a name now. He is Zuko and then there is Aang. Zuko is a Fire Nation name so Zuko must be her brother and Aang the Avatar. 

She remembers how it feels to die. 

She remembers her entire body twitching and spasming, charing and smoldering. It was mostly on the inside. Absently she holds her hand to her belly–it had been burned away, her lungs had been burned away. She remembers her heart stoping, remembers the pain slicing through her chest, up the side of her neck, and into her teeth.

Her eyes snap open, she is breathing heavily. When she bolts up, Hama jerks awake. 

She remembers Hama. She remembers Hama the best. The timeline is still in disarray but she remembers that Hama has cared for her more than anyone else has bothered to. So when Hama reaches out and murmurs, “you go back to sleep, let your mind collect itself,” she listens. She fights to level her breathing an leans against the old woman.

The old woman who rubs her hair and asks her if she’d like to hear a Water Tribe tale. 

Sleep, she hasn’t done that in a very long time…

But she is finally tired…

Chapter Text

It feels different to step back into the garden with a jumble of memories trying to sort themselves out. It is foreign and familiar all at once. Fresh and new but old and tried simultaneously. “Ready to get rid of some bindweed?” Hama pats her shoulder. “We’ve looked in all but one place, the The root. 

Maybe she needs to find the root of her memories. Something to string them all together with more coherence. 

root has to be in the west side of the garden.”

“I’m ready.” Azula replies. “Of course this could have been done sooner had we not had such unpleasant company.” Had she not damn near obliterated herself. She looks at her stump. She can firebend but lightningbending is no longer an option. 

“Alright, the west side of the garden is the smallest section but it’s still rather respectably sized.” She puts her hands on her hips. “You search the right half and I’ll cover the left. 

“Right, yes. I can do that.” She’s done it before plenty of times. She thinks that she has anyhow. She watches Hama wander off to her side of the garden before going to her own. 

She scans the garden but she can no longer recall what she is looking for–at least she doesn’t remember what it looks like. She knows that it doesn’t have three leaves, she know that very vividly. 

Everything is so…messy; the bindweed could be the plant with the pink flowers or the one with the white flowers. Maybe it has no flowers at all. She recalls what Hama had told her about bindweed and about echinacea and about rosemary and morning glories. But she can recall which is which. 

She rubs her hand over her face. At least this time her incompetence isn’t her fault…but actually it is. She’d shot the lightning. She had overestimated her unpracticed abilities or underestimated just how large the impact of her missing hand would be on her lightningbending. 

Be it about plants or bending there was an alarming lack of oversight, stupidity…foolishness plain and simple. 

And now she can’t even remember the flowers that Hama had worked so hard to teach her about. That she had worked so hard to learn about and memorize. 

But no, it isn’t her fault entirely. 

If Zuzu hadn’t shown up with his miscreant friends. 

If Katara hadn’t tried to take Hama from her…

She clenches her fist, grits her teeth, and…feels a hand on her shoulder. “It’s alright if you don’t remember.” Hama says. “Things are still falling back into place.”

But she thinks that they are done falling, that she is going to have to put things in order on her own. She says as much and Hama frowns. “Well you’re a smart young woman, if anyone can work out such a complex puzzle, it’d be you.” She gives Azula’s hand a little tug. “Come on, this way. I didn’t find the root to the left so there’s only one place that it can be.” 

Azula sniffs indignantly. “Fine.”

.oOo. 

The girl approaches her shaky and tearfully. This isn’t like her Azula. At least earlier she was seeing a favorite cranky, disgruntled princess. This…Hama doesn’t like this. And Hama isn’t sure if it is because it hurts to see such a strong girl cry or if it’s because it’s so unlike her. 

But then again, she’s seen her cry before; she had been in pain then and she is in pain now–albeit it is more emotional.

“Sit down.” Hama says quietly, patting the seat next to her. 

“Hama, I still can’t do it.”

Hama furrows her brows. “Can’t do what?”

“Sleep! I can’t sleep!” She is practically shouting. “I need to sleep but I can’t my mind…my body? It won’t let me but I need to, Hama. And I want food but I can’t eat…”

“You can eat…”

Azula shakes her head. “Every time I do I feel sick and if I keep trying…” She swallows. “I can’t keep anything down.”

“Perhaps you need something bland. I know that you firebends like your spices but you might have to eat like…”

“Like a taste impaired peasant?”

Hama gives her a decent swat. “Now don’t be rude.” 

“I haven’t slept or eaten, I have a right to be rude!” Her voice is what the princess would deem embarrassingly higher than she perhaps intends it to be. And that is why Hama lets the comment slide. 

“Come on, I’ll make you something that’s light on the stomach. We’ll see if that does any good.”

“What about sleep. I need to…” She is pacing now, clutching at her hair. 

“Maybe you don’t need to sleep anymore.” Hama muses.

“I want to sleep. I want to dream. I–I want to feel normal.” Likely, she wants to pretend, at least for a little while, that she hadn’t died at all.  

“Have you considered that you are stressing yourself out too much to get any sleep? You’re over thinking something that will come naturally if you can relax. After you eat, we’ll try to get you relaxed.” 

Azula nods, “alright.” And then her brows knit. “How am I supposed to relax, Hama?”

“We can sit on the porch while you eat and we can watch the fireflies. Does that sound good?”

Azula nods again.

.oOo.

In spite of the ambiance, her discomfort only grows. Hama’s cooking is homely and as tasty as an unseasoned meal can taste. But she isn’t surprised to find herself feeling bloated and nauseous. It happens every single time regardless of what or how much she eats. A little nibble or two doesn’t bother her so much. But a full meal…she clutches at her middle and bunches herself up. Hama observes her from a short distance, lips pressed into a thin line. 

At least this time she isn’t heaving and choking. But the queasiness is still present and still highly unpleasant. “I think that I’m allergic to all food.” She grumbles. 

Hama only continues to frown as she rubs Azula’s back. 

She wonders what the old woman is thinking. Some time back she might have assumed that the woman was disgusted with her or annoyed that she has to take care of her again. Tonight she knows that her anger is as distant as her gaze. It has a home and the home it finds is with Katara and Zuzu wherever they have retreated back to.

“You’re going to be alright.” Hama murmurs. 

But Azula feels far from alright. Sick, heavy, tired, and sluggish is what she feels. And she has only had a small bowl of mashed potatoes and spinach. 

She holds her hand against her tummy, willing the aches and nausea to pass. 

“I don’t know what else to do.” Hama admits. “Usually I’d offer teas for the stomachaches but I’m not sure if that would make it worse…” She trails off. “All I can do is just sit here.” She shakes her head. 

That’s more than a lot of people would have done for her. 

“Do you want to lay down somewhere more comfortable?”

“Yes.” She winces. But she is almost terrified to move. She thinks that if she does, she’ll be on her hands and knees hurling again. 

“Alright then…” Hama rises her old bones give a good crack. Agni, how is she going to help get her to the cot? She offers a wrinkled hand anyhow. And Azula takes it, her stomach lurches at the shifting of positions. 

By the time she makes it to the bed, the sickly feeling reaches a peak. She hunches over and gives a dry heave but manages to keep her meal down. She flops down upon the cot and curls herself up again. 

“I don’t think that I’m going to be able to sleep, Hama.” 

“I don’t think I will either.” 

