Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Ty Lee had always thought the world looked more reasonable upside down. Mountains stopped pretending they were important, the sky became something a person could almost step across, and everyone else’s expectations seemed considerably less persuasive when viewed from beneath the soles of their shoes. Her sisters had thought this habit ridiculous when they were younger, although that hadn’t prevented three of them from attempting it after she learned to balance without touching a wall. They had all looked alike even then, seven matching faces arranged beneath seven nearly identical curtains of dark hair, but none of them had managed to remain inverted as long as she could. It was one of the first things Ty Lee remembered being hers.

The earth beneath her palms felt cool and slightly damp. Afternoon sunlight pressed against her closed eyelids, warm enough to leave the impression of gold even after she shut out the trees, the road, and the Fire Nation encampment behind her. She breathed in slowly, held the air until the movement of her thoughts softened, and released it through her nose. Her arms remained straight, her legs balanced neatly overhead, and the rest of the world settled into the familiar shape of something she could ignore for a little while.

That was the important part.

Not the balance, although balance mattered. Not the exercise, although Azula had once informed her that physical discipline was less embarrassing than most of the ways other people wasted their time. What mattered was the quiet space between one breath and the next, the place where nobody asked her to smile, perform, fight, reassure them, entertain them, or follow orders she hadn’t been permitted to refuse.

It wasn’t a very large space.

Ty Lee had learned to be grateful for small ones.

Somewhere behind her, a soldier dropped a cooking pot and immediately began apologizing. The apology came too quickly and continued too long, which meant Azula was close enough to hear him. Ty Lee’s shoulders tightened before she could stop them, a tiny shift that would have gone unnoticed by almost anyone else and which she felt all the way down to the center of her palms.

She took another breath.

The pot was not her problem.

The soldier was not her problem.

Azula was—

“Are you planning to stay like that until sunset?”

Ty Lee opened one eye.

Mai stood a short distance away, holding two cups of tea and regarding her with the kind of patient disappointment normally reserved for furniture that had unexpectedly developed opinions. Her dark hair stirred in the breeze, and the expression on her face suggested she had already decided the forest, the camp, and possibly the entire Earth Kingdom were inconveniences she intended to endure rather than acknowledge.

Ty Lee grinned at her upside down. “Only if you’re planning to bring me dinner.”

“I brought tea.”

“That’s even better. Dinner usually falls on my face.”

Mai looked at the cups, then at Ty Lee’s inverted position. “You understand that I’m not pouring this into your mouth while you hang upside down.”

“You could try. It might be really impressive.”

“It might be really stupid.”

“Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Mai’s mouth shifted by a fraction. On most people, the movement would barely have qualified as an expression. On Mai, it was practically a standing ovation.

Ty Lee lowered one leg, twisted through her hips, and came down lightly onto both feet. The world resumed its ordinary arrangement around her: trees above, dirt below, soldiers in the distance, and the red canopy of Azula’s traveling tent visible between the trunks. She accepted the offered cup and curled both hands around it, appreciating the warmth even though the afternoon wasn’t especially cold.

“Thanks,” she said.

Mai shrugged. “You disappeared.”

“I walked twenty steps into the trees.”

“Azula counted.”

Ty Lee’s smile remained where it was. She had practiced that particular trick for years, long enough to understand the difference between maintaining an expression and actually feeling one. The tea smelled faintly of ginger, which meant Mai had either remembered Ty Lee liked ginger or selected it because the other pot contained something unpleasant.

With Mai, it was often difficult to know which explanation was kinder.

“She’s busy,” Ty Lee said. “I figured she wouldn’t notice.”

“She notices everything.”

“Yeah.” Ty Lee lifted the cup toward her mouth. “That’s kind of her thing.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The camp sounded ordinary beyond the trees: horses shifting against their leads, armor buckles clicking, a low conversation between two soldiers who thought distance made them safe from being overheard. Ty Lee could identify the rhythm of Azula’s footsteps when they crossed the packed earth near her tent. Even without looking, she knew exactly when those steps paused.

They started again a few seconds later.

Ty Lee took a sip.

“She wants us ready to move before dusk,” Mai said.

“Did she say where we’re going?”

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

Mai gave her a look.

“Right,” Ty Lee said. “That was a silly question.”

“You could ask if you’re interested.”

Ty Lee considered this with all the care of someone inspecting the edge of a blade. “I think I’m interested in being surprised.”

Mai’s expression shifted again, less amused this time. She leaned against a nearby tree, one shoulder settling against the bark as though she had decided to occupy precisely enough space to demonstrate that she was present without making a production of it. Ty Lee knew that posture. It meant Mai had noticed something and wasn’t sure whether mentioning it would help.

Most people assumed Mai didn’t notice much.

Most people were wrong.

“You haven’t slept,” Mai said.

“I slept.”

“You fell asleep sitting against your saddle yesterday.”

“That still counts.”

“You were holding an apple.”

“I was multitasking.”

Mai looked down at her tea. “You don’t have to keep pretending you’re fine when it’s just me.”

Ty Lee’s fingers tightened around the cup. The warmth pressed into her palms, pleasant and steady, and for one dangerous moment she thought about answering honestly. She could say she missed the circus. She could say she missed waking up without first remembering who might be disappointed in her. She could say she still dreamed about the net catching fire beneath her and the animals roaring while Azula watched from her seat with that calm, interested smile.

Instead, she tilted her head and said, “I know.”

Mai studied her for another moment. She didn’t look convinced, but she also didn’t push. That, more than anything, was why Ty Lee loved her.

Not in the same way people meant when they whispered about romance or imagined dramatic declarations beneath moonlit windows. Ty Lee loved Mai because Mai had known her before the circus, before the mission, before Azula had come calling louder than any freedom Ty Lee had managed to find. Mai understood that silence could sometimes be an offering rather than a punishment.

Unfortunately, she also had terrible timing.

“If you disappear for real,” Mai said, “I’ll have to talk to Azula by myself.”

Ty Lee laughed. “That sounds awful.”

“It would be.”

“I promise I won’t leave you alone with her.”

Mai pushed away from the tree. “You’ve got five minutes before someone comes looking.”

“Five whole minutes? You’re spoiling me.”

“I’m being generous because I don’t want to carry your tea back.”

“You’re such a sweetheart.”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

Mai turned and walked toward the camp. Ty Lee watched her go, the familiar dark silhouette slipping between the trees until the red and black of her clothes became another piece of the larger encampment. For a moment, she considered following. Azula would ask why she had taken so long, Ty Lee would invent something cheerful, and the rest of the evening would proceed exactly as every other evening had.

