The mirror I find is disappointingly clean.
I return to the room I left them in to find two additional people inside. Healers, it seems, from the way they are fussing over Mai and stealing furtive glances at Azula.
My silent entrance goes unnoticed.
"I will be fine", Mai says, pushing the hands reaching for her head away.
"I'm so sorry, Mai", Circus Girl has tears in her eyes.
As I move to the wall beside me and lean against it, the baby on my arm smacks his lips together loudly, the sound disproportionately loud directly by my ear. Immediately, five heads swivel in my direction. Azula scrambles to her feet, if that can even be called scrambling. It's more of a less graceful way to stand.
"Your mirror", I toss it over, and she catches it shakily with a glare that I'm not too sceptical about it setting me on fire.
A glance into it and already she's looking back at me. Then her eyes snap back to her reflection and widen comically. "What…", she whispers, staring at her own face with astonishment.
Circus Girl is beside her in a moment, hovering worriedly as Azula takes in her appearance.
"Why do I look like her?", her voice is cold, but brittle around the edges. I'm reminded of the time she went truly mad.
"She's your mo-"
"Yes", she cuts her friend off sharply, takes a deep breath, "How did this happen?"
Circus Girl's eyes dart to me, looking apprehensive. She's worried that if she tells her princess that I'm the one she has to thank for this, I won't agree to heal her.
But the small movement is enough for Azula to round on me. With a shaking hand, she points at me accusingly, "You! You did this! Fix it! FIX IT!"
When I give no outward sign of having heard her, she stomps towards me, dropping the mirror in the process. It shatters to pieces by her feet, and she doesn't appear to care.
"You can heal! Fix this! Fix-"
"Fix you?", I mock and she falters mid-stride. Self-esteem issues become apparent. How very good insight I have. "There is hardly any point. To me, you are acting just as you would at fifteen. You're more of a spoilt brat than this one", I poke the baby's nose. He giggles cutely.
"Spoilt-", she flounders. She was trapped, groomed to be the perfect puppet form the time of her birth. The only question is, can she break free?
I turn to look at her friends, take a few steps towards them, rounding Azula. "Poor, poor princess. Did your mother never teach you to be kind?"
A screech of anger and I can feel the heat of flames through my shirt as I slap her fist away easily. Too easily. Does she want to be subdued, stopped? Does she test me? Perhaps, in the most unlikely of ways, she has mastered the third Jin.
"Is it perhaps", I say and inspect the limp appendage at her side, "That you think you deserve to be loved?"
A wounded noise from Circus Girl. Wow. I am such an arsehole.
"I'll heal you", I tell her.
"But?", Azula asks.
"When the time comes that you understand my motivations, I will find you", I declare softly.
"When will you heal me?"
"Once I've determined that everyone dear to me is out of your reach."
It's a harsh thing to say. But with the way Azula averts her eyes, it needed to be said. She is aware of her own cruelty. She must be aware of how much better she is at manipulation at fifteen. She knows that I do not trust her.
I take a knee beside Mai and reach out with gentle fingers to free her from the bandages. She lets me without protest.
I heal her with care, then I stand. "I'll return with your brother as promised. I will take care of the princess after that."
She nods and the other two watch as I leave the room.
This got complicated fast.
...
The way back is a little trickier than getting inside the city. But I haven't escaped enraged orderlies throughout the first ten years of my life for nothing.
There is a brief contemplation of walking out the front door, but that's just asking for trouble that I can't afford. So, I leave via balcony and make my way down to the city over the rooftops. I resist the temptation of the chutes by way of reminding myself that I can always play later, once the city is back under Bumi's command. I really am getting tired of acting responsibly. There is just no fun to be had.
But that's not entirely true.
On my way over the walls, hidden between one of the larger factory buildings and a watchtower, I get to see someone who looks rather important escorted into the city. He looks vaguely familiar, but I can't place him until one of his escorts whose voice carries calls him 'Warden'.
He's the crazy prison warden of the Boiling Rock.
I can't decide if today is my lucky day or not.
This just got a lot more complicated. But also, I know he's the kind to deserve a little bullying. And, by all that is wholesome and good in this world, what better way to browbeat a warden than to abduct him? It will be an ode to canon, only without resembling it at all. There certainly won't be any of the dignity it had.
It's kind of pathetic that I'm able to take out half of his escort as easily as I do and the other half is too busy gaping at me in shock to put up much of a fight after that.
The warden though, is not one to go down without a fight. The Kiyoshi girl must be one heck of a fighter to have captured him as quickly as she did. Instead of engaging in a bending duel that, as he surely knows, I would have won, baby or not, he attempts to keep me away from him for as long as it takes for help to arrive. He's good. Very good.
I'm rather proud to say that I'm better.
Not by much, though. And he makes me work for getting him tied up. Spirits, can't he just stop struggling? Man, what is wrong with this man?
It's not like I'm going to kill him.
Probably…
I should definitely review my recent behaviour.
Later, though. (Worrying. Wilfully prioritising taking someone hostage over my own mental state might not be something I want to be doing.)
Almost getting my thumb bitten off does take precedence, though.
...
As I drag the man, who is heavier than he looks, back to camp, I see signs of fighting all over. Deep turfs where earthbenders must have been bending something fierce, bushes burnt to black charcoal and in some places, blood. I do hope I managed to negotiate in time. (I hope Mai didn't deliberately take her time in sending the orders.)
Even as I look around cautiously, a slide of wall opens to my left. O-Ting waves me in. "Glad you're here. Why've you still got the baby?"
Why indeed. The special snowflake is asleep again. "I'll give him back once you're out of the canyons. But look, I found something almost even better."
"Almost?", he questions even as he helps me pull the blindfolded and still struggling man into the tunnel.
"Another member of the governing family."
I can almost feel the judgement as a tangible prod in the side of my head. "Are we starting a collection?"
It startles a laugh out of me. It shouldn't be all that funny, since it was the resistance that attempted to assassinate the governing family, and O-Ting might have had a direct hand in it. However, I'm not about to point fingers at what could well be albeit murky mirrors. I may be many things, but I try not to be a hypocrite if I can help it.
Not, that I can help it most days.
We tie up the warden with his back to the fireplaces that come into view around the bend of the tunnel. It vaguely reminds me of Plato's Cave Parable the way he can only see our shadows even if he turns his head.
I remove my mask.
The others are gathered around another campfire, this one far smaller than the one from last night. The shadows the light casts make them all look like recovering drug-addicts with hollowed-out cheeks and bleak looks in their eyes.
Especially Aang.
Spirits, he went into the Avatar State earlier and was probably unconscious for most of the fighting just now. Has he talked to Katara about this yet? Bumi?
À propos madman. He's a short distance away debating with the general over something that looks like a miniature three-dimensional model of Omashu and the surrounding canyons. How very neat. O-Ting follows me over.
"-isn't a feasible option! Not after this! The Avatar may have convinced us once, but some of us died here! The Fire Nation will hunt us, force us to scatter if we back off now!", the General whispers heatedly at his King.
...
Don't forget to throw some power stones :)
...
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