At least she has company. 

At least she isn’t alone with her dreads and discomforts. 

“Maybe we just need to give you some time.” Hama muses. “Your body needs to adjust to being alive again.”

“Maybe.”

“You said that you can take a few bites and be fine?”

Azula nods.

“Then we can try doing that. Like a starvation recovery diet.” Hama speculates. “Instead of trying to sleep a full night you can try little naps. Just like we did with your bending, small things at a time.” 

“I shouldn’t have to take baby steps with natural human functions.” Azula grumbles. 

“Well you went through a very unnatural thing and you need to recover from it.” 

Recover, recover, recover. No wonder she can’t heal and move forward. It seems like all she is doing these days is recovering from one thing or another. And whenever she finally does, there is something new to recover from. “I just want to be okay, Hama.” She doesn’t even want any of those palace extravagancies anymore. She just wants peace–whatever that means for her anymore.

“Yes.” Hama whispers, “so do I.” She rubs small circles on Azula’s belly. She thinks that the last time anyone has done something like that for her was when she was still a tottering child. Before her own mother learned to fear and resent her. “We all, just want to feel safe.” The old woman adds.

Azula supposes that she does feel safe with Hama, so long as no unwanted guests come knocking. 

“I’ll send for Kohan and see if he has any other ideas. For now, we’ll just try to keep you as comfortable as possible.” 

“Alright.” Azula murmurs. 

“You’ll feel like yourself again, just give it time. We’ll have peace of mind again some day.”

Chapter Text

“Do you regret it?” Azula asks.

Hama furrows her brows.

“Bringing me back.”

Hama shakes her head rigorously. “Of course I don’t. Do you?”

Azula swallows, life since coming back has been considerably worse. Almost unbearable. She feels like a freak–more than she had when her fire first turned blue and her mother looked at her strangely. More than she had when father began speaking differently of her. 

More than she had when she lost her hand. 

She is scarred and disfigured and losing control of her mind again. 

Finally she nods. “You should have left me dead. People aren’t supposed to come back from that.” She finds herself wondering, again, if the Avatar had felt the same. If he felt like an abomination. An anomaly. But then, his scars aren’t so ugly and prominent as hers. He was born to be re-born. Perhaps not so dramatically and not like that. But his reawakening had been more natural. It certainly hadn’t been the product of bloodbending. 

“I–maybe it’s selfish but I couldn’t lose you.” Hama’s creaky voice cracks. 

“You should have let me go. I’m not supposed to be here.” She traces her fingers over the scar tissue on her belly and sides. “I don’t even look human.”

“That’s not true!” She insists. “I need you, you’re all I have.”

“You have Kohan, your bones, and your garden…”

Hama shakes her head. “I’d let that boy torch this shack and everything in it so long as I could flee with you.” 

“Why?” Azula inquires soft and low. 

“Because you’re my daughter.” 

Azula furrows her brows. “Your daughter?”

Hama nods. She reaches for Azula’s hand, holding it between her own. “I never had the chance to have children of my own. I suppose that I didn’t really want any of them anyhow. But you…you’re my child now.” 

“Okay.” 

“Okay? I tell you that I think of you as a daughter and ‘okay’ is the best you have?” 

“Did you want me to say ‘no’?”

“Of course that’s no better.” Hama grumbles. “Now sit down and lets discuss this whole, human, not human business.”

“We already have. Plenty of times.” Azula mutters. “I still can’t sleep, I still can’t eat…”

“But you can feel pain again.”

“Not the same way that I used to.” She counters. “I can feel aches and discomforts. My body reacts to things; if I eat something that it disagrees with–everything–then it purges it and I feel sick. I can feel sick. But…” She conjures up a small little flame the size of a match and holds it to one of her old burns. “I don’t feel that.” She lets the flame die. “I know that sticking my hand in a fire is inadvisable, my skin will blister and blacken. I still sustain damage but I don’t feel it. I could punch myself in the face, I could pull out my hair, but I wont feel it.” She pauses. “I could probably roll in poison ivy and it wouldn’t bother me any. I’d get the rash but I wouldn’t feel the need to scratch it.” 

“I told you before; you feel the things that matter. You feel sad and scared and angry.” 

“But I don’t feel happy.”

“But you still feel emotion. You still feel love, yes?”

Azula nods. 

“You’re human.” Hama stands firm. “I’ve known several people who’ve lost the capacity to feel physical pain. Those who have survived the worst Fire Nation prisons–the ones that come out covered head to toe  in burns. That’ve lost feeling, Kohan calls it nerve damage. I’ve met people paralyzed from the waist down. They don’t feel a thing from the waist down. Are these people inhuman?”

“I never said that they weren’t.”

“Are they less human?”

“I never said…”

“But you did. If you’re less human because you don’t feel pain, then so are they.”

“It’s different.”  Azula insists quietly, brushing her fingers over the fabric of her pants. 

“How so?”

“They lost feeling because of physical injuries…”

Hama gestures to the scar tissue. “Forgive my bluntness–you’re covered head to toe in burns. Perhaps not as extensively as some of those prisoners have been but you’ve been struck by lightning. Have you considered that the lightning has damaged your nerves the same way that the burns have damaged those of a war prisoner? Lightning can stop a heart from beating, it can fry chipoints beyond repair…”

Azula cuts in. “That’s not what happened with Zuzu.”

“Your brother has one small scar. He took less damage.”

“He didn’t die. Those war prisoners didn’t die!” She argues. “They still sleep and eat. Fine, maybe not feeling pain is normal for the type of damage I took. But not being able to sleep and eat–not having to do any of those things…? I feel better when I don’t eat and it doesn’t bother me when I don’t sleep.”

Hama quirks a brow. “You sound rather bothered to me.” 

“You know what I mean, Hama. I’m not fatigued, I’m fully alert, I can function unhindered. And I haven’t slept an hour since I came back.” She pauses before adding, “passing out doesn’t count as sleep.”

“Well let me ask you this?” Hama takes a bite of her oatmeal. “If you had to choose between your crown and my life, which would you pick?”

“Depends on the context.”

Hama nearly spits out her oatmeal. “The context!?”

Azula nods. “In this situation why is your life in danger? Is someone holding you hostage and demanding the crown as payment or are you a prisoner about to be executed?”

“Does that matter?”

She nods again. “Very much, yes. In the first situation I’d choose you and then take my crown back later. In the latter situation it would be more beneficial if I had the crown. If I had the crown I could nullify your execution with no questions asked.” 

Hama sighs and chuckles. “How could I forget that you like to anticipate every possible situation and outcome.” She thinks for a moment, reconsidering her question. “This situation is purely fantasy, logic and rules don’t apply. You can only have one, either me or your crown. There is a spirit curse; the minute you touch or put the crown on your head, I did.”

“Simple.” Azula replies. “I do not wear the crown, someone else handles it for me and I still have the Fire Lord title and you get to be alive and reap the benefits of my status.” She gives a self satisfied smile. 

Hama, still sporting a faintly amused expression, rubs her hands over her face. “You are missing the point of this question.” She mulls over another new one. “Forget the crown. You can only have one, your royal, upper class status or me. There is a spirit curse; you can have either your wealth and status or myself and what you have now. What will it be?” 