The thought made the tea taste different.

She set the cup carefully beside the tree.

“Five minutes,” she told herself.

Then she placed her palms against the earth, kicked upward, and let the world turn over again.

The transition came easily. Her breathing steadied, her shoulders aligned, and the scattered unease beneath her ribs began to loosen one careful thread at a time. She focused on the movement of energy through her arms, the pressure of her fingertips, and the tiny corrections her body made to hold itself in place. A handstand looked still to people who didn’t understand it. In truth, balance was a thousand small decisions made quickly enough to resemble peace.

She breathed in.

The forest listened.

She breathed out.

The camp seemed farther away.

On the third breath, someone whispered.

“Hold on.”

Ty Lee’s eyes opened.

The voice had been young. Not Mai, not Azula, not any of the soldiers, and certainly not one of the children who sometimes gathered near the roads when Fire Nation troops passed through occupied villages. It belonged to a little girl, though there was something strange beneath it, a weight that made the two quiet words feel much older than the voice that carried them.

Ty Lee remained upside down and looked between the trees.

“Hello?”

No one answered.

The breeze moved through the branches. Somewhere behind her, a horse stamped once against the ground. She waited, listening more carefully, and wondered whether a child had wandered too close to the camp.

That would be bad.

Azula generally disliked surprises she hadn’t arranged herself.

“Hey,” Ty Lee called, keeping her voice soft. “If you’re out there, it’s okay. You can come talk to me.”

For one brief moment, she thought she heard rain.

That made no sense. The sky was clear, the afternoon warm, and there hadn’t been a cloud overhead when she last looked. Yet the sound moved through the trees anyway, distant and steady, like water falling across a place so far away that the world between them had forgotten how to measure it.

Then the little girl whispered again.

“Please. Don’t let go.”

Something pulled.

Ty Lee had felt powerful bending before. She knew the pressure of air gathering around an airbender, the sharp electrical warning that came before Azula formed lightning, and the heavy disturbance of stone shifting beneath an earthbender’s feet. This was nothing like any of those things. It was movement without direction, a force that caught somewhere deeper than muscle or bone and drew every breath in her body backward.

The ground vanished beneath her palms.

It returned immediately.

The air changed.

The trees changed.

The world changed.

Ty Lee’s balance broke.

She dropped out of the handstand, twisted instinctively, and landed on one knee in a patch of unfamiliar grass. Her hands hit the ground again a moment later, fingers digging into soil that felt colder, softer, and wrong beneath her touch. The scent of ginger tea disappeared. So did the horses, the soldiers, the distant crackle of the campfire, and the quiet awareness of Azula somewhere behind her.

There was only wind.

Ty Lee looked up.

The trees were taller.

That was the first thing she noticed, though it was hardly the most important. They stood close together in long, irregular rows, their branches thick with leaves that shifted between green and the first faint gold of approaching autumn. The ground sloped away toward a shallow valley she had never seen before, and beyond the trees rose a line of distant mountains beneath a sky too pale to belong to the afternoon she had left.

She turned quickly.

“Mai?”

Nothing answered.

Ty Lee pushed herself to her feet. Her pulse had begun racing, the beat quick and hard beneath her skin, but she kept her breathing controlled as she searched the forest around her. She found no tents, no red banners, no soldiers, and no sign of the narrow road beside which Azula had ordered the camp established.

“Mai!” she called again, louder this time. “This isn’t funny!”

A bird startled out of a nearby tree.

It was small, brown, and possessed precisely one head.

Ty Lee stared at it.

“That’s not normal,” she informed the bird.

The bird declined to explain itself and flew away.

She took three quick steps back toward where the camp should have been. The forest continued in that direction without interruption. There were no broken branches, no wheel tracks, no scattered ash from cookfires, and no sign that anyone had occupied the clearing before she appeared in it.

She turned in a slow circle.

The mountains remained unfamiliar.

The trees remained unfamiliar.

The quiet remained absolute.

“Okay,” she said, because saying something felt better than allowing the silence to decide what this meant. “That’s fine. This is probably just a spirit thing.”

A spirit thing would not, strictly speaking, have been fine. Spirits could be unpredictable, dangerous, or deeply offended by mistakes people didn’t realize they were making. But a spirit thing was still something that belonged to a world Ty Lee recognized.

She could work with a spirit thing.

Probably.

“Hi,” she called to the surrounding forest. “If there’s a spirit here, I’m really sorry if I did something rude. I didn’t mean to step on anybody, or interrupt anything, or accidentally meditate in the wrong direction.”

The trees rustled.

Ty Lee waited.

“Also, if this is because I left my tea on the ground, I promise I was going to pick it up.”

Still nothing.

The silence pressed closer.

She walked back to the place where she had landed and crouched, studying the grass. It bent beneath her fingers, green and ordinary, with no scorch marks, no circle of light, no strange symbols, and no visible opening through which a person might reasonably travel from one forest into another.

Her hands felt warm.

Not painfully so. Not even unusually enough to call it alarming. Just warm in a way that seemed to linger beneath the skin after everything else had changed.

She rubbed her palms together.

The feeling faded.

“Right,” she murmured. “So we’re doing this the difficult way.”

A small animal emerged from beneath a bush a short distance away. It had long ears, soft brown fur, and the general shape of a jackarabbit. Ty Lee looked for antlers, wings, scales, a second tail, or any other feature that would make its appearance less unsettling.

There were none.

It was simply a un-jacka’d jackarabbit.

The not-jackarabbit looked at her.

Ty Lee looked back.

“What are you supposed to be?”

The rabbit twitched its nose.

“Yeah, that’s kind of what I was afraid of.”

It vanished into the undergrowth.

Ty Lee stood very still.

She could feel the first serious edges of fear gathering now, cold and unpleasant beneath the brightness she normally used to keep such things at a manageable distance. She had been lost before. The circus had traveled through unfamiliar towns, and Azula’s campaign had carried her across enough of the Earth Kingdom to teach her how quickly roads could disappear beneath weather, war, or bad information.

This wasn’t that.

The world felt different.

Not just the trees or the mountains. Something in the air itself had changed, a faint unevenness she couldn’t describe even to herself. She had spent years learning to understand how energy moved through living bodies, how tension gathered in muscles, how breath altered balance, and how a person’s presence changed the space around them.

Here, the space felt full of unfamiliar currents.

As though the world had learned another way to breathe.

Ty Lee wrapped her arms around herself.

Mai would notice she was gone.

Azula would notice too.