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Azula asks. “There are enough people who disagree with Zuzu and his ideologies for me to claim the throne. The Avatar would be a problem, but not for long if I moved my pieces correctly. Especially if I wave this around.” She holds her stump up. “The right words can make him into a cruel and vicious person that shouldn’t rule a nation–something akin to if he can disfigure his own sister imagine what he’d do to his enemies.” 

“If you can take your throne back, what are you still doing here?”

Azula’s brows furrow. “I like it here. You treat me well.” She treats her like a person. Not a weapon, not a burden, not a monster…she is an anomaly but Hama still treats her like a person. “I enjoy looking at your bone collection with you and I don’t have to worry about all of the ways that people will try to use my condition…conditions against me.” Her memories are still in such a jumble she can’t imagine trying to integrate herself back into palace life. 

She isn’t sure that she’d want to even if her memories were intact. 

“And to answer your silly hypothetical, I wouldn’t want you to die.”

Hama grins. Waving her spoon about she replies, “and that …is humanity.” She lets that settle in. She puts her spoon back in her half-empty oatmeal bowl. “Pain isn’t what makes a person a person. Eating and sleeping are very naturally human, yes. But I know plenty of people who eat and sleep and scream when they bleed who would have no problem making me bleed just for being a low-class waterbender. People who eat and sleep but dream of geocide and hatred. Beasts who try to claim women against their will. I’d wager that you’re more human than those people.” Hama pushes her bowl to the side. 

She clears her throat. “Humanity isn’t a series of bodily functions. It’s consciousness and compassion. It’s feeling, living, loving…” She puts her bowl in the sink and wanders closer, putting her arm upon Azula’s shoulder. “It’s forgetting about your crown to keep an old flutterbat like me company. It’s loving someone enough to die for them.”

Azula swallows, tears prickle behind her eyes. It isn’t that she is sad, not even slightly. She doesn’t exactly understand why she is getting teary again. But then, she never had been exactly an expert regarding her own emotions. 

“Maybe you can’t eat or sleep but you’ve got more humanity than any firebender I’ve come by.”

She bites the inside of her cheek. She thinks that she can place that emotion now. It is touched. Touched with a dash of relief. Relife and touched that at least one person sees her as a human being when she is arguably less so than before. 

.oOo.

 “Okay, Hama.” She manages. 

It occurs to hama that the girl says ‘okay’ when she doesn’t know what else to say. When words finally cease to come to that brilliant mind of hers. When she is trying to process something that is almost unfathomable to her. 

“I’m sure that you’ll be able to sleep and eat again but if you don’t…”

“Then the palace is not an option.” Azula replies. “They’d find all sorts of ways to use me if they knew that I didn’t need to sleep or eat. Especially if they realize I don’t feel pain. Father would have loved that.” Her expression darkens again. 

Hama shakes her head. “It’s a shame. That man has himself a perfectly good daughter and he can’t treat her well.”

“I’m not angry at him, Hama. He’s the only one who ever cared.”

“Just because a person cares doesn’t mean they can’t hurt you. I don’t doubt at all that your father loves you, but he’s a broken, prideful man. And that’s a dangerous thing.”

“He only wanted the best for me. He wanted to give me power and status.”

“But did you feel loved? Did you feel like a daughter?”

“No.” She admits quietly. 

“I didn’t think so. I believe you when you say that he wanted what was best for you. And I think that he probably did think that what he was doing was the best for you. But it was also what was best for him. People can hurt people that they love. And they can do it with the best intentions. But the way he did it hurt you more than it helped.”

“Yes.” Azula agrees. 

“Your father needs to find peace with himself. He needs to learn to love himself without having status or power. He won’t be able to do right by you if he can’t do that. I don’t know your father but I know what he’s done. And he doesn’t seem like the type who will do that.”

“He isn’t.” She clears her throat. “Pride is a family trait.” 

“Well at least you’ve got the brains to put it aside for a while.” 

The girl manages a little half smile and then even that fades. “He was the only family I had. The only one who cared.”

“Was.” Hama emphasizes. “You have myself and Kohan if you’d like to make a new family.” 

“That would be nice.” Azula replies. “But someone should probably let Kohan know that.”

Chapter Text

A new family. 

She lays on the cot for the sake of laying upon it. For the sake of feeling normal she closes her eyes. Her inability to sleep gives her plenty of time to think things over. And for once these rushing thoughts don’t bring her dread. They are confusing and strange but they are vaguely reassuring. 

She can have…she does have a family. 

It is a small family. It is a bizarre family. But it is undeniably a family. One without any conditions or caveats. And all of this in spite of her mistakes and their dreadful first impressions. 

She rolls onto her side and begins trying to order things in her mind. She thinks that she has things in her childhood in chronological order. It was easier–there was the time before Zuzu got scared and the time after. She knows that mother had left before the scarring. She knows that anything involving begin away from the Capital–although she still can’t remember the name of the city–especially the things occurring off of Fire Nation soil happened after father had asked her to go bring Zuzu home. 

Slowly she finds herself piecing together the order of everything that has happened after being sent on that mission. There was the time before conquering Ba Sing Se and the era after. And from there, there was the time before Sozin’s Comet and the time after. This is a bit easier to distinguish–for the longest time her hair had been a good indication.

The mundane things are harder to put order to though. There are some events that either don’t seem to fit in anywhere or can fit everywhere. Ember Island, for example. She can’t for the life her her figure out when she would have had the time to go there, but she had all the same…

It is maddening. 

This is the thought that is circling in her head when Hama finally stirs. It is still dark but the woman is stretching her old bones and wandering over to the hearth for breakfast. She casts a look over her shoulder, “care to join me?”

Azula sits herself by the fire. Blueberry and raspberry oatmeal smells heavenly. She is almost certain that she had liked it before she had died. She wonders if one little blueberry could hurt. But she doesn’t want to throw a whole day away to find out.

“I’ve heard back from Kohan.” Hama speaks after half finishing her oatmeal. “The both of us think that it would be helpful to go back to Honoki. We’ll get some supplies to start fixing truly this mess.” She  gestures to the loose boards held over the hole in the floor by a large boulder and the ceiling which is only leaking worse now.

It is no pleasant feat thinking about going back to Honoki looking and feeling more ravagned than ever but she supposes that it would pay off to get those damages repaired once and for all. She wouldn’t mind seeing Quin-Shaw again either. “Will we be leaving today?”

“Ideally, yes.” Hama replies. “If the mongoose-lizards get here today.”

“It should be a quicker trip, this time.” Azula says. “I can keep steering the mongoose-lizards while you sleep.”

“The mongoose-lizards need to sleep too.”

“Right…” She mumbles. 

.oOo. 

There are no fancy spas this time. This time Azula is rather content keeping to themselves in Hama’s old inn. People don’t whisper and speculate about her new scars when she is tucked away in here.

“You should try to make more friends.” Hama suggests over lunch. “Talk to more people just me and Kohan. Friends your age.”

“I have Quin Shaw.” 

“More than just one friend, girl!” She exclaims. 

“I’m not exactly the sort of person who gets along with others easily.” Especially not now. “We have other things to worry about besides my social life…more pressing matters. Like fixing your house and figuring out how to avoid Zuzu and…”

Hama shakes her head. “It is my house. I need to worry about fixing it. You need to find some time to relax and enjoy yourself, like every other teenager. Kohan and I will worry about fixing the house. You worry about meeting some new people and giving yourself a break.” 

“And what happens when someone asks me to spend the night at their house? When they notice that I don’t eat?”

“Then you’ll know if they’re worth keeping company with.” As Hama rests her spoon in the empty icecream bowl she rests her case. And just like that, Azula has been left to wander the streets while she and Kohan enter the woodsman’s shop. 

Well, she supposes that she isn’t completely alone. “Rough day?” Quin-Shaw asks. Azula nods. More like, rough life. It occurs to her that the last time he had seen her was before she had died. If he has noticed the new scars he hasn’t commented. 

“Hama thinks that I need more friends.” 

“That might be good for you.” He agrees. 

“You’re taking her side!?”

“Well, it couldn’t hurt.”

It could hurt quite a lot actually once she gets attached and they decide that they don’t want to keep companionship with a high functioning corpse. Azula holds a hand to her chest. Her heart still beats, her lungs still fill, her cheeks still have color–corpse might be something of a stretch. 

“So my friends and I usually get together every week, play a little kauai ball, sneak some cactus juice. Juko discovered that it tastes pretty good when mixed with coconut and pineapple. What do you say?”

“It sounds like…” something she’d get way to competitive over, something fun that she’d make too intense. It sounds delicious and tempting, it sounds like something that would make her upset and frustrated when she couldn't have a sip for herself. “Not the way I usually spend my evenings.”

“It’s alright to try something new.”

“Quin, I can’t drink caucus juice out of coconuts…”

“I can’t see Hama really getting upset about it, sounds like she’ll just be happy that you did something with friends.”

“No, I mean I can’t drink cactus juice, I can’t drink anything more potent than water. I can’t eat either.”

He tilts his head, “are you on some kind of diet?”

“I’m on some kind of I died.” She might as well push him out before she can get too invested. She is already more invested than she had intended to be. She pulls up her sleeves. “I tried to lightningbend and I got myself killed. And then Hama used bloodbending to bring me back and now I can’t eat without getting sick.” She pauses. “And I can’t sleep either, so if your idea of a good time is letting me watch you sleep, then fine, let's have at it.”

“Do you actually do that, though?”

“What?”

“Watch people sleep?”

“Yes. Yeah, I go out and find some moderately attractive, unwitting dolt and I just stare at them for eight hours.”

“Okay, rude question, sorry.” He mutters. “But like you actually died!?” He flushes. “That was also a rude question, wasn’t it.” 

“It was, yes.” 

“Interesting. Well, for what it's worth I can’t tell that you were dead. Like you don’t look like someone who died.” 

“I suppose that I should take that as a compliment. It was a dreadful one but…” She shrugs. 

“I’m trying my best.” He laughs. “So what do you say, join us from so Kuai ball and pretending to drink cactus juice.” 

Azula sighs. “Fine. I’ll tell Hama that she can stop fretting over me becoming a lonely old hermit or something.”

.oOo.

There’s Juko who is a small girl with a round face and the most foul mouth that Azula has ever heard. There’s Nim-Hara who can’t spell bumblebee and can talk her into another early grave. There’s Dao who prides himself on how many peppers he can eat at once. And there’s a waterbender named Khan who is only going to be staying in the Fire Nation for a few months while his parents learn about Fire Nation literature. Khan who claims to have caught the largest fish in the Water Tribes–Azula is almost certain that this is a tall tale but she won’t call him on that. Khan, whose name used to be Kyah. 

Azula supposes that they are an interesting bunch. She doesn’t know many people who can fit approximately twenty chili peppers into their mouths, and the boy is going for twenty-one. 

“That’s terrifying.” Khan mumbles. “His skills are terrifying.”

“Perhaps he’ll be able to breathe fire.” Nim-Hara quirks a brow.

Juko pops a fireflake into her mouth. “That’d be something.”

“He won’t. Breathing fire takes a very well practiced firebender. There’s a lot that goes into it, you have to actively monitor how you are breathing well before you try to add fire into it. You have to pool up just the right amount of…” she trails off. She can’t imagine that they are interested in the technicalities. 

“Amount of what?” Khan asks. “Not that I could actually do anything with this information. He laughs. 

“The right amount of chi. If you get too little the flame will be pathetic and if you gather too much then you’ll land yourself on the ground and look stupider than you would have if you just got that little puff of smoke.” 

“Fascinating.” Dao says through his mouthful.

“How is he still talking?” Nim-Hara furrows her brows.

“The man’s got a talent!” Quin-Shaw declares.

“It’d be really cool to meet someone who can breathe fire.” Nim-Hara mumbles to herself. 

“I can breathe fire.” 

Several pairs of eyes fall on her. Eyes that seem to request a demonstration. So she gets to her feet and takes a deep breath. She focuses in on her fire chakra and all of those little chi points from her belly to her throat. She can feel each of them ignite in sequence as the warmth in her belly grows. Just before it can become uncomfortable she raises it up through her throat. Up through her throat and out into the air, a nice steady stream that she holds for some time and tapers off. 

Nim-Hara gives a little clap. 

Junko hands her a coconut. “You could probably use this.”

“Water would do just fine.” Azula says. “I don’t drink cactus juice.”

“Is that like, a princess thing?”

She nods, “I’d rather not test my limits in such a public place.” And that is true enough. It simply isn’t the primary reason. 

Quin-Shaw passes her a cup of water. “Starting to feel more comfortable?” He asks as the others head over to the Kaui ball court. 

Azula nods. 

“They aren’t bad people, a little weird sometimes but…”

“No weirder than being…whatever I am.” 

“You’re just you.” He replies. “Come on, I’ve heard rumors that you’re pretty good at kuai ball.” 

.oOo.

The people of Honoki hear a lot of things. They have heard that their princess is back in town. They have heard that she has lightning scars. They have heard that they were given to her by the Avatar…and by Zuko…and by Iroh who had apparently been there too. 

And Hama swears that she hadn’t told a soul. So either they had taken a look at her and lept to their own conclusions just as they had with her hand or the Avatar had passed through Honoki on the way home. 

Now they look more closely at her, gander more openly. It isn’t disrespectful–not intentionally anyhow nor hateful persay. But it is mightily uncomfortable. Whatever has or hasn’t been said, they don’t seem to resent her for it.

At least she can cling to that.

But if the Avatar and his friends have passed through and had done more talking…no, she would have already heard them whispering about an alleged death and rebirth. They would be looking at her quite differently. 

“This is a good thing.” Hama insists.

“How?” Azula grumbles as she pretends to be invested in a plate of grilled salmon. “You know that I don’t like their pitying looks.”

“Well, you see, they see an old lady and a young lady with a missing hand and relatively recent lightning scars and they think that it is rather reprehensible to just let them carry on with holes in their roof.”

“Hama, we’re perfectly capable…!”

Hama chuckles, “but they don’t have to know that!” She declares, probably too loudly. “We can focus on gardening and rebuilding our bone collection and they can help us patch up the roof. I don’t know if you remember, but we had a very extensive to do list. They’re even going to help us fix that rickety old water pump.”

“Because they think that I’m…we’re weak.”

“Because they want to help.” Kohan replies. “They don’t know how to feel about Hama, but they are fond of their princess. And if their princess enjoys Hama then bygones will be bygones.”

“And I don’t even have to apologize.” Hama grins.

“But you should.” Azula grumbles. “You terrorized those people. My people.”