The thought came with two feelings at once.

Fear arrived first. Azula didn’t forgive abandonment, and she certainly didn’t forgive mysteries that made her appear less than perfectly in control. If she believed Ty Lee had run away, she might punish Mai for knowing something. She might send soldiers. She might decide the circus had somehow helped, even though Ty Lee hadn’t seen it in months.

Then relief followed.

It came so quietly that Ty Lee almost failed to recognize it.

Azula wasn’t here.

For the first time in longer than Ty Lee cared to admit, there was no order waiting for her. No sharp golden eyes watching for hesitation. No carefully worded invitation that concealed a threat beneath its courtesy.

She could go anywhere.

She could do anything.

She had absolutely no idea where she was.

The relief made her feel sick.

“I didn’t leave you,” she whispered, though whether she meant Mai, Azula, her sisters, or everyone she had ever known, she couldn’t have said.

A scream cut through the trees.

Ty Lee’s head snapped up.

The sound came again, sharper this time, followed by a man shouting and the unmistakable crash of something heavy overturning. The voices carried from somewhere down the slope beyond the clearing, close enough that she could distinguish fear from anger even before the next cry reached her.

Someone was in trouble.

Ty Lee looked once toward the place where she had appeared.

Then she ran.

The road lay at the bottom of the hill, narrow and deeply rutted where wagon wheels had pressed through damp earth. A cart had overturned near a bend, scattering bundles of cloth, broken pottery, and two wooden crates across the ditch. One horse strained against its harness while the other lay twisted beside the shaft, alive but trapped beneath enough weight to keep it from rising.

Three men stood around the wreck.

A fourth held a woman by the arm.

She looked older than Ty Lee, perhaps thirty, with dark hair escaping its pins and a line of blood running down one side of her face. A little girl crouched behind the fallen cart, both hands pressed over her mouth. Ty Lee saw her only because the child’s shoes remained visible beneath the broken axle.

The men carried swords.

Real swords.

Not the decorative blades wealthy Fire Nation officers sometimes wore when they wanted people to believe they were more dangerous than they actually were. These were nicked, dirty, and held with the casual confidence of men who had used them before.

One of the figures on the ground wore a leather guard’s coat.

He wasn’t moving.

Ty Lee slowed at the edge of the trees.

The man holding the woman shoved her against the wagon. “Where’s the rest of it?”

“I told you,” she said, her voice shaking. “There isn’t anything else.”

“Then you won’t mind if we look.”

One of the other men crouched beside a broken crate and pulled out a bundle of folded cloth. He shook it once, frowned at the quality, and tossed it into the mud. Another began searching the woman’s pockets.

Ty Lee drew a breath.

She could leave.

She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know whether these men belonged to an army, a local government, or something worse. She didn’t know how many others might be nearby, and she had no idea whether anyone in this unfamiliar place could bend.

The little girl behind the cart looked up.

Her eyes found Ty Lee between the trees.

The child’s mouth opened.

Ty Lee put one finger to her lips.

Then she stepped onto the road.

“Hi,” she said brightly. “I’m really sorry to interrupt, but I think you guys might be doing a terrible job helping with this accident.”

All four men turned.

The one holding the woman blinked at her. His gaze moved over her pink clothing, her bare hands, and the complete absence of anything resembling armor.

“Well,” he said, “that’s fortunate.”

Ty Lee smiled. “I thought so too. There’s a horse trapped under the wagon, and she’s bleeding, so if everybody works together, we can probably get this sorted out pretty quickly.”

The man beside the broken crate laughed.

It wasn’t a nice laugh.

“Where’d you come from?” he asked.

“That’s actually a really complicated question.”

“Traveling show, maybe,” another said. “Look at her.”

Ty Lee placed one hand against her chest. “I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”

The leader released the woman and stepped toward her. He was broad through the shoulders, heavy around the middle, and moved with the careless confidence of someone who had decided an unarmed girl couldn’t possibly be a problem.

Ty Lee had met people like him before.

They were rarely as observant as they believed.

“Come closer,” he said.

“I’m pretty comfortable right here.”

“That wasn’t a request.”

Her smile held.

“Oh. Then I’m definitely comfortable right here.”

He reached for her.

Ty Lee caught his wrist, stepped inside his balance, and struck twice along the inside of his arm. His fingers opened immediately. Before he could understand why, she drove two quick fingertips into the space beneath his shoulder, pivoted behind him, and nudged the back of his knee.

He folded onto the road.

The nearest bandit stared.

Ty Lee looked down at the man, whose arm now hung uselessly against his side.

“I did try asking nicely,” she said, smiling once more.

The second bandit lunged.

His sword came high and clumsy, more anger than technique. Ty Lee slipped beneath it, planted one hand against the side of the overturned cart, and swung both legs around his shoulders. The movement carried her neatly over his head. She landed behind him, tapped the back of his neck, and watched his knees buckle.

The third man was faster.

He grabbed for her hair.

Ty Lee ducked, twisted away, and struck the soft space above his elbow. His hand dropped before it reached her braid. She followed with a sharp jab beneath his ribs, another against the outside of his thigh, and a final touch near the base of his neck.

He made a confused sound and fell sideways into the ditch.

The woman by the wagon stared at her.

Ty Lee offered a reassuring smile. “It’s okay. They’re just going to feel really weird for a little while.”

The last bandit backed away.

He was younger than the others, with uneven stubble along his jaw and the wild expression of someone who hadn’t expected the afternoon to become this difficult. His sword shook visibly in his hand.

Ty Lee raised both palms.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said. “You can just put that down, and we can all pretend you made a really smart decision.”

His gaze flicked past her.

Toward the cart.

Toward the little girl hiding beneath it.

Ty Lee’s smile disappeared.

“Don’t.”

He moved.

She was already turning, already shifting her weight, already calculating the distance between herself and the child.

She wouldn’t reach him in time.

Something dark crossed the road.

Steel flashed.

The bandit’s sword flew from his hand, struck the side of the wagon, and landed in the mud. A second motion followed so quickly that Ty Lee understood it only after the man staggered backward with both hands pressed against his throat.

He fell.

Blood spread beneath him.

The woman standing over him wore dark leather armor, a weathered cloak, and the expression of someone who had arrived exactly where she intended to be.

Her hair was a deep, unusual shade that seemed almost black until sunlight caught the green within it. Her sword rested easily in one hand. She looked first at the fallen bandit, then at the child behind the cart, then at Ty Lee.

Her eyes were the color of deep water.

Ty Lee forgot, for one disorienting moment, how breathing worked.