Hama opens her mouth and closes it again. “I’ll apologize to…” 

“My wife?” Quin-Shaw pasess her drink to her. 

“You married young.”

Azula had forgotten about that.

“Yeah, we married at sixteen. And you abducted her years before we married…” He lets that hang in the air until it registers that Hama had taken a child. The woman cringes. 

“Fine…I’ll apologize to your wife and the other citizens. But I’m not apologizing to the guards and soldiers!”

“Fair.” Azula shoots the salmon a longing glare. She ought to have Quin take that bake before she eats it despite knowing how it will end for  her. “I miss food.” 

“Yes, that is another thing we have to do. We have to find you something you’ll be able to eat and with a portion that works for you, until you can eat normally again.” She pauses. “Which is why we should take these people up on their offer to help us. It’s not like we’ll just be sitting around–we’ll simply be off starting on more gratifying tasks.”

“I suppose that, that isn’t completely unbearable.” Azula admits. It actually sounds rather nice. It’ll be nice to write at least a few worries off. And nicer yet to have more concrete proof that her people still treat her like royalty in spite of whatever Zuzu might have said. 

Chapter Text

Quin-Shaw and his friends tag along for the trip home. She supposes that that makes things a little easier, at least in some regards. Hama seems to be more cheerful knowing that her push to get her to make some friends had worked. And she supposes that it is nice to have a few people to talk to who are around her age. 

This, however, is the second third night that she has had to force herself to eat one or two more bites than she could handle in order to avoid unwanted questions and attention from the other folks who have tagged along with their tools and their skills. 

And so it is that Azula is a good distance away from the camp, behind a tree losing the dinner that she’d just had. When her body is finally through, she slumps against the tree and takes a few breaths. Agni, it is so taxing. But there will only be one more night of this. Only one more night of having to pretend to sleep.

“You alright?”

She jolts. “Why aren’t you with the rest of the group?”

“Hama asked me to check on you.” Quin-Shaw replies. “She’s busy squabbling with Kohan about whether or not we should all just pull an all nighter and just get to the shack or if we should stop  off at some point.”

“I vote we just pull an all nighter.”

“Just because you don’t need sleep…” He grumbles. 

“I’m just tired of having to eat and then…” She gestures to the tree she had just emerged from behind. “If it were just you and maybe the others I’d be fine. But there are so many strangers and I don’t need the questions.”

“Fair enough.” He replies. “Why don’t you just tell everyone that you’ve got food poisoning?”

“That will work for a while.” She agrees. “But eventually people are going to get a little suspicious if I’m constantly getting food poisoning. They’ll probably suspect that Hama is trying to assassinate me or something considering her reputation.” 

She follows him back towards the rest of the group where Hama and Kohan’s debate is just wrapping up. It would seem that Hama had lost and they will be spending one more night out here in the jungle. 

.oOo.

They begin at dawn.

The sun is still rather low on the horizon, casting a soft yellow-orange haze over the land. It sparkles over the retracting floodwaters in which toad-squirrels begin their morning croaks and dragonflies flittingly skim the surface.

“We’ll split off into three groups.” Azula announces on behalf of Hama, who is quite adamant that they will listen to their princess over some old Water Tribe hag. Granted, she has to agree, and she has missed ordering people around. She feels a touch closer to having the importance that she once had. “Group one will begin working on the water pump, group two will work on the roof, and group three will work on the interior.” She pauses. “Hama, myself, and and Khan will be doing some of the garden work. Apparently Junko will be babysitting Dao who is allergic to everything but peppers.”

Dao rubs the back of his head. “My parents should have moved to Caldera City…” 

Azula furrows her brows. Caldera City…

The name is familiar. It smacks into her like the gales of the avatar state, several buried memories slam into her all at once. They are mostly mundane; trips to buy new clothing, firework dazzled new year festivals and summer festivals with spicy tinged aromas, and a great many instances of addressing the general public at her father’s side…

She shakes her head. 

There is a hand on her back and a couple dozen pairs of anxious eyes observing her. “She mentioned having food poisoning the other day.” Quin notes.

“I’ll be fine.” She insists. “I just…get me something to drink.” 

“I got it.” Nim-Hara volunteers. 

Azula nods. “Anyhow, most of what needs to be done is rather simple; just patching a few holes in the floor on the porch. The roof needs to be re-thatched. And the waterpump…I don’t know anything about that so I’ll leave that to group one. Don’t mess anything up or there might be another string of mysterious disappearances.”

“I would never.” Hama comments. 

“Of course not.” She claps her stump against her palm. “Well then, let's get to it.” 

.oOo.

The steady beating of hammers and knocking wood is music to Hama’s ears. It is the sound of progress and a coming sense of security. It is the sound of forgiveness and acceptance. The sound of no longer being an unwelcome guest on the far outskirts of Honoki. The sound of the village inviting her to drop by more often. 

“See, what did I tell you?” Kohan asks. 

“About what?”

“I told you that you would have a much easier time if you made peace with the villagers. Most of them aren’t so bad. We’ve got a good handful of hateful folks who enter the tavern now and then, demanding to be served by a firebender. But, I didn’t want to serve them anyhow.” He pauses. “It’s getting easier now that the war’s over.” 

Hama nods and casts a glance over at Azula. “She made it easier.”

“And you’re lucky for it. You found yourself a powerful ally.”

“And some powerful enemies. The Fire Lord doesn’t like her and neither does that ungrateful water brat. To think! A waterbender fighting one of her own because she can’t see the value in reaching her full potential.”

“Bloodbending isn’t for everyone, Hama. It’s…unnatural.”

“It saved her.” 

“And you mention that she no longer sleeps, eats, or feels physical pain. It may not be evil but it isn’t natural either.”

“The Avatar died and came back.” 

“Through the use of Spirit Oasis water. That’s very different…”

“That’s not the point. The point is, that Katara girl is ungrateful and she cost me a good deal. If I hadn’t been able to bring her back…”

Kohan nods. “You hold a harsh grudge.”

“Harsh!? They killed her! There’s no better reason to hold a grudge. And my first one was just as fair. I’ll apologize but I’d do it again–the Fire Nationals have to know that they can’t just go off invading kingdoms and get away with a slap on the wrist.” 

“Speaking of wrists.” Azula cuts in. “Mine is getting sore. Are you going to help me dig out the last of the bindweed or not? And you promised that…”

“We’d be learning about new plants and how to sew. Yes, yes. Where is Khan?”

“He decided that, while plants are nice, as a waterbender his skills would be better appreciated by the water pump. I told him that he is correct.”

“So you’ve been digging up bindweed all by yourself?” 

“Quin has helped for a moment.”

“We can finish this discussion some other time.” Hama replies and Kohan nods. “We’ll finish up with the bindweed and then you can teach her to sew. Your hands are steadier than mine, Kohan.”

.oOo.

Zuko furrows his brows.

“I didn’t realize that Hama had Fire Nation friends.” Sokka comments. 

“Could she be using bloodbending?” Zuko asks.

“To control all of them?” Katara asks. “She can’t control that many people at once and it’s not a full moon.” 

“Then what are they doing helping her? She terrorized them!” Sokka throws his hands up. 

“Maybe she has some secret stash of wealth and she’s paying them all enough to feed them for years.” Toph suggests.