Not because the stranger was pretty.

Although she was.

Very.

That wasn’t the problem.

The problem was that Ty Lee had seen dangerous people before, and this woman’s entire body carried the unmistakable stillness of someone for whom violence required neither performance nor hesitation.

The stranger glanced at the three men Ty Lee had disabled.

Then she looked at the fourth.

Then she returned her attention to Ty Lee.

“You’re not with them,” she said.

Ty Lee blinked. “I really hope that wasn’t difficult to figure out.”

The woman’s gaze shifted briefly toward the man in the ditch. “I wanted to make sure.”

“Because of all the friendly touching?”

“Because you were winning.”

Ty Lee looked at her.

The woman looked back.

Somewhere behind them, the trapped horse made a frightened noise.

The stranger sheathed her sword and moved toward the animal.

Ty Lee followed automatically. “Wait, are you just going to lift that?”

“I’m going to try.”

“That cart probably weighs more than both of us.”

The woman examined the broken shaft, adjusted her footing, and placed both hands beneath the edge of the wagon. “Then you should help.”

There was no challenge in the words. No sharpness. No assumption that Ty Lee would obey simply because someone expected her to.

It was a practical suggestion.

Ty Lee hurried to the other side.

Together, they raised the broken shaft enough for the horse to pull its legs free. The animal scrambled upright, nearly striking Ty Lee in its panic, but the dark-haired woman caught its reins before it could bolt. She murmured something low and steady until the horse stopped pulling.

The little girl crawled out from behind the cart.

Her mother caught her immediately.

Ty Lee looked away from them and toward the dead bandit.

The woman with the sword noticed.

“He was reaching for the child,” she said.

“I know.”

There was a pause.

Ty Lee swallowed. “I just thought I could get there.”

“You couldn’t.”

The answer should have sounded cruel.

It didn’t.

The woman’s voice remained calm, almost gentle, though she made no attempt to soften the truth into something easier to accept.

Ty Lee replayed the movement in her head. The distance. The angle. The moment the bandit changed direction.

She had been too far away.

“I know,” she said again.

The stranger studied her expression for a moment longer. “You stopped the others without killing them.”

“Yeah. That’s usually the goal.”

“It’s a useful goal.”

Ty Lee looked up.

The woman had already turned toward the mother and child, checking the woman’s head wound with careful fingers. Her hands were steady. Her expression remained composed, but her movements changed when she touched the injury, becoming slower and more deliberate.

“Can you walk?” she asked.

The woman nodded. “I think so.”

“What about her?”

“My daughter isn’t hurt.”

“Good.” The stranger glanced at the unconscious guard. “Was there anyone else?”

“My husband went ahead to the village. He was supposed to come back with help.”

“How long ago?”

“I don’t know. A quarter hour, maybe.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Ty Lee felt the change before she understood it.

The stranger turned toward the trees.

Then she drew her sword again.

“More?” Ty Lee asked.

“Several.”

“How can you tell?”

The woman tilted her head, listening.

A moment later, Ty Lee heard it too: branches shifting where there shouldn’t have been movement, the scrape of boots against stone, and a low voice speaking somewhere beyond the bend.

The dark-haired woman looked toward the slope above the road.

“Two archers,” she said. “At least six on the ground. Possibly more.”

Ty Lee stared at her. “You got all that from footsteps?”

“And the reflection off the bow.”

She pointed.

Ty Lee followed the gesture and caught a brief flash of light between the branches.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s kind of amazing.”

The stranger looked back at her.

Ty Lee cleared her throat. “Not the archers. Obviously. The noticing.”

The woman’s mouth shifted.

Not quite a smile.

Something close.

“We can discuss it later,” she said.

“That sounds great. I’d love for there to be a later.”

The mother had gone pale. She held her daughter so tightly that the child made a small sound of protest.

“Where can we go?” she asked.

The stranger looked across the road, measuring distances Ty Lee couldn’t yet see. “There’s a drainage channel below the eastern slope. It passes beneath the road and opens into the trees on the other side. Take your daughter through it and keep moving until you reach the stream.”

“I can’t leave the cart.”

“You can.”

“But everything we own—”

“You can replace a cart,” the woman said. “You can’t replace your daughter.”

The mother’s grip tightened.

Then she nodded.

Ty Lee crouched beside the little girl. “Hey, what’s your name?”

“Anya.”

“That’s a really pretty name. I need you to do something important for me, okay?”

The child looked at her with enormous frightened eyes.

Ty Lee smiled, softer this time. “You’re going to hold your mom’s hand, stay really quiet, and follow the little tunnel under the road. Can you do that?”

Anya nodded.

“Perfect. You’re already doing better than most grown-ups.”

The stranger pointed toward the ditch.

The woman took her daughter and ran.

A whistle sounded from the trees.

The first arrow struck the overturned cart.

Ty Lee flinched.

The second came a breath later.

The dark-haired woman moved before Ty Lee saw it. Her sword flashed upward, striking the shaft aside with a sharp crack that sent the arrow spinning into the mud.

Ty Lee stared.

“That,” she said, “was definitely amazing.”

The woman didn’t look at her. “Can you climb?”

Ty Lee blinked. “Can I climb?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, that question’s almost insulting.”

“Good.” The stranger pointed toward the trees above the left side of the road. “Take the archer on the lower branch. I’ll keep the others off you.”

Ty Lee followed her gaze.

The branch was high, the trunk slick with moss, and the archer had already begun drawing another arrow.

She smiled.

“That one I can do.”

The stranger shifted her footing.

Ty Lee ran.

She crossed the road in three quick steps, planted one foot against the side of the wagon, and launched herself upward. Her hand caught the lowest branch. Momentum carried her into a clean rotation, and she swung around the trunk, climbed twice, and reached the archer before he could decide whether he was witnessing an attack or an unusually aggressive circus performance.

His bow dropped when she struck his wrist.

His other hand went numb a moment later.

“Sorry,” Ty Lee said brightly. “You’ve got really bad energy.”

She tapped the side of his neck.

He slumped against the branch.

Below, four men burst from the trees.

The stranger met them in the middle of the road.

Ty Lee had watched Azula fight.

She had seen blue fire cut through stone, lightning split the air, and entire groups of trained soldiers scatter when the princess decided she was tired of being patient. Azula fought like certainty made visible: brilliant, overwhelming, and almost impossible to ignore.

The dark-haired woman fought differently.

There was no display.

No wasted motion.