“Or maybe, she’s just an old lady trying to find some peace.” Aang says softly. “She and Azula were kind of just minding their own business when we showed up. And everybody that we talked to in Honoki said that neither of them have bothered anyone. They just came into town to buy a few goods and stay at the spa. That doesn’t sound like a terrorist plot to overthrow you, Zuko.” 

“But this is Azula we’re talking about.”

“And Hama.” Katara adds. 

“Maybe Azula just wants some peace too. Don’t you think that she would have made a move already if she was going to? Hama was teaching her to integrate waterbending forms into her firebending when we showed up.” He points out. “We were watching from a distance for a while that day; they were talking about learning about plants and teaching Azula to cook. Does that sound like evil plotting to you, Zuko?”

“Then why run all the way out here?”

“Because it’s peaceful out here, look around you! It’s really  beautiful.” 

“A-and maybe she might have had a problem with the straightjacket.” Toph shrugs. 

“So what do you want to do Aang?” Katara asks. “Do we just leave two dangerous enemies together after we…”

“Killed her.” Aang says alarmingly bluntly.

“Hama spent decades plotting and enacting revenge because firebenders took her from her home. What do you think she’ll do to us?”

“Well maybe if we go there and just talk instead of appearing in their garden with fire in out hands…” he looks at Zuko. “We might be able to just talk some things over.”

“Azula is…”

“A really rational person. She likes talking. And that’s what she was doing…”

“Until Hama attacked us!” Sokka cuts in. 

“That’s Hama, not Azula.” Aang replies. “I have a feeling that she won’t do that again if Azula tells her not to. And this time we have a whole crowd of people. I don’t think that any of us are going to do anything rash with so many people watching.” 

“Aang, your optimism is terrifying.” Sokka grumbles. 

“It’s not optimism.” He replies. “We’ve fought Azula before and she’s always been more inclined to use wit than raw power. We’re not at war anymore so let's not start battles.”

Chapter Text

Azula looks up from that final patch of bindweed. It is a victory short lived when she realizes that it is not Hama's shadow that has come to fall over her.

"What do you want?"she asks flatly.

"We just wanted to talk." Aang says meekly.

"Is this conversation going to end with my death?"

"It wasn't supposed to end that way the first time." 

Azula sighs. "I suppose that it would be quite a tarnish on your immaculate reputation if I died in front of all of these people."

"Just keep Hama in check." Sokka says bluntly.

"Keep your sister in line." She scoffs and Katara flinched. She turns back to Aang. "I'll make this discussion very quick. If you're going to try to place me back in that facility I have no interest."

Zuko bristles. "That isn't up to you."

"It certainly is. I won't be coming quietly. And killing me permanently won't be quite as simple as you think it will be."

His expression changes only for a flicker. "Im…that's not what I want to do."

"Then you'll have to decide what you want more; me alive and free or me dead."

"You're dangerous, we can't just let you run free!" Sokka declares.

She must say that it is rather flattering to still be seen as a threat even one hand short. "Perhaps I don't want run free, maybe I'd prefer to leisurely walk free." She shrugs. And with a sigh she adds. "Does it look like I have any intention of going back to the Capital for any reason? Have you considered that I'm perfectly content here with my…with my mother and her box of animal bones?" And to Katara she adds. "You damaged those by the way."

"Look, its just really hard to believe that two evil people…"

"Are actually just people who want to dwell in the jungle and be left alone?"

.oOo.

Katara swallows, she wishes that she didn't believe her. But when she had looked into Hama's eyes that day she had only seen deep exhaustion and even deeper sorrow. She had seen that withdrawn, hopelessness that she had gotten so used to seeing in the more battleworn Fire Nation towns.

She had taken away something…someone so important to the women and she had almost felt relieved about.

"I helped heal you."

"And how would you have responded if I helped you heal the Avatar in the Crystal Catacombs? I'm not interested in making friends."

"Neither are we." Sokka cuts in.

"I wouldn't have responded well." Katara finally answers. "I would have as much bad blood with you as I do now."

"Well then." Azula shrugs. "At least when I killed the Avatar we were engaged in combat during a time of war. You all marched up our porch step while we were just…" she shrugs. "Doing our daily routines."

Katara swallows. She tries to remember exactly what she had seen Azula and Hama doing before they had gone and upheaved their serenity like the best of any Fire Nation soldier could have.

And she is sure that Aang is right. They had been talking about plants and Azula learning to cook.

She can almost imagine herself sitting with Hama on her porch. The woman had been a nice teacher. Perhaps in another lifetime they could have been friends.

"What was she going to teach you to cook?"

"I don't remember." Azula replies plainly. "Hama probably does. Why does it matter?"

"I don't know, I guess that I…" what? Needs more proof that they are just two human beings trying to find peace. "Never mind."

"So how is this going to work? Are you all going to let me get back to helping Hama with her garden or am I going to have to indulge in a rematch. Of course I would recommend walking away, Honoki prefers my reign to yours, Zuzu. There have been some particularly heinous rumors about how you’ve treated me and if you kill me again…well then they will have every reason to believe that the worst of them are true.” She pauses. 

“Azula…” Aang starts. 

“But I don’t think that you can kill me again. After all, I was the one who delivered the fatal blow. Hama is safe, you have no leverage.”

“Oh we can get Hama again.” Zuko growls.

“I don’t think that you can. Not without hurting the civilians who have grown rather fond of her. They will protect her. They will protect me. How many of them are you willing to kill to take me down?”

“None!” Aang replies. “We’re not fighting.”

“Is that correct, Zuko?” She spits his name. 

“It’s not.” Zuko replies and Katara grits her teeth. 

Azula smirks, it is enough to chill Katara to the core. She has an advantage, more than the ones that she had already mentioned.

“Zuko, maybe we should just leave.” She winces. “Aang’s right, they’re not hurting anyone–the villagers wouldn’t be helping them if they hated them.”

“Or maybe they’re scared that their village is going to get torched if they don’t.”

“I’m sorry but that was kind of your thing.” Aang points out. “Kyoshi Island is still being repaired. And the villagers look pretty lively to me. Hama is giving them snacks.” He jabs his thumb in the woman’s direction. “She’s giving Toph snacks.”

Sokka blinks twice, his mouth falling agape. “She…she was just over here!”

“And now she’s getting snacks.”

Katara fixes her gaze back on Azula. Her face is as blank and unreadable as ever, maybe less so than before. “We don’t have to like them, Zuko.” Katara speaks up. “And they don’t have to like us but we can agree to just, I don’t know, never speak to one another again. We don’t even have to come near Honoki again.” 

“But they’re threats to the safety of the Fire Nation.”

“I’m a threat to your safety.” Azula rolls her eyes. “Everything I’ve done in the war was to better our nation. You’re the traitor. You and Iroh. Why do you think that these people are still loyal to me? They know that I have their best interests in mine. I’ll put them before other nations.” She furrows her brows. “Of course I wouldn’t go out of my way to destroy the others like father had. So long as they don’t infringe upon Fire Nation affairs I won’t…wouldn’t think much of them either which way. Of course trade would be a possibility…” 

She is rambling. It isn’t entirely like her to muse quite so openly. Katara swallows again; Azula is just another person. She has her passions, subjects she can talk about for hours and never tire. She has her own kind of expressions of love. 