The first attacker raised an axe, and she stepped inside the swing before he understood how badly he had exposed himself. Her blade struck once. He fell. She turned immediately, caught a sword against her guard, and drove her shoulder into the second man hard enough to send him stumbling into the third.

The fourth circled toward the ditch.

Toward Anya.

Ty Lee dropped from the tree.

She landed behind him, struck the back of his knee, and caught his collar before he hit the ground. His eyes widened when she touched two fingers beneath his jaw.

“Sorry,” she said again. “The little girl’s not part of this.”

He went limp.

The woman with the sword glanced toward her.

Ty Lee gave her a thumbs-up.

An arrow hissed between them.

The stranger caught Ty Lee by the arm and pulled her sideways. The shaft struck the road where she had been standing an instant earlier.

Ty Lee’s back hit the woman’s chest.

For one brief, completely inconvenient moment, she became aware of the warmth of the stranger’s hand around her wrist.

Then the woman released her.

“Second archer,” she said.

“Right. Yes. Still dangerous. Very focused.”

The archer above the opposite slope drew again.

Ty Lee looked at the tree, calculated the angle, and shook her head. “I can’t get up there before he shoots.”

“You don’t need to.”

The woman bent, picked up the fallen bandit’s axe, and threw it.

The weapon turned once in the air.

It struck the branch beneath the archer.

Wood cracked.

The man dropped with a startled shout and landed badly in the brush below.

Ty Lee looked at the broken branch.

Then at the woman.

“Are you always like this?”

“Usually.”

“That’s incredible.”

Another voice called from beyond the bend.

“Get the mage up here!”

The stranger’s expression changed.

Not dramatically. Just enough for Ty Lee to notice the slight tightening around her eyes.

“Mage?” Ty Lee repeated.

The woman looked toward the road. “Move.”

Ty Lee moved.

A burst of fire struck the place where she had been standing.

Heat rolled across the ditch, sharp and immediate, blackening the grass along the roadside. Ty Lee dropped behind the overturned cart and stared toward the bend, where a thin man in a stained coat stood with one hand raised and a small open book in the other.

A circle of red light turned beneath his fingers.

Ty Lee’s thoughts caught on the wrongness of it.

The fire had come from him.

But he hadn’t moved like a firebender.

There had been no rooted stance, no sharp breath, no shift through his shoulders or hips. The flame had simply gathered in front of his hand after he spoke words she couldn’t understand.

The book glowed.

Ty Lee’s stomach dropped.

“That’s not how fire works,” she said.

The stranger glanced at her. “Mage’s enjoy that distinction.”

The mage began speaking again.

Three more bandits moved onto the road beside him.

One carried a spear.

One held a crossbow.

The last was larger than the others, wearing a battered breastplate and a scar that pulled one side of his mouth into a permanent sneer. He saw the bodies on the road, the unconscious men near the cart, and the woman standing beside Ty Lee.

Then his expression changed.

“Well,” he said, “that’s bad luck.”

The stranger lifted her sword.

The bandit leader spat into the dirt. “Should’ve known the Blade Breaker wouldn’t be far behind.”

Ty Lee looked at the woman.

“The what?”

“Later,” she said.

The mage’s fire gathered again.

The leader pointed toward them. “Kill the demon first.”

Ty Lee looked at the woman a second time, eyes even wider now.

“The what?”

“Also later.”

The spell struck the cart.

Wood exploded outward. Ty Lee threw herself sideways as splinters and flame tore through the place where they had been crouching. The stranger caught the edge of her cloak around one arm, turned into the blast, and used her body to shield the path leading toward the drainage channel.

A burning fragment caught against her shoulder.

She ignored it.

Ty Lee didn’t.

She grabbed the cloak, slapped the ember out, and said, “You know, I’m starting to think your later is going to need a really long explanation.”

The stranger’s eyes flicked toward the mage.

“He’s the problem,” she said.

“Yeah, I noticed the terrifying fire.”

“Can you reach him?”

Ty Lee looked across the open road.

The spear fighter stood between them. The crossbowman had already begun reloading. The leader’s breastplate covered most of the usual pressure points along his upper body, and the mage remained far enough behind them to cast without exposing himself.

“Probably,” she said.

The stranger studied her.

Ty Lee amended the answer. “If you help.”

“I will.”

There was no hesitation.

No demand for proof.

No order.

Just certainty.

Ty Lee felt something settle inside her.

“Okay,” she said. “Then here’s what I need.”

The crossbowman raised his weapon.

The stranger moved first.

She ran straight toward him.

The bolt fired.

Ty Lee’s breath caught, but the woman twisted before it reached her, the shaft passing so close to her shoulder that it cut through the edge of her cloak. She closed the remaining distance in three steps, struck the crossbow aside, and drove the pommel of her sword into the man’s temple.

He collapsed.

The spear fighter lunged.

The stranger caught the shaft beneath her arm and twisted.

Wood cracked.

Ty Lee ran.

She used the broken cart as a springboard, vaulted over the spear fighter’s head, and landed directly in front of the bandit leader. He swung at her with a heavy sword, confident that the breastplate made him difficult to disable.

He wasn’t entirely wrong.

But armor still had joints.

Ty Lee slipped beneath the blade and struck the inside of his elbow.

His fingers loosened.

She drove her heel against the back of his knee.

He staggered.

A third strike landed beneath the edge of his helmet.

His head snapped sideways.

The mage saw her coming.

The circle of red light beneath his hand brightened.

Ty Lee threw herself forward.

Fire burst over her shoulder.

She felt the heat skim her back as she rolled beneath the spell, came up inside the mage’s reach, and hit the pressure point just above his wrist.

His hand went numb.

The fire flickered.

But it didn’t disappear.

The mage stared at his useless fingers, then began shaping the spell with his other hand.

Ty Lee’s eyes widened.

“Oh, come on. That’s cheating.”

She struck beneath his collarbone, twisted past the next flare of heat, and drove two fingertips sharply against the side of his neck. His legs failed beneath him. The open book fell into the mud, and the red light dissolved before the next spell could form.

Ty Lee exhaled.

Then someone grabbed her braid.

Pain snapped across her scalp.

The bandit leader had recovered enough to stand.

He dragged her backward, one arm wrapping around her throat while his other hand fumbled for the knife at his belt.

Across the road, the dark-haired woman turned.

Ty Lee saw the change in her face.

It wasn’t panic.

It was calculation.

The distance between them collapsed into something measurable and terrible.

Ty Lee understood immediately.

The woman was deciding whether she could reach the leader before his knife reached Ty Lee.

She couldn’t.

So Ty Lee made another choice.