“It doesn’t matter. I have no interest in the throne. There’s no thrill and the city is less vibrant.”

“You love Hama, don’t you?” Katara cuts in.

“Excuse me?”

“You care about her?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Aang meets Katara’s gaze and she is almost certain that he understands where she is going with this. “She taught you not to hate waterbenders, didn’t she?”

Azula sighs. “I don’t hate anybody–not on a collective level anyhow. Certain waterbenders, though, are unbearable. But then, there are certain firebenders that are even worse. It’s a poor reflection on all of us when that one wears the crown.” She ends with a shrug.

Zuko clenches his fists and teeth. 

“She’s not going to bother anyone if we just leave her alone, Zuko.” Aang insists. “Right, Azula?”

“If I wanted Zuko dead, he’d be dead already. I would have made a delightful little sneak attack while we were having this conversation. He wouldn’t have seen me again if he hadn’t sought me out.” 

“She needs to be brought to justice.”

“For what? Killing me? We got her killed so we can call that even. For Ba Sing Se? We haven’t done anything to Iroh and the only difference between what she did and what he did is success.”

Zuko opens his mouth and closes it again. 

“The war is over Zuko, we don’t need anymore bloodshed. And we can’t take her from Hama.”

“Katara, I thought that you were with me.”

“I was.” She admits. “But you weren’t there, Zuko. You didn’t see her face when…” Katara swallows. “You didn’t see the…”

“My body.” Azula fills in. “You didn’t see my body. You didn’t even have the decency to stick around and take a good look at what you caused. At least I had the decency to look at the Avatar after I struck him down.” 

“I’m sure he really appreciated that.” Sokka grumbles. 

“If you can’t stomach murder then you shouldn’t seek to comit it.” 

“I already said that I’m not here to kill you!”

“Oh but you are. Putting me back in that place would kill me–the parts of me that matter anyhow.” 

“The point is that the war is over, we haven’t punished Iroh for his actions in Ba Sing Se. We haven’t punished you for burning Kyoshi Island–we’re friends with you! Katara, you let Yon Rah live.” 

Katara nods, “I don’t regret it.” Not at all. And what is the difference between he and Hama? She swallows once more upon realizing that she has been angrier at Hama than the man who had killed her mother. Hama whose victims are still living–some of them among the people working on her house. “If I can let him go, I can let Hama go. I won’t forgive her and I’ll always remember how terrifying that night was. But I can let the anger go.” 

Aang is smiling now. And Katara realizes that she doesn’t want to be angry. It is such a heavy weight to be angry. And if Hama can help Azula to stop hating waterbenders then how dreadful can she be? “It was you, wasn’t it?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific.” Azula folds her arms across her chest. 

“You’re the reason that the people of Honoki have been treating me better; the reason that they don’t hate waterbenders as much.”

“It’s a work in progress, but if I say something they’ll usually listen. There are some stubborn ones but I like Hama and Kohan…and Khan. So they follow suit. At the very least they’ll leave them alone.”

“If anything, Zuko, it sounds like she’s helping people.” 

.oOo.

Hama has finally noticed their new guests. She and Quin approach with a small army of villagers in tow. “It’s alright, Hama. They were just leaving.” She cuts Zuko a glare. “Right?”

“Right.” Aang says solidly. She has a feeling that the Avatar’s opinion holds more value than thant of an underprepared, dolt of a Fire Lord’s. “We shouldn’t have come back here at all. We’re sorry for damaging your house and almost killing Azula.”

Hama opens her mouth but Azula holds her hand up. They don’t need to know that she had died, mostly because it is an inconvenience to her but she supposes that she doesn’t want to hassle the Avatar either. “And I suppose I should offer you an apology Avatar.” Albeit a curt one. “I did what I had to do. I would do it again. But…”

“I get it, you want to apologize but you don’t want to do it in front of all of these people.” He flashes one of his all too happy-go-lucky smiles. 

“You’re hilarious, Avatar.” 

“It’s always a pleasure talking to you, Azula.” He replies. 

“You should be honored, yes.” She supposes that she doesn’t hate the boy. He has a job to do and he does it sufficiently. Respectably, with a degree of honor that a firebender has to appreciate. “I am willing to converse with you again, perhaps. But none of your other friends.” She gives Toph a sidelong glance. “Alright, that one too. Maybe.” 

“That’s a start.” Aang laughs. 

“Maybe.” She emphasizes.

“Maybe is good enough. Let’s go, Zuko.” He gives his arm a light tug.

And just as he is walking away she says, “oh, and Avatar…”

“Yes?”

“There is something else that I’d like to talk to you about.”

Chapter Text

Azula finds herself a comfortable log to sit upon, the one that Hama had dragged over there a while back so that she would have a place to rest. She will leave the Avatar to find his own place to sit. Evidently, the grass is comfy enough for him.

“What did you want to talk about, Azula?”

“What was it like for you when you died? After you came back, I mean.”

Aang furrows his brows. “What do you mean?”

“Did you have all of your memories? Were they in order?”

His look of puzzlement only deepens. “Yeah, I had no problems with my memory. I was a little confused when I woke up with hair and on a Fire Nation ship but everything else was in order. Why? Are you having trouble with your memories?”

“Not anymore.” She replies simply. “I suppose that there are a few things that are no longer in chronological order but it isn’t a big deal. Those things are mostly insignificant moments, anyhow.” 

“Is everything else okay?” He asks. 

“What did your appetite look like when you first came back?” She returns with a question and then a second. “And your sleeping pattern?”

Again he fixes her with a quizzical expression, this one is dashed with concern. “Azula…”

“Answer the questions, Avatar.” 

“Normal.” He replies and her heart sinks. “I guess I had some trouble sleeping but that’s because I just let the entire Earth Kingdom down. But other than that, normal for me.” 

“Right. That’s all I needed to know.” 

“Azula, are you having trouble sleeping and eating?”

She shrugs. “I don’t need to do either anymore. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve eaten anything. I feel fine. I haven’t slept in that long either. I am fully alert and I don’t feel tired. I suppose I should be happy, I’m more efficient now.” More efficient and less human. 

“That bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“Why would it?” She asks. “I have the advantage. I don’t feel pain either, would you like to see?” She draws out the pin cushion that Hama had told her to hold onto for a moment. 

“That’s not necessary, you don’t have to hurt yourself–”

“But I won’t be hurting myself.”

“You still bleed, right?” 

Azula nods.

“Then you’re still hurting yourself. Just because you can’t feel it, doesn’t mean that you aren’t hurt.” 

She shrugs and shifts herself about on the log. Her fingers brush against the spongy, moist moss beneath. “And that’s no bother to me. I was getting sick of feeling pain anyhow.” And yet she finds that she craves it intensely. She almost wants to sever her other hand just to see if she’d be able to feel that. Maybe superficial pricks, cuts, and burns simply aren’t enough…

“Maybe we can take you to the spirit Oasis and see if that would help.” 

“I’m not interested in journeying anywhere with you and your friends. “You can’t guarantee that Zuzu won’t turn that bison of yours around and take me to some prison or ward instead. I’ll find my own way there if I ever decide to humor the idea.” 

Aang nods. “I can’t make you go if you don’t want to go. But I can let them know that you might be coming by and put in an Avatar’s request that they help you out. Just don’t…”

“Destroy anything, kill or maim anyone, use it as the first step in a plot to take over the Water Tribes…I get the gist, Avatar.” She sighs. “I told you already that I’m content with my bones, my geode, and this gaggle of idiots.” She gestures towards the house. “And Hama.” 

“Why is Hama separate from the rest of the gaggle?”

“She has a degree of intelligence and common sense.” Azula replies. “Anyhow, thank you for speaking with me.” 

“Yeah, it’s no big deal.” Aang smiles. “I don’t hate you, Azula. We were all just kids fighting a war that was meant for our parents to take care of.”

“Oh, because they handled that so well…”

“Sorry, I should be more careful…”

She lifts her hand. “It won’t do any good to dodge subjects. Father treated me as well as he was capable of. Mother is gone and even if she weren’t she’d be gone from my life. I found a new one, Zuzu can have Ursa.” 

“That’s kind of really depressing.”

“I don’t feel sad.”

He opens his mouth but she answers before he can ask. “I can still feel emotions. Just not physical pain. And Ursa doesn’t bother me. Acceptance or something of that nature.” She plucks a few longer blades of grass from her shoe. “I have Hama in the same way that Zuzu has Iroh.” 

“Are you sure that you don’t want a ride to the Northern Water Tribe?”

“I’m sure, Avatar. I actually had a few other plans to get to first.”

“If you change your mind, we’ll be in Honoki a bit longer.”

“If things go as planned, I won’t be.”

Chapter Text

“There are so many.” Azula wanders through a cloud of fireflies. They drift like the auroras over the water tribe’s glittering hills of snow. They hover above the path, crawl over vines, and twinkle in the palm fronds. “More than when we went by those spirit pools.”

“Yes.” Hama nods. “It’s the height of their mating season. Tomorrow night there will be hardly any of them left at all. Think of it as one last show before they go away for some time.” 

Azula holds her hand out and lets clusters of them land upon it. For herself, Hama lets them land upon her hair, lighting it up like lights in the snow. 

“Firefly night is always my favorite. Once a year, I like to sit on the porch and watch them until the sun rises. It was one of the only things that I liked about the Fire Nation after I got free…” Hama trails off. “It’s nice to be able to share it with someone else.”

“Why didn’t you try to invite Kohan?” Azula asks as the man in question comes out with two cups of raspberry spritzed cactus juice and a basket full of freshly picked wild berries. She can see the pangs of longing in the princess’ golden eyes. Hama pats the spot between she and Kohan. 

“Never thought to, I suppose.” Hama admits. But then she thinks that she would have been afraid to try.

“So are you going to miss it?” Azula asks.

“Miss what?”

The princess gestures about the jungle; to the delicate petals and the fireflies that crawl upon them between drops of late night dew, to the eye sockets of skulls that the fireflies crawl upon and light up, to the trees beyond the garden and its vibrant fruits. To the fireflies themselves as they skim the puddles of what’s left of the flood waters. 

And then to the rickety old shack that is finally repaired and fully hospital. 

Hama furrows her brows. She really didn’t think that she would. 

Perhaps that is why she had left the place to crumble, because she didn’t want to ever miss it. Because she never wanted to nor thought that she would see it as home. 

“Well, at least we’ll be closing things on a kind note.” Kohan points out. “One last gorgeous thing before…whatever happens next.” 

“Yes, I think that I will.” Hama finally answers. “I think that I will…”

The full moon hangs high and yet the fireflies seem to outshine it yet. And the toad-squirrels are lively nestled in those swishing cattails. The croak and call in time with the crickets and the occasional howl or whoop of a tiger-monkey. 

Truth be told, Hama doesn’t think that the jungle has ever been so lively. 

She likes to think that they are trying to bid her a goodbye.

That they are wishing her luck.

She, Kohan, and their strange fire child.

Chapter Text

She feels the cold wind but it doesn’t seep through her skin and pierce her bones as she imagined that it would. It stirs her bangs while she hunches over the guardrail. Hama is still pacing and Azula knows that it has nothing to do with the cold air. The woman is bundled up rather heavily–not so much as Azula but heavy enough to add an awkwardness to her gait. “Don’t tell me that you’re nervous! Isn’t this what you and Kohan have been dreaming of?”

“Of course it is!” Hama snaps. Azula rolls her eyes and bites back the urge to tell her to watch how she speaks to the princess of the Fire Nation. Instead she lets the woman ramble on, her tone softening. “But it’s been so long.” She pauses. “I’m not sure how it has changed…”

Azula bites her lip. She imagines that the Southern Water Tribe has certainly changed and probably not for the better. The invasions have taken their toll, if Zuzu’s recounts are anything to go by. He isn’t the most reliable source but she can’t imagine that he’d not know the difference between a small war-torn village and a larger, more secure one. 

“I’m not sure if there’s anything left of it. If I recall correctly, Katara mentioned that there isn’t much at all. That most of them men there are gone…”

“They’re probably returned. There were a lot of Water Tribesmen at the Boiling Rock and Zuko had them released. I suppose that he’s good for something…” She shrugs. 

“Do you think that my home is still there?”

“Not likely, no.” Azula replies bluntly. “It’s been a long time since you left and a lot of the Southern Water Tribe was destroyed.” It doesn’t pay to sugar coat it. She clears her throat. “I just don’t want you to expect something that isn’t…”

Hama chuckles. “I know that you don’t mean anything by it.”

Azula nods, still slightly rattled at the concept of someone actually understanding her mannerisms and her way of speaking. 

“You don’t want me to get my hopes up for something grand. They probably won’t even remember who I am.” 

“Last I heard there are a lot of kids there. A bunch of mothers and their children. So…”

“People who’ve never met me at all and no familiar faces.” Hama nods. “I wonder if it’s worth going back at all.”

“You said that you wanted to go home. You should at least get to see it, even if it doesn’t look much like home anymore.” Azula shrugs. “Besides, Khan says that there are projects to help rebuild the village and I thought that you’d be interested. You built and maintained your house alone for so long…”

This time Hama’s smile is more genuine. “That Khan is a good boy, letting us stay with his family. I would very much be interested in these projects. But I’d also like to show you what Water Tribe culture is in its true form.” 

Azula nods. “I’ve been to the Earth Kingdom but I’ve never seen any of the Water Tribes. Is it really as cold as they say?”

“Sometimes it’s colder.” Hama replies. “Speaking of, we need to get you bundled up more, this won’t do at all. Especially for two people who aren’t used to that kind of cold.”

Azula swallows. Swallows at the notion that Hama has been kept away from her home for so long that she has grown unused to the cold. The cold that increases steadily with each inch closer to the Water Tribe mainland. 

.oOo.

Hama might laugh at the expression on the princess’ face; at her flushed cheeks and her chattering cheeks were she not so nervous herself. But the girl…her expression is caught between wonderment and confusion. 

Her brows furrow when her foot meets the snow. She gives a little yelp as it sinks in. This time Hama does muster a chuckle. “I forgot to tell you to put on snowshoes first or you’ll sink right in.”

“Sink in? How deep is it?” 

Hama laughs again. “Pretty deep, girl. But the permafrost will keep you from sinking in too far.” She hums. “Although you’re pretty small so if you step on the wrong patch, you might find yourself waist deep.”

“Sounds fantastic.” Azula grumbles as she fumbles with her snowshoes. She clears her throat. “Can you help me lace them?”