She dropped her weight, caught the man’s wrist with both hands, and drove her heel backward into the exposed gap behind his knee. His balance broke. His grip loosened for less than a second.

That was enough.

Ty Lee twisted beneath his arm, struck two fingers against the underside of his jaw, and followed with a sharp jab into the soft space above his collar.

His body went rigid.

Then he fell.

The knife landed beside him.

Ty Lee stepped away, breathing hard.

The stranger reached her a moment later.

Her gaze moved quickly over Ty Lee’s face, throat, shoulders, and hands.

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay.”

The woman touched the side of Ty Lee’s neck with two careful fingers.

Ty Lee froze.

The contact lasted only a moment, long enough for the stranger to inspect the reddening mark left by the bandit’s arm.

“You’ll bruise,” she said.

“I’ve had worse.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Ty Lee looked at her.

Up close, the woman’s eyes were even stranger than she had first realized. They weren’t simply green or blue. They held both colors at once, deep and steady, with something difficult to read beneath the calm.

Ty Lee had spent most of her life learning how to understand people quickly. Their auras, their posture, their tone, the way they positioned their hands when they wanted something they weren’t willing to ask for openly. She could usually tell when someone was angry, frightened, lonely, interested, dishonest, or dangerous before they admitted it themselves.

This woman was dangerous.

That part was obvious.

The rest was more complicated.

There was quiet around her, but not emptiness. Something warm lived beneath it, hidden so deeply that Ty Lee could sense the shape of it without knowing what it meant. The feeling reminded her of a campfire buried under cold ash, its heat protected from the wind rather than extinguished.

“I’m not hurt,” Ty Lee said, more honestly this time. “Just a little shaken.”

The woman nodded.

“Good.”

Behind them, one of the disabled bandits groaned.

Ty Lee glanced toward him. “They’ll be able to move again eventually.”

“How long?”

“Depends on how hard I hit them.”

The stranger looked across the road, counting bodies and unconscious men with the detached concentration of someone accustomed to making certain a fight had truly ended.

“Can they be restrained?”

Ty Lee followed her gaze. “Yeah. Probably before they start getting feeling back.”

The woman bent, retrieved the leader’s knife, and cut several lengths of rope from the remains of the wagon harness.

Then she handed half of them to Ty Lee.

Together, they tied the surviving bandits’ wrists.

The stranger didn’t question why Ty Lee wanted them alive.

She simply helped.

By the time they finished, the mother and daughter had emerged from the trees on the far side of the road. Anya ran toward Ty Lee before her mother could stop her.

Ty Lee crouched automatically.

The child threw both arms around her neck.

For a moment, everything else disappeared.

The dead men.

The fire.

The impossible road.

The camp she might never see again.

Ty Lee hugged her back.

“You did really well,” she whispered.

Anya’s fingers tightened against her clothes. “I was scared.”

“Me too.”

The little girl pulled back enough to look at her. “You didn’t look scared.”

Ty Lee smiled.

She had spent years becoming very good at that.

“Sometimes being scared doesn’t mean you stop,” she said. “Sometimes it just means you keep going while your knees complain about it.”

Anya considered this seriously.

Then she nodded.

Her mother reached them a moment later, eyes bright with unshed tears. “Thank you. Both of you. I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t come.”

The stranger sheathed her sword.

“You don’t have to know,” she said.

The woman looked toward the fallen guard.

Her expression changed.

Ty Lee felt the grief settle into the space between them, heavy and immediate. The guard’s body remained where he had fallen beside the wagon, one hand still curled around the broken strap of his shield.

“I’m sorry,” Ty Lee said quietly.

The woman closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, she reached down and rested one hand against her daughter’s hair.

“His name was Thomas,” she said. “He had two sons.”

The stranger looked at the body for a long moment.

Then she nodded once.

“We’ll tell the village,” she said.

There was no promise that the loss would become smaller. No suggestion that saving the others made it disappear.

Just the certainty that someone would remember his name.

Ty Lee found herself grateful for even that.

The sound of hoofbeats reached them several minutes later. A broad-shouldered man in a merchant’s coat appeared around the bend with two villagers behind him, each carrying a farming tool that looked less like a weapon than a desperate attempt to improvise one.

The woman called his name.

He dropped from his horse before it fully stopped.

Anya ran toward him.

Ty Lee looked away while the family held one another.

The stranger remained beside her, hands resting loosely at her sides.

After a moment, she said, “You’re shaking.”

Ty Lee glanced down.

Her fingers trembled.

“Oh,” she said. “I guess I am.”

The woman reached beneath her cloak, removed a small wrapped cloth, and offered it to her.

Ty Lee unfolded it.

Inside was a piece of bread.

She looked up.

“I’m not hungry.”

“That’s unfortunate,” the woman said. “You should eat anyway.”

Ty Lee laughed before she meant to.

It came out uneven.

The stranger’s expression softened by a degree so slight that most people would have missed it.

Ty Lee didn’t.

She took a bite.

The bread was dense, slightly stale, and possibly the best thing she had ever tasted.

Her name was Byleth.

Ty Lee learned this after the merchant finished thanking them, the villagers began collecting the surviving bandits, and Byleth took several minutes to explain which prisoners would regain control of their limbs first. She accepted no immediate payment, though she did tell the merchant where the Blade Breakers were camped in case the village wanted to discuss compensation after everyone had stopped bleeding.

Ty Lee waited until the family had started back toward the village.

Then she said, “So you’re a mercenary.”

Byleth nodded. “My father leads the company.”

“And people call you a demon.”

“Some people.”

“Do your friends?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Ty Lee considered that. “That’s reassuring.”

Byleth looked at her. “Is it?”

“A little. If your friends called you a demon, I’d probably have more questions.”

“You already have questions.”

“I have a lot of questions.”

“So do I.”

They stood beside the broken wagon while afternoon light softened across the road. The air smelled of damp earth, scorched wood, and the sharp metallic edge Ty Lee tried not to breathe too deeply. Somewhere farther down the slope, water moved over stones in a narrow stream.

Byleth bent to retrieve the mage’s fallen book.

She examined the cover, wiped mud from one corner, and tucked it beneath her arm.

Ty Lee stared at it.

“You’re keeping that?”

“It might tell us where they came from.”

“It shoots fire.”

“The book doesn’t shoot fire.”

Ty Lee pointed toward the blackened grass. “I feel like the evidence disagrees.”

“The mage used it to cast a spell.”

“A spell.”

“Yes.”

Ty Lee waited.

Byleth waited too.

“That was the whole explanation?” Ty Lee asked.

“It seemed sufficient?”

“It really wasn’t.”

Byleth tilted her head. “Do people not use magic where you’re from?”

“They use bending.”

“What’s bending?”

Ty Lee opened her mouth.

Then closed it.

There were questions a person expected to answer when visiting a new place. Where are you from? Do you need directions? Why are you dressed like that? Occasionally, if the person asking was especially rude, what happened to all your shoes?

Nobody had ever asked her what bending was.

“It’s when someone moves an element,” she said slowly. “Water, earth, fire, or air.”

Byleth looked toward the burned grass. “The mage moved fire.”

“Not like that. He used a book.”

“Most mages do.”

“Why?”

“To help shape the spell.”

Ty Lee pressed both hands over her face.

“This is getting so much worse.”

Byleth remained quiet.

Ty Lee lowered her hands.

“I’m sorry. That probably sounded rude.”

“It sounded confused.”

“I’m definitely super confused.”

“Where are you from?”

Ty Lee looked down the road.

The mountains beyond it remained unfamiliar. The signs carved into a nearby marker carried letters she couldn’t recognize, and the people around her had spoken of villages, currency, and roads as though the world were arranged according to a map she had never seen.

“The Fire Nation,” she said.

Byleth’s brow furrowed.

Ty Lee felt something cold move through her chest.

“You’ve heard of it, right?”

Byleth didn’t answer immediately.

That was answer enough.

“It’s a country,” Ty Lee said quickly. “A really big one. There are islands, and the royal family lives in the capital, and there’s a war, which is obviously terrible, but it’s been going on for a hundred years, so everybody knows about it.”

“A war with whom?”

“The Earth Kingdom. And the Water Tribes. And there used to be the Air Nomads, but—” Ty Lee stopped. “You really haven’t heard of any of them?”

“No.”

“What about the Avatar?”

Byleth shook her head.

Ty Lee stared at her.

The road tilted.

Not physically. She knew that much because her feet remained steady and the trees stayed exactly where they were. But something inside her lost its balance all the same, the last small hope that this was simply an unfamiliar corner of the Earth Kingdom slipping away beneath the weight of Byleth’s confusion.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“Fódlan.”

“That’s a city?”

“A continent.”

Ty Lee laughed.

The sound was wrong.

Byleth noticed.

“I’ve never heard of Fódlan,” Ty Lee said.

Byleth looked toward the distant mountains. “There are places beyond it. Almyra, Dagda, Brigid, Sreng. Your home might be farther away than any of those.”

“Do any of them have firebenders?”

“I don’t know what those are.”

“They’re people who bend fire.”

“The mages?”

“No, not the mages.” Ty Lee’s voice rose before she could stop it. She took a breath and tried again. “I’m sorry. I’m not upset with you. I just don’t understand how any of this can be happening.”

Byleth studied her carefully.

“When did you arrive?”

“Today.”

“From where?”

“That’s the problem.” Ty Lee wrapped her arms around herself. “I was with my friends. We had a camp in the Earth Kingdom, and I was practicing, and then I heard someone talking.”

“Who?”

“A little girl.”

Byleth’s expression changed.

Only slightly.

Ty Lee noticed anyway.

“I didn’t see her,” she continued. “I just heard her voice. Then everything felt strange, and suddenly I was here.”

“What did she say?”

Ty Lee looked at the ground.

“Something about holding on.”

Byleth remained very still.

For a moment, Ty Lee wondered whether she had said something wrong.

Then Byleth asked, “Was she alone?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see anything.”

“Did you recognize her?”

“No. I couldn’t see her, I just heard the voice.”

Byleth looked toward the trees.

The quiet around her deepened, thoughtful rather than suspicious, and Ty Lee had the sudden impression that the answer meant more to her than it should.

“You believe me?” Ty Lee asked.

Byleth returned her attention to her. “I believe you think it happened.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” Byleth admitted. “But I’ve seen enough strange things to know that impossible isn’t always the same as untrue.”

The words settled somewhere warm beneath Ty Lee’s fear.

She smiled, though this time it didn’t require quite as much effort.

“You say really nice things for someone people call a demon.”

“They don’t usually ask for my opinion.”

“That seems unfair.”

“It often is.”

Ty Lee glanced toward the village road. “So what happens now?”

Byleth looked at the sky.

Clouds had begun gathering beyond the western ridge, dark enough to promise rain before nightfall.

“You shouldn’t stay out here alone,” she said.

“I can take care of myself.”

“I noticed.”

Ty Lee waited for the rest.

It didn’t come.

Byleth simply adjusted the book beneath her arm and looked toward the forest path leading away from the road.

“My company is camped nearby,” she said. “You can come with me if you want.”

“If I want?”

“Yes.”

Ty Lee blinked. “You’re not going to tell me I have to?”

“No.”

“What if I say no?”

“Then I’ll give you directions to the nearest village.”

“And if I don’t want to go there either?”

Byleth considered this. “Then I’d suggest finding shelter before it rains.”

Ty Lee stared at her.

Byleth’s mouth curved faintly.

“You can be fine and still need help,” she said.

That did it.

Not the impossible fire.

Not the blood on the road.

Not the realization that Mai and Azula might exist somewhere impossibly distant beneath a different sky.

Those things had already cracked the careful balance Ty Lee maintained inside herself.

Byleth’s quiet permission to need something nearly broke it altogether.

Ty Lee looked away quickly.

“Okay,” she said.

Byleth didn’t comment on the sudden shine in her eyes.

“Okay,” she repeated.

They started up the forest path together.

Byleth walked without making much noise.

Ty Lee noticed this almost immediately, partly because she had spent years traveling with people who believed stealth meant being quieter than a siege engine, and partly because Byleth’s entire presence seemed arranged around the assumption that the world might become dangerous again without warning.

She watched the trees.

She listened to the wind.

She noticed when the path narrowed and shifted her position so Ty Lee walked farther from the drop along the hillside.

None of it felt performative.

Ty Lee wasn’t sure anyone had ever protected her so quietly before.

“So,” she said after several minutes, “how many people are in your company?”

“Twenty, usually.”

“Twenty?”

“Sometimes fewer. Sometimes more.”

“And they all carry weapons?”

“Generally.”

Ty Lee considered this. “That’s either incredibly reassuring or exactly how a really scary story starts.”

Byleth glanced at her.

“It can be both,” she said.

Ty Lee laughed.

The sound came more easily this time.

“Do they know you’re bringing someone back?”

“No.”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“My father will have questions.”

“How many questions?”

“Several.”

“What kind?”

“The normal kind.”

Ty Lee raised an eyebrow. “I feel like our definitions of normal might be different.”

Byleth stepped over a fallen branch and held it aside until Ty Lee passed.

“He’ll want to know where you came from, what you can do, whether anyone is following you, and why you don’t have a weapon.”

Ty Lee glanced at her hands.

“I have weapons.”

Byleth followed her gaze.

“I noticed those too.”

The answer warmed Ty Lee in a way she couldn’t quite explain.

People usually noticed the acrobatics first. The flexibility, the tricks, the bright clothes, the smiling girl who didn’t look like she belonged in a fight until someone lost the ability to stand. Even people who respected her skills sometimes treated them like an entertaining surprise.

Byleth had seen exactly what she could do.

And she hadn’t seemed surprised for long.

“Your father won’t think it’s weird?” Ty Lee asked.

“He’ll think everything about you is weird.”

Ty Lee looked at her.

Byleth’s expression remained perfectly serious.

Then she added, “He thinks most things are weird.”

“That’s not very comforting.”

“He’ll feed you anyway.”

“You sound pretty sure.”

“I know him.”

They walked a little farther.

The first drops of rain began to fall.

Ty Lee lifted her face toward the sky. The water was cold, scattered, and smelled faintly of leaves rather than sea salt. She thought of the Fire Nation coast, the warm black stone near the harbors, and the bright red roofs she had spent years believing she wanted to escape.

She had never imagined escaping quite this far.

Byleth noticed her slowing.

“Do you want to stop?”

Ty Lee shook her head.

“No. I just…” She searched for the words. “I told my friend I wouldn’t disappear.”

Byleth’s gaze softened.

“What’s her name?”

“Mai.”

“Is she the one you were traveling with?”

“One of them.”

“And the others?”

Ty Lee’s shoulders tightened.

“Another friend,” she said. “Sort of.”

Byleth didn’t ask what that meant.

After a moment, Ty Lee added, “She’s a princess.”

“That sounds difficult.”

Ty Lee laughed in surprise. “You have no idea.”

Byleth’s eyes moved toward the trees.

Something unreadable passed across her face, a quiet thought that seemed to belong to someone far beyond the road beneath their feet.

“Maybe I have some idea,” she said.

Ty Lee turned toward her. “You know a princess?”

Byleth considered the question.

“I know someone who’s very demanding.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“She would disagree.”

Ty Lee smiled. “Is she your friend?”

“Yes.”

The answer came quickly.

More quickly than anything else Byleth had said.

Ty Lee noticed.

She noticed the slight change in Byleth’s expression too, the warmth that appeared beneath her calm when she spoke of someone absent. It wasn’t dramatic. Most people might have missed it.

Ty Lee didn’t.

“Oh,” she said.

Byleth looked at her. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You said it like it was something.”

“I just think it’s nice that you have someone you care about.”

Byleth regarded her for another moment.

Then she nodded.

“She matters to me,” she said.

Ty Lee’s smile gentled.

“I’m glad.”

The rain strengthened.

Byleth unfastened her cloak.

Ty Lee realized what she was doing a second too late.

“You don’t have to give me that.”

“You’re wearing less.”

“I’m not cold.”

“You’re shivering.”

“That might be emotional.”

“It can be both.”

Before Ty Lee could argue again, Byleth settled the cloak around her shoulders.

It was heavier than she expected. The fabric smelled faintly of leather, rain, and something clean beneath the smoke from the road. It still held the warmth of Byleth’s body.

Ty Lee pulled it closer.

“Thanks,” she said.

Byleth nodded.

A few steps later, Ty Lee noticed a dark stain spreading beneath the leather at Byleth’s upper arm.

She stopped.

“You’re bleeding.”

Byleth looked down. “A little.”

“A little is still bleeding.”

“It’s not deep.”

Ty Lee caught her wrist.

Byleth went still.

Her pulse moved steadily beneath Ty Lee’s fingers.

Strong. Calm. Entirely normal.

“You should’ve told me,” Ty Lee said.

“It didn’t seem important.”

“That’s a terrible reason.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Byleth looked at her.

Ty Lee gave her a pointed expression.

A small smile touched the corner of Byleth’s mouth.

“You learn quickly,” she said.

“I’m incredibly talented, I’ll have you know.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

Ty Lee felt an unexpected flicker of warmth beneath her ribs.

She ignored it.

Mostly.

Byleth allowed her to inspect the injury beneath the edge of the armor. The cut was shallow, likely caused by a piece of wood from the exploding cart, and the bleeding had already begun to slow. Ty Lee tore a narrow strip from the inside hem of her sleeve before Byleth could object and wrapped it firmly around the wound.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Byleth said.

Ty Lee tied the knot.

“You can be fine and still need help,” she replied.

Byleth studied her for a long moment.

Then her smile became real.

It changed her entire face.

Ty Lee forgot what she had planned to say next.

Fortunately, the forest chose that moment to open ahead of them.

A cluster of tents stood beneath the trees beyond a shallow rise, arranged around a central fire protected from the rain by a stretched canvas cover. Horses shifted near a line of temporary pickets. Several armed figures moved between supply crates, bedrolls, and cooking equipment with the easy familiarity of people who had spent enough time on the road to make a temporary camp feel almost like a home.

Ty Lee counted swords.

Then axes.

Then a woman carrying a crossbow while arguing with a man who appeared to be mending a sock.

There were, in fact, approximately twenty armed weirdos.

“Oh,” she said softly. “You weren’t exaggerating.”

“I rarely do.”

A man near the edge of the camp spotted them.

He was older than Byleth, broad-shouldered and heavily built, with weathered features, pale hair, and the particular expression of someone who had become tired of surprises several decades ago without managing to avoid any of them since.

His eyes found Byleth first.

They moved immediately to the blood on her arm.

Then to the unfamiliar pink-clad girl wearing his daughter’s cloak.

His face did something complicated.

“Kid,” he called, “you wanna tell me why you’re coming back injured and bringing home a stranger?”

Byleth stopped beside Ty Lee.

“It’s a long story.”

The man looked at her.

Then at Ty Lee.

Then at the blood again.

“I’ve got time,” he said.

Ty Lee offered him her brightest smile.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Ty Lee, and before you get worried, I just want you to know that most of the blood isn’t ours.”

The camp went quiet.

The man closed his eyes.

Byleth’s smile widened slightly.

And for the first time since the world had changed beneath her hands, Ty Lee thought that perhaps landing somewhere impossible didn’t necessarily mean she had landed in the wrong